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Intel's low-cost Atom processors will be at the core of inexpensive PCs. And inexpensive computers these days often come with Linux. How do PC companies shave off the last hundred dollars or so to get to $299 or in some cases $199? Easy. They swap out Windows (pricey) for Linux (free).

The LiMo Foundation released the first full version of its platform on Monday, as it welcomed a major new member on board. Chipmaker Texas Instruments (TI) will be joining its main rival ARM in LiMo, the largest mobile Linux consortium. TI, however, is joining at the "core member" level--a superior position to the "associate member" status enjoyed by ARM.

Canonical has just announced Ubuntu jabbering Jackass, the next version of Ubuntu. It will focus, among other things, on being highly stubborn -- I mean stable.

I recently picked up "Firefly, The Complete Series", and would like to enjoy viewing it on my newly recycled laptop. Placing a Firefly DVD in the drive, after a moment, the 'what do you want me to do with this?' window popped up. I pick play with Kaffeine, a short banner appears, and then Kaffeine dies, being unable to read the DVD. What to do?

This week saw the International Standards Organisation vote on adopting Office Open XML as a standard for office documents. KDE gained a representative late last year through our legal body KDE e.V. realising that the only way to ensure a fair process was to be part of it. Today our delegate voted yes to adopting the format as an international standard. "We have studied the standard hard and many changes have been made to it," said KDE's Supreme Leader Aaron Seigo "and following a $10,000 donation from an anonymous North American source we realised the market should decide the best formats to use, not technical bureaucrats".

[April Fools! - Scott]

I've already written most of my Ubuntu 8.04 beta review, which I'm holding onto for the time being. I don't usually run -- or review -- beta releases, but this time I'm making an exception because a) most Ubuntu releases are hotly anticipated and b) Ubuntu's second-ever long-term-support release is a huge deal for me as a big fan of releases that have lives longer than the standard six months to a year. I ran into a problem starting Friday. I couldn't get any updates from the Update Manager. I then ran Firefox and discovered that my networking was dead. I hadn't changed anything, but I couldn't even ping anything on the local network. I checked my static IP information in Network Settings. It all looked fine.

One of the things that most of us learn at our mother's knee is that you shouldn't rush things. If you do, you'll make silly mistakes. Mothers also tend to tell their children to play by the rules, but some apparently listen better than others to that advice as well. Current events continue to indicate that OOXML is a motherless child.

Improved usability and integration with other integrated development environments are the first features being called for inresponse to a request for feedback on the future Eclipse.…

Your moolah mired in Microsoft Money? Are you ready to quit Quicken? We've stumbled across GnuCash, personal and small-business financial-accounting software that's not only free but available on multiple platforms because of its GNU/Open Source pedigree. GnuCash has enough financial bells and whistles to compete with the best commercial packages.

The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced that Adobe Systems Incorporated is joining the Foundation. Adobe is joining the LF to collaborate on the advancement of Linux as a leading platform for rich Internet applications (RIA) and Web 2.0 technologies.

Linux has succeeded as a product only because the community that supports it has organised itself systematically to create, share, test, reject, and develop ideas in a way that flouts conventional wisdom. Successful We-Think projects are based on five key principles that were all present in Linux. Here are the first two.

The GNU/Linux Matters non-profit, which is dedicated to Internet Freedomware advocacy, has completed a full re-design of its translation system. Now, with new translations of GetGNULinux.org and increased linking, it wants to find 1,000,000 Windows visitors over the course of one year. There are many ways to participate.

An Information Week article published last week appears to position Microsoft as trying to do something right when it comes to open source. And it positions the open source community as being not quite ready to make nice after past insults, threats, and abuse. Speaking for myself, I am always ready to see what somebody has to say when they say they want to work with the open source community. Unfortunately, Microsoft seems to be continuing its campaign of defining open source on its own terms, terms that violate the basic principles of our community.

It’s no small secret. I hate Microsoft. I think they are the most vile and corrupt corporation in the tech industry. Their monopoly hampers innovation and they favor litigation, corruption and marketing tricks to maintain their position over simply creating great products. I have read and heard many people claim Microsoft is changing, improving, and the evil Microsoft of the pass is fading; I strongly disagree with this view, and it takes no more then a cursory look through Microsoft’s actions in 2007 to see why.

According to multiple observers, Microsoft's OpenXML is on its way to becoming an ISO standard. The three sites that have been following the International Organization for Standardization re-vote on the OpenXML standard—Command Line Warriors, Open Malaysia and ConsortiumInfo—are all reporting that, barring some unforeseen circumstances, OpenXML will become an ISO standard. Since none of the authors at these sites is pro-OpenXML, it seems a foregone conclusion that Microsoft was successful in its OpenXML standardization efforts.

There hasn't been much of a stampede to implement Internet identity management in the consumer space. Microsoft's Passport was the first serious attempt. OpenID is the second, and as far as I know those two are it. Passport is like a zombie; it never quite dies, but isn't really alive either. It just shambles along, dropping body parts here and there, and often forgetting its own name.

Learn how to develop complex applications consisting of many components and Web services using BPEL V2.0. This article describes how to combine the Eclipse BPEL plug-in for development of processes and Apache ODE for their execution.

You can do your part to help tackle such global issues as disease control and climate prediction simply by volunteering your computer's resources to solve complex computational problems. The concept, known as volunteer computing, benefits universities and research institutions around the world, who conduct projects that often have humanitarian goals, such as predicting and controlling the spread of malaria in Africa.

Adobe is joining the Linux Foundation as part of an effort to show its commitment to Linux. It sure sounds all fine and nice, but there is still is a major problem in my view. Adobe does not lead with Linux, it barely stays even with Linux. Adobe's product releases for Linux

It was one security embarrassment after another for Apple the week of March 24. It began at the CanSecWest show, where the annual hacker contest challenged attendees to compromise a Vista system, a Ubuntu Linux system and a MacBook Air. The first day was reserved for preauthentication attacks and would have netted $20,000, but nobody took the prize.