Periodic schedulers come in many shapes and sizes but one constant is cron, the scheduling daemon that will run programs and scripts at arbitrary times or intervals. A number of different cron implementations exist: although vixie-cron may be the most popular, there are other similar programs such as dcron, fcron, anacron, and others.

Ah! A fresh issue of the “Linux Format” magazine. I rip off the plastic wrap and open up to a random article. This article is about the newest piece of proprietary Grubby Games software. I immediately realize something isn’t right. My eyes slowly make their way to the bottom right side of the page. There is an advertisement for the Free Software Foundation staring right back at me.

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is planning protests at key BBC sites because it believes the national broadcaster's management has been corrupted by Microsoft. Protests will be mounted outside Television Centre in London and outside the corporation's Manchester offices on Tuesday, 14 August.