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A few words of caution to any Myspace users out there considering "free" software designed to let you spy on unsuspecting others online: Be sure to read the fine print when a product like this says "free," and don't be surprised if the software is used to spy on you.

[Hey, can we get all this MySpy stuff working under Wine? - dcparris]

Peter Calveley is an actor who went through the motions to provide animation for the computer-generated orcs and elves in the "Lord of the Rings" film series. Last year, he generated a motion to have the Amazon one-click patent re-examined, and last week, the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) agreed to have another look at the patentability of the controversial technology.

The Jahshaka Project today announces the release of the Jahshaka 2.0 RC3, the world’s first complete, open source, real-time editing and visual effects application. Distributed under the GNU General Public License, Jahshaka is a groundbreaking tool that promises to revolutionize digital content creation through the power of open source. The software and its source code are available for public download at http://www.Jahshaka.org

Part philosophy, part community and mainly a smart development model, the open source model of building small and large scale software has made itself an indispensable part of modern computing life. The Macintosh community is particularly well served thanks to a Unix core, fantastic developers and on-again-off-again support for open source from Apple.

[Recommends much the same software as on a typical Linux distro -- grouch]

This article shows you how you can interact with Lotus Domino databases from Web applications created in the PHP programming language. Learn how to access Domino applications from PHP pages using a COM object, the Lotus Notes API, and XML.

Imagine yourself dutifully wading through the documentation for whatever gnarly Linux application you're rassling into submission. You're running commands and editing configuration files; things are working and life is good. Until -- yes, you knew the good times weren't going to last -- until you hit the dreaded "send the process a SIGHUP" instruction.

Six South Africans were this afternoon the first candidates worldwide to write the brand new Ubuntu Professional certification. They wrote the exams, backed by the Linux Professional Association (LPI), during the LinuxWorld show in Johannesburg, South Africa.

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The Judge presiding over the Microsoft anti-trust settlement has agreed to a request by both parties to continue monitoring the company for an additional two years.

Aplix, best known for its Java stacks for mobile phones, will add carrier-specific mobile phone software reference implementations (RIs) to its product line. Handset vendors will use its modular RIs to quickly create differentiated BTO (built-to-order) designs, it says. A Linux RI and a Brew RI are its first objectives.

Portland, Oregon is the unlikely capital of a global software revolution. The revolution is called Open Source. And its leader? Linus Torvalds, the reclusive founder of Linux.

[Not sure where the "reclusive" comes from, but it's a really nice interview. -- grouch]

Minimalism does not suit all

Sun Microsystems' new GNU/Linux-friendly Java license does not go far enough for Red Hat. It says Sun should have open-sourced Java instead.…

Need a way to resize NTFS partitions, mirror disk images, or otherwise muck about with disk partitions -- and don't want to use a proprietary package like Partition Magic? If so, the GNOME Partition Editor (GParted) is an excellent open source tool for the task. The GParted team released the GParted live CD version 0.2.4-2 this month, so I decided it was a good time to take GParted for a spin.

GamePark Holdings has announced the release of the GP2X - a Linux based handheld console. The device packs a 240MHz dual core processor, 64MB of RAM and 64MB of on-board NAND flash memory, and can be used not just to play games, but to playback music and movies, and to read e-books and store and view photos.

Buffer overflow problems are well-known. Fewer people know how exploits can help attackers execute their malware through buffer overflows and other holes. Peter Mikhalenko walks through the construction and refinement of a shellcode to show how they work so that you can protect your machines.

At the JavaOne conference yesterday in San Francisco, Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth joined Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz on stage during the Sun CEO's opening keynote speech to discuss the benefits of running Ubuntu on Sun's server hardware. In a move sure to antagonize Sun rivals Novell and Red Hat, Schwartz argued that Ubuntu is one of the most important Linux distributions available [. . .]

Thanks to our terrific colleague John Windhausen of Telepoly Consulting for this analysis of the Sensenbrener-Conyers net neutrality bill (H.R. 5417) that was introduced today

I've always followed SymphonyOS with great enthusiam. I admire folks who march to a different, or even moreso, their own beat. Symphony has always done that. They have few rivals for the title of Most Unique Desktop. Each release builds more and more excitement as things begin to shape up and improve. Symphony OS 2006-05 BETA is upon us and just like its predecessors, it's still different and ever improving....

Pete Macomber, a Venice-based aspiring director of commercial spots and music videos, has won the grand prize in the Firefox Flicks video contest sponsored by Mozilla Corp., the developer and distributor of the Firefox Internet browser.

The success of Mozilla's Firefox and Openoffice.org's productivity suite has breathed life into people's aspirations about Desktop Linux. As a result, the vast majority of articles published today focus there and ignore the strides made on the Linux server. Unlike the Linux server of the past, today's version supports rocket science and its gains far exceed those of the Desktop.

China is counting on senior members of the open-source community to help formulate policy ideas to promote open-source software, according to a local software executive. The China Open-Source Software Promotion Union (COPU), a government-backed industry group, has established a think tank comprised of 19 prominent open-source executives from overseas to develop a framework for better international cooperation. The group will hold its first meeting in Beijing during July and will meet annually, said Song Kewei, the assistant to COPU's chairman. Its primary focus is to advise COPU on how local companies and the government can promote the adoption and development of open-source software in China, he said. Among those that have agreed to participate in the group are Brian Behlendorf, co-founder of the Apache Web Server Project; David Axmark, co-founder and vice president of MySQL AB; Marc Fleury, founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of JBoss, and Andrew Morton, the maintainer of Linux kernel version 2.6.