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The miniature-sized Asus Eee PC has been selling around the world with Linux preinstalled, but the Taiwan company's little laptop will soon start selling loaded with Microsoft's Windows XP. Previously, customers could install XP on their own Eee PC with their own license, but XP would not ship out o...

In the 1980s, auto manufacturers began using simple computers called the "engine control unit," or ECU, to monitor and regulate such things as fuel mixture and spark plug timing. Since then, a cottage industry has developed around hardware and software to bypass, tinker with or replace this system. ...

What a nut I was. Back when Sun Microsystems and Microsoft announced they would be joining forces on interoperability between Sun, nee Java, and .NET -- remember Steve Ballmer of "Ballmer and Butthead" fam] and Scott McNealy sitting side by side -- I thought they meant it. I pushed the envelope, jus...

Open source software is making its way into the systems that touch our everyday lives, from our banks to the stores where we shop. Open source is also found in some of the IT systems that manage traffic flow on city streets, state highways and in the skies. In fact, throughout the overlapping transp...

Only a few months into a relationship with Linux-powered PCs, Wal-Mart is pulling the plug on the products. The retail giant has sold out its stock of Linux-driven and price-friendly Everex Green gPC systems, and says it won't be restocking its shelves with replacements -- although several models ca...

Xandros, which makes intuitive Linux solutions and tools to manage mixed environments, announced two new products that will make it easier for Windows systems administrators to manage Linux platforms in their IT environment. One is the Xandros BridgeWays Management Console for Red Hat Enterprise Lin...

In Search Of: CEO to turn IT organization that operates like a terrorist group into a Microsoft-like outfit. Vision and big-picture mentality not required. Management, administrative and detail skills sorely needed. Ability to deal with a chairman who occasionally goes off reservation during press i...

Larry Sanger was an early participant in Wikipedia, and in 2006 he founded the Citizendium, which bills itself as "the citizens' compendium." Like Wikipedia, Citizendium is an encyclopedia that invites the public to contribute content. The two share other similarities as well, but the two are distin...

Google has announced that it's taking Google Gears to the road, a move the company said is intended to make sense out of the dense and complex process of developing for the mobile Web. Google Gears, previously only available for desktops, is software that enables device users to access online servic...

To long-time promoters of mobile Linux, Google's announcement of Android marked a critical market inflection point. At long last, mobile Linux is emerging from a niche to quickly gaining broad acceptable in the mobile world alongside Symbian and Windows Mobile. While Android's entrance has generated...

The Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California at Berkeley is nestled into the Berkeley Hills just off the fire trail where runners from around the area come to take on the brutal 3.5-mile climb. The lab, though, doesn't feel like it's part of Berkeley. It's located a few miles from t...

Drupal, the wildly popular open source social publishing system which has been downloaded more than 2 million times since it was released in 2001, will soon be available as a commercial distribution. The news was announced at DrupalCon Boston 2008, a convention of Drupal users, being held in Boston ...

Wikileaks.org won a reprieve Friday from a judge's order that had shut down its U.S. site for more than a week. U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey White lifted the injunction he had previously imposed to keep the site from spreading possible trade secrets. He issued the new ruling after he heard a fr...

Give office workers familiar with the Microsoft XP operating system an opportunity to try the same navigational tasks at a Linux-based desktop. Then step back and wait for the reaction. First will come the surprised look. Then questions like "where did the command line go?" will soon follow. That's ...

The American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Citizen and twelve media groups are asking a federal court to lift an injunction against the global whistleblower Web site Wikileaks.org. Two weeks ago, in the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of California, J...