"On May 14, Microsoft and the Linux Foundation sent a joint letter to the American Law Institute to express our shared concerns with the group’s draft Principles of the Law of Software Contracts. The ALI Principles are meant to provide guidance to judges and others as they interpret software licensing agreements. While the Principles reflect a lot of hard work and thought by the ALI, Microsoft and the Linux Foundation believe that certain provisions do not reflect existing law and could disrupt the well-functioning software market for businesses and consumers, as well as create uncertainty for software developers."

As you're going to see hear in tomorrow's OSNews podcast, there was a lot of interesting stuff going on on OSNews this week. We've had some serious talks about advertising on the web, Intel getting a serious slap on the wrist, we've talked about what to do with RAM, a mind-boggling security issue in Windows 7, and much more. This week's My Take is about Two And A Half Men.

With the rise of microblogging services like Twitter and Identi.ca, the length of URLs has been the subject of much discussion. Some research has even suggested that long URLs cost us significant dollars, and that by shortening URLs, one could realize significant cost savings in bandwidth. As such, today, we're unveiling OSNe.ws, our own short URL service. OSNe.ws links are currently peppered throughout the site: you can view them by hovering over any news item, any conversation, or at the end of any story via the "Tweet this!" link. Note that these links are 301 redirected to the appropriate OSNews.com page, there is no actual content living on OSNe.ws. We hope you enjoy this new service and that it encourages you to share our links more readily. Update by AS: Because everyone seems to be so focused on the "bandwidth savings" of links, let me be very clear: the new URLs are only for your convenience and saving characters in sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Identica where you're limited on characters.

Whenever we talk about Windows 7 on OSNews, you'll always hear me advise you to change the UAC settings by setting it to its highest level, since Windows 7's default simply isn't secure. You might wonder why you should deal with additional prompts - what is the security risk actually like? Well, it's pretty big.

Good news for plurality advocates in general, and Linux fans in particular: during a press event, Dell has announced a shift in its Linux strategy, one that seems to contradict recent moves by competitors who are de-emphasizing Linux models: Windows and Linux models will be made available simultaniously.

It seems like we're getting even more signs that netbooks haven't been doing very well lately. Research figures by IDC on the processor market seem to paint a not-so-rosy picture of sales of Intel's Atom processor, and then figures coming in from DisplaySearch seem to paint a different picture. What's going on here?