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unalterable form such as ... PDFs.

What?

also: How you can digitally sign OpenOffice.org documents

Your right, I don't agree with you, I must be a troll. If you can explain to me why you can't run a Windows application using Wine's API without using the wineserver process I'll capitulate. One caveat, if you find yourself using words like "translate" or "compatibility layer" then your simply providing euphemisms to get around the fact that it's, at its heart, binary emulation.

It's worth nothing that Wine originally stood for "Windows Emulation" and wasn't changed until later. While your at it, you might want to try reading:

http://www.linux.com/news/software/applications/35492-emulation-or-virtualization-which-is-right-for-you

http://www.linux.com/news/software/applications/37986-use-windows-applications-on-linux-using-emulation

I feel I've provided some amount of commentary and evidence supporting my view. If I'm seen as a troll it's simply because my opinion isn't the popular one. You on the other hand have simply resorted to name calling, telling me I'm wrong, and picking apart one point of argument which doesn't even necessarily debunk what I'm saying.

Your right, I don't agree with you, I must be a troll. If you can explain to me why you can't run a Windows application using Wine's API without using the wineserver process I'll capitulate. One caveat, if you find yourself using words like "translate" or "compatibility layer" then your simply providing euphemisms to get around the fact that it's, at its heart, binary emulation.

It's worth nothing that Wine originally stood for "Windows Emulation" and wasn't changed until later. While your at it, you might want to try reading:

http://www.linux.com/news/software/applications/35492-emulation-or-virtualization-which-is-right-for-you

http://www.linux.com/news/software/applications/37986-use-windows-applications-on-linux-using-emulation

I feel I've provided some amount of commentary and evidence supporting my view. If I'm seen as a troll it's simply because my opinion isn't the popular one. You on the other hand have simply resorted to name calling, telling me I'm wrong, and picking apart one point of argument which doesn't even necessarily debunk what I'm saying.

Well, you are of course free to call it whatever you want. The fact remains that Wine doesn't emulate a Windows system in the way that, say, VirtualBox running Windows does.

I believe I've differentiated between the two the entire time. Nor am I the only one that considers what Wine does emulation, even if it is not at the machine level, you do realize that the original acronym for Wine was Windows Emulator right? Read the old FAQ if you don't believe me, the name was changed to help differentiate it from full virtual machines.

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/windows-emulation/wine-faq/

Ancient History? How about this, from Linux.com:

"The acronym "WINE" stands for Wine Is Not an Emulator. But don't let the acronym fool you, WINE does help to "emulate" the Windows environment."

http://www.linux.com/news/software/applications/37986-use-windows-applications-on-linux-using-emulation

and from the previous article..

"Although the acronym WINE stands for "WINE Is Not an Emulator", the theory is the same. What WINE does is serve as a compatibility layer allowing Linux to make use of Windows DLL files. WINE achieves this by implementing the Windows API layer entirely in user-space instead of kernel-space with the help of the wineserver daemon."

Notice the differentiation, Wine does not do any /CPU/ emulation, it does on the other hand do software, often called binary, emulation. /Every/ other system that performs similarly refers to itself as binary emulation. Look up FreeBSD linux binary emulation if you don't believe me.

Well, you are of course free to call it whatever you want. The fact remains that Wine doesn't emulate a Windows system in the way that, say, VirtualBox running Windows does.

I'm confused as to how you think Wine works, if it was simply APIs as you seem to think, how exactly would it go about loading binaries, as well as handling Windows memory layouts, exceptions, threads, and processes.

All of those are part of Windows API. Also, running native Linux ELF-format binaries also involves using a special loader program (/lib/ld-linux.so.1). This format is simply recognized directly by the kernel, yet Wine can also be registered as such a loader by following the instructions here.

If APIs were all you needed you wouldn't have to preface every single windows command with "wine."

You don't. See above.

They claim that all the code is audited but the unrealIRCD trojan (only in the Loonix version but not the Windows LOL), debian OpenSSL fiasco and that huge Apache flaw that allowed administrator access, just to name a few, show that this is pure fantasy.

You need to buy more ram, if you ever find swap in use that is just a sign to buy more ram.

Not necessarily. While plenty of ram is important and good, "used" swap space is in many cases just reserved for copy-on-write, for instance after a fork. Your system can allocate lots of memory which is never touched, this may exist in swap without any disk I/O happening at all. Swap I/O is not good, that is what you need to watch out for :)
See the first comment on this article

Your computer might benefit from using swap as well, your memory might be better employed as disk cache. YMMV. This is from an article which describes it for Linux, but the same goes for Windows:

It's unbelievably simple, although not apparent at first.
Most running programs have code paths and data in memory that they rarely, if ever, touch. I would be bold and say most program-allocated memory is very rarely touched, but I might be wrong. So, the RAM taken up by unused code and data would actually be better utilized as cache for frequently-used files (or, even more beneficial, inode and dentry cache).

On Linux you can play with the swappiness parameter as well, mine is currently at 15. Please note that people can get pretty religious about swap space, correct me if you want, but I don't aim to get involved in a discussion. This is my experience, try it out for yourself (or not).

Buy hardware with Windows preinstalled, give the OS back and ask for a refund.

And after going through hoops, you may get a whopping $52 back.....

http://www.linux.com/archive/feed/59381

You asked, I replied. And the link you provided reinforces that.

Anything else?

Buy hardware with Windows preinstalled, give the OS back and ask for a refund.

And after going through hoops, you may get a whopping $52 back.....

http://www.linux.com/archive/feed/59381

The copy of windows that came with your computer is an OEM version. You will NEVER get a refund from MS for an OEM version. The only way you could potentially get a refund on Windows is if you purchased the retail copy, or if a full retail copy was provided with the system. In which case you have to return it to the retailer, not MS.

Hey everyone, Steve Ballmer is trolling slashdot again! Shouldn't you be doing something productive, like not launching yet another failed product?

$52.50 refund for OEM version of Windows Vista
Getting a $199 refund for an OEM bundled version of Windows in Small Claims Court
How to get your refund for OEM Vista
OEM refund for Windows
OEM refund from HP for Vista

Someone will give you back your money - try everyone along the supply chain and you'll eventually get a winner - then pass the info along to the next person.

This is one of the reasons Linus kept the kernel GPL2 rather than moving to GPL3. He did not like the DRM clause and the Tivoisation clause. As far as Linus is concerned the manufacturers should be able to use DRM to block you from loading an OS they do not want you to load http://www.linux.com/archive/articles/51826

If you do the math, a 1.5m x 1.5m map at 100dpi (screen quality) is only ~34,810,000 pixels. You can capture 40 million pixels with a modern medium-format digital camera. Of course, there is no requirement that you use a single photo. With a good tripod and a typical 'point-n-shoot' or DSLR camera, you can stitch multiple photos into a single high-resolution mosaic.

My understanding was that MS Office's implementation of ODF (at least in Excel specifically) had some serious issues.

The "issue" in this case is that spreadsheet formulas (and some other things) are underspecified in the text of the standard (see here and here and here), and the (proprietary) MSOffice implementation is different from the (proprietary) OO.org implementation. Specifically, MSOffice uses formulas as specified in ISO 29500:2008 (that is, ISO-amended OOXML).

This wasn't the case just between MSOffice and OO.org, by the way, other implementations had similar interop problems. One of the links above describes such a problem between OO.org and KOffice

OO.org had since moved to implement a draft of ODF 1.2, which does cover spreadsheet formulas. Other FLOSS word processors have followed suit. However, MSOffice remains an ODF 1.1 implementation, with no stated goal of having OO.org compatibility.

That said, MSOffice ODF formulas are still open in a sense that there is an open specification for them.

Shoes (a Ruby environment) is a great concept. If only the great why hadn't left it behind in its current messy state. Here's a short article about Shoes and two more programming environments for kids.

Captcha: kinder

Run spamd on OpenBSD or other OS that supports it. Works beautifully.

http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=spamd&sektion=8
http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=spamd-setup&sektion=8
http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=spamd.conf&sektion=5
http://www.linux.com/archive/feature/61103

By default, email gets greylisted. In other words, the first two tries are rejected with a temporary failure message, the third try gets through. Real mail servers will retry, spammers often won't. Mail that gets through is whitelisted for that combination of sender, recipient, and IP for a month or so. You can also up-front blacklist IPs by whatever criteria you want -- published blacklists, country IP ranges, and so on. You can specify specific email addresses as spam traps, so you setup fromlamespammer@example.com on your mail server and put that as a hidden mailto link on your home page, and anyone who emails that obviously harvested it and their IP gets blacklisted.

Combine that with Bob Beck's greyscanner (google for it) which looks for individual IPs trying to send from multiple domains and blacklists them for a period of about a month. I've found it eliminates about 99% of all spam. You should still do things like proactively whitelist clients and mail servers which send from a pool of servers (otherwise it'll get delayed quite a bit). And the occasional spam that gets through should get its IP address blacklisted.

It has the additional benefit that if you run a busy mail server, running this in front significantly reduces the load on the mail server. So you end up with less spam, less wasted storage space, and a snappier mail server.

I suspect the GP is talking about the interactive features of Zone Alarm.

Yea, I should have caught that. I wonder if TuxGuardian is more what the GP is looking for. From their site:

TuxGuardian was developed after the observation that Linux security applications were not tailored for lay users. With TuxGuardian you'll be able to implement access control policies to the network resources in order to identify and control every application that tries to access the network.

I remember seeing a conversation in the UBuntu forums a while back. It was talking about how application level firewalls didn't offer much protection. Someone had asked about Zone Alarm for Linux. The reply was that it would be difficult to implement because many of the tools you want to access the net can also be used to do Bad Things. For example my Linux distribution uses wget to download updates. However, wget can be used by any script to upload information from your system or download payloads. If you block wget, you block both the good and bad applications that make use of it.

Zone Alarm checks to see if the binary has changed since it last connected to the net. This is good. However, does it also check all of the settings? Wouldn't it be possible to construct an application in Windows that seemed beneficial to end user and had the ability to update itself over the net? The application binary wouldn't need to change to do Bad Things. It could be a data file it uses, or a different site it points to.

I've seen some conversation concerning the restrictions available that can isolate an application to prevent this kind of damage. SELinux seems like a match. It is difficult to set up. However, it can control what various applications can access. AppArmor offers similar protection based on path names.

Got some links or references for any of these Linux ports?

http://www.linux.com/archive/feature/138452

The issue that the GP missed is that with or without a complete ZFS feature set, running a filesystem under FUSE is hinders the performance far too much to be used as a primary drive in a production environment.

What, and add 5+ more boot options? :) Fedora, Ubuntu, SUSE, Mandriva, Gentoo... I could go on...

I see it as ending up on mobile devices and maybe netbooks.

I see it ending up on netbooks especially. Eventually it'd be nice to see it installed by default by the OEM. That was a possibility during the first months of netbooks before M$ shut down that option.

However, the work-around, aka the windows refund, might not be as financially bad as it sounds. It used to be profitable to buy a car or other expensive item in a high-tax country and then fill out the import papers to have it brought home and pay the tax at home. The reason was because the vendor had to cut down on the base price to leave room for the tax and still have it within reach of enough of the market.

Same deal with the Windows refund. The manufacturers have to keep the overall price down to cover the cost of Windows. Take that off and the discount is noticeable. The downside is that it takes a little patience and a little record keeping to plod through the process. However, all retailers have a refund process, especially during the holiday season.

Just a few for ideas. It varies from country to country, of course:
http://www.linux.com/archive/articles/59381
http://www.theopensourcerer.com/2009/07/29/amazons-windows-refund-helps-the-earth/
http://www.linux.com/archive/articles/59381

I see it as ending up on mobile devices and maybe netbooks.

I see it ending up on netbooks especially. Eventually it'd be nice to see it installed by default by the OEM. That was a possibility during the first months of netbooks before M$ shut down that option.

However, the work-around, aka the windows refund, might not be as financially bad as it sounds. It used to be profitable to buy a car or other expensive item in a high-tax country and then fill out the import papers to have it brought home and pay the tax at home. The reason was because the vendor had to cut down on the base price to leave room for the tax and still have it within reach of enough of the market.

Same deal with the Windows refund. The manufacturers have to keep the overall price down to cover the cost of Windows. Take that off and the discount is noticeable. The downside is that it takes a little patience and a little record keeping to plod through the process. However, all retailers have a refund process, especially during the holiday season.

Just a few for ideas. It varies from country to country, of course:
http://www.linux.com/archive/articles/59381
http://www.theopensourcerer.com/2009/07/29/amazons-windows-refund-helps-the-earth/
http://www.linux.com/archive/articles/59381

Except for the DVD-player part -- it seems like it would be more reliable and easier to update if you just streamed video off of a hard drive. Some airlines are using Linux-based LCD terminals in every seat back for in-flight entertainment so it is definitely doable. What you want to do sounds pretty similar, just with slightly larger displays.

Xubuntu installs more RAM-consuming daemons than some other XFCE-based distro installs such as Debian's - see http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20090504#feature for a guide on how to slim down Xubuntu, resulting in about half the memory usage before starting applications. Distrowatch also did a similar guide on how to slim down the main Ubuntu distro here: http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20081215#feature

You could also try Crunchbang, an Ubuntu derivative that uses OpenBox: http://crunchbanglinux.org/ - or U-Lite which is even lighter, or see this thread for discussion of Linux distros for 192 MB RAM: http://www.linux.com/archive/forums/topic/4908

The SheevaPlug is indeed viable and cheap $99. Plug in and mount an external USB and/or SD (there's a slot for it), install/config Samba and you are ready to serve files to your LAN. You can also easily install Apache and PHP for Web service. Be aware that the current models are reference designs, so adding things might require a kernel upgrade. Also, you'll generally access the Plug via the network and SSH, perfectly natural for a server. Here are a couple of my articles on the Plug that might be helpful. http://www.linux.com/news/hardware/servers/9517-plugging-away-diy-file-server-using-samba http://www.linux.com/news/hardware/servers/6877-plugging-ahead-diy-basic-apachephp-web-server The Fit-PC might also fit the bill although the price is a little over the $300 requirement (around $360, as of last May). Remember though that the Fit-PC is an entertainment PC. It has 6 USB ports, Gigbit Ethernet, Wifi, an Atom 530 at 1.6 GHz, 1 GB of RAM, Intel GMA500 graphics w/ h/w video acceleration, and a 130 GB drive. All in a little 4" x 3" x 1" fanless case. You can SSH into it because it runs Ubuntu or plug in a keyboard/mouse and DVI/HDMI monitor (no VGA connector). It's designed as a desktop/video client machine that is integrated into your big-screen, killer sound system installation. You could possibly serve files as an add-on. Everything works out of the box and performance is good. Here are a couple of my stories on the Fit-PC: http://www.linux.com/news/hardware/desktops/18899-fit-pc2-ubuntu-desktop-in-a-tiny-box http://www.linux.com/news/hardware/servers/20811-fit-pc2-phone-calls-from-your-easy-chair I've used both boxes for several months and have had no reliability problems. The seem like good value for the money.

The SheevaPlug is indeed viable and cheap $99. Plug in and mount an external USB and/or SD (there's a slot for it), install/config Samba and you are ready to serve files to your LAN. You can also easily install Apache and PHP for Web service. Be aware that the current models are reference designs, so adding things might require a kernel upgrade. Also, you'll generally access the Plug via the network and SSH, perfectly natural for a server. Here are a couple of my articles on the Plug that might be helpful. http://www.linux.com/news/hardware/servers/9517-plugging-away-diy-file-server-using-samba http://www.linux.com/news/hardware/servers/6877-plugging-ahead-diy-basic-apachephp-web-server The Fit-PC might also fit the bill although the price is a little over the $300 requirement (around $360, as of last May). Remember though that the Fit-PC is an entertainment PC. It has 6 USB ports, Gigbit Ethernet, Wifi, an Atom 530 at 1.6 GHz, 1 GB of RAM, Intel GMA500 graphics w/ h/w video acceleration, and a 130 GB drive. All in a little 4" x 3" x 1" fanless case. You can SSH into it because it runs Ubuntu or plug in a keyboard/mouse and DVI/HDMI monitor (no VGA connector). It's designed as a desktop/video client machine that is integrated into your big-screen, killer sound system installation. You could possibly serve files as an add-on. Everything works out of the box and performance is good. Here are a couple of my stories on the Fit-PC: http://www.linux.com/news/hardware/desktops/18899-fit-pc2-ubuntu-desktop-in-a-tiny-box http://www.linux.com/news/hardware/servers/20811-fit-pc2-phone-calls-from-your-easy-chair I've used both boxes for several months and have had no reliability problems. The seem like good value for the money.

The SheevaPlug is indeed viable and cheap $99. Plug in and mount an external USB and/or SD (there's a slot for it), install/config Samba and you are ready to serve files to your LAN. You can also easily install Apache and PHP for Web service. Be aware that the current models are reference designs, so adding things might require a kernel upgrade. Also, you'll generally access the Plug via the network and SSH, perfectly natural for a server. Here are a couple of my articles on the Plug that might be helpful. http://www.linux.com/news/hardware/servers/9517-plugging-away-diy-file-server-using-samba http://www.linux.com/news/hardware/servers/6877-plugging-ahead-diy-basic-apachephp-web-server The Fit-PC might also fit the bill although the price is a little over the $300 requirement (around $360, as of last May). Remember though that the Fit-PC is an entertainment PC. It has 6 USB ports, Gigbit Ethernet, Wifi, an Atom 530 at 1.6 GHz, 1 GB of RAM, Intel GMA500 graphics w/ h/w video acceleration, and a 130 GB drive. All in a little 4" x 3" x 1" fanless case. You can SSH into it because it runs Ubuntu or plug in a keyboard/mouse and DVI/HDMI monitor (no VGA connector). It's designed as a desktop/video client machine that is integrated into your big-screen, killer sound system installation. You could possibly serve files as an add-on. Everything works out of the box and performance is good. Here are a couple of my stories on the Fit-PC: http://www.linux.com/news/hardware/desktops/18899-fit-pc2-ubuntu-desktop-in-a-tiny-box http://www.linux.com/news/hardware/servers/20811-fit-pc2-phone-calls-from-your-easy-chair I've used both boxes for several months and have had no reliability problems. The seem like good value for the money.

The SheevaPlug is indeed viable and cheap $99. Plug in and mount an external USB and/or SD (there's a slot for it), install/config Samba and you are ready to serve files to your LAN. You can also easily install Apache and PHP for Web service. Be aware that the current models are reference designs, so adding things might require a kernel upgrade. Also, you'll generally access the Plug via the network and SSH, perfectly natural for a server. Here are a couple of my articles on the Plug that might be helpful. http://www.linux.com/news/hardware/servers/9517-plugging-away-diy-file-server-using-samba http://www.linux.com/news/hardware/servers/6877-plugging-ahead-diy-basic-apachephp-web-server The Fit-PC might also fit the bill although the price is a little over the $300 requirement (around $360, as of last May). Remember though that the Fit-PC is an entertainment PC. It has 6 USB ports, Gigbit Ethernet, Wifi, an Atom 530 at 1.6 GHz, 1 GB of RAM, Intel GMA500 graphics w/ h/w video acceleration, and a 130 GB drive. All in a little 4" x 3" x 1" fanless case. You can SSH into it because it runs Ubuntu or plug in a keyboard/mouse and DVI/HDMI monitor (no VGA connector). It's designed as a desktop/video client machine that is integrated into your big-screen, killer sound system installation. You could possibly serve files as an add-on. Everything works out of the box and performance is good. Here are a couple of my stories on the Fit-PC: http://www.linux.com/news/hardware/desktops/18899-fit-pc2-ubuntu-desktop-in-a-tiny-box http://www.linux.com/news/hardware/servers/20811-fit-pc2-phone-calls-from-your-easy-chair I've used both boxes for several months and have had no reliability problems. The seem like good value for the money.

so Microsoft Federation Police Department is going to deploy these to look for WGA violations? good! now Joe User will BEG to get linux installed.

The GPL has been tested in court? I must have missed this one.

No, actually you missed all of them.

In the US: http://www.fsf.org/news/wallace-vs-fsf

In Germany: http://www.linux.com/archive/articles/57353

In France: http://opendotdotdot.blogspot.com/2009/09/big-win-for-gnu-gpl-in-france.html

Just google 'GPL tested court' for more links (there are older cases that got in front of a judge too)...

Once upon a time, MySQL supported the use of Berkeley DB as one of its back end storage engines. Then Oracle acquired Sleepycat Software, the makers of Berkeley DB (which was, and still is, open source). MySQL didn't like the idea of Oracle controlling their back end, so they phased out its support.

If that had actually been our motivation, we would have axed InnoDB as well.

As Brian Aker says in the linux.com article you cited (but apparently didn't actually read), we were *already* planning to drop BDB due to lack of interest; something like 0.03% of all MySQL users who responded to our polls said they were actually using BDB, and most of those indicated that it was not mission-critical.

Once upon a time, MySQL supported the use of Berkeley DB as one of its back end storage engines. Then Oracle acquired Sleepycat Software, the makers of Berkeley DB (which was, and still is, open source). MySQL didn't like the idea of Oracle controlling their back end, so they phased out its support.

Now it doesn't matter anymore. Oracle is going to own MySQL and Berkeley DB. In my opinion, Berkeley DB is the finest storage engine on the planet. Either with a relational/schema layer on top of it (like MySQL), or all by itself (in which case it's simple key/value pairs), it is insanely reliable and its performance is excellent. I can't say enough good things about it. So how about it, Oracle? Can we get these two great pieces of software together again?

PolarViewer only works with certain monitors, but is under the GPL.

Linux.com had an article in 07 on the subject as well.

In English please?

It's the Year of the Linux Botnet!

You know, because those things never worked well in WINE.

Well, it seems that stupid people actually *build* linux too!

lots of alternatives.

I actually reflashed my Vaio VGN-FW285J in order to enable Intel VT-x which was deliberately disabled by Sony. It irked me to no end that they disabled this feature, since I would not have bought the laptop if I'd known they'd disabled it. The procedure on how to reflash is on my blog, along with links on how to do it for Sony's other Vaio laptops (such as the "Z" series). The blog post is here: http://linux.com/community/blogs/sonys-crippled-intel-vt-support.html Credit should of course go to those fine folks who took the time to reverse engineer the BIOS, such as Igor Levicki who did this for the FW series' AMI BIOS. I hope Sony realizes they are making a big mistake.

Free "for non-commercial use" is not libre. Also, you cannot recompile run it on devices without paying $99 to Apple. This isn't because the tools cost money, it's because Apple must sign the code to run it and thus Apple controls who runs it (and charges for it). This is exactly the TiVo case.

And I'm not spreading FUD. For starters, I'm not spreading anything. I'm just commenting.

I'm not alone in my beliefs, either.

http://www.linux.com/archive/feature/131752

Wine's come a long way in the past 4 years if it can run viruses now!

"You didn't pay anything for Windows."

Since the price of Windows was included in the price of the computer, they may try to argue that you didn't pay anything for it. This one is easy to debunk. Windows costs money -- everyone knows that. Once you establish that Windows does indeed cost money (and you can't get it for free) then the only remaining issue is how much you paid. Since Microsoft contracts out with hardware vendors, there's no actual way to know how much Windows costs a given retailer. This being the case, I was asking for the price of an OEM copy of Windows XP Home SP2 that I found on Newegg, which was $89. In the end they gave me $52.50. I don't know if this is really how much Windows costs, but it's a non-trivial amount and I can well imagine that one of the world's largest computer makers can get a good deal on Windows licenses from Microsoft.

http://www.linux.com/archive/articles/59381

In this case, it was determined that Windows XP added $52.50 to the price of a Dell PC.

It has been a while since I posted on slashdot, but I could not resist because this is WHAT I DO (but WHITEHAT)

Here are some references: (Please be careful with MODS - these are NOT links to my sites]
http://www.linux.com/archive/feature/140576
http://digg.com/tech_news/The_Drupal_com_domain_has_been_donated_to_Dries_Buytaert
http://xmpp.org/xsf/press/2005-12-30.shtml

Here is my simple advice:
You are screwed.

The squatters won long ago - THEY know the rules:
1) Register a domain
2) Be careful!
      a) Do not put up infringing content
      b) Put up a 'search' page to generate some profit
      c) Do not offer to sell, just wait
      d) Hide in another country with nicer rules for scammers if possible
3) Profit!

Here are my suggestions
1) Choose a different domain
      a) Choose another Top Level Domain , may I suggest .TV ? (I may be biased as I bought the first premium dot TV domain)
      b) I can offer some for FREE for Open Source communities (Notice: No link to me - just google for OpenDomain )
      c) Try different variations of the brand
2) Suck it up and pay.
  a) Lease the domain
  b) Negotiate - a lawyer may help if you DO have IP

Good luck!

Just so that I can cost the bastards some money by demanding a Windows Refund on it.

http://www.linux.com/news/enterprise/case-studies/7981-linux-picked-in-gendarmerie-lineup

Apparently the drivers were open-sourced long ago:

http://www.linux.com/archive/feature/119049

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=ATI+open+source

If I knew that I would have gone out of my way to get ATI rather than Nvidia video cards in the gaming PC I just built.

Funny, I don't see it refreshing at all. I get a pop-down saying:

Authentication Required

A username and password are being requested by http://beta.linux.com./ The site says: "Linux.com is under maintenance. Please check www.linux.com shortly"

This has username and password input widgets, plus Cancel and OK buttons. It doesn't seem to have any way of setting up an account, so I tried a couple of dummy loging, hit OK -- and got back exactly the same pop-down windowlet. So I hit Cancel -- and got the same pop-down windowlet.

I notice that the button to close the window is greyed out ...

I'll check them occasionally and see if anything works. At least they're not soaking up all my cpu while they wait for me.

And it messes up your browser (Firefox in my case) too. Check this out:

http://linux.com/distrocentral/download-linux

Right now it continually refreshes the page while asking for authentication, spawning a new window each second. I managed to escape from it with some careful mouse wrangling.

I can understand your frustration. However, I won buy a Blackberry when they cannot provide Linux support. I want to use equipment which follows open standards so I can switch technology providers easily.

Also I have seen Blackberrys, however I cannot see why they are so popular in the US. Ok they had smartphone features before others had them. But now?

Also it looks like, that using Blackberry and Linux together is becoming more easily. This article from 2007 is much easier to follow http://www.linux.com/feature/123251 However, support for Linux is not at its best. So sell the not so smart blackberry and get the same service from another provider.

Instead of whining about paying the Microsoft Tax you can call Asus up and demand a refund off of the OEM version of windows they shipped with it. There is no sense in giving Microsoft Money for something you won't even use. This link might help you out http://www.linux.com/articles/59381.

Interesting. According the article referenced in the Wikipedia even OpenOffice and KOffice don't get along.

I thought the realtime blender plugin was a very cool project and quite effective. It implemented a sandboxed version of blender's richly featured 3d game / interactive simulation engine within several browsers on multiple platforms back in 2002 http://www.linux.com/feed/20866 there have been rumblings of reviving the project and bringing it in line with the current code base now and then on the blender developers mailing list. most recently by Marcelo CoraÃa de Freitas

Yellow Hat Linux

http://www.linux.com/feature/42031
Old, but still funny. Though I'd guess the compatibility must have improved a lot since then. It'd be interesting to do a run with some modern ones.