Open Source Pixels

With just a few modifications and some experimentation, your Ubuntu box can realise its untapped potential. We have identified 8 tips to help you achieve this. Most of the tips are really easy to implement, and are perfectly safe.

What the heck is happening in Redmond? Is Microsoft really giving away antivirus software? Yes, friends, it appears that they are. Come on Microsoft, we really want to hate you. I’ve carried this Microsoft voodoo doll* around with me for years–stabbing it every time I have to pay money for one of your products on a new laptop or desktop computer. I cringe when I see “Vista Ready.” And, I almost hurl penguin when I have to activate my software. So, somebody please pinch me, wake me up, take the needle out of my arm and tell me it’s all been a bad trip.

Some of the kids over at Georgia Tech have recently unveiled a development that takes realtime information from varied sources such as CCTV cameras and motion detectors and layers it on to Google Earth and Microsoft Virtual Earth. The result? The ability to watch things happen as they happen anywhere in the world (well– not quite anywhere just yet, but that’s the idea). While this undoubtedly reeks of “awesome,” the mind of a suspicious citizen of the 21st century automatically jumps to a future Orwellian land of Big Brothers who are this time running professional versions of Google Earth in dark offices atop mile-high, tinted-window skyscrapers.

A group from the ETH technical institute in Zurich is working together with software giant Microsoft on a new kind of operating system called Barrelfish. The first results are now available under an open source license.

Windows 7 will be released October 22, and the pricing information for both the full and upgrade versions have been known for a while. However, as most of us geeks will know, there’s a third variant you can buy, apart from upgrades and full versions: OEM or system builder releases. NewEgg has leaked the pricing information for these releases too.

A long-term patent battle between Microsoft and a California- and Singapore-based security software company known as Uniloc has found Microsoft on the winning side… again. The said battle began about six years ago when Uniloc first sued Microsoft for allegedly infringing a patent of a technology that decries piracy by way of an activation key. Microsoft was supposed to have violated the patent by integrating the technology into the Windows XP and Office products’ activation sequences that we all know and love. In short: Microsoft won the original case in 2003, Uniloc appealed and eventually won the appeal in April 2009 after many years of long and drawn out legal proceedings, and Microsoft appealed the appeal and won that appeal just recently, now not having to pay the US$388 million from the last appeal. Oh, and Uniloc already has plans to appeal.

LinuxInsider
looks at
the Garmin Nuvifone G60.
“Is there a market for a $300 proprietary Linux-based navigation device with phone capabilities? Garmin’s Nuvifone will put that question to the test. Known for its navigators, Garmin might be following Palm’s playbook by adding phone capabilities. Given the popularity of the iPhone, the advance of the Androids, Palm’s struggle to push the Pre — can the Nuvifone find a niche?”

A new wave of women’s liberation is crashing on an unexpected shore, the world of free and open source developers. The FOSS communities might pride themselves with being the promoters of free, open and transparant. It is a world where a meritocracy rules, where you are judged by your skills and not by who you are of who you know. Right? Wrong!