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The good folks at SlySoft announced last week that they’d broken the BD+ copy protection scheme:

IBM is putting some of its financial muscle behind the business trying to rival Sun Microsystems' MySQL, pushing PostgreSQL. The systems giant and a trio of VCs have pledged $10m in the latest round of funding for EnterpriseDB. That brings the start-up's total funding to $37.5m.

A major global electronics distributor has announced that its U.S.-based operation has started reselling a software subscription service for embedded Linux developers. Arrow Electronics's North American Components (NAC) division says TimeSys's "LinuxLink" subscriptions can help developers streamline development of their own commercial-grade custom Linux platforms.

India recently rejected Microsoft's document format Office Open XML (OOXML). The Bureau of Indian Standards voted against making Openxml an ISO standard. Microsoft, in a statement released subsequently, expressed deep disappointment at the bureau's rejection of OOXML. There's widespread sentiment that OOXML should not be considered even if supported as a standard. This may seem like taking it a bit too far but a careful analysis of the issue would reveal that this sentiment albeit far-fetched does have some plausible explanation.

To some folks outside of Microsoft, the Open-Source Software Lab has been a sort of mysterious place. A place where we study Linux and open-source software, cursing our enemies while brewing our malevolent plans to combat those nasty FOSS developers. Oh, and we also have a death ray on the roof of building 17. It's Linux-powered, of course, just to add a little irony.

We have some really good stuff this week: a super-thin graphics tablet and a teeny-tiny computer. Let’s kick off with the tiny computer We were charmed by a new miniature computer from Asus. It has a full keyboard (if only we had miniature fingers ), built-in wireless connectivity, an Ethernet port, serial port and three USB ports. It’s 6 inches by 9 inches and weighs just 2 pounds. That’s with the battery, so if you run it off the charger instead, it’s just a little over a pound.

A European standards expert has defended the move to fast-track the ISO approval process for Microsoft's Open XML (OOXML) document standard, dismissing criticisms that the decision to do so is flawed and unfair. He advised governments against mandating just one document standard as it may run foul of polices set by the World Trade Organization (WTO), opening themselves to possible legal challenges. "One of the big concerns of the WTO is that you should not use standards as a barrier to trade," he said. "If a government enforces [the use of one standard], that would mean the whole country is not allowed to use OOXML. They could get into a very difficult legal situation as this could be challenged legally," noted van den Beld.

[Wow. So much FUD and it's only Tuesday morning. These are straight bald-faced lies. Expect a lot more OOXML news and FUD in the coming week. It's the last week until the ISO (re-)vote. - Sander]

I was invited to speak at Sun a few weeks ago. They've started a new program to bring in outside luminaries to offer differing perspectives on topics important to Sun in an effort to avoid inside-the-beltway thinking (or, put more floridly, to avoid breathing their own exhaust). I was their first speaker in the program and something of a guinea pig.

Here are five (bad) reasons to approve OOXML that are often touted my OOXML proponents, and an explanation of why they are bad.

Last spring, marketer and blogger Hugh MacLeod posted a question on his site: If open source is such a phenomenon, where are all the open source billionaires? His audience wasn't amused. Open source software relies on a community of volunteer developers who tinker on, write for, or amend a program, then give it away free. MacLeod's site filled up with complaints that even to look for billionaires violated the spirit of the open source movement. "There have to be rewards," one commenter wrote, "but they don't have to be financial."

A lot has been said of late concerning the way Apple slipped in a brand-new Safari installer into the Apple Software Update used by many hundreds of thousands of iPod-wielding Windows users. Let me offer a new perspective, from the open source point of view - why what Apple did was bad, and why open source developers wouldn’t do it. I'll also cut through the FUD and deliver the truth about what the installer really does!

When asked what they most like about RISC OS, many enthusiasts are likely to mention the fluid, slick and intuitive manner with which user and computer interact. In other words, the graphical user interface, or the GUI as the geeks would have us call it. With RISC OS, the GUI encourages all applications to work in a similar way, and to have the same feel. Faced with new RISC OS software, a user already has a good idea of how to drive it and explore.

A few weeks ago a colleague of mine sent me a link to a story about a man who clustered together sixteen Playstation 3s using Linux to simulate black holes. I had forgotten about this until yesterday when I was thinking “What can’t Linux do?” I know, I know, you’re thinking: Alright fanboy, bring on your dogma. Not so. This isn’t one of those pie in the sky, wishful thinking blog entries where I am going to go on to spout that Linux will, in fact: Cure cancer, solve global warming, fix the US economic crisis, and release the world from its dependency on oil (Although it might help in those arenas.)

The next version of Novell's Suse Linux Enterprise Server will focus on migration technologies and virtualization, in order to entice users from Unix and take market share from Red Hat, according to a roadmap announced at the company's BrainShare meeting in Salt Lake City.

Microsoft is continuing to spread FUD about Linux and scare manufacturers into paying them to use Linux. The latest company to fall into Microsoft's demands is Onkyo.

The Sony PlayStation 3 (PS3) runs Linux, but getting it to run well requires some tweaking. This first article, Part 1, introduces the features and benefits of PS3 Linux, shows you how to use them effectively, and suggests the kind of trickery that might get improved performance or a more usable display.

Developers thinking of using Linux as an embedded operating system won’t want to miss the annual Embedded Linux Conference coming to Silicon Valley next month. The event boasts enlightening keynote talks by embedded Linux luminaries Andrew Morton, Tim Bird, and Henry Kingman, plus numerous technical sessions.

Firefox 3 may still be a beta, Beta 4 to be exact, but in a recent Reuters news story, Mozilla Vice President of Engineering Mike Schroepfer said of the browser, "In many ways it is much more stable than anything else out there." Is Firefox 3 Beta 4 ready for prime time? The Firefox Beta 4 Web page still declared, as of March 24, that Mozilla does "not recommend that anyone other than developers and testers download this beta release, as it is intended for testing purposes only."

DCPI, a technology consulting firm based in New York City, specializes in providing custom content management solutions. DCPI uses open source software and recommends it to clients who need powerful, flexible content management solutions, but face budget challenges in a belt-tightening economy. President and founder Joe Bachana says he discovered the merits of building a business on open source first through personal experience.

NComputing has sold more than 600,000 virtual desktops in the last three years, offering an innovative way to harness what it calls “the untapped power of existing PCs.” The 5-year-old NComputing provides the software that creates a virtual desktop environment on any Windows- or Linux-based computer. The NComputing solution differs from competitors Citrix Systems, Microsoft and VMware by also including a client device that improves I/O through a patented process.