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The alpha version of what will become ROSA Desktop 2012 has been made available for download. It comes about a week later than planned, but that is no big deal. The most important thing is that it is here. Let the bug hunting begin!

We've noted for quite some time that the USTR's idea of "transparency" is laughable. They pretend that letting a few critics speak briefly is "transparency." It's not. Transparency is revealing what you're proposing on behalf of the public. And, even the "hearing from critics" part is increasingly laughable. We recently noted that the USTR had already limited the "direct stakeholder engagement period" to just three hours, which is much shorter than usual. Now, word comes from the EFF that it's become even worse, as the USTR has sent them an email saying that their allotted 15 minute presentation time has been cut down to just 8 minutes, and they're splitting up the presentations into four different rooms -- so most negotiators won't even be around to hear any individual presentation anyway.

LLBMC 2012.2 has been released, which is based upon the LLVM 3.1 code-base, and is a high-precision static analyzer that implements Bounded Model Checking...

Insync provides a new way to Synchronizing and managing your Document (Doc, Xls, ppt, etc) on Google Drive. This Apps is available in Windows and Mac, and now insync for linux available in beta 3 (0.9.18), Insync for Linux also comes with Nautilus integration, Ubuntu AppIndicator support that displays recent changes, errors and the sync status and support for multiple accounts

Another day, another troubling ruling out of the Federal Circuit court (CAFC) which handles patent appeals. We wrote about this a little over a year ago. It actually involved CAFC reviewing two separate, but similar cases, concerning whether or not companies could be found liable for inducing infringement if no single party actually violates the patent, but a group of different parties, combined, serve to infringe on all the claims of the patent. This is tricky for a variety of reasons. In one case, involving Akamai suing Limelight, Limelight doesn't directly infringe on all of the claims of Akamai's patents, because some of the steps are completed by Limelight users, rather than by Limelight itself. Similarly, in the case of McKesson v. Epic Systems, Epic doesn't infringe on any of the claims of McKesson's patent -- but in combination, its users may do so, though none do so individually.

The final stable release of Mozilla desktop and Mobile browser version 15 is now available to download. Mozilla Firefox 15 brings several improvements for the desktop and mobile, which will allow you to have a better web browsing experience in desktop …

Its this kind of rejection of an interesting and thought provoking app that will turn people away from walled gardens. We talked recently about Microsoft's moves toward further locking down Windows resulting in developers seeking the more open alternative of Linux. The same will happen with the iPhone. As more developers continue to have their apps rejected with little to no context, those developers will become much more frustrated with the whole process and leave for Android. Is this really the lesson that Apple wants young developers taking from this and similar experiences?

Water Coolers, Cubicles, Committee Meetings and a Penguin

One of these things doesn't belong in the workplace. If you ask most people in the business world, they'd say a penguin is a silly thing to keep at work. Those of us in the server room, however, just snicker at such foolishness. I'll take Linux over a committee meeting any day!

GNU Backgammon is a fun backgammon game, match and position analysis tool, statistical estimator and random generator based on a neural network. It can serve you as an application to use when you want to kill some minutes of your free time playing the wonderful game of backgammon, or improve your playing strength through game analysis and playing against a very strong engine.

Lost your shell connection? Need multiple shell sessions? You are logged into your remote server via SSH and happily plucking along at your keyboard and then it happens. Suddenly, the characters stop moving and then you get the dreaded “Connection Closed” message. You have just lost your session. You were halfway through some task and now you have to start over. Ugh. Well you can prevent this from happening by using screen. The Linux screen tool can not only save you from disconnection disasters, but it also can increase your productivity by using multiple windows within one SSH session. I use this tool all of the time in our server management work.

At long last, NVIDIA confirms they are working on supporting their multi-GPU Optimus Technology under Linux with their proprietary graphics driver...

Months after Hewlett-Packard originally announced the open source version of webOS, the beta version of the platform is on its way out the door. Friday's release includes two environments for developers. The first is the desktop build, which is boasted to provide "the ideal development environment" for designing the webOS user experience with more features and integrating other open source technologies on the Ubuntu desktop.

Alexandre Julliard announced a few hours ago, August 31st, development version 1.5.12 of the Wine app, which brings assorted bugfixes and improvements.

Although we all are technology enthusiasts and like to spend a significant amount of everyday time in front of our computers, we also don’t forget to stay fit and exercise regular for a healthier body. Unfortunately, there aren’t many sports tracking applications available in Gnome, so chances are that you either using Windows to do this, or you are not tracking your athletic activities at all. The recently updated SportsTracker could be the solution to this.

The OpenEMR community has released version 4.1.1. This new version continues to maintain Official ONC Complete Ambulatory EHR Certification and has numerous new features including 19 language translations, full support for ICD9, ICD10 and SNOMED coding, support for 5010 billing standards, compatibility with new PHP and MySQL versions and improved performance. OpenEMR 4.1.1 can be downloaded from the OpenEMR Project website at http://www.open-emr.org . Thanks goes to the OpenEMR community for producing this release.

Finally! Canonical implemented disk encryption via the Ubuntu installer for enhanced security in the upcoming Ubuntu 12.10 (Quantal Quetzal) operating system.

The beta of the open webOS is now available for testing...

After Fallback Mode another feature is under discussion for Gnome 3.8. Matthias Clasen (who’s core dev of GTK and GLib – his blog) pushed Videos in Gnome Live Three Point Seven Features Page. Gnome Videos (aka Totem) is going to have a massive redesign for the next version.

Not to be outdone by Local Motors and their open source Rally Fighter vehicle, the team at MakerPlane is hard at work on version 1.0 of their open source aircraft. While they are still at least 2 years away from a working prototype, things are moving along briskly and the team is ready to show off some of their results.

Steve Langasek from Canonical announced a few days ago, on August 27th, a proposal to drop the Alternate CD ISO images starting with the upcoming Ubuntu 12.10 (Quantal Quetzal) operating system.