At this week's Digital Music Forum, lawyers managing digital rights for Microsoft's Zune music download site and RealNetworks' Rhapsody said that they too believe digital rights management to be more of a headache than an asset.
Read more »Nobody likes DRM, including attorneys for Microsoft, Real
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Open-source 3D printer built with Linux, can even replicate its own parts
This is an amazing device: The RepRap (short for "Replicating Rapid-prototyper"), an open-source printer developed at the University of Bath. It was built using Linux, and all of the project's software and hardware components fall under the GNU General Public License. It's cheap to use, and can even replicate most of its own parts. Most of this article is an interview with the technical lead, plus there are links on the first page to videos and sample parts and objects made with the RepRap.
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Flash Fears of DRM
Why Adobe needs to get their act together in better supporting Linux. With the possible inclusion of DRM in Flash, this might spell the end of Flash on Linux, and this certainly won't benefit either the Linux community or Adobe.
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Slack Off: GoblinX vs. Zenwalk
Today, two Slackware-based Linux distributions from the lightweight division will square off to find out once and for all, who has the clear edge. On the left corner, please welcome the Brazilian sensation, GoblinX.
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KDE gets new Vista, Mac bling
The long-awaited KDE4 is finally out the door after an extended gestation and a rescheduled launch date. In this inside look at KDE4, we see what all the fuss is about.
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Open the full KDE Control Centre in Kubuntu
Kubuntu (and some other KDE-based distributions) features a special System Settings application which takes the place of the full KDE Control Centre application, which is used for setting all sorts of KDE preferences and changing different settings on the system.
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Two New Themes Arrive in Ubuntu 8.04
It’s not the complete redesign that was planned and canceled, but two new themes have been added to Ubuntu 8.04. The new GTK themes are Human-Murrine and Human-Clearlooks. The Human icon and Metacity themes are unchanged. Currently, Human-Murrine is the default in up-to-date Ubuntu 8.04.
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What's in a label? ODF vs. OOXML and Open Standards
The OSI adopted a mandate of working on Open Standards two years ago. We put forward a statement on requirements for an Open Standard which boiled down to a simple proposition: if the standard could not be implemented fully and faithfully in Open Source, the standard should never be declared nor considered open.
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Rubber-stamping of OOXML raises concerns
Critics have reacted angrily after most of the proposed changes to a draft standard for Microsoft's Open Office (XML) standard were waved through at an ISO meeting last week in Geneva.
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Open-source advocates to build free PCs for needy schools
For years, open source software advocates have been holding "installfests," gatherings to help others learn how to install and use Linux and other open source applications on computers.
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Unbreaking the Web
"... 'There's one little jewel tucked away in Microsoft's press release, that helps to shed some light on why this massive change of heart may have come about: «While we do not believe there are currently any legal requirements that would dictate which rendering mode must be chosen as the default for a given browser, this step clearly removes this question as a POTENTIAL LEGAL AND REGULATORY ISSUE,» said Brad Smith, Microsoft senior vice president and general counsel.' Ah ha! It all becomes clear, now..." -- (emphasis mine)
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Steve Wozniak: $100 laptop deserves a Nobel Prize
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has revealed he's a big fan of Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project but confessed that his own plans to switch entirely to the device have gone awry.
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Bill Gates: Cheap PCs won't help the poor
The world's poorest two billion people do not need cheap computers -- they need drugs and electricity, according to the world's richest man.
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NDISwrapper and the GPL
"«A change after 2.6.24 broke ndiswrapper by accidentally removing its access to GPL-only symbols,» noted Pavel Roskin, offering a patch to address the issue. Linux creator Linus Torvalds was unimpressed, «I'm not seeing why ndiswrapper should be treated separately. If it loads non-GPL modules, it shouldn't be able to use GPLONLY symbols» [...] «Ndiswrapper itself is *not* compatible with the GPL. Trying to claim that ndiswrapper somehow itself is GPL'd even though it then loads modules that aren't is stupid and pointless. Clearly it just re-exports those GPLONLY functions to code that is *not* GPL'd.» [...] « So stop blathering. ndiswrapper has one purpose, and one purpose only: to load non-GPL'd code. So OF COURSE it shouldn't touch GPLONLY functions. »"
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Bos Wars and Globulation2
Bos Wars 2.5 has been released. Beautiful particle explosions are the highlight. I couldn’t find screenshots of this online yet. I downloaded and had a very brief go.
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Read contents from Free Software Magazine
Anybody up to writing good directory software?
Tue, 2007-02-20 11:17 — David JonathanFrom the very start, directories have served a very useful purpose on the Internet. (One I find useful for example is Free Web Directory). News sites can also be considered directories: they index and categorize news stories! What about categorizing software? In the open source world you get Savannah, SourceForge, Freshmeat; there are still, believe it or not, shareware and freeware directories like FileBuzz, PCWin Download Center and Freeware Downloads (although you need to be careful, as they are not like their free-as-in-freedom counterparts).
Is better education the key to finding better software?
Sat, 2007-03-03 03:25 — Edward RusselAbout Jonathon's article Anybody Up To Writing Good Directory Software?, it's clear that the topic of software directories is very hot. Most of what you find on Google, however, are not pointing to free and open soruce software -- or worse, they mix the two. Examples of such sites are Freeware Downloads and Shareware Download, which simply don't focus on "free as in freedom", and still can be used as good free software directories.








