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Microsoft and Amazon.com have reached an agreement that gives each company a license to the other's patent portfolio, in a way that could revive one of the Redmond company's longest-running controversies. That's because Microsoft says the deal grants Amazon patent-related "coverage" for its use of open-source and proprietary technologies in its Kindle e-reader, and for its use of Linux-based computer servers.

[You smell what I smell? Microsoft FUD.. - Scott]

Occasionally, your editor will be struck by a series of topics all associated with a common theme. The recent fuss about Android's presence (or the lack thereof) in the mainline kernel ties in well with a couple of other items of notice: the Nexus One phone and the role of free software on the Android platform in general.

In this article, which is the second article of the article series, we will cover how to install PHP-Nuke on a local machine running an Apache/MySQL/PHP (AMP) environment. We will not cover the installation of AMP here; you can find a walkthrough of installing the XAMPP package in Appendix A. This package includes PHP, MySQL, Apache, and much more, and is a quick way to get yourself a working AMP development environment.

Days later you receive an email from your reputable vendor that your RMA refund request has been denied, because you installed Linux on the laptop. You contact your vendor's customer service group, and are again told, "No refund. You installed Linux."

Microsoft and Amazon announced on Monday that the two have entered into a patent cross-licensing deal. As part of the pact, Amazon will pay Microsoft an undisclosed amount of money, though the two sides did not disclose more details. The deal covers both Amazon's Kindle product as well as the company's use of Linux-based servers. Microsoft has maintained that many implementations of Linux infringe on its patents and has signed numerous licensing deals that cover Linux with both companies that sell Linux-based software and those that use the operating system in their hardware.

Edubuntu is Ubuntu customized for the classroom, with a wealth of educational applications for different age groups. Eric Geier reveals some of the many treasures in Edubuntu.

We have extremely promising open source media editing applications for Linux like the Jokosher audio editor and PiTiVi video editor, both built on the powerful GStreamer framework, reaching a point of maturity where the focus can shift from making sure the underlying infrastructure of the application is solid to adding all the cool features that everyone's been waiting for. These apps will make multimedia editing simple and easy yet still fully featured. Projects like the recently announced VideoLAN Movie Creator (you know, from the people behind the VLC media player) and OpenShot are certainly cool projects which show that FOSS video editing is really progressing, but PiTiVi will still be my NLE of choice. VLMC is sure to be a great product, but being cross-platform drives the focus away from our OS of choice, and OpenShot while perhaps adding as many features as quickly as possible, lacks the same focus on proper design that PiTiVi has.

The Microsoft Browser Ballot screen will begin arriving in Europe this week, but according to a YouGov survey commissioned by Mozilla, 77% of Britons don't know it is coming. Microsoft announced its plans to provide a choice of browser, as required by the European Commission, last week. The ballot will be delivered to Windows computers by means of a software update and will prompt users that they have "An important choice to make" before offering a randomised selection of alternative browser choices.

Google Chrome is growing and so is it's arsenal of extensions. Google Chrome recently stole the limelight from Safari browser and became the third most popular web browser in the world. And Slideshow is a beautiful yet functional image viewing extension for Google Chrome.

Mozilla's mobile Firefox browser is coming to Google's Linux-based Android operating system. Although the porting effort is still at an early stage of development, it is moving forward swiftly. Mozilla's developers achieved an important milestone this week by demonstrating that the browser can run on the Nexus One smartphone. Due to the highly experimental status of the project, Mozilla has not yet published packages for testing, but that didn't deter us from getting our grubby mitts on the goods. As our readers know, we just can't resist the doughy flavor of half-baked software, and we will gladly brave the bugs for a chance to taste test the new hotness before it really heats up. In order to get our own hands-on look at Firefox on Android, we had to compile it from source code.

MediaInfo 0.7.28 is released. This tool supplies technical & tag info about a video or audio file.

I have heard of my geeky friends talking about this Linux stuff. I wasn't sure what it was so I asked them about it. Honestly, I thought they were trying to sell me some religion the way they jumped all over me trying to explain what Linux is. They did make some very good points though. I have always felt uncomfortable with using a pirated version of windows but I can't justify the expense of buying an original version. I am also tired of all the problems I have been having because of virus and spyware infestations. These Linux guys tell me that they don't have any problems with that stuff.

Cloud Linux Inc.'s CEO is set to take the stage at this week's Parallels Summit in Miami. The big question: Does the hosting and cloud world need yet another Linux distribution -- this one known as CloudOS? Here are some clues that may answer that question.

Kerberos provides a secure network authentication model using secret-key cryptography. Kerberos can be used with multiple services to offer superior authentication security. On a Centos system you can review a list of possible programs that are listed for kerberos with yum. yum list | grep krb5

[And now the stupidest comment I've ever read.]

Enough of the analogies. Point is that Google has to be very careful, now, in doing what the open source community might call “amazing.”

Because even open source can violate antitrust laws, when its power is abused by a dominant player.

Although Google's take-over of On2 Technologies has only just been completed, already the Free Software Foundation (FSF) is calling on the company to release On2's video codec technology as a patent free standard. In an open letter, it asks Google to release the VP8 video codec under a royalty-free licence and to promote that free codec by using it on the YouTube video site. The FSF says to Google that it "can end the web's dependence on patent-encumbered video formats and proprietary software (Flash)". The letter then suggests that "to sit on this technology or merely use it as a bargaining chip", for example, in negotiations over h.264 video licensing, "would be a disservice to the free world".

The LPI certification is a great way to show you have Linux system administration knowledge. Especially when you don't haven working experience a certification is a valid tool to show you do have special knowledge about the operating system. The problem is the LPI didn't create the certification for people without experience. As a matter of fact, the exam is actually aimed at finding experienced administrators. That's why they have a lot of questions about stuff you don't encounter all the time, like little used options for command line arguments.

iWave Systems announced a COM (computer module) based on Freescale's i.MX51 SoC (system-on-chip). The iW-i.MX51 includes up to 512MB of RAM and 2GB of flash storage, runs Linux and Android, and works with an available iW-Rainbow-G8D development baseboard, the company says.

Lighttpd is a secure, fast, standards-compliant web server designed for speed-critical environments. This tutorial shows how you can install Lighttpd on an OpenSUSE 11.2 server with PHP5 support (through FastCGI) and MySQL support.

While Frank was enjoying himself spear phishing venture capitalists, back at the Library of Congress files were flashing out of virtual view like fireflies on a summer’s eve. One by one, documents important and banal, short and long, drifted silently off in the digital darkness to points unknown, leaving only Alexandria Project contribution screen code behind.