"So why do all these American reporters, who know quite well that they get praise and money for doing what Assange has done, stand in a silence that can only be called cowardly, while a fellow publisher faces threats of extradition, banning, prosecution for spying - which can incur the death penalty - and calls for his assassination? U.S. journalism's business model is collapsing; the people who should be out in front defending Assange are facing cut salaries or unemployment because of the medium that Assange represents. These journalists are not willing to concede that Assange is, of course, a publisher, rather than some sort of hybrid terrorist blogger, because of their self-interested prejudices against a medium in which they are not the gatekeepers." Great article - focussing on the US, but just as applicable in the rest of the world (except the great nation of Iceland, obviously). The internet could very well become the single most important 'invention' in human history. We must stand guard against our governments getting their filthy, inefficient, censoring, controlling, and damaging hands on it.

"Internet vigilante group Anonymous turned its sights on security firm HBGary on Sunday evening in an attempt to "teach a lesson you'll never forget." The firm had been working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation to unmask members of Anonymous following the group's pro-WikiLeaks attacks on financial services companies, and was prepared to release its findings next week."

"One member of the European Parliament and a handful of their advisors and assistants started a free software group last Saturday, aiming to increase the use of Free and open source software in the European Parliament's IT infrastructure. The user group is open to all who work in the European Parliament, including staff and assistants working in political groups."

We have a new operating system! Well, no - we have a new operating environment, since it's technically not an operating system. Pyxis 2 is an operating environment written in C# on the .NET Micro Framework. The goal of the project is to make it easier for developers to develop robust NETMF applications, while providing users with a common environment to launch applications in. It is open source (Apache 2.0).

So you have taken the test and you think you are ready to get started with OS development? At this point, many OS-deving hobbyists are tempted to go looking for a simple step-by-step tutorial which would guide them into making a binary boot, do some text I/O, and other "simple" stuff. The implicit plan is more or less as follow: any time they'll think about something which in their opinion would be cool to implement, they'll implement it. Gradually, feature after feature, their OS would supposedly build up, slowly getting superior to anything out there. This is, in my opinion, not the best way to get somewhere (if getting somewhere is your goal). In this article, I'll try to explain why, and what you should be doing at this stage instead in my opinion.

Nokia Beta Labs are currently experimenting with a new kind of lock screen for touchscreen Symbian phones. Called Nokia Bubbles, this lock screen "offers a new way to achieve a bunch of different interactions and access functionality with a load of bubbles floating around on your handset's touchscreen."

Is it really going to happen? Will we see one of the more momentous announcements in the tech world next week? The web's been abuzz about Nokia possibly adopting Windows Phone 7 for a number of handsets, and now even The New York Times has chimed in - at which point it might be time to start taking the rumours seriously.

"Since the last year with all the hype around HTML5 and the buzz about 'how HTML5 is going to save the web' and that 'Flash is dead', etc., a lot of people started to believe that HTML5 is ready for production and that it is more stable and has a better performance than Flash... Since the beginning I've been saying to everyone that it isn't true and it won't be for a long time."

"Computer engineers at North Carolina State University have developed hardware that allows programs to operate more efficiently by significantly boosting the speed at which the 'cores' on a computer chip communicate with each other."

"Nokia has temporarily closed the MeeGo-themed branch of its Qt Quick components project. Hartz says that moving behind closed doors is a temporary measure and that the code will be published as soon as the developers are permitted to do so. Although the situation is a little bit frustrating for developers, it's arguably an extremely positive sign that Nokia is getting close to finally delivering a MeeGo product."

"Windows Home Server 'Vail' Release Candidate goes to testers. For those Windows Home Server loyalists hoping against hope that Microsoft might reconsider its decision to cut Drive Extender from the coming 'Vail' release, your prayers have not been answered. Microsoft is delivering the Release Candidate test build of Vail - Windows Home Server 2011 - on February 3, and there is no Drive Extender included."

In this series of OS News articles, I'vedescribed how to refurbish maturecomputers. One useful technique is torun multiple operating systems on a singlecomputer. This retains the benefits of the existing Windows install andcouples it with the advantages of open source software.Thisarticle explores different techniques to runmultiple operating systems on one computer and discusses theirbenefits andshortcomings.

Dell has released two servers for the U.S. market that have been customized to run Ubuntu-based cloud services. The company has outfitted its PowerEdge C2100 and C6100 servers with Canonical's Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud, an implementation of the Eucalyptus private cloud software that runs on the Ubuntu Server Edition operating system.

It's only seven seconds long. It's the first teaser video for the upcoming HP Palm launch event. I have a soft spot in my heart for Palm, and I'm actually quite anxious to see if HP runs the brand and its legacy into the ground, or if they manage to wow us like Palm did when they first unveiled the Pre and webOS. We'll be seeing new phones, tablets, and probably improvements in the webOS itself. Six more days.