Rouben's blog

As some of you may know, Google Apps is a free (depending on the package you choose) offering from Google. In a nutshell, it's a branded GMail and Google Calendar and Google Docs instance. It can be "skinned" to some extent to match your organization, and it's all hosted by Google and provided to you free of charge (or for some $ you can get additional benefits, like 25GB mailboxes and priority support).

Literally hours after its release, the Free Software Foundation already released their statement re: their general dissatisfaction with the inclusion of "digital rights management" controls in Apple's iPad operating system. They've made similar statements in the past (and then some) about the iPod touch and the iPhone platforms.

Note that "digital restrictions management" is FSF's creative misnomer of the proper term "digital rights management". Very creative indeed.

http://www.defectivebydesign.org/ipad

It looks like WIND mobile is finally here. Value-wise, they actually seem to be competitive with the rest of the "contract-free" crowd (namely low-end telcos like Fido, Koodo, PC Mobile, Virgin and others). By being "actually competitive" I mean offering more than a choice of "with telco X you get feature X included, and with telco Y you get feature Y included". WIND seems to give you either a choice between X and Y that won't cost you any of your appendages... or they just throw both in.

Ubuntu 9.10 (codename Karmic Koala) is coming soon! Gone are the days when Linux desktop is just for computer enthusiasts! Each release of Ubuntu brings new improvements in usability and stability, and 9.10 is no exception. I invite you to check out the feature list and download or order a CD to be shipped out to you completely free of charge!

I bet the pic caught your attention! It's very controversial indeed! With the imminent infiltration of technology into everyone's everyday lives, the entertainment and media industries came up with an answer to the problem of piracy called digital rights management. Sounds OK at the first glance... the only problem is, the only rights protected (or managed) are theirs, not yours. You, the end user, have virtually no rights (including the ones you enjoyed previously, like the ability to tape a TV show legally).

LinuxMint is a Linux flavour based off Ubuntu. Here I was, thinking that Ubuntu offers the best-looking, most polished end-user experience... and then I stumble upon the LinuxMint project. All I can say is, WOW! From boot to shutdown, I was impressed. Check it out for yourself:

http://linuxmint.com/

P.S. Keep in mind that you can always try LinuxMint or Ubuntu on your computer without touching any data on it (Linux will load and run entirely off the CD).

I really, really, hope that this is just a beta/release candidate issue... or rather a misconfiguration. Anticompetitiveness (questionable... things may break otherwise) aside, this is a pretty major security issue. I'm not quite sure why DEP (data execution protection) isn't catching this... again, hopefully default settings will be adjusted so that this won't be possible in the final version. I really, really hope so, otherwise we're back to the Windows XP security model.