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A couple of innocuous words that have insidious consequences. A simple marketing tagline, yet it appears to be seriously undermining a vast segment of the computer sector. What is it? The phrase, "industry standard." It comes from the same warped (but ingenious) minds that coined the term "legacy" back in the 1990s. That harmless word served to forward the Windows NT - Intel processor gravy train at the expense of so-called inferior technologies like mainframe, OpenVMS and even Unix. Yet many would argue that despite all the genuine improvement to Windows in recent years to make it much more enterprise friendly, it still can't hold a candle to many of these legacy systems.

Free software advocates are praising a federal appeals ruling that allows greater protection for open source software against copyright infringement. The case concerns a company, Kam Industries, which downloaded open source code for use in a product that programs the chips that control model trains. The code used was written by Robert Jacobsen, who released it under an Artistic License, which requires other people who use it to give credit to the author, identify the original source of the files and describe how the new code has been changed, among other conditions.

Most often, Microsoft Corp.'s biggest rivals in the Chinese market have been black-market versions of its own products. That could change for the company's Office software suite, a key product that includes its word processing and spreadsheet tools. Wuxi, China-based Evermore Software is expected to release its latest Office competitor in late August. And while EIOffice 2009 is based on a file format standard promoted by the Chinese government and costs a fraction of Microsoft's offering, it also comes with a new legal threat.

Ten years ago, the then CEO of Ericsson in Sweden wrote an internal article about digital convergence. He stated that within a very short time, all data produced in an analog way such as books, music, photographs, newspapers and so forth would cease to exist. Instead all content would become digital and we would render, view and listen to digital formats. I believe he had a vision for the future, but his timing was off about eight to ten years.

CodeWeavers' CrossOver Linux is a software framework that emulates the Microsoft Windows 98, 2000 and XP application programming interfaces (APIs) on GNU/Linux. This allows Windows programs to run on GNU/Linux without having to run a virtual instance of the operating system e.g. a virtual machine.

LXer Feature: 17-Aug-2008

This week we have Akademy 2008 reviews, Windows gives a BSOD during the Olympics opening ceremonies, Linus doesn't like monkeys, Derek Knowlton journeys to Sin City to experience DefCon 16, Lawyers who should stay away from Linux and 10 of this, 5 of those, 11% of that..its numbers numbers everywhere!

In the nextPeople Behind KDE interview, we stay in the United States of America (but leave in an underwater craft!) to meet a KDE developer who could be a JuKebox in another life, someone who helps you build development versions of KDE (staying on the bleeding edge without the pain!) - tonight's star of People Behind KDE is Michael Pyne.

Yesterday marked a big step in copyright protection of open source licensed software, as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled that an open source software developer can claim copyright infringement, even if the work is released under a free software license.

Linux Operating System has been myth for many of the people out there.. Most of the people has wrong inception regarding Linux. Those who dare to make the transition get caught in the partition or they failed to understand the Basics of Linux. “The applications and the OS itself” . Its pretty natural for a Mediocre user to get used to different terms at once.. People still consider Linux to Commands Line and OS meant for geeks and professionals.. Linux has cleared all the obstacles and now stand as a great alternative for Home Users Desktop OS.. Linux has emerged as one of the great alternative to Windows and it is must if you want to make the transition..

This workshop explains how to install the current release (Backtrack 3 Final) in a virtual environment using VMWare Server. The goal will be to run Backtrack 3 from the hard disk connected to a wireless USB adapter, a USB GPS antenna and to use the tool Kismet. It further describes how to collect valid wireless networks and to display them on Google Earth’s worldwide map system.

Read more at Linux-tip.net

Tampa is about to get a life. Denizens of Second Life, a virtual online community, will hold their annual convention at the Tampa Marriott Waterside hotel, according to Kevin Alderman, a Lutz entrepreneur who sells sex toys in Second Life. Alderman is serving as local spokesperson for the convention organized by the Future United, a nonprofit organization of Second Life inhabitants.

PyTube is a GUI tool to download videos online from Video-sharing websites like Youtube, Google videos. Not only can it download files, PyTube can search for videos and help you to convert the videos to your format of choice. Also, can manipulate videos like Apply Audio into Video, Merge videos, resize videos, create ringtones to your mobilephone, rotate videos etc.

As I reported yesterday, the OOXML appeals brought by Brazil, India, South Africa and Venezuela have been rejected by the Technical Management Board (TMB) and Standardization Management Board (SMB) of ISO and IEC, respectively. I have now received the actual voting results.

Buoyed by a court ruling and prospects for new mobile phone products, The SCO Group says it is on track for a Phoenix-like rebirth. The company believes those two factors have finally given it the breathing room to emerge from bankruptcy and continue its traditional computer server business, as well as market promising new mobile products and pursue its high-profile legal battles over the millions of dollars it believes it is owed from users of Linux-based servers.

As a computer journalist for the last 25 years, I've received a lot of review copies of software. As something of an obsessive magpie, I've tended to keep most of it, “for reference”. Until yesterday, that is, when I finally threw out all those copies of OS/2, Lotus SmartSuite, and my entire collection of Microsoft software. This included Windows NT 3.5, Windows 2000, Microsoft Office and many, many more. What's makes this little spring-cleaning exercise particularly apt as well as cathartic is that all of us - and not just me - may finally be witnessing the end of the Windows era.

In this article I will show how to install and use QuickStart on an Ubuntu 8.04 desktop. QuickStart is like a Swiss army knife, it allows you to do various things on your Ubuntu desktop: creating and restoring backups, running scheduled backups, backing up configuration files, installing some common applications, installing DVD codecs, deleting unnecessary files, etc.

If you want to know how much disk space you have on a Windows machine, what do you do? There's a number of different ways of getting that information, but the way that I usually use is to go to Windows Explorer and right click on the drive letter and select Properties. This opens up a window which looks at the drive and tells me how many folders and items there are, how big it is and how much space is left. In Linux, how can I see how I get the same information?

Everyone knows about the infamous internet wars. Ranging from operating systems to text editors to code indentation style, these wars have wreaked havoc on the web for years. The topics range from serious topics like religion to serious geek topics like operating systems to just plain stupid topics like code indentation style. So today, I’m going to go through a list of some of the most famous topics and remind you of a few of the more, er, “famous” battles.

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) have given the green light to publish the Microsoft-backed Office Open XML (OOXML) specification after organization leaders rejected appeals from four countries to protest the vote that approved OOXML as a standard.

The way he has gone about establishing Ubuntu as the desktop Linux distribution most in demand by enthusiasts is remarkable. And he is now quietly beginning to muscle in on the enterprise market. One trait has stood him in good stead and will continue to help him and his company, Canonical, make headway - patience. He has always shown himself willing and able to wait for the right moment to do something. Time appears to be of little importance to him; he has a goal and he intends to attain it.