Hello everybody, and welcome once again to the fortnightly newsletter of Free Software Magazine: keeping you well informed about the realm of free software... AND the top 10 FSDaily announcements for this week! Happy reading!

Top ten Free Software Daily stories this week

1. Dutch Consumers’ Counsel advises against Vista - After more than 5000 complaints from consumers about Vista in a month of time, the Dutch Consumers’ Counsel decided to talk with Microsoft. MS didn't comply with their requests so they are now advising consumers to choose XP rather than Vista. Read more...

2. Why Open-Source Does Not Protect Your Freedom: Richard Stallman Explains Why Free Software Is The Only Answer - "As the advocates of open source draw new users into our community, we free software activists have to work even more to bring the issue of freedom to those new users' attention..." Read more...

3. bsdtalk132 - Richard Stallman - "Interview with Richard Stallman..." Read more...

4. On Your Marks, Get Set...Gutsy Gibbon! - This week, I had the chance to take part in a press conference with Mark Shuttleworth, Founder of Ubuntu. Read more...

5. In which I get a lesson in patents -- how do you figure out the dates? - I wanted to share with you a conversation I've been having with a retired EU patent attorney with hands-on experience with the US patent system as well. Read more...

6. Ubuntu 7.10 lets YOU choose your level of freedom - People seem to have quite high expectations of Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy), and to be honest, I don’t think they’ll be disappointed. Read more...

7. eBay: Beware of geeks bearing penguins (on their shirts) - eBay Australia's "We'll help you stop the scammers" page and a flash game "Dunk the scammer" depict a scammer as a geek in a shirt bearing the tux penguin! Read more...

8. RMS: Ask Radiohead to release songs in Ogg Vorbis - "...If you are a Radiohead fan, please try to contact them and ask them to release the same songs in Ogg Vorbis also." - RMS Read more...

9. 10 Features in 10 Days: Desktop Effects with Compiz - Today we soldier on to Desktop Effects with Compiz Fusion.Read more...

10. Thinking about The GNU Hurd - Most Linux users out there, think that their whole system is named just “Linux” (or perhaps the distribution name). Read more...

Thanks to extra, can.axis, leo, bridget, greengrass, C733tus, and mads for these stories!

Latest content

The unspoken truth of operating systems - An article on Slashdot recently is the latest in a series of items I’ve seen over the past several years, all on the same theme. Each one has identified the thing which will finally allow Linux to build up enough inertia to begin to gain significant market share on the desktop and begin to challenge Microsoft and Apple. By Don Pickett. Read more...

Thoughts on invention, innovation, and patents from 'Guns, Germs, and Steel' - I'm working on Guns, Germs, and Steel, by Jared Diamond. Good book so far, although I've ground almost to a halt halfway through. (I'd probably make better progress if it showed up as blog-sized chunks in my feed reader every day.) I like sweeping accounts of history, and this one presents many new ways to look at things. It also gets me thinking about the current sorry state of the patent system... By Scott Carpenter. Read more...

Wikipedia Vs Software - So I, along with everyone else today, got forwarded this link which shows that Wikipedia has begun its journey from an edit-focused hive of activity, to read-only archive, as people stop editing the site. By Steve Goodwin. Read more...

Transcript: Richard Stallman, honary degree speech, Pavia 2007 - The University of Pavia, in Italy, recently awarded Richard Stallman with an honorary degree. Stallman gave a short speech, his “lectio doctoralis”, on the ethical imperative to use free software, focussing on individuals and schools. By Ciaran O’Riordan. Read more...

UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) installation and configuration - Preventing unscheduled power related downtime. By Ken Leyba. Read more...

Creating a free CD or DVD database and labels in OpenOffice.org Base - Going beyond the box of index cards to track and label your media. By Solveig Haugland. Read more...

The software protection racket - Again in the case of Intellivision, much like so many other of its “partners” (including Sendo), Microsoft demonstrates that their business model is based primarily on fraudulent and deceptive business practices. By David Sugar. Read more...

From the driver to the window manager: how to install Compiz Fusion for Ubuntu, Kubuntu, and Xubuntu - The step-by-step guide to installing ATI/NVIDIA, Xgl/AIGLX, and Compiz Fusion. By Andrew Min. Read more...

Managing and configuring downloads with KGet - The easy, friendly way to improve downloads with Konqueror. By Gary Richmond. Read more...

Extending Nautilus: rotating JPG images - Customize the GNOME file manager with scripts. By Scott Carpenter. Read more...

Free software drivers: the unmatrix - Well, it’s been a while—“cough!”—the set’s all dusty since my previous post about 3D cards... By Mitch Meyran. Read more...

Interview with Clement Lefebvre - This is the first in what I hope will be a series of interviews with major GNU/Linux distribution lead developers. By Tony Mobily. Read more...

Using PDFedit in Kubuntu - I was going through howtoforge and I came across one for installing Modifying PDF Files With PDFedit On Ubuntu Feisty Fawn. By Laurie Langham. Read more...

SSH beyond the command line - File servers made easy with SSH. By Nathan Saunders. Read more...

The "alias" command - Alias: Speed Dial for your Shell. By Gary Richmond. Read more...

Latest book reviews released

Writer for Writers by Dmitri Popov A fantastic reference for OpenOffice.org's Writer, reviewed by Tony Mobily. Read more...

SQL for MySQL Developers: A Comprehensive Tutorial and Reference by Rick F. van der Lans SQL for MySQL Developers covers all significant topics of SQL with specific references to the MySQL dialect. Reviewed by Alan Berg. Read more...

Reminders

Comments

Your comments on articles, issues, and blog entries are very welcome. They provide other readers with insightful suggestions, further information, and the feeling that they are not alone. They also provide our authors with the feeling that they are being heard.

Avatars

Avatars are a great way of expressing your personal identity, whether it be a photo or an image that you feel represents the you you want to be. Read more about avatars here. To add an avatar: log in, go to “my account” in the menu on the left, go to the “edit” tab and scroll down to where it says “Upload picture”. Now, hit the browse button, find the image on your computer that you want to upload and go to the bottom of the page and hit the submit button. That’s it; you now have an avatar image.

Invite a friend

Share Free Software Magazine with your friends! We have a really strong community and we want it to grow and grow, and with your help, it can! When you are logged in to Free Software Magazine, you should have a feature called “Invite Your Friends” showing on the left hand side in your navigation menu. If you click on this feature, you will be taken to a page where you can insert your friends’ email addresses and a personal message, and they will receive an invitation from you! You can also keep track of which of your friends have accepted your invitations. Go on, spread the free software word today!

Subscriptions

Ever wanted to follow that story, or blogger, or be informed when a change appears to some content that you want to keep up with? Now you can. Using our new “Subscribe” feature, you can receive an email update every time a blog or page is updated or when a comment is added, so you can keep up with all the latest changes. You can manage your subscriptions by logging in and going here.

Donate

As you might know already FSM is a low profit project with all funds raised going back into producing the fine magazine you can read for free.

Think about how much you would normally have to spend buying a magazine of this quality. We provide it for free!

Your donations will help us to continue spreading the word about free software and producing more fantastic issues.

Contacting us

If you’d like to contribute to FSM: read our Write for us page. Then send your proposal to proposals@...

If you have some feedback for us about our site or its content, then drop us a line at input@...

If you are interested in advertising on our site, or in our magazine or newsletter, you can find more information on our Advertise page or send an email to advertise@...

If you need help with your account for any reason, please send an email to helpdesk@...

Please add freesoftwaremagazine.com to the ends of the email addresses above. Sorry for the inconvenience but spammers make this necessary.

Thanks

Thank you for subscribing to Free Software Magazine. You are a part of a growing community who help to raise the awareness of, and educate new users in, the joys of free software. Without you we would not have this community and without you we would not have a magazine. Happy reading!