A U.S. government- and industry-led coalition aiming to equip every car and roadside in America with wirelessly connected computers has tapped Linux for a prototype design. The Vehicle Infrastructure Integration Consortium (VII-C) hopes to lower driver death rates, reduce traffic jams, and media-enable cars before 2017.

The VII-C is funded by the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), along with AASHTO, ten State Departments of Transportation, and seven vehicle manufacturers already involved in the U.S. DOT’s Intelligent Vehicle Initiative: BMW, DaimlerChrysler, Ford, GM, Honda, Nissan, and Toyota.

The VII-C says that 21,000 of the 43,000 traffic fatalities in 2003 were caused by vehicles leaving the road or entering intersections when they should not have. It hopes a massive network connecting cars to each other and to roadsides can help.

More at LinuxDevices.com

“eCourse is an extension of info products to support additional capabilities that will help Infopreneurs grow their internet business and sell more of their info products,” said Kayem Chow, the CEO of eLearning Community, as he launched eLearning Community version 2.0 this week.

“This knowledge marketplace allows knowledge providers to leverage the full capabilities of Web 2.0 to enhance their customers’ learning experience,” Chow said. He instanced facilities like live coaching, live conferences, and learn-on-demand, and said of eLearning Community 2.0:
“It has been designed from the ground up to help Infopreneurs to build strong relationships with their customers and to sell more of their learning products.”

Continue article at Social Computing Magazine…

Free Software Foundation (FSF) lawyer Eben Moglen claims that the absence of an expiration date on SUSE vouchers distributed by Microsoft will make Microsoft subject to terms of the GPL3, thus undermining Microsoft’s patent threats against Linux by forcing the company to provide nearly unlimited upstream patent licenses. During an OpenLogic online seminar last week, Moglen said that in his opinion, Microsoft is subject to the GPL because the company is distributing SUSE Linux vouchers. Although SUSE Linux is licensed under the current version of the GPL, which has only weak upstream patent licensing requirements, Moglen argues that since the vouchers have no expiration date, Microsoft would become subject to GPL3 requirements—including strong upstream patent licensing requirements—if a company that purchased a voucher from Microsoft holds onto it and redeems it after SUSE Linux software is released under the GPL3.

Read the rest of the article at Ars Technica… 

The Optimus Maximus keyboard is now available for preorder. This is the coolest keyboard ever! What makes it so incredibly awesome! Every key on the keyboard is a display. Boy howdy, that is nifty! You can preorder yours here and you might be lucky enough to get it shipped by January 2008. Warning, this sucker isn’t cheap. Price on the site is listed as approx. $1,564.37 USD.

With increasing chatter about whether 2007 will be the “Year of the Linux Desktop,” you hear considerably less about whether it’s time for the Linux Office. But business desktops aren’t just islands unto themselves. In a networked world, the desktop is just a piece of the office puzzle. There are also servers, printers, faxes and productivity applications. For this Solutions That Work, the CRN Test Center put together a small-business Linux and open-source office environment and spoke to solution providers who have been examining Linux office solutions on the frontlines. The verdict: Microsoft has a lot to worry about down the road, but in 2007, Linux is still lacking the driver support, ease of use and interoperability with mainstream, legacy software to make office migration pain-free.

Continue reading at CRNtech… 

go2web20

Originally uploaded by linuxchic.
Pretty snazzy page of all things Web2.0 in a fancy logo layout!

http://www.go2web20.net/

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is pressing the U.S. Congress to enact a sweeping intellectual-property bill that would increase criminal penalties for copyright infringement, including “attempts” to commit piracy.

“To meet the global challenges of IP crime, our criminal laws must be kept updated,” Gonzales said during a speech before the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington on Monday.

The Bush administration is throwing its support behind a proposal called the Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2007, which is likely to receive the enthusiastic support of the movie and music industries, and would represent the most dramatic rewrite of copyright law since a 2005 measure dealing with prerelease piracy.

Continue reading this article at CNet News Blog