“... 'This could be the true beginning of the end for the RIAA in its attempts to bring students to heel, turning them into compliant consumers of corporate product under threat of legal persecution and severe financial penalties no student can afford.' ..."

Ubuntu Linux's Mark Shuttleworth talks of free software for the masses, cultural tidal waves and building rockets.

New versions of favorite applications are always a little tricky; you want to keep up with the times without fixing what ain't broke. With that in mind, I took a look at the newly released Firefox 3 Beta 2 to see what we can look forward to when the final version ships in 2008.

While two thirds of enterprise companies have some degree of interest in open-source, far fewer indicate its adoption is a high priority, according to a Forrester survey of 2,252 software decision-makers.

"The Open Document Foundation, which consisted of three individuals, disbanded," said Marino Marcich, managing director of the ODF Alliance. "The Foundation's proposals in OASIS did not receive sufficient votes -- quite common in any standards-setting body. Over the past few years, I have worked with the individuals involved. It's unfortunate that they chose to eventually disband the Foundation, but I wish them well."

"I consider myself a beginning Lisper. I’ve been developing my software in Emacs for 8 months now. At first, I was clumsy at it. Emacs can be difficult and daunting. The terminology is different from what I’m used to, the key bindings are different, and there are just so many commands, configurations, and modes. But I’ve persevered and I now find myself quite nimble with key bindings and structured editing. And yet there’s still more to learn.

The subject of what to learn is treated in many online tutorials and printed books. But here, now, I thought I’d share some tips I use to keep the key bindings in my head from being garbage collected..."

I've told a million times by now, that I am a Linux person. I like the operating system, the tools, the applications, the works. I like the process. I like the community. I like the people. And all these positive feelings are not distribution-specific, or "KDE vs. Gnome" or "Is Amarok the best media player?" kind - its genuine people-to-people kind of a thing, and the love for the technology.

In an effort to win quick converts to its bid to have Microsoft Open Office XML (MOOXML) accepted as an ISO standard, Microsoft is deprecating parts of its widely-criticized MOOXML. But whatever the new Microsoft OOXML file format with deprecated parts will eventually look like (if such a format ever appears in an actual application), these cosmetic changes don’t really make a difference for Microsoft or the world.