A few weeks ago, we took a look at TotalFinder, a collection of add-ons to the Mac OS X Finder that fixes some of its shortcomings, adds some welcome features, and in all, makes it a little more pleasant to use. We've got three free copies of TotalFinder to hand out, so read on to find out how you can win one!

After a pre-order launch which left much to be desired, resulting in Android Police calling them a scam, Notion Ink have decided to amend themselves by giving up on secrecy and releasing more information on their upcoming tablet, Adam. Originally planned for the product's unveiling at the upcoming CES, these blog posts go into more detail about the software running on top of their product, called "Eden". Note from Kroc: Readers please also welcome OSNews user Neolander (Hadrien) as the new OSNews editor!

Due to my incessant whining about the evilness of big content, it's easy to forget that despite all the lunacy those guys throw our way, there are also cases where they're simply very much right. The Columbus Dispatch is reporting on the story of Qiang Bi, who has just been sentenced to jail for two and half years for piracy.

"In October Commtouch reported an 18% drop in global spam levels (comparing September and October). This was largely attributed to the closure of Spamit around the end of September. Spamit is the organization allegedly behind a fair percentage of the worlds pharmacy spam. Analysis of the spam trends to date reveals a further drop in the amounts of spam sent during Q4 2010. December's daily average was around 30% less than September's. The average spam level for the quarter was 83% down from 88% in Q3 2010. The beginning of December saw a low of nearly 74%."

"A tightening of copyright rules means kindergartens now have to pay fees to Germany's music licensing agency, GEMA, to use songs that they reproduce and perform. The organization has begun notifying creches and other daycare facilities that if they reproduce music to be sung or performed, they must pay for a license. 'If a preschool wants to make its own copy of certain music - if the words of a song or the musical score is copied - then they need to buy a license,' GEMA spokesperson Peter Hempel told Deutsche Welle." Honestly. I wonder how those pro-RIAA/MPAA folk we have on OSNews feel about this. This is EXACTLY why I try to do my part (a small part, but still) in fighting big content. I wonder how much has to happen for our politicians to open their eyes, and see current copyright law for what it really is: pure venom. Poison of the most dangerous kind, which is destroying our very culture, which is stifling art and science. News like this SICKENS me. How anyone can defend something like this is beyond me.

The Playstation 3 has been cracked so hard even its momma felt the blow. "Approximately a half hour in, the team revealed their new PS3 secrets, the moment we all were waiting for. One of the major highlights here was, dongle-less jailbreaking by breaking the PS3 loaders, giving complete control over the system. The other major feat, was calculating the public private keys (due to botched security), giving users the ability to sign their own SELFs."

What were the big themes this year? Which stories on OSNews were the most popular? We dove into our database (well, Adam did), and compiled a list of 2010's ten most popular stories on OSNews. As a metric, we didn't look at silly things like hits or whatever, but at the only metric that matters on OSNews, the only metric which really indicates what our registered (and thus, loyal) readers loved to argue about this year: number of comments. Yes, that headline is intentionally confusing.

Every now and then (or, actually, rather often) you come across a story which once again exemplifies why governments should keep their paws off anything remotely related to technology. It seems that not knowing anything about technology is one of the prime reasons why governments the world over fail so spectacularly when it comes to technology-related lawmaking. The latest in the series? France. My southern neighbours (I never acknowledged Belgian independence) are thinking about extending their piracy levy, normally found on CD-Rs and mp3-players and such, to cover tablet computers as well. However, tablet computers running Windows are exempt.

Documentation on how to create a FreeBSD DomU is scarse, so I wrote this step-by-step guide, to guide users from the initial download to a complete, running FreeBSD DomU under a Linux Dom0 Xen host. The guide covers creating the initial Xen kernel, configuring the Xen host, generating the correct configurations, resizing FreeBSD partitions in Xen and cleanly booting the final OS. In the process, we will also create a template disk image which can be used to generate new VM's very quickly. The entire process can be completed in under an hour the first time, and only takes 5-10 minutes to re-generate future VM's.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin signed a plan for transition of power structures and the federal budget to free software. According to the document, the introduction of Linux in government should begin in II quarter 2012.

"Google's new Nexus S smartphone is the first Android device to use the Ext4 filesystem. The company published a statement on the official Android developer blog earlier this month to discuss how adoption of Ext4 on Android will impact third-party application developers. In a follow-up post last week, Ext4 developer Ted T'so commented on the transition and offered some further clarification regarding concerns about fsync data loss issues, which he says pose minimal risk on Android due to the higher level of quality assurance testing."

Logitech International SA Monday denied Google Inc. had asked the Swiss electronics firm to suspend production of television set-top boxes until the U.S. Internet giant irons out software problems. "Suggestions that production of the Logitech Revue companion box might need to be halted to address software issues are unfounded. As those familiar with the product know, it is not necessary for Logitech to make changes to the companion box to accommodate future enhancements to Google TV," Logitech spokeswoman Nancy Morrison said in a statement to Dow Jones Newswires. Logitech was addressing a report in trade publication Digitimes that Logitech is delaying shipments through January.

"Hopewell Culture & Design reckons it owns the act of double-clicking, and is suing Apple, Nokia, Samsung and just about everyone else for breaching its patent. It's not double-clicking per se that US patent 7,171,625 covers, just the act of clicking twice on an already-selected component to action a request for additional information or greater interactivity."

"The team behind the popular open-source video player VLC is busy working on an Android app, which could be released in early 2011. Lead VLC developer Jean-Baptiste Kempf told me on Thursday that it will be 'a matter of weeks' until the release of the first VLC app for Android-based mobile devices."