Boston - A Boston College computer science student has asked a Massachusetts court to quash an invalid search warrant for his dorm room that resulted in campus police illegally seizing several computers, an iPod, a cell phone, and other technology.

Paint.NET is one of the best image editing applications for Windows and it has a version for Linux too, called Paint.Mono (or Mono Paint). According to Miguel de Icaza, most of the features in Paint.NET have been ported over to Paint-Mono, with more to come. Apparently, this should also work on Mac OSX, details HERE.

Back in August we warned that Microsoft had just made a very suspicious donation at a very strategic time. It only days before the September vote on OOXML. The article which was cited at the time has vanished, but you can find a copy here...

Australian university students have developed a Linux-based data-forensics tool to help police churn through a growing backlog of computer-related criminal investigations.

One of the interesting omissions from the Microsoft case study cited yesterday is any support for the claim that the Wintel decision will save the state $10.5 million over five years.

It was time for a new computer for my Grandparents. Their ancient Windows 98 PC had become so slow that it was unusable. The replacement, an inexpensive Acer PC, came with Windows Vista preinstalled. It was up to me to set up the new computer and support it. So I decided to wipe out Vista with a Debian 4 base install and set up an easy to use environment for my Grandparents.

My school uses a SIS program called Infinite Campus. The SIS (Student Information System) is the backbone for any school. If you use, are employed by, and/or have high regards for the Infinite Campus company, I strongly advise that you not to read this post, as it may smash your high-held opinions about this fraud into little tiny shards.

"The lack of personal tax software, like the lack of commercial games, is sometimes cited as a clear indication that Linux is not yet ready for ‘prime time’. To be honest, I haven’t the foggiest idea as to why this is such a ‘tell-tale’ sign."

Without an operating system – Mac OS X, say, or Windows XP – a computer is just a dumb box of chips, and even the most exciting application will have no environment in which to run. And, it's easy to forget that you have a choice of which OS you run.