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griffjon writes "OLPCNews has a comparison of Windows XP to the Sugar/Linux OS on the One Laptop Per Child XO-1, based on the Microsoft Unlimited Potential video, touching on video recording, power usage, boot times, and mesh networking. An interesting, if saddening, read."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"I don't want to come across as being hugely anti- (Bill C-61) but I am concerned about one particular feature," Young said. "It errs on the side of making technology illegal as opposed to making behaviour illegal....

"It's the equivalent to making screwdrivers and pliers illegal because they can be used to break and enter instead of making the act of breaking and entering illegal," Young said.

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and while I admire the effort to try and restrain copyright theft, that particular piece of the act I don't think is well architected. I think it's the wrong way to go in stopping copyright theft. - IT World Canada

TechTree: States like Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka promote the Linux operating system in its education and government sectors. Will ASUS roll out Linux alternatives for the new 904HD and 1000H models in India?

Benson Lin: Currently, we're closely tied up with Microsoft and the EEE PC with Windows XP would be available to the Indian market. However, the Linux alternative would be a possibility based on specific grounds. - Techtree.com (India)

mcgrof writes "Atheros has released a shiny new Atheros driver for all their 11n devices aimed for inclusion in the Linux kernel. This new driver has no proprietary HAL and is licensed under the ISC license, so the BSD community should be able to benefit as well. Note: no firmware required!"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

CWmike writes "Dell was the first of the major computer manufacturers to support pre-installed Linux, but it's not just pre-installing Linux. The Austin, Tex. company is also adding functionality to Ubuntu Linux on its desktops and laptops, writes Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols. It began by adding DVD-playback to its systems shipping with Ubuntu 7.10. With the recent release of Dell PCs with Ubuntu 8.04, Dell is now including "Fluendo GStreamer codices for mp3, wma (Windows Media Audio), and wmv (Windows Media Video) playback" in its latest Ubuntu-powered desktops and laptops. On Ubuntu systems with ATI or NIVDIA graphics, Dell also now supports HDMI output. Yesterday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said his company hopes to steal a page from Apple's playbook and change how it works with hardware makers in an attempt to duplicate its rival's success. Is OS customization the way forward for desktop Linux, and Windows?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Admittedly it is true that Steve Jobs (and Apple) would certainly provide a service to Apple stockholders if they were to provide some public reassurance on the state of his health. But surely these same shareholders have already benefited hugely from Jobs's performance in the corner office. There seems to me to be something unseemly and even archaicly retro about this insistence to permit a public reading of a CEO's entrails as an augery of the future value of his company's stock. Perhaps even that should be demanded - wouldn't it be more effective disclosure to post a CATSCAN of Jobs's midsection on line, so that medical experts could offer their own evaluations of his health during the next fiscal quarter?

I hope not. But after reading Nocera's column, I'm less sure. Unfortunately, like a CEO whose privacy and health are at stake, those that tap out words for a living can sometimes let their egos get ahead of their Jobs. - Andy Updegrove, Standards Blog

On Thursday afternoon, several hours after I'd gotten my final "Steve's health is a private matter" - and much to my amazement - Mr. Jobs called me. "This is Steve Jobs," he began. "You think I'm an arrogant [expletive] who thinks he's above the law, and I think you're a slime bucket who gets most of his facts wrong." After that rather arresting opening, he went on to say that he would give me some details about his recent health problems, but only if I would agree to keep them off the record. I tried to argue him out of it, but he said he wouldn't talk if I insisted on an on-the-record conversation. So I agreed.

Because the conversation was off the record, I cannot disclose what Mr. Jobs told me. Suffice it to say that I didn't hear anything that contradicted the reporting that John Markoff and I did this week. While his health problems amounted to a good deal more than "a common bug," they weren't life-threatening and he doesn't have a recurrence of cancer. - Joe Nocera, NYTimes

Since version 2 came out in 2005, Google Desktop for Windows has included a sidebar that users can fill with screen gadgets, but the Linux version (version 1, from June 2007) provided only indexing and search functions, with no eye candy whatsoever. This has finally changed. Google recently released Google Gadgets for Linux (GGL)

perlow writes "While Solid State Drives are expensive and shouldn't be used exclusively for primary storage, they perform exceedingly well for things like MySQL databases, provided you tweak your kernel, BIOS, and filesystems accordingly. Here's a few tips to get excellent performance out of your new $500-$900 investment on a Linux system."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Some Windows users secretly love Linux. They want to use Linux but are too chicken to install it on their hard drive. So, they use a program like Windows Blinds to radically alter the graphical user interface of their Windows desktop and make it look like that of Linux.

3 different ways to download torrents from the terminal.

You've probably heard of Journaling Flash File System (JFFS) and Yet Another Flash File System (YAFFS), but do you know what it means to have a file system that assumes an underlying flash device? This article introduces you to flash file systems for Linux®, explores how they care for their underlying consumable devices (flash parts) through wear l

3rd Alpha for Ubuntu 8.10 is out.

Four Google ( NSDQ: GOOG) executives may be standing trial over failing to adequately monitor third-party content posted to their Italian language site. Italian prosecutors are preparing to file charges in a two-year old case against the Google employees over a video uploaded to the search giant's Italian site, the Wall Street Journal is reporting. Prosecutors are expected to charge the execs for defamation and violation of privacy after they failed to control the content of the site. MO Dianne See Morrison, Washington Post

Yesterday, the Ministry of Commerce and Industry hosted a "Stakeholders Meeting on the Draft Patent Manual." Around 70 people attended this meeting. The audience was a mix of lawyers, industry associations like CII, FICCI etc, civil society organizations and industry.

The pro-software patent lobby was pretty aggressive about their point of view. The body language made it apparent that they had come prepared for a fight....

Prabir Purkayastha from the Knowledge Commons and myself represented the open source community. Prabir made the point that software is a form of mathematics and that merely applying it in a specific domain like image processing should not make it patentable. He also added that such patenting would be an incorrect interpretation of Section 3(K) which says that "a mathematical or a business method or a computer program per se or algorithms are not patentable."

At this point, the discussion became pretty heated and the chair of the meeting decided to call for a separate meeting on software patents. I'll keep you updated. Meanwhile, if there are open source supporters who are who can help us with the software patents issue, please let me know. If you happen to be based in New Delhi, that's even better! We need all the help we can get.- Open Source India

IT majors like Infosys Technologies Ltd and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) are opposing the open-source community's demand that the government drop a clause in the draft patent examination manual as it gives scope for software patenting under the Indian Patent Act of 2003....

However, patenting of software is being opposed strongly by Red Hat India, the Linux based open source software company, along with science forums like the All India Peoples Science Network. - Financial Express

Linux® loadable kernel modules, introduced in version 1.2 of the kernel, are one of the most important innovations in the Linux kernel. They provide a kernel that is both scalable and dynamic. Discover the ideas behind loadable modules, and learn how these independent objects dynamically become part of the Linux kernel.

At OSCON, Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical Ltd. said he doubts Microsoft would file a claim against Linux developers.

We are looking for examples of keyboards for small children present before 1993.

Specifically, we are looking for keyboards whose key-key spacing is between 10.8 and 16.4 mm horizontally, and 10.8 to 18.0 mm vertically, and with a stroke distance of 0.9 to 6mm.

Thanks for your memories, wad [PJ: Note the 3 or 4 comments.] - lists.laptop.org

LifeHacker reviews an early version of Amarok 2.