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Sound eXchange (SoX) is a command-line sound sample translator. This Swiss Army knife of sound tools can be used to convert file formats of your audio files, and to apply sound effects such as echo, fade-in/out, and chorus to jazz up your music with just a few keystrokes.

Fighting fragmentationThe biggest obstacle in Java's path to becoming the dominant software architecture for mobile phones has been its fragmentation - both in terms of technical features and the various licensing schemes adopted by its early exponents. The past two years have seen the handset makers and large operators increasingly taking the steering wheel of the mobile Java movement, seeking to create unified platforms and work around the confusion caused by Sun's halfhearted open source approach.

The Beta sessions of the first South African LPI level 3 exams will be taking place in early December in Joburg and Cape Town. The exams can be written free of charge and registration is open to anyone with an LPI level 1 certification.

Much too often, we take things for granted, and don’t think about them. They just work, especially if you are using Debian with its outstanding dpkg and apt package management tools. But one thing which amazes me every now and then again is apt-proxy.

The beta version of the future Flash 9 is included; update from X.Org 7.0 to 7.1; Intel wireless firmware updates for the ipw2x00 models of wireless cards; Torus trooper, an amazing game made by Kenta Cho, with a retro-futuristic style; Transmission, a small basic BitTorrent client; E16 fonts - fixed problem with characters on the E16 menus and messages; E16 sounds - helpful sounds added to the 'Elive look' of E16 (a nice girl's voice explaining the available options); Java was again added to the development versions; Evidence no longer be in the dock, replaced by Thunar; Thunar media tags and archiver plugins have been added to Elive; Gaim updated to the latest version.

I spotted a couple of strange things in today's distrowatch.com news column.

Welcome to this year's 45th issue of DistroWatch Weekly! Novell drops a bombshell on the Linux community. Signing an exclusive patent-protection agreement with Microsoft, a company that has been trying to discredit Linux at every opportunity, Novell claims that the deal is great for its customers. The community, however, is not impressed. In the meantime, CentOS, a project that provides a free clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, voices its concerns over the recently launched Oracle Enterprise Linux. In other news: find out how the Fedora code names are generated, check out the 100% "libre" gNewSense distribution, and install a bunch of scientific applications on your Ubuntu box with just one command. In our web log feature, we revisit Mandriva Linux 2007 and give away four boxes of its PowerPack edition. Finally, reader's input is sought for a dilemma about the increasingly aggressive linking of several Linux distributions to DistroWatch. Happy reading!

In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: Work on porting kdegames applications to SVG and other general improvements continues at a fast pace. Work continues on video support in KPhotoAlbum. Krita gets a new star shape tool. Okular gets support for freehand ink overlays in presentation mode. Kate gets syntax highlighting support for ActionScript and RapidQ code. Mailody continues to mature as an alternative email client. Strigi refactors to allow searching within multiple simultaneous indexes, with preliminary interoperability with Akonadi on the horizon.

NetBSD 3.1 has been released: "The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce that version 3.1 of the NetBSD operating system is now available in both source and binary form. NetBSD is a general-purpose Open Source operating system that provides interfaces for running a wide range of applications on a big number of different hardware platforms, all from one source tree. NetBSD 3.1 contains many bug fixes, security updates, new drivers and new features like support for Xen3 DomU."

Dell gets honest about its support for the Linux Desktop, A new trendy Linux-based Smartphone is on the way, then we get all excited about the new version of Amarok and talk the heck out of Novell and Microsoft’s new partnership. THEN!..We interview one of the guys from TVease and talk about their awesome Linux based Media center, follow that up with a listener question and so much MORE!

We've known that a major part of the Microsoft/Novell Linux co-operation agreement was about patents. What we didn't know, however, was what technologies would be covered, and what ones wouldn't, by the agreement. Now, thanks to Jason Matusow, Microsoft's director of corporate standards, we now know what's what.

For weeks the rumor mill has been full of guesses about what Oracle's big Linux news, if any, might be. None of them, however, were correct. In the end, Oracle has announced a competing support program for Red Hat Linux. It will be most interesting to see how things will evolve from here. At least nobody is complaining anymore that you can't get support for Linux. Oracle's program is easy to understand: Oracle starts with Red Hat Linux, removes Red Hat trademarks, and then adds Linux bug fixes... Every time Red Hat distributes a new version we will resynchronize with their code. All we add are bug fixes, which are immediately available to Red Hat and the rest of the community.

While gNewSense enjoys its initial introduction as a fully free as in freedom distribution, it seems at the same time an existing GNU/Linux distribution has turned to slavery. Excuse me a moment, while I remove the metaphorical knife from my back before continuing. Never before has the contrast between software freedom and intellectual slavery been more clear thanks to the proud efforts of gNewSense, and the craven ones of Novell.

Web 2.0 words -- from ajax to wiki

This guide describes how to install and use xen-tools, xen-shell, and Argo on a Debian system. All three packages provide useful tools for the administration of virtual Xen machines. Xen-tools is a collection of Perl scripts that allow you to easily create, update, and delete Xen guest domains. The xen-shell provides a command-line interface to owners of Xen domains so that they can manage their Xen domains without the help of the server administrator. And with Argo, you can control Xen domains through a web interface or through a menu on the command line.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer says competing Linux vendors such as Red Hat and Oracle have strong incentives to follow Novell's initiative in reaching a patent liability settlement with Microsoft.

..The two companies also announced an agreement to provide each other's customers with patent coverage for their respective products. These agreements will be in place until at least 2012. Under this new model, customers will realize unprecedented choice and flexibility through improved interoperability and manageability between Windows and Linux.

[Here is your chance to tell Novell what you think of their deal with the devil. - Scott]

The Novell/Microsoft partnership had the desired short-term effect both companies were looking for: Red Hat stock went down, said Red Hat general counsel Mark Webbink in today's interview with SearchOpenSource.com. On the other hand, Webbink said, the hype surrounding the announcements from Oracle, Microsoft and Novell will be short- lived. In the end, Red Hat's high customer satisfaction ratings will allow his company to ride the tide. In one year's time, Webbink said, Red Hat would be the only Linux commercial vendor left standing, Microsoft support or not.

Which has more leverage in the marketplace— A) disclosure or B) secrecy? Which is more supportive of growing markets— A) public infrastructure or B) private platforms? Which is better for inventive entrepreneurs— A) sharing one's great ideas to drive development and adoption, or B) patenting and keeping secret one's"intellectual property"?I'm sure most Linux Journal readers would answer"A" to each of those questions, plus other questions like them. Yet I suspect that most venture capitalists would rather fund the"B" choices.

It has become something of a cliché that Linux has reached a critical point in its development and adoption. However, this is especially true now when we look at what events are lined up to occur in the near future, and particularly in the desktop area.