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I just checked, and my State government's website here in Australia has 43 pages with the message that Adobe Acrobat Reader is needed if I want to view the page's downloadable PDFs. One variant of the message is This a Portable Document Format (PDF) file and requires the use of Adobe Acrobat Reader. The Reader is easy to download and is free of charge. The link takes you to a download page at adobe.com. Another variant is To view these forms you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader. There are a lot of PDF viewers other than Acrobat Reader, and they're just as free. Safari and Google Chrome browsers even have built-in PDF viewers. So why is my government telling fibs? Does it create its PDFs with Adobe Acrobat software, and does its product licence require it to recommend Acrobat Reader when making those PDFs publicly available? Or is my government just software-stupid?

Following word that the state of the Fedora 18 release is looking poor and the F18 Beta saw its sixth delay, there's now talk of turning Fedora into a rolling-release Linux distribution...

LibreOffice only knows how to spell a few scientific names, and the more scientific names you use in a Writer document, the more your pages fill up with squiggly red underlining – indicating misspelled or unrecognised words (see main image). You can add scientific names to LibreOffice's spell checker using the application's spelling dialog box, but only one word at a time.

Is there an easier way? Yes. This article explains how you can save a lot of time and effort by adding hundreds of scientific names to the spell checker all at once.

Android dominates the worldwide smartphone market, running on 75 percent of all smartphones shipped throughout the globe in the third quarter, IDC reported. Samsung continued to hold sway over the Android market, but its market share slipped because of competition from a multitude of smaller vendors. Apple's iOS came in a poor second, shipping on 26.9 million smartphones in Q3 2012.

Patents threaten every software developer, and the patent wars we have long feared have broken out. Software developers and software users – which in our society, is most people – need software to be free of patents.

The patents that threaten us are often called “software patents,” but that term is misleading. Such patents are not about any specific program. Rather, each patent describes some practical idea, and says that anyone carrying out the idea can be sued. So it’s clearer to call them “computational idea patents.”

According to Surden, big data networks persistently chip away at privacy interests and expand the surveillance society’s reach — and we’re about to see a lot more of it. Surden argues that privacy is safeguarded by barriers that make it hard for others to thwart our interest in limiting access to information. Bring down these walls — which Surden calls constraints — and prying eyes can capitalize on newfound vulnerability. Accordingly, we need to reassess how we think about our privacy rights, and what personal information should be included in that class.

Word processors are a general application software that are perfect for constructing business documents, letters, batch mailings using templates, etc. However, many word processors are too obtrusive and distracting for writers. What is needed is software that helps concentrate on the content of the novel, sketch out the chapters and scenes, work out the best structure, import research, add locations, characters and objects.

In a decisive twist to the sprawling smartphone wars, it appears the government intends to sue some of the participants over their use of patents. The first targets won't be the companies that initiated the battles, though—companies like Apple, Kodak, and Microsoft that have gone on the offensive. Instead, it looks like Google and possibly Samsung could be the targets of government lawsuits. Staffers at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) have formally recommended the government bring an antitrust lawsuit against Google, according to sources cited by Bloomberg. Now FTC commissioners will have to decide whether to whether to act on that recommendation. A decision will likely come after the presidential election on November 6.

The problem is Google's use of so-called standards-essential patents. Those are patents it has already disclosed to a standards-setting body as being important to the functioning of some type of technology standard.

How to use mencoder to add subtitles to videos

I will say that it is extremely irresponsible of Phoronix to make a big deal about this this before giving anyone knowledgeable (which unfortunately does not include any Ubuntu kernel engineers, since as far as I know they don't have any file system specialists on staff) to comment on the bug.

The Ubuntu Shopping Alternate Lens is an unofficial alternative to the default Ubuntu Shopping Lens announced by Canonical for the Ubuntu 12.10 operating system.

This week we look at Sandy's impact on data centers, why one writer doesn't care about "Agile" and securing applications while using Platform as a Service.

Tiny Core Project lead Robert Shingledecker has released version 4.7 of his minimal desktop Linux distribution. Shingledecker says that the major theme for the new version is improvements to its bundled GUI programs. The OnDemand system has been overhauled to add support for Self Contained Mountable (SCM) applications OnDemand menus and icons.

Developer Alex Gavrishev's free, widget-oriented app lets you assign home screens specifically to be used in the car, and it lets you create large, easy-to-punch buttons for six shortcuts per screen. The buttons render well at tablet-strength high resolutions, unlike other car apps I've tried.

Email management and troubleshooting can be a challenge as there are so many options and configuration choices that can get twisted.

This Howto describes the way to set up two factor authentication with one time passwords for Apache2. We assume, that you have already set up your LinOTP server. You can download Debian and Ubuntu packages or you can install the system using the Python Package Index. It provides a good quick start to get the service up and running for demo purposes (check for the latest version).

Back in June we let you know that the futuristic racing game CoreBreach was aiming to go open source, well now it has happened.

Canonical is committing to Ubuntu Hyperscale Availability for ARM V8 as it joins the Linaro Enterprise Group

RuneSoft, a company that specializes in porting games for Linux, is planning to bring their games to Desura. Alongside their own published games, they have also ported games like Software Tycoon and Knights and Merchants: The Shattered Kingdom for Linux Game Publishing.

Pear Linux 6 is based on Ubuntu 12.04, and features many new and cool features. In fact, the version of Pear Shell that comes with Pear Linux 6 is a near-complete overhaul of the edition in Pear Linux 5. And by my assessment, it is probably the best GNOME Shell adaptation available. It is most definitely better than the stock GNOME Shell.