To this point...Launchpad isn't available under a free software license aside from its Storm component. However, Mark Shuttleworth has stated this afternoon that within the next 12 months they expect to release the source-code to Launchpad.

"...Damn, I find it so cool when people combine all those free as in freedom things! In my opinion this is exactly the goal we wanted to achieve with the free software movement and which many of its naysayers and opponents did not get. :-)

A new global standard for the enforcement of intellectual monopolies is currently being discussed by representatives of the United States, the European Commission, Japan, Switzerland, Canada, Australia, Korea, Mexico and New Zealand. This new agreement is so important that it must be drawn up in secret, safe from the prying eyes of little people like you and me.

"...Something else that hasn't changed is vendor's annoying, no, make that pathological mania for secrecy. Another gadget you can get is one to read and decipher the trouble codes emitted by your vehicle's engine. These have just a tiny bit of storage, so if you don't capture the information quickly it's lost, which makes diagnosing a transient problem ever so much fun.

Learn these 10 tricks and you'll be the most powerful Linux® systems administrator in the universe...well, maybe not the universe, but you will need these tips to play in the big leagues. Learn about SSH tunnels, VNC, password recovery, console spying, and more. Examples accompany each trick, so you can duplicate them on your own systems.

The open-source way of creating programs is still the best way, just don’t confuse it with being the perfect way — there’s no such thing.

For years I have envied how easy my Windows- and Mac-based peers had it when traveling with their laptops. They connect to hotspots with ease, get online while I was still logging into root and running some tools. It just wasn’t fair. I wanted an integrated easy-to-use tool that did not require bringing up a shell or logging into root.