this war on dissent ... the evidence against him was essentially that he was associating with a website, didn't operate the website. [FBI wiretaps showed his decision and urging of others not to violate] civil injunctions that were imposed on certain demonstrations. ... the government alleges [encrypted email is] evidence of his criminal intent.

the journey that Andrew Stepanian has gone through is a frightening example of ... this incredible attempt by the government to envelop political activists, criminalize dissent, convict them and then send them to special housing units based on a political agenda.

Florian Schiessl, the acting head of the Munich LiMux project, says, "We'd do it again". ... The target is to convert 80 per cent of the city council's 14,000 computers to Linux by mid-2012 at the latest. ... by the end of this year in fact, all the town hall staff are to drop Word, Excel and Internet Explorer and use free OpenOffice software and Firefox, the open-source browser, instead.

Other authorities are now following Munich's example. Like many cities, the German Foreign Office and the Office for Information Security (BSI) [are dumping M$].... The council's attitude to free software is unambiguous. "We don't mean free in the same sense as free beer", explains Schiessl. He says with Open Source, programmers can improve software and extend it with additional applications, instead of having to rely on a specific company. This benefit carries weight for other city councils as well. Mannheim, Schwäbisch Hall and Treuchtlingen, Bavaria, for example, are relying at least partially, on free software.

Debian's decision to include Mono in the default installation, for the sake of Tomboy which is an application written in C#, leads the community in a risky direction. It is dangerous to depend on C#, so we need to discourage its use. .... This is not to say that implementing C# is a bad thing. ... [writing and using applications in mono] is taking a gratuitous risk.

A few days ago, version 4.0 of the Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) specification was released, weighing in at a hefty 727 pages ... there are still flaws in many implementations.

Intel is now developing the Simple Firmware Interface (SFI) especially for small and low spec devices like Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs) with Atom processors, and is particularly targeting the Linux operating system... SFI can be implemented in addition to, or as an alternative to ACPI, in the firmware either within a classic BIOS, (U)EFI, or with alternative firmware like OpenFirmware.

"It looks like Microsoft [is] paying a lot of attention to their own profitability rather than how to expand the market," says Gianfranco Lanci, chief executive of Acer, the Taiwanese personal computer manufacturer.

The number of PCs sold each year is flattening, and the average selling price is falling fast. That leaves Microsoft, Intel (INTC), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), and Dell (DELL), which once shared profits from a fast-growing market, fighting harder for every dollar.

technology that once powered supercomputers now is found in embedded devices. In recent years both MIPS32 and MIPS64 cores have been found powering everything from routers to the Sony PlayStation. About a year ago the first MIPS32 based netbooks appeared ... We are talking about systems that reportedly will sell for as little as US $130 and which have already sold for as little as US $149. Say hello to the $150 netbook.

a site called "exo.performance.network" conducted the study using a 10-site browsing scenario ... comparing IE8 to IE7, as well as FireFox 3.01 running on two separate machines- Windows XP (SP3) and Vista (SP1). .... IE8 has a 350-400MB memory footprint, uses 150-200 concurrent execution threads, and uses a ridiculous 6 discrete iexplore.exe process instances every time it runs. This means that its well over two times more demanding then FireFox. With older machines, this can mean big problems.

Australian aged care and charity organisations have sworn to dump the vendor if it enforces the policy change and are prepared to tear out established Microsoft infrastructure to implement open source alternatives. ... [Paula Carleton, CIO of the not-for-profit Baptist Community Services] is investigating how to move its 850 Windows desktops to open source following Microsoft's decision to force it to a full commercial licence, "Every dollar we are forced to spend on software is a dollar less spent on the charitable services like homeless and crisis care that we deliver," St Vincent de Paul Society, National Council of Australia research officer Jonathan Campton said the price increase could not be accomodated into the organisation's budget.

Anglican Church CIO George Lymbers began phasing in open source across his organisation more than a year ago and has slashed more than $250,000 in software costs in combination with a collective bargining agreement.

Colonel Joe Adams from the United States Military Academy at West Point has a solution [to your security problems] ... he said recruits at the New York academy line up in the corridors outside their rooms in their barracks every Saturday morning for a notebook inspection or "IT SAMI".

The college teaches Ada ("because you can't cheat at Ada"), C++, Python and Java, he said. And it standardised on FreeBSD: "We love it, it's the key to our success". Col Adams said the college uses Windows "as little as possible".

It's official. Bill Veghte, Microsoft's senior VP for Windows business, told an audience of the Microsoft faithful at TechEd that Windows users should not switch to Vista. Veghte said, "If you're just starting your testing of Vista, with the [Windows 7] Release Candidate and the quality of that offering, I would switch over and do your testing on the [Windows 7] Release Candidate, and use that going forward."

You may say that Windows XP is too old thats why its loosing its appeal and is going downhill. So how about we will compare Ubuntu with the fresh Windows Vista or with the upcoming Windows 7.

If a consumer on a cheaper PC running the "Standard" version tries to use a high-definition monitor or run more than three software programs at once, he'll discover that neither is possible. Then he'll be prompted to upgrade to the pricier "Home Premium" or "Ultimate" version. [using a credit card and 25 character code]. ... pricing hasn't been determined, but upgrading "will cost less than a night out for four at a pizza restaurant.

The $125 million deal gives Google the right to store digital copies of the books, include them in its search results, sell online versions and license its book-scans to libraries. It also allows millions of "orphan" works (books still under copyright but whose copyright-holders can't be found) to be included in Google's program.

The only obstacle remaining for the settlement to take effect is final court approval. ... [it is not] surprising that at least one party nudging its way into the settlement is an internet-issues-oriented group from New York Law School. But what does raise an eyebrow is the source of New York Law's funding on this matter: Microsoft.