In this article I'll briefly review ten of my favourite CLI (command-line interface), not necessarily the most popular or most powerful of them. So if you don't find your personal favourite, (e.g. Midnight Commander or mp3blaster), it's because the article includes the tools I use more often. So here it goes:

“When students learn only proprietary software, they will qualify only as computer operators and never learn about using the nuts and bolts of the profession. This is one of the reasons why there are no innovative products that come out of this country,”

“Patenting is an expensive and tedious process. The challenge for every programmer would be to verify each time, to see if any two lines of his code would infringe upon a patent. In the U.S., a single verification can cost as much as $5,000. The fundamental issue is that if I arrive at anything independently, should I not use it only because someone had got it patented before me?”

The basic program is called VistA; the name was chosen well before a Certain Other Company copied the move, and the code began life as an electronic health records system for U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).

Life without walls is the title of microsoft's new advertising campaign. It is yet another example of microsoft taking someone else's idea and trying to claim it as their own. This has put me in rant mode because for a long time there has been a quote floating around in the Linux camp. It goes like this "In a world without walls. Who needs windows and gates?"

"Numerous amendments tabled for the Telecom Package will be examined by the European Parliament this 24 September. The number of amendments, the complexity of the texts, and the fact that some of those amendments have not been published harms the european democratic debate..."

Open source drivers will become an imperative, rather than a choice, for device manufacturers who want to break into new markets and extend their user base

OpenOffice.org is in an unenviable place. Office suites -- word processors, spreadsheets, presentations and the ilk -- are utilitarian, complex bundles of software. They are a necessity of modern life, used daily by individuals and businesses all over the world.