FSM Newsletter 27th of November 2006

Welcome to another of Free Software Magazine’s fortnightly newsletters, keeping you up to date with us, and all things free software... enjoy!

General announcements

We had no idea just how talented our audience was—not to mention that many of you want to write for us! We asked for bloggers, and bloggers we got! We have had a fantastic response to the blogger competition so far—there are so many excellent entries to choose from. We’ll be announcing our winners next fortnight, but we already have some new names on the site who were just too good for us to keep from you! If you still haven’t entered and plan to, you better get in quick as there’s not much time before we close off the competition. A big thanks to our community for their involvement and we hope you enjoy our new talent.

Latest content

Have we raised a generation of technology drones?—Ken Leyba asks: how will our kids know anything about technology options if all the schools give them is Microsoft? Read more...

Securing NFS—Want to be secure with NFS? Wouter Verhelst tells you how. Read more...

Clueful versus clueless—a never ending battle—Steven Goodwin talks about how there are many in the IT industry who should ask for a clue before ditching GNU/Linux Read more...

Creating a managed website (Part 1): Focus on the message not the tools. Set up a content management system to deliver your site—Graham Oakes talks about why you need a CMS to optimise your site. Read more...

How to recognise, prevent, and treat burnout—Pieter Hintjens talks about burnout in a free software context—and how to prevent it. Read more...

Former social worker and tech CEO finally gets it—Chris Holt saw the light—he calls it Ubuntu! Read more...

Inside the mind of the enemy: the community—Patrick McFarland tries to reconcile the cathedral and the bazaar project models. Read more...

For love or money—Terry Hancock has a look at the two different types of free software projects—the big commercial ones, and the ones done for love. Read more...

The Tron effect—Anthony Taylor talks about how the feeling of belonging, and helping to create something great, can be engendered by something as innocent as watching a movie... Read more...

Adopt and orphan—Marco Marongiu wants your help! Read more...

Latest content continued

Authenticating on the network—Authenticating is such a pain! Wouter Verhelst talks about how possible it is with GNU/Linux. Read more...

A free education: Open-Of-Course —Tim Cowlishaw talks about a new project dedicated to providing free and open online courses. Read more...

I’d like to thank God, the academy and Microsoft for making possible everything I’ve achieved to date—Bridget Kulakauskas has a message for Steve Ballmer—and it isn’t “thanks”. Read more...

Of movie making and control—Mitch Meyran talks Virtualdub—and how to make the most of it. Read more...

Personal privacy: Keep your privacy on the web with a technologically advanced onion—Robin Monks talks about how to utilise TOR to keep your private stuff private. Read more...

http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/blogs/liberating_verizon_fios_using_free_operating_systems—David Sugar lets you know how to use Verizon with GNU/Linux. Read more...

Sun’s right move: GPL Java—Anthony Taylor is pretty pleased—Java’s becoming free! Read more...

Latest book reviews released

OpenVPN: Building and Integrating Virtual Private Networks by Markus Feilner Anything you’ve been keen to know about Virtual Private Networks? Alan Berg explores Markus Feilner’s knowledgeable and accessible take on the subject. Read more...

Managing and Customizing OpenCMS 6 Websites by Matt Butcher Even if you don’t know anything about creating a free software content management server, Alan Berg thinks that Matt Butcher can help you. Read more...

Book competition announcement for this fortnight

This week we are giving away a copy ofSELinux by Example: Using Security Enhanced Linux by Frank Mayer, Karl MacMillan and David Caplan The Official Ubuntu Book by Benjamin Mako Hill, et al.

All you need to do to enter is check out the latest book competition announcement on our blogs page.

GOOD LUCK!

Thanks go to Prentice Hall for providing these fantastic prizes.

Winner of the book competition from last fortnight

Thanks to all those who entered, unfortunately there can only be one winner...

Congratulations Ron Morley of Michigan in the USA!

Ron has won copies of Beginning Ubuntu Linux: from Novice to Professional and AJAX and PHP: Building Responsive Web Applications.

Thanks to all who entered.

Thanks also go to Apress and Packt for providing these great prizes.

Please comment wherever possible and don’t forget to log in so that you’ll be in the running to win the latest book competition

Poll Results—Now that the ink is dry, how long do you think Microsoft will wait to start suing free software developers and companies?

This fortnight’s poll was asking how long you thought it would be before Microsoft starts suing and the results were really interesting—the two highest results were 30% with “six months to a year” closely followed by 25% with “never”. “One to five years” was next with 18%, followed by “one month or less” and “one month to six months” both on 16%. The lowest result was “over five years” with a mere 3% of the vote. Your comments showed that, essentially, the belief is that, if Microsoft sue at all, they'll do it just to prove a point and will probably target those who can’t afford to defend themselves. It doesn’t make them look good... they sure aren’t going on our Christmas list! Read more here and stay tuned for...

This fortnight’s poll

What's your distro of choice?

We decided that it would be interesting and useful to see what distros our readers use. Sorry if your distro is not shown... you know we can't show them all. We have listed the top ten distros from DistroWatch.com in no particular order. We may use this info to decide on what distros to focus on for future issues and articles.

Reminders

Comments

Your comments on articles, issues, and blog entries are very welcome. They provide other readers with insightful suggestions, further information, and the feeling that they are not alone. They also provide our authors with the feeling that they are being heard. Please comment wherever possible and don’t forget to log in so that you’ll be in the running to win the latest book competition.

Avatars

Avatars are a great way of expressing your personal identity, whether it be a photo or an image that you feel represents the you you want to be. Read more about avatars here. To add an avatar: log in, go to “my account” in the menu on the left, go to the “edit” tab and scroll down to where it says “Upload picture”. Now, hit the browse button, find the image on your computer that you want to upload and go to the bottom of the page and hit the submit button. That’s it; you now have an avatar image.

Donate

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Think about how much you would normally have to spend buying a magazine of this quality. We provide it for free!

Your donations will help us to continue spreading the word about free software and producing more fantastic issues.

Contacting us

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Thanks

Thank you for subscribing to Free Software Magazine. You are a part of a growing community who help to raise the awareness of, and educate new users in, the joys of free software. Without you we would not have this community and without you we would not have a magazine. Happy reading!

License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.