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Until today I've largely been a big supporter of Microsoft's efforts to acquire Yahoo. A couple of days before Microsoft placed its initial $44.6 billion bid for the company, I told Fox Business Channel that a Microsoft merger had to happen to save Yahoo (and I certainly wasn't the first to say this, I just had magnificent timing). Throughout the ups and downs and stupendous drama of the negotiations, I held firm that a deal was in the best interests of both companies. Not because I'm a huge Microsoft fan, but because the health of the Internet requires a competitive search market. Google controls too much market share and too much related search revenue. A counterbalancing force is needed to keep the system healthy. And Microsoft or Yahoo standing alone cannot counter Google.

The Web is buzzing about Best Buy's decision to carry Ubuntu Linux. But I must admit: I'm not impressed. Here's what Best Buy should really be doing with Ubuntu.

For most of us, the Web is primarily a visual medium. The downside is that accessing the benefits of the Internet can be a challenge for the visually-impaired. Fortunately, electronic documents are much more versatile than printed ones. Screen-reading software has come a long way, and today it can make online information accessible even to the completely blind.

It's arguably the prettiest alternative to Microsoft Office, with a clean interface in a soothing IBM blue. Oddly, the once-biggest name in computing christened it"Lotus Symphony," after a spectacular and expensive failure that dates back to the days of DOS. But this new IBM Lotus Symphony seems poised for success.

As you study for your LPI exams, you may find that what's in your study materials doesn't always match what's on your Linux system. That's because the study materials still contain quite a bit of out-of-date information. To make things worse, as of this writing in July of 2008, the official LPI exam objectives also cover some out-of-date material. So, there's a chance that you could see some of it on your exams.

I've been saying that Ubuntu should do this for a long time, and now they have: You can get Ubuntu -- the biggest desktop GNU/Linux system going -- for $19.99 in a boxed edition at Best Buy stores.

(I know everybody's writing about this, but how can I not? -- s.r.)

K9Copy is a DVD ripper for KDE. The last version for KDE3 is 1.2.3 and you can install it from the debian-multimedia.org repositories. A version for KDE4 is also available for download on the official website.

In addition to being a good tutorial for anyone new to Ubuntu, this article makes a good point that it is probably far easier to transition from Windows to Linux than from Windows to the Mac.

Can we save what we don't understand? That's the challenge for those who wish to save the Net — both from those that don't understand it, and froin those that understand it too well, in wrong or inadequate ways. I've written here before about this challenge. The first piece was called Saving the Net , and ran in June, 2003. The second had the same title, adding How to Keep the Carriers from Flushing the Net Down the Tubes. That ran in November, 2005. The Net isn't flushed yet, but it's circling the drain.

I know that Debian does its thing the Debian way, but I'd like to at least see a definite period of support for the project's releases. That means I don't care when they come out; it doesn't have to be every six months or even every year. But I'd like to see the project pledge to support Etch for five years, regardless of when the next Debian release achieves Stable status. In other words, I'd like to see Debian treat itself a little more like the "enterprise" Linux releases from Red Hat and Novell -- and like Ubuntu -- by taking the guesswork out of how long distributions will receive support.

Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz, the man who orchestrated Sun's $1 billion takeover of MySQL, could be on thin ice. Rumors are swirling that Sun is searching for a new CEO. Say it ain't so, says The VAR Guy. Here's the scoop.

Consumers who want to try Ubuntu Linux but are intimidated by the idea of downloading and installing it themselves now have a less stressful option. They can walk into their local Best Buy store and pick up a boxed version with support for $19.99. Since the first Ubuntu Linux operating system was released in October 2004, the software has been free to download and use. But that wasn't always an option for users with slow Internet connections or those who lacked adequate technical experience to download and install a new operating system.

Just a few years ago, getting complex legal assistance from a lawyer you never met in person would have been unthinkable. Today, however, many people carry on relationships online; why not conduct business with your lawyer online as well? One Italian firm already works this way, using open source software as much as it can. The lawyers at Solignani in Vignola, just a few miles from the home of Ferrari in Maranello, never see many of their clients after one initial meeting. All communication takes place by phone, Internet Relay Chat (IRC), Internet telephony, or email.

Although Mobile Safari is more than adequate at rendering normal Web pages, many Web developers created versions of applications aimed at the iPhone. Here in Part 2 of this series learn the common use of drill-down lists as a navigation method. Part 1 of this series took an existing Ruby on Rails Web application and began the process of augmenting it to serve iPhone users.

The OpenSUSE Project has launched an automated build system aimed at helping developers build and package their applications. The "OpenSUSE Build Service" can package source code for several popular distributions, and cross-compile it for a variety of embedded architectures, according to the Project.

This week, system administrators across the globe are rushing to fix an Internet-wide security flaw. The issue, discovered in the domain name system, would allow a hacker to gain access to domain name records and redirect traffic to an alternate location. That'd mean trying to access something like your bank's Web site could take you instead to a malicious page designed to steal your information.

In my last post, I wrote about why we need an easy way to create compelling courses for the XO in order to scale constructionism to the national level here in Nepal. In this article, I will talk about what I think those courses should look like and how they should function.

rsnapshot is easy, reliable and disaster recovery backup solution. It is a remote backup program that uses rsync to take backup snapshots of filesystems. It uses hard links to save space on disk. You can easily build remote / local backup server to keep snapshots in in hourly, daily and monthly format.

Recently the makers of the free-as-in-cost iPhone jailbreaking utility PwnageTool discovered that someone was reselling their creation -- without permission, under a new name, and for profit. That's a situation no software developer wants to be in, but the PwnageTool team was in an even tougher position because of the license under which it released its code. It didn't have one. What the reseller did is flat-out illegal, of course; PwnageTool is protected by its creators' copyright, period. No one who downloads it has any right to modify or redistribute it without permission.

Ubuntu Kung Fu is a new book by Keir Thomas available in PDF and Print format from the Pragmatic Programmers. The book promises over 300 tips, tricks, hints, and hacks for users of Ubuntu Gnu/Linux.