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A new agreement illustrates the classic problems of regulated monopolies--and the tragedy of a regulator that doesn't do its job.

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The Winners of the Extend Firefox Contest have now been announced.

Counter point in the musical sense when different instruments combine in a pattern to heighten the music? Perhaps, here in a main line business media publications the Microsoft shady business practices that this company employed are many of the same issues the LXer Editor-in-Chief has been pounding upon.

Will there finally be enough volume to finally bring this issue to the fore? Will it arouse enough of the public to incite action?

Good questions, which may not turn out positive, but at least begin to have the possibility of being addressed. Watch for more.

Just an announcement the latest issue: 124 is out.

The first short news articles are showing up regarding the new ODF Alliance. They don't tell you much, so here's a lot more.

This is release 0.9.9 of Wine, a free implementation of Windows on Unix.

From the ditzy blond jokes department, Kim tells us all about the safety and security of Microsoft Word. I wonder if any people in the intelligence community email Word Docs around. That could explain some leaks out of the White House.

So Kim writes: You probably e-mail business letters, resumes and personal documents as Word documents. But you may be telling people things that would make your hair curl. Unless you take extra steps, recipients of Word documents can easily see items deleted or modified.

For example, how about that letter you sent to Joe Jones? You first referred to him as a "sniveling creep." You changed that to "great guy." But Joe may know what you really think.

Here is one way to build a market, almost literally stealing from Windows.

A PDA-like Windows Mobile phone has been successfully coaxed into running Linux. The "Universal," created by Taiwanese ODM HTC and re-sold under various brands, has successfully booted several Linux OSes, after a flurry of collaboration on a developer community forum.

[ED: I guess they began rejecting the shrink wrap license. I wonder if they got a OS refund? In any case, they should apply, since it could lower the cost to the customer - HC]

This caught my eye, due to my thinking the projects came out of Chinese efforts, however, not with a name like McGuire. He wrote these applications. Since McGuire is now teaching in China perhaps some return with be encouraged by just his presence.

We get tons of press releases touting the release of this or that program as open source. Thanks for letting us know, PR people. But you need to understand something: While we're glad your client or employer chose an open source license, it's such a common decision these days that it's no longer newsworthy in and of itself.

[ED: Anyone want to hazard a bet when we do the same? - HC]

Debate in preperation for the election of the Debian Project Leader.

Caboodle Networks has launched an open source search engine based upon semantic web standards. This new search engine, Kit, (available for free at http://semantical.org) is ideal for finding digital content and services otherwise poorly suited to discovery by traditional text-retrieval search engines the company claims. Kit can intelligently recommend related digital content such as games, music, images, and video, thereby truly leveraging the value hidden in the “long tail” of published content.

[ED: This will be usable only if we can stop those that want to lock everything up. These same types will wonder later why no one is buying their product. Hence, they offer no other solution than sueing the malefactor non-users or having government imposed charges to subsidize their ownership expenses plus a fair profit. Make sense, provided you own one. - HC]

This may not be of universal interest, however, Firefox is being configured to be a base installation on set top boxes in the U.K. that are to appear later this year. Every niche adds to the total.

As with all surveys, I tend to lean strongly skeptical despite having used Mozilla and Firefox now for years. Nonetheless, this is nice to read, since many voting are voicing a perception of a product they may have never used. Hence, it bodes well for the future and can entice others that may be either fearful or skeptical to give it a try.

Apache Webserver tutorials [ED: These appear to be concentrated on the Debian Sarge (very stable) 3.1 server release. Impressive collection of detailed How-tos. - HC]

This is the complete apache webserver installation and configuration articles this inclueds apache2 installation with PHP and SSL support,Creating self cert,counter program,webalizer,awstats configuration and many more

Joe Brooks is your average 23-year-old capitalist and sick freak (a.k.a., fan of conservative radio talk show host Glenn Beck). He's not a geek, but he believes free software is a "great way to create software that the average Joe can use." Brooks proved that point recently, after becoming disgruntled with Wikipedia administrators who kept reverting posts made by Brooks and other Beck fans at the popular community encyclopedia Web site. Brooks, an open source neophyte, downloaded Mediawiki software, configured it, and started his own site called Glennpedia.

IBM is set to launch open source software intended to improve the lot of web developers building voice-enabled applications.

An API is being released for download as part of the Eclipse Foundation's Voice Tools Project, which is based on the VoiceXML language for building voice-recognition systems.

During a visit to Brussels this week, the former chief information officer of Massachusetts, Peter Quinn, warned audiences of MEPs, Commission officials and member state representatives about the dangers of losing Europe's cultural heritage. Presentation

The team at the helm of the 'Chrome' interface that is the front end for FireFox have been debating the best way to go about improving the browser for its next major release, version 2.0.

[ED: Be certain to check the first link, discussion by principle developers on what they see as the options, 2nd link is thinner and more from users' perspective - HC]

Marketing Web sites to search engines has become a business in itself, and many consultants, tools, and search engine optimization (SEO) sites are available to help your site do well in search engines. But if you want to take charge of it yourself -- you have to start with the basics. This article will give you the keys to friendly Search Engine Optimization and teach you how to organically optimize your Web site.