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On July 4th, 2008; a significant percentage of Felton, California, will go Microsoft-free for one week…maybe an entire month.

Our initial thinking for IE8 involved showing pages requesting “Standards” mode in an IE7’s “Standards” mode, and requiring developers to ask for IE8’s actual “Standards” mode separately. We made this decision, informed by discussions with some leading web experts, with compatibility at the top of mind. In light of the Interoperability Principles, as well as feedback from the community, we’re choosing differently. Now, IE8 will show pages requesting “Standards” mode in IE8’s Standards mode. Developers who want their pages shown using IE8’s “IE7 Standards mode” will need to request that explicitly, using the http header/meta tag approach.

[Not FOSS news but important news nonetheless. Microsoft's original plan that would have locked us into a browser-specific web a la 1994 can be found here. - Sander]

Even in today's high-tech world of unified communications and wireless mobility, the idea of two kids with laptops sitting under a tree somewhere in Saharan Africa being able to exchange information without any kind of infrastructure or configuration, seems as wild an idea as the land they live in. But with the OLPC project, this scenario is rapidly becoming a widespread reality.

Vyatta, the leader in Linux-based networking, today announced Vyatta.org, a new site for the popular Vyatta Community, which brings together users and developers to advance the cause of open-source networking as an alternative to the over-priced and inflexible solutions from proprietary vendors. Vyatta.org will feature more collaborative and efficient ways for members to contribute, learn, and shape the future of Vyatta.

Lynis is an auditing tool which tests and gathers information from Unix based systems. The audience for this tool are security and system auditors, network specialists and system maintainers.

Check out our short screenshot tour and flash video of the latest release of Linux Mint 4.0 KDE. The installation was flawless and quick. Enjoy the tour....

Quick notes because I've got time for no more: I hadn't updated Debian Lenny in about a week. Bugs are getting fixed all over the place. The latest wave of upgrades includes a couple of fixes for the Epiphany browser, which as a result is running better than ever. Most of what I noticed was cosmetic, but it just adds to the excellent functionality that Lenny already offers users. If you've been worried about running Lenny instead of Etch, I think the time is right to move to Lenny as it makes its way from Testing to Stable.

In this article Mark Rais shares some of the basics of setting up a Linux firewall using the iptables tool. It includes a review of some firewall options, basics of getting started, details of the iptables syntax and some example configurations.

157 software tools. No fees. No expiration dates. No problems. Sometimes even no downloads. No kidding.

Google is preparing its fourth Summer of Code programme in which students spend the summer working on development projects with various open source groups.

Paylocity provides payroll and human resources outsourcing services for companies that don't want the burden of performing those functions in house. Launched in 1997, is is the brainchild of founder Steve Sarowitz, who was previously a salesperson for other payroll companies. "My accountant said I might want to stop making other people rich and do it myself," Sarowitz says. Paylocity was birthed strictly with a Microsoft infrastructure, but over the last six years, open source has made some inroads on the shop floor.

A group of volunteers in the Twin Cities area has built an AX.25 packet radio network for emergency response and public service. The network's back end is powered by Linux and the Citadel open source groupware system.

iTALC, or Intelligent Teaching and Learning with Computers, is a didactical tool designed to assist teachers. Despite its name, the tool itself isn't a learning environment. It's meant to let teachers control their students' computers in a computer-driven classroom setting. Thanks to its powerful remote desktop control features, simple setup, and lack of cost, it's a potential remote assistance tool for any type of network.

In our last blog posted on February 21, I proposed three test pitches for Microsoft to help judge the meaningfulness of its latest efforts to turn over a new leaf on interoperability. The first of these was to embrace the extant, multi-vendor ISO standard, ODF (Open Document Format) in lieu of its single vendor dominated efforts to create a new standard, OOXML (Office Open XML). The first pitch was thrown in Geneva last week at the ISO ballot resolution meetings on OOXML. And we can safely say: strike one!

[Michael also notes that the BRM was fully recorded in audio. I hope they get released within the next 30 days. - Sander]

This book has almost as many authors as it does pages. This tells me that O'Reilly tapped into a rather large pool of talent in order to get this book written and out to the public. Something re-enforced by the blurb at the back of the book, "What if you could sit down with some of the most talented security engineers in the world and ask any network security question you wanted?" This book is supposed to be the print equivalent of doing just that (not that the book talks back, as such). 23 cross-referenced chapters produced by an impressive group of authors, editors, and technical reviewers with very interesting bios is a lot to absorb and it should be. I expect this book to include everything security-related, kitchen sink and all.

There has been a long standing rumor regarding NASA running Fedora which all of us in the Fedora community have been always intrigued by. Is it true? What are they doing with it there? Why don't they run RHEL. Fortunately enough, a couple of weeks ago, I got to experience NASA behind the scenes, first hand, and hang out with the coolest members of the Fedora community, and find out the answer to these questions and lots more.

Here is the scenario: You have multiple developers logged into a Linux server which is running Apache and PHP using Vim to write PHP code. They’re using error_log and echo statements to debug their code. It takes forever, it’s tedious and can result in bugs from forgotten debug statements. You stare enviously at .NET programmers with fancy debuggers (while you snicker knowing that you edit 10x faster with Vim anyways). But still, you know there has to be a better way. There is.

I’ve been working with Linux for ten years now. I have seen issues come and I have seen them go. But there’s one issue that has always surprised me because it just seems to never go away: Suspend/Hibernate. I am always so surprised about this because it just seems like a fundamental issue on laptops - and let’s face it, laptops are standard issue for many people - you close the lid, the laptop suspends.

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has revealed he's a big fan of Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project but confessed that his own plans to switch entirely to the device have gone awry. Speaking today at the Broadband and Beyond conference in Sydney, Wozniak told delegates that despite early doubts, he believes that overall the project is making a positive contribution to developing economies.

Well, the BRM is over and I can only describe the week as a lot of technical work and a lot of great people I was lucky enough to meet and exchange ideas with. The objective of the BRM was to work with all of the National Body delegations in the room and improve the specification on a technical level -- and that we did. There were many technical changes the delegates made to really get consensus on some of the more challenging issues, but all of these passed overwhelmingly once they were updated. The process really worked (it was very cool).

[I wonder, is he really so delusion that he believes what he writes? Or has the man no moral bone left in his body? After reading all the other BRM reports here, make up your own mind. - Sander]