Hello readers, and welcome once again to Free Software Magazine's fortnightly newsletter (sorry about the delay!), keeping you up to date with all things free software... AND the top 10 FSDaily articles for this week! Enjoy!
Announcements
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We are very grateful to the people who do vote, comment and submit. But, if those same people do all the submitting, voting and commenting we will be providing the wider community with a fairly narrow view of the free software world.
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Thanks for all of your participation thus far and thanks in advance for all the help you will give in the future.
Top ten Free Software Daily stories this week
Microsoft WGA servers down; XP and Vista installs marked as counterfeit— DRM bites again: the Microsoft Windows Genuine Advantage servers (which every XP and Vista install phones home to) all failed sometime earlier today. read more...
Why proprietary code is bad for security— Tho Skype is using an encrypted protocol, it’s still their own, non-disclosed code and property. So we don’t know what it contains. read more...
Torvalds confirms there will be no Linux kernel 3.0— According to a new interview with Linus Torvalds there will be no Linux kernel 3.0 as the great man himself says there is no need. read more...
Open Source Contribution - Alternative to Certification?— Today, when open source projects are so active there is a way to earn yourself a measurable reputation by doing what you know the best - coding. read more...
Backing Up Your Linux— Backing up your computer is important. Don't be the sucker who loses important files and has to deal with it afterwards! read more...
Public Schools, Open Source Software and Linux— Last school year, I worked as a technology coordinator for a rural high school in Illinois. In an attempt to save the school some money, I introduced OpenOffice.org, GIMP, Firefox, and Thunderbird. read more...
Order out of chaos: Airforce base swithces to Red Hat— Over the course of 11 months the base switched from using HP Superdome and Sun servers and a Windows environment which Babb (chief information technology systems architect) described as “unstable” to “the only vendor out there that had gone through National Security Agency security" which was Red Hat. read more...
Linux User - You Have The Right To Remain Silent, Anything you say...— There could come a day when it will be against the law...at least in the United States to use, possess, advocate or distrubute any Linux Operating system. read more...
Free ATI drivers for Christmas?— Fully-functional video drivers -- ones capable of handling 3-D acceleration -- remain one of the weak points of free software. The Free Software Foundation has declared them a high-priority project. read more...
GPL Violations On Windows Go Unnoticed?— Seems a slashdot reader has discovered a company using Free Software in their products without complying to the GPL. It seems they've even deliberately tried to hide those, wrapping them in dlls. read more...
Thanks to dave, mark, achingbaby, kofman, greengrass, anna, Jimbob, and incinerator for these stories!
Latest content
Interview with Jeff Starkweather, Chris Buechler and Scott Ullrich— by Tony Mobily. "Centipede Networks has recently entered a partnership with BSD Perimeter to offer commercial support for two important free software projects, pfSense and m0n0wall..." read more...
How to use Quake-style terminals on GNU/Linux— by Andrew Min. "We know all about how powerful the GNU/Linux terminal is...." read more...
Create your own Live CD in 7 Steps— by Jonathan Roberts. "Knoppix made live CDs popular—and with good reason too..." read more...
Fighting Megatron: five steps to freedom— by Pieter Hintjens. "The free software world is being attacked by a large, wealthy, brutal monopolist, who I'll call "Megatron" for today..." read more...
Snap happy with free software— by Ryan Cartwright. "It's been said that for a free software desktop to succeed it needs to address the needs of the average home user...." read more...
Love and war: the Microsoft patent deals— by Chris Mostek. "Few events have created more fodder for the blogosphere, more fuel for Microsoft critics and more emotional responses than the Microsoft patent deals with Novell, Linspire and Xandros..." read more...
Free software media players— by Robin Monks. "Last year, while running Ubuntu, I decided I wanted to watch a video, so I opened it up in the built-in Totem player..." read more...
Zonbu GNU/Linux computer— by Jeremy Turner. "Zonbu GNU/Linux is a new, environmentally-friendly, compact PC available from Zonbu..." read more...
Linspire: Doomed to failure— by Andrew Min. "Linspire is doomed..." read more...
Introduction to Firestarter— by Ken Leyba. "Most modern GNU/Linux distributions are secure with their default minimal installs, whether desktop or server, while some distributions are designed specifically with security in mind..." read more...
Beware of Skype— by Jabari Zakiya. "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." read more...
Latest book reviews released
Free/Open Source Software: Network Infrastructure and Security by Gaurab Raj Upadhyaya What are computer networks? And where does FLOSS fit in? A brief but to-the-point slim book, with loads of links, brought out by a program linked to the United Nations. read more...
Linux Appliance Design by Bob Smith, John Hardin, Graham Phillips, and Bill Pierce I am not paranoid... honest, but we are all surrounded, surrounded by consumer appliances such as wireless network routers, media centers and even some clever fridges and microwaves. read more...
Reminders
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