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Nobody knows yet what the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) will consist of, but the few available indications are so ominous that the Free Software Foundation (FSF) has started a campaign to raise public awareness of the possibilities. According to Matt Lee, an FSF campaign manager, ACTA threatens to "create a culture of fear and suspicion," and, in the worst-case scenario, undermine and demonize free software.

Canonical CEO and Ubuntu Linux backer Mark Shuttleworth will step into the spotlight July 22, when he keynotes OSCON (Open Source Convention) in Portland, Oregon. It will be a critical moment for Shuttleworth and the Ubuntu movement. Here's why.

A bug in Mac OS X can cause loss of data in VMware Fusion virtual machines, company officials have warned. Fusion is VMware's virtualisation product for Mac OS X. According to VMware, the underlying problem is in the way Mac OS X handles unbuffered I/O. The issue is variously referred to as either a bug or "a disagreement between Fusion and OS X about what sequences of disk-write calls are legal to make."

But listen...you might want to reconsider your stand on being my exact opposite. You know a small bit of moderation goes a long way. You may want to ponder your decision to walk to the very end of that spectrum...the "zealot" one. You don't honestly want to wear that title...that exact opposite of zealot. That would make you a coward.

The SQO-OSS project aims at developing a software quality assessment platform to Free Software developers. SQO-OSS is a project funded through the European Commission's Framework Programme 6 and consists of a number of European organisations with knowledge relevant to build such a platform, among which KDE e.V.. After more than one and a half years of research, design and development the SQO-OSS developer now have made available a first demo showing some capabilities of the Alitheia system. Alitheia stands for the ultimate and business-like truth.

Using the perltidy program to create readable Perl scripts from working, but messy and convoluted, existing ones.

LXer Feature: 20-Jul-2008

In this week's Roundup, the judge in the SCO v. Novell suit finally hands down a ruling, a member of the Brazilian group that analyzed the OpenXML standard speaks out, debunking the Linux virus myth, a review of 12 web browsers for Linux, finding the fastest filesystem, a test drive of OpenOffice.org 3.0 and what Linus Torvalds thinks about BSD developers. On the lighter side, we end with a review of the Linux Hater's Blog by Steven Rosenberg and Unix and Linux humor - know your SysAdmin.

The most interesting story the media is downplaying is the ASUS announcement that it will have a ROM boot chip on all its motherboards, which will boot Linux instantly on start-up. When you flick the switch the machine is instantly on. (It's about time.) Of course, you will have to press another button for the machine to load Windows.

I like the word "farewell". It carries a lot more meaning than plain old "good-bye". Wikipedia defines it as "...a wish of happiness or welfare at parting, especially a permanent departure." So it's fitting to bid Brian Proffitt, who managed Linux Today, LinuxPlanet, AllLinuxDevices, JustLinux, and LinuxPR for the past six years, a very fond farewell.

Assortment of financial analyses about Microsoft and its disappointing quarterly report

Lately it's hard to avoid the buzz about netbooks - the small, cheap laptop systems that were popularized by the Asus Eee PC (which, of course, Mandriva Linux 2008 Spring supports very well). Many in the community have asked if Mandriva is going to get directly involved in this market. Well, the answer is yes! Mandriva is providing the innovative operating system for the upcoming Gdium netbook system, produced by Emtec.

As computing moves to the web, either a monopoly will form or a set of open standards will be adopted. If a set of open standards does not appear soon, though, it might be too late.

It has come to our attention that the CDs supplied with the retail version of CrossOver Games in BestBuy are defective. Customers attempting to install and run CrossOver Games will receive an error message when they try to install Windows software under the product.

In this HowTo I will describe how to prepare a Fedora 9 server for OpenVZ. With OpenVZ you can create multiple Virtual Private Servers (VPS) on the same hardware, similar to Xen and the Linux Vserver project. OpenVZ is the open-source branch of Virtuozzo, a commercial virtualization solution used by many providers that offer virtual servers. The OpenVZ kernel patch is licensed under the GPL license, and the user-level tools are under the QPL license.

Stephen Dukker believes he has what the world is looking for: The People's PC. But it's not really a PC. The chairman and chief executive of NComputing in Redwood City, Calif., is pursuing a computer revolution with a small box that turns low-cost desktop computers into servers that feed dozens of work stations.

Humorous and interesting twist on the standard man page :)

Wikipedia is considering a basic change to its editing philosophy to cut down on vandalism. In the process, the online encyclopedia anyone can edit would add a layer of hierarchy and eliminate some of the spontaneity that has made the site, at times, an informal source of news.

Another step was taken this week in the tortuous case which the SCO Group initiated against IBM in March 2003 - but by no means is an end anywhere in sight to the company's misery. Unlike Neil Armstrong's historic statement, it is not a giant step for anyone. Some background - SCO sued IBM for breach of contract in March 2003, claiming that the latter had contributed code to the Linux kernel which it did not own, code which had been developed in conjunction with SCO. SCO claimed to have rights to all the IP for UNIX, which it said it had purchased in toto from Novell in 1995.

Microsoft is buying the election and is set to decide on its non-existent proprietary formats next week.

Judith Kung Fu may be just one of more than 14 million computer-generated characters in the 3-D virtual world Second Life. But with her help, her creator may one day save your life. In Second Life, Judith has walked through the walls of a human cell. She has, in a flash, conducted complicated science experiments that took the world's best minds years to complete.