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The PHP development team is proud to announce the release of PHP 5.1.2. This release combines small feature enhancements with a fair number of bug fixes and addresses three security issues. All PHP 5 users are encouraged to upgrade to this release.

Dave Pell was nice enough to give me a heads up on Rollyo's new simplified means to create customized Firefox Search Engines.

PITTSBURGH, PA – January 12, 2006 – TimeSys® Corporation, the leading developer service provider for the embedded Linux market, will host complimentary webinars addressing key challenges faced by embedded developers creating custom Linux platforms.

THE Government should use free and open source software because it enables effective and simplified delivery of messages to local people, an information and communication technology (ICT) expert has said.

“Uganda should emulate Brazil, China, and the US state of Massachusetts who have adopted free and open source software. It reduces the costs of using ICTs and can be modified and translated into languages understandable by the local communities,” Allen Gunn, the executive director of Aspiration, a US-based ICT non-governmental organisation said at a press conference on Tuesday at Kalangala.

Gunn is one of the trainers of 140 African participants at an eight-day training course. The participants are being trained in use of ICTs like the Internet, digital audio and video systems and building wireless antenna networks in rural areas.

The training’s theme is, “Free and Open Software for Local Communities.”

Linux services company Synaq has allied with the South African importer and distributor of Altiris, First Technology, to offer support for Altiris products on Linux in the local market.

The next major release of KDE will come out in the fall, and the developers are already planning new features and benefits. John Littler recently interviewed Aaron J. Seigo about the team's plans--and controversy surrounding upcoming ports to nonfree platforms.

Ever thought how important it is to be able to find your documents just when you need them? Now, a geek from South Africa and his team is offering a solution with the open source KnowledgeTree. Frederick Noronha caught up with Neil Blakey-Milner at the Africa Source II developer workshop being held in Uganda to talk about document management, PHP and his association with FreeBSD.

A dispute that has kept the House Ethics Committee from considering Majority Leader Tom DeLay's activities may have ramifications for Microsoft. When one begins to untangle the remarkable political organization created by Microsoft and lobbyists Preston, Gates Ellis et al, you find some uncanny coincidences.

Have fears of a resurgence of communism led the DoJ to suspect GNU/Linux communities of having anti-capitalistic agendas? If so, have they allowed Microsoft to engage in anti-trust to stop Free Software?

By Quashing Linux Anti-Virus Software Support, has Microsoft Taken to Tactics in Restraint of Trade?

Someone has started rearranging content on the Internet to suit their own purposes and the culprit might be a convicted monopolist. This article examines some compelling evidence and asks Congress to investigate.

  Many people aspire to run a pure GNU/Linux environment, but often complain that some device or program is stopping them. LXer's Don Parris shares his transition from a pure Windows environment to a pure GNU/Linux environment, and how he has fared over the past year. Does he see a need to go back to dual-booting?

Recently, we witnessed the power of Microsoft's political machine when one of the champions of free and open source software, Peter Quinn resigned as CIO of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. In my opinion, Microsoft just blinked and everything went south. Other writers have also commented on the chain of events in Massachusetts. For example, Andy Undegrove writes a farewell piece in his blog to the maligned public servant. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols also writes an article about this issue in Microsoft Wins, Open Standards Lose. Steven writes: "CIO Peter Quinn's story tells us that if you go up against Microsoft, you can expect everything and the kitchen sink to be thrown at you."

Well Steven, as much respect and admiration as I have for you, Microsoft didn't even breathe hard. They looked in the direction of bean town and people started doing their bidding. That's what happens when you own a country.

One of the top stories of the year at LXer warned mightily of Microsoft's capabilities. So, I brought it back out and rewrote it. It you don't get it this time, you never will.

Anyone doubting the power of Microsoft, should consider what we said at the end of June 2005. We've also added the preceding article to this text - and made some changes. But the documents we uncovered are still in place. The people within Microsoft's grasp politically are still listed. This isn't a story you scan. This is one you read.

The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic State itself. That in its essence, is Fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group or by any controlling private power.

We're reviewing evidence, which with collaboration could demonstrate that Microsoft went around the legal system to influence the courts, that Linux was used as a straw man and our esteemed leadership not only knows it but fixed it. Keep in mind, all of this exists in theory. No proof exists and people who subscribe to the belief that these situations are true have nothing on which to rest but a conspiracy theory. In fact, no collaboration has ever come forth.

[Ed note: This article went into embargo right after publication. We brought it back after finding new evidentary material on which we will report soon.]

As a news organization, we first reported back in June that we had suspicions that ties existed between Jack Abramoff and Microsoft. Our initial report tied together research when the Washington Post disclosed that Preston Gates had paid an invoice for a trip made by Tom DeLay to play gold in Scotland. (Sorry that's a Freudian slip. I meant golf.)


Abramoff's guilty plea of last week helps us make our case and allows us to demonstrate our suspicions regarding Microsoft's ties to the Bush administration. The guilty plea also allows us to question whether Microsoft received favorable treatment by the Bush Justice department by paying Abramoff and his aides and partners, starting with Ralph Reed.

Our main concern deals with whether or not our government can use Microsoft's status as a monopoly and possible ties to a slew of politicians to stop its global attack on Linux.

A very nice piece on the risks of Digital Restrictions Management.

This article shows you how to implement a Web browser-based SOAP Web services client using Ajax design patterns. In the Part 1 of this series, the author introduced a simple Web browser-based JavaScript library for invoking SOAP Web services using AJAX. In the discussion that follows, the author expands on functions of that JavaScript library by implementing basic support for the Web Services.

Buffer overflow exploits are one of the most interesting security vulnerabilities and are used in a majority of security attacks against Linux and UNIX-like operating systems. In Part 2, readers will see how DSM guards against such exploits and it is implemented as a Linux module, using an exploit example.

I first went in search of a Java charting package when I had to write a financial application for one of my projects in 2003. JFreeChart caught my eye, not only because it was available under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL), but also because it provided support for financial charts right out of the box. With last month's release, JFreeChart is the first open source, Java-based charting library to reach the 1.0 milestone.

"Today, in Part 2, this Knoppix tutorial shows you how to use Knoppix cheats to speed up Live Knoppix. And it shows you how to free the CD drive or DVD drive that you use to run Live Knoppix too . . ."