DRM bites again: the Microsoft Windows Genuine Advantage servers (which every XP and Vista install phones home to) all failed sometime earlier today. The result? Every single Windows XP and Vista installation is being marked as counterfeit when it tries to check in.

After publishing an article about removing backgrounds quickly in Photoshop, many have asked me how to do the same thing with the Gimp. While there is no equivalent to the Extract filter in the Gimp, you can still remove backgrounds fairly quickly. At Linux.com there is a good explanation of some techniques. Here, I will show you how to do it with the Create and edit paths tool.

China has unanimously voted "no, with comments" on OOXML. As I had noted in an earlier blog entry, China had been signalling some displeasure with Microsoft and OOXML in recent weeks, via Xinhua, the official government news agency, so this is not totally a surprise.

On Sunday, August 5, 2007 Bush signed the revised Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) into law, in which the U.S. Congress spinelessly caved in and gave legal authority to the Bush administration to continue to intercept and spy on electronic communications. Then, on Thursday, August 16, 2007 the whole worldwide Skype network goes down. Coincidence?

Does it really have to be the open source that drives the community contributions, and thus defines at least this measure of the success of the project?

"For those who wish to know the gory details, here is a quick way to get them. These eight points are part of a petition circulated by the organization OOXML..."

It was a long time in coming. But Microsoft has finally acknowledged that its anti-Linux site had gone past the point of usefulness.