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Microsoft it trying to get open source and open standards excluded from a key EU document, the Digital Agenda for Europe. If it succeeds, it would be a massive setback for open source throughout the continent. EU citizens need to write to the Commissioners now.

Opera is finally making with the snapshots for 10.50 on Linux, but is it really as fast as they claim? Opera’s upcoming release gets a shakedown this week, and the results might surprise you.

Document Freedom Day is a global day for document liberation. It will be a day of grassroots effort to educate the public about the importance of Open Document Formats and Open Standards in general. Every year on the last wednesday in March, we celebrate his day. This year in The Netherlands in conferencecentre "Het Brandpunt" in Baarn, the former residence of the Dutch queen, we will have five speakers who will talk about the importance of open documents and open standards for the Dutch government.

[Disclosure: I am one of the speakers there. - Sander]

Ubuntu is set to release their next Long Term Support version at the end of April, and we now have a beta version to look at and see what we can expect. There are some pretty big changes coming in Lucid Lynx, many of which are partly or fully implemented in the current beta. There are the surprising changes, the controversial changes, and the just plain cool. Though the full release is still a month away, Ubuntu 10.04 is clearly shaping up to be an impressive release.

One of the driving mantras for us is “less is more”. I want us to “clean up, simplify, streamline, focus” the user experience work that we lead. The idea is to recognize the cost of every bit of chrome, every gradient or animation or line or detail or option or gconf setting. It turns out that all of those extras add some value, but they also add clutter. There’s a real cost to them – in attention, in space, in code, in QA. So we’re looking for things to strip out, as much (or more) as things to put in.

Ubuntu 10.04 codenamed Lucid Lynx is on the verge of its final descent. A lot of new things are coming your way. Ubuntu Artwork Pool in Flickr is buzzing with activity, so is the awesome Community Contributed Themes at Ubuntu Artwork Wiki page. But apart from these eye candy, in a more subtle way, a number of new applications are also in the pipeline. Let's explore these new comers.

My love for new technology was part of my downfall today. You see, because I so love technology, I might occasionally be a little too trusting of it and perhaps a little too casual in how I deal with it. Consider this foray into Lucid Lynx a cautionary tale.

The Italian Constitutional Court just published its decision: two articles of a 2009 Italian regional law that promotes Free Software and open digital standards violate the Italian Constitution. It will be VERY interesting now to find how many other local laws (both in Italy and in OTHER countries) have similar problems...

Astrology is a set of traditions, beliefs and systems which hold that there is a connection between the movement of heavenly bodies and events that take place on Earth such as human affairs, and personality. Astrologists use the position of the planets to try to predict future events, and to inform the psychological understanding of an individual's psyche.

"I’ve been playing with the Ubuntu 10.4 beta for the past two days, and it’s bloody brilliant. You’re sick of hearing it, I know. Every Ubuntu release sends fanboys scrambling for the same, old script – the one where Ubuntu cracks the mainstream, crushes Windows and convinces the ignorant public that open source can cure cancer and inspire world peace."

Dell has announced that it will be adding Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC) to its infrastructure solutions. The company plans to offer "blueprints" for optimising deployments of UEC of Dell hardware such as the PowerEdge C-Series. UEC joins the ranks of the proprietary solutions from VMWare and Microsoft, for which Dell already offers blueprints for deployment.

IBM, Canonical and Simmtronics today announced they will market a low-cost, Intel Atom-based Simmtronics netbook in emerging markets. The Simmbook will be preloaded with the IBM Client for Smart Work Linux distro, based on Ubuntu Netbook Remix, and will first be made available in Africa for just $190, says IBM.

Although Ubuntu is generally regarded as a desktop Linux distribution, the sever variant is becoming increasingly popular in the cloud. It is silently infiltrating server rooms and gaining traction in enterprise environments. A recent survey published by Canonical provides some insight into adoption trends of Ubuntu on production servers.

"Yesterday I was warning about the threat that the super-troll Intellectual Ventures represents. To provide some balance, here's a surprisingly upbeat piece from Samba creator Andrew Tridgell on how to read software patents..."

For years the free and open source software people would say that the number one enemy, the devil on earth, the only factor blocking us from flooding the mass market with gnomes, mice and strange k-prefixed creatures is the company from Redmond. Is is still the case?

"Source Size: 273.3 Megabytes Compiled Size: 84.9 Megabytes" ... "`Single Window` mode in the current development version of GIMP is so named because it allows you to attach GIMP's docks to the main window. It does not force you to have one singular window" ... "Lately, people have been speaking highly of Adobe Photoshop over this video showing what Bryan O'Neil Hughes calls "Content-Aware Fill" which is a technique for synthesizing texture."

...it leads to dangerously skewed values. I don't need to remind anyone of all the abuses perpetrated in the name of chasing the dollar, do I? Or rant against idiotic billionaire worship? Whether it's a Gates or a Shuttleworth, admiring someone because they are able to amass a huge fortune is the dopiest form of idolatry.

Most of us have experienced the need to disinfect a virus-laden system — though a near-total immunity is one of the many benefits of being a Linux user. If public health officials in northern England are to be believed, though, the term "computer virus" may be in for a new meaning. Social networking can do many things for users: help them kill vast amounts of time, expose career-ending after-hours antics, and sometimes even connect them to new and interesting people. According to the Teesside (UK) Director of Public Health Prof. Peter Kelly, they can also help users catch VD.

This document describes how to install a PureFTPd server that uses virtual users from a MySQL database instead of real system users. This is much more performant and allows to have thousands of ftp users on a single machine. In addition to that I will show the use of quota and upload/download bandwidth limits with this setup. Passwords will be stored encrypted as MD5 strings in the database.

If you decide, for any number of reasons, not to get an iPhone then there are numerous choices available