KDE 4.3.0 Released.
The KDE Community has announced the immediate availability of KDE 4.3 "Caizen". "KDE 4.3 continues to refine the unique features brought in previous releases while bringing new innovations. With the 4.2 release aimed at the majority of end users, KDE 4.3 offers a more stable and complete product for the home and small office." more... and A first look at KDE 4.3.

CentOS back from brink of death.
CentOS is alive. Two days after a core group of developers posted an open letter to primary admin Lance Davis, threatening to fork the open source OS if he didn't discuss his apparent disappearance from the project, Davis has answered their call - and he seems to have quelled their complaints. more... and Progress at CentOS and Weirdness at CentOS.

Sony open sources digital effects software.
Film effects specialist Sony Pictures Imageworks has released five digital image-manipulation software tools under open source licenses. While Imageworks has released other open source software in the past, the release of five tools at once brings its involvement in open source to a new level, the company said on Monday, in an announcement marking the beginning of the Siggraph computer graphics trade show in New Orleans. more...

BIND 9 denial of service being actively exploited.
Internet Systems Consortium, the developers of the BIND DNS server, is reporting a denial of service vulnerability that is being actively exploited. "Receipt of a specially-crafted dynamic update message to a zone for which the server is the master may cause BIND 9 servers to exit. Testing indicates that the attack packet has to be formulated against a zone for which that machine is a master. more...

A first look at Eclipse 4.
As is already indicated by version 0.9, which has just been released, Eclipse 4 will incorporate several familiar web technologies and put them to new uses. The Eclipse development environment has become a very popular open source project. more...

Skype shutdown: where are free software and free protocols?
The Skype copyright issue: The problem is that when eBay bought Skype, they were in too much of a hurry to read the fine print. Skype’s original owners retained the copyright for some crucial portion of Skype, specifically the peer-to-peer side of it — the same code which is probably responsible of making sure that user A routes packets for user B without his or her knowledge of authorisation. more...

Company Receives Patent for Podcasting.
VoloMedia, a podcast analytics, advertising, and distribution company, just received a patent for "providing episodic media," including podcasts. According to the company, which filed for the patent in November 2003, U.S. Patent 7,568,213 covers all episodic media downloads, not just the RSS-dependent downloads that power today's podcasts. more...

Sweet Home 3D: Open Source, Cross Platform Design Application.
Though Sweet Home 3D tops Google's SketchUp in a number of areas, it's still not much help for someone with no design sense. more...

Misc.
Mono coming to the iPhone.
Open Invention Network starts buying patents
5 Excellent Downloadable eBooks To Teach Yourself Linux.
The grumpy editor's e-book reader.
Lucidor 0.6 E-Book Reader Can Handle Web Feeds.
myTouch 3G: Improved Droid Still Has Some Squeaky Joints.
The Book vs. The Kindle.

How To Tips.

How To Create a Local Ubuntu Repository using Apt-Mirror and Apt-Cacher.
How To Hack an iPhone using SMS.
How To Install VLC media player 1.0.0 in Ubuntu.
How To Installing "Sugar on a stick" On A USB Stick.
How To Compile kernel in Debian 5.0 (Lenny).
How To Accessing PostgreSQL in C/C++.
How To VPN - Virtual Private Network and OpenVPN.
How To Install and Use of Cairo dock.

See you next Thursday 7 P.M. at Dooley's Pub, 442 Water Street, Eau Claire, WI.

EC_LUG