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As WGA blows up in its face

Not since IBM invented a handwriting recognition system for banks, have I heard such cries of grief. To understand it, you have to know what WGA means. And if you've ever had a problem with Office, and been told by tech support "just install this patch" you'll know what it is: because it's the thing which, since September 2004, has told you it won't install it until you put your CD in the drive. And enter the key.

[See, that's why smart computer users use GNU/Linux! - dcparris]

Who woulda thunk it? The new Office 2007 Preview online demo is being served up from an Apache/Linux box!

[Gotta admit, it is kind of funny! - dcparris]

While searching for a new webmail solution, we find more that we bargained for – both a client and a very extensible PHP framework with all kinds of cool modules, Horde.

Motoring organisation the AA is to implement an identity and access management solution running on Novell's SuSE Linux to automate the management of digital identities for around 6,000 staff.

SAN JOSE, Calif. — He's bent the ear of world leaders on social causes. He's a Nobel Peace Prize nominee. He's a rock star.

With the popularity of Ubuntu swelling these days, one can hardly visit digg or other tech news sites without seeing a Dapper Drake or Breezy Badger (both recent titles of Ubuntu releases). Another strong indicator that Linux in general, dapper drake aside, may be seeing an influx of users is the news that Microsoft receives a call back from Windows computers daily.

Many users expressed deep concern about false positives where Microsoft receives reports that you are using a pirate copy of Windows when you are running a licensed version. Also, why not examine why WGA (Windows Genuine Advantage) fits the bill for Spyware? So, what's a ticked off user to do? Give Linux the old college try, that's what!

The Eclipse Foundation announced the release of 10 Eclipse open source projects. This release event, named Callisto, is one of the largest multi-project releases undertaken by an open source community. The roll-out of Callisto marks the third consecutive year Eclipse has shipped a major release on schedule.

First Asia Pacific Facility With the New Systems

For the first ten years of its life, free software was largely a hacker's tool. All the early programs – Emacs, GCC, Perl, Linux – were written by coders for coders (usually themselves). It was the rapid uptake of the Internet by business in the mid-1990s that led to free software being used by companies, not just their employees.

[LXer presents this access to LWN's normally subscriber-only content in full cooperation with Jonathan Corbet, Executive editor, LWN.net. LXer hopes you enjoy this free peek at LWN's excellent community magazine and thanks Mr. Corbet for his cooperation.]

GWT (or the Google Web Toolkit) provides a Java library and set of tools that allow a pure JavaScript and HTML application to be derived form a Pure Java development environment. Theexecutable is then generated from this and is implemented in terms of JavaScript, HTML and CSS etc. As such, this allows a much higher level of abstraction to be used by developers, while still generating the latest AJAX based web applications.

Sun Microsystems will release sample code next month giving Solaris 10 its first injection of virtualization on Intel and AMD hardware, finally expected in 2007.

With the National Security Agency (NSA) monitoring our phone calls, now might be a good time to think seriously about the security of our email as well. In particular, you might want to think about encrypting your email, and about whether it's safe in the hands of third-party providers like Yahoo!, Google, and Microsoft.
[...]
If you can persuade Windows-using friends and family to use encryption, Lucas recommends Mozilla Thunderbird as a replacement for Outlook and Outlook Express, saying that Microsoft "doesn't provide clear and open access to APIs you need to write a solid plugin [for encryption] ... not to mention that the people I help with their computers, once I hook them up with Thunderbird, they stop calling me [for support]."

The open nature and yes, the hype around Linux has made lots of mobile-oriented companies to consider using Linux for their next-generation cellphones. But there is a major problem on the way to success, a problem which is created not by Linux itself, but by the greed and close-mindness of these same companies that endorse Linux.

On June 28, Magistrate Judge Brooke Wells ruled largely in favor of IBM's "Motion to Limit The SCO Group Inc.'s Claims Relating to Allegedly Misused Material." This means that the vast majority of SCO's claims against IBM for misusing Unix code in Linux have been thrown out.

ATLANTA – (NASDAQ:VRSO) Verso Technologies has said that the company and IBM have executed a strategic teaming agreement to offer the Verso MetroNet VoIP Overlay solution on the IBM® eServer™ BladeCenter platform. The joint offering creates a Linux-based VoIP solution running on the IBM eServer BladeCenter and will be globally positioned and marketed by both companies.

For its central source code management KDE last year migrated from the venerable "Concurrent Versioning System" (CVS) to the newer, more powerful Subversion (SVN) software. [....] Now the next big change is happening: KDE is leaving the aging "autotool" build chain behind. [....] KDE 4 will feature a completely different build system: CMake.

In typical KDE fashion the current move to CMake was not a "decision by committee". Instead, the old rule "who codes, decides" made itself felt once again. Let's look back at the history of this change.

A small Sri Lankan firm of open-source developers says it's time to bring a fresh set of concepts and standards to the notion of an application server.

The X10 protocol is a fairly primitive tool for transmitting data over power lines that allows you to turn things on and off remotely. In this article, Peter Seebach shows how to extend the software capabilities, setup a dynamic web interface and how to use cron for scheduling tasks. All this can be done easily with off-the-shelf hardware and a couple of hundred lines of simple code.

Do you like Ubuntu? Do you like KDE? Would you like to have them both in one distribution, but with more than Kubuntu can give you? If that's you, then SimplyMEPIS 6.2 is your operating system.

SAN FRANCISCO — Altium Ltd. Thursday (June 29) announced the release of a new Tasking VX-toolset for the Nios II family of embedded processors from programmable logic supplier Altera Corp.