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Every time my paycheck is direct-deposited, I contemplate purchasing a Chromebook. Long gone are the days of the CR-48 laptops with the clunky interface and frustrating usability. Although I never quite seem to pull the trigger and buy a Chromebook, thanks to the developer Hexxeh, it's possible to run the Chromium OS on a wide variety of hardware combinations.

A few folks have sent in this story on the blog of the wonderful (and super popular) site Cake Wrecks, which (as the name suggests) highlights hilariously bad cake designs, supposedly done by "professionals." Not surprisingly, the site is well known among those who wield cake decorating bags. However, some do not appreciate the wonders of such a site... especially when it features their own cakes. Cake Wrecks recently put up a blog post in which it reveals that at least one Safeway (a part of the giant supermarket chain) has apparently told its bakery that there is a "no photography" rule, officially set up to avoid having its cakes show up on the site -- though, they're using copyright as their excuse..

So it is easier to claim that their cakes are copyright protected than to just make cakes that look decent? Now that's funny. - Scott

Now this is an interesting little tale: Samsung has raised the price it charges Apple for the main applications processors in the iPhone and iPad. The interesting question is why have they done this? I have a suspicion that I know the answer why: no proof, just a suspicion.

Samsung Electronics , the world’s largest technology firm by revenue, raised the price of mobile processor supplied to Apple Inc. AAPL +0.67% by 20% recently, Chosun Ilbo reported Monday, citing a person familiar with negotiations between the two tech giants. “Samsung Electronics recently asked Apple for a significant price raise in (the mobile processor known as) application processor,” the person was quoted as saying in the report. “Apple first disapproved it, but finding no replacement supplier, it accepted the (increase.)”

LDT has been published, a Linux Driver Template for helping new Linux kernel developers begin writing hardware device drivers.

I’m convinced: If Windows 8 and Surface had been the run-away successes Microsoft hoped for and needed, Sinofsky would still be at Microsoft. Instead, he's the scapegoat for their failures.

Linux developer Andy Grover has posted to the kernel developer mailing list (LKML) to accuse RisingTide Systems of violating Linux kernel licensing conditions with its RTS OS storage operating system. This has led to a discussion in which prominent kernel developers, a RisingTide employee and a legal representative for the company have explained their positions. Discussion has also turned to NVIDIA's proprietary Linux drivers and related cease and desist notices.

When you consider that none of us could have much of an interest in Linux if it wasn't for the hardware it runs on, x86 hardware gets relatively little attention. This might be because Linux is now so stable, and performs well enough on older hardware, that we seldom need to think about it.

The Research team at Mozilla has announced the launch of a new open SWF runtime project called "Shumway". Described as "an HTML5 technology experiment", Shumway is intended to provide a web-native implementation of Adobe's SWF Flash file format, used for vector graphics and multimedia.

Apply now to stand for a position in the openSUSE Board, with votes being cast in just one month’s time

Slightly delayed but wearing a big smile, Jim Zemlin reaches the meeting. He is “delighted” to be speaking about free software, a theme that is his personal passion. The setting could not be more perfect. The lobby of the Barcelona hotel where LinuxCon takes place is overflowing with developers from around the world. All of them came here with one goal: to exchange ideas. The agenda is full of interesting activities for software engineers and open source enthusiasts. Everyone is eager to hear about the state of the industry from the mouth of the father of Linux, Linus Torvalds, and Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical. The two share some pretty radical opinions and rarely disappoint the crowd.

In a guest post on Debian Project Leader Stefano Zacchiroli's blog, Kevin Carillo, a PhD student from the Victoria University of Wellington, is calling for participants for a survey that seeks to collect data on the experiences of newcomers joining open source communities. Carillo says he is "interested in hearing from people who are either technical or non-technical contributors, and who have had either positive or negative newcomer experiences." The goal of his research project is to collect data on how newcomers to open source communities turn into contributors or what prevents them from doing so.

I was lucky enough to interview Linus quite early in the history of Linux – back in 1996, when he was still living in Helsinki (you can read the fruits of that meeting in this old Wired feature.) It was at an important moment for him, both personally – his first child was born at this time – and in terms of his career. He was about to join the chip design company Transmeta, a move that didn't really work out, but led to him relocating to America, where he remains today.

This guide explains how you can install and use KVM for creating and running virtual machines on an Ubuntu 12.10 server. I will show how to create image-based virtual machines and also virtual machines that use a logical volume (LVM). KVM is short for Kernel-based Virtual Machine and makes use of hardware virtualization, i.e., you need a CPU that supports hardware virtualization, e.g. Intel VT or AMD-V.

"The world is built on C++ and so is Microsoft," proclaimed Herb Sutter at Microsoft's Build conference last week in Seattle, Washington. Sutter is chair of the ISO C++ standards committee and Microsoft's Visual C++ language architect. Native code is currently ascendant inside his company, with C++ prominent in SDKs for Windows Phone 8 and for the Windows Runtime - the touch-friendly app platform in Windows 8.

Today, I have a piece over on Tech President about how the new UK government website—Gov.uk—does a lot of things right. I'd love to see more governments invest two of the key ingredients that made the website work—good design and better analytics.

From small systems to the biggest on the planet

Back in March of this year, the University of Albany Student Chapter of the American Society for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T) organized its second Open Source Festival. The event brought together enthusiasts of open source from industry, government, and academia in the New York-Albany area. There, I shared my experience of teaching an open source class at RPI and the work that OSEHRA was doing on further promoting the use of open source software in healthcare. Among other topics of discussion was the need to educate college students on the basic concepts of NoSQL databases.

Ubuntu is one of the most popular free and open source software available. A 2012 survey revealed it is the most popular Linux Distribution on desktop and laptop PCs. Below are some of the reasons why you should have Live CD / DVD with Ubuntu, or other Linux distribution.

Canonical published a few days ago a new animated commercial for their upcoming and ambitious Ubuntu for Android project (watch it above).

One would not normally associate Microsoft with Unix. While Microsoft’s interest(s) in Unix may remain minimal in recent times, history tells a very different story.