Thursday, June 07, 2007: Microsoft Corp. and LG Electronics have entered into a patent cross-licence agreement to further the development of the companies ’ current and future product lines. Through the agreement, LGE will be able to use Microsoft-patented innovations in its products, including Linux-based embedded devices.

The Kamloops/Thompson School District in British Columbia, Canada, is a free software success story. Gregg Ferrie, manager of information technology for the district, believes its infrastructure may be the largest Linux on-the-desktop implementation in Western Canada in public education.

Designed by Elektrobit's team of engineers, the Mobile Internet Multimedia Device (MIMD) prototype has a slide-out keyboard, a 4.8-inch touchscreen with a resolution of 1,024 pixels by 600 pixels, and a 3.2-megapixel camera. Instead of Windows, the MIMD uses Midinux, a Linux operating system for mobile devices from China's Red Flag Linux.

Ubuntu backer Canonical has pinned down some broad feature lists for its upcoming version of Linux for smaller mobile devices. At the Computex trade show in Taiwan, the company announced particulars of a mobile version of Linux, Ubuntu Mobile and Embedded Edition. The first full release of the software, which will permit video, sound and full-featu

So, this is what we have been leveled to: patent wars. Earlier this week, I learned that the Linux Foundation has a portfolio of patents they own themselves and are quite willing to take Microsoft on in a patent war. And while I support the Linux Foundation fighting the good fight, I believe there are some issues that had better be considered.

Try going to pigdin.im. See what comes up. And how is aMSN "multiprotocol"?

Performance optimization in Linux doesn't always mean what we might think. It's not just a matter of outright speed; sometimes it's about tuning the system so that it fits into a small memory footprint. You'd be hard-pressed to find a programmer that does not want to make programs run faster, regardless of the platform. Linux programmers are no exception.