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So far, the “Secure Boot” feature that Microsoft requires for Windows 8-certified hardware has caused a lot more anxiety in the Linux community than actual harm. Most Linux distributions have viable plans for working around the potential problems that Secure Boot poses. Nonetheless, the Free Software Foundation has embarked on a campaign to fight the feature tooth-and-nail. And it wants your help.

The FreeBSD Foundation, the maker of the FreeBSD open source operating system, proudly announced on the last day of 2012 that the FreeBSD 9.1 release is now officially available.

A few months ago, Ars took a look at how cars are getting smarter, mainly in the aid of fuel efficiency and safety. All that technology stuffed under the hood creates data, and where there’s data, there are nerds eager to analyze it.

In 2001/2002 I wrote a tutorial on how to configure Gnu/Linux desktops on limited hardware. Before that, I had also written down my own, very personal motivations for playing with that kind of tricks, to clarify what itches I would try to scratch. I rediscovered that 2002 file this morning. Reading it again, in these days of Unity, tablets and touchscreens, made me think it may be fun to share it. Remember when it was written, judge by yourself and let me know.

Sometimes, privacy and open-source can seem like an odd mix. People who prioritize openness and transparency in their software might appear less likely to obsess over the privacy of their data. But in a reminder that rock-solid privacy standards and open-source software are not mutually exclusive, the GNOME community has announced a new campaign centered on making the GNOME desktop interface “one of the most secure computing environments available.”

Well another holiday season has come and gone, leaving more than a few jangled nerves and expanded waistlines in its wake. Holiday pressures are bad enough by themselves, of course, but Canonical's splashy and yet profoundly confusing Wednesday announcement so soon afterward hasn't exactly helped.

Current US law extends copyright for 70 years after the date of the author’s death, and corporate “works-for-hire” are copyrighted for 95 years after publication. But prior to the 1976 Copyright Act (which became effective in 1978), the maximum copyright term was 56 years – an initial term of 28 years, renewable for another 28 years. Under those laws, works published in 1956 would enter the public domain on January 1, 2013, where they would be “free as the air to common use.” Under current copyright law, we’ll have to wait until 2052.1 And no published works will enter our public domain until 2019. (The law in the EU is different – thousands of works from authors who died in 1942 are entering their public domain on January 1.) Even more shockingly, the Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that Congress can take back works from the public domain. Could Shakespeare, Plato, or Mozart be pulled back into copyright? The Supreme Court gave no reason to think that they could not be.

No matter how brazenly people abuse the DMCA takedown process, and no matter how ridiculous the notices get, it seems like there's always someone waiting to do something even stupider. This latest incident, submitted by Anonymous American, is a serious contender for the crown dunce cap: a DMCA takedown over a login page. And not just any login page, but the barely-modified default login page of an open source website platform, which the operators of iPhotographyCourse.com claim infringes on... their own barely-modified default login page of a different open source website platform. Yeah.

One company found that switching to a cloud-based phone system from a hard-wired pbx, not only cut the monthly phone bill in half, it put end users in charge of most of their phone maintenance.

When Steven Vicinanza got a letter in the mail earlier this year informing him that he needed to pay $1,000 per employee for a license to some “distributed computer architecture” patents, he didn’t quite believe it at first. The letter seemed to be saying anyone using a modern office scanner to scan documents to e-mail would have to pay—which is to say, just about any business, period.

The figlet command makes turns ordinary terminal text into big fancy letters, like this:

A clear majority in the council of the Swiss city of Bern has voted for a switch to free and open source IT solutions. It instructs the city's IT department to make future IT purchases platform and vendor neutral and to prefer using open source solutions. This way, the council wants to rid the city of IT vendor lock-in.

The smartphone market is already dominated by iPhone and Android, with RIM losing prominence, Windows Phone making a charge at third place, and various other operating systems aiming for elusive name recognition. So why should carriers and handset makers warm to Ubuntu, and why should anyone buy an Ubuntu phone?

In short, Shuttleworth believes that Ubuntu will be more user-friendly for people who barely know how to use a smartphone, and he says it will offer a more powerful alternative to Android at the high end for several reasons, including Ubuntu's ability to operate across mobile devices and desktops.

Many educators might have been hesitant in the past regarding embracing open source software. But not anymore as the number that has taken to open source software (OSS) has increased significantly over the years. As more teachers as well as institutions are now engaging with organizations such as Open Source Schools, SchoolForge among others. Consequently, these educators have begun to realize the potential inherent in OSS that can help transform education in many ways. Now, here is a list of open source applications that is available to assist educators in teaching as well as in inspiring their students:

Blocked services lead to 'degraded experience' Microsoft has admitted that Windows Phone 8 doesn't work as well with some of the internet's most popular properties as do other smartphone platforms, but it has pinned the blame on a surprising culprit: apparently, it's all Google's fault.…

Bug surfaces just as Apple trumpets feature in new Venus 'n' Serena ad Users of Apple's iPhone will have to wait until Monday for its latest bug to fix itself.…

Cassandra, the distributed, column-oriented NoSQL database, has been updated to version 1.2, says the Apache Software Foundation. Version 1.2 of Cassandra sees the official release of CQL3, which was introduced in beta in April 2012's Cassandra 1.1 release. CQL is the modelling and query language for Cassandra that borrows, syntactically, from SQL to offer a more familiar database environment for developers. CQL3 allows for multi-column primary keys and many other changes, which are now established.

Mark Shuttleworth announced Ubuntu Phone OS, a version of Ubuntu for mobile phones. Planned release day is the end of 2013.

A full review of Linux Mint 14 MATE.

The new version of SuperTuxKart is available, and you can download it now. It’s a fun racing game that brings back memories of Mario Kart on Nintendo 64 (my favorite version of Mario Kart).