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The man has been dead for over two hundred years, but no one can deny his genius when it came to coming up with clever quotes that people would be repeating centuries after his death. Though nobody living in the 18th century could foresee the computer technology we benefit from today, Franklin's wise words can be applied to really any aspect of life, and Martin Streicher has applied ten of Franklin's famous quotes to the area of UNIX systems administration. Read the full article for some helpful hints in administration all sparked from our dear friend Franklin himself, covering everything from security to the wisdom in frugality.

Jeremy White posted the CodeWeavers' Outlook for 2009, explaining what the group has been working fervently on the past eight months as well as plans for the coming months of 2009. CodeWeavers develops and sells CrossOver, an application based upon Wine that can run Windows applications on Mac OS X and Linux, specifically certain games and office applications. They're also the leading corporate backer of the Wine Project. In the road map, White explains that the past eight months have been spent on unattractive, under-the-hood improvements to Wine, particularly "things like .NET support, work on a DIB Engine, Gdiplus, and a lot of Direct X work. We've also spent a lot of energy focusing on issues with Microsoft Office 2003 and 2007, in an effort to bring those applications fully up to 'Gold' level." He goes on to say that DirectX 9 support is coming along nicely for the CrossOver Games project, and DirectX 10 is around the corner. The plans for the upcoming months include shipping CrossOver 8.0 for both Linux and Mac, which will include many improvements, the juiciest of which are centered around Photoshop CS3, Microsoft Office, and Quicken 2009. Aside from adding more and better application support in Wine, the GUI of CrossOver is supposed to get a hefty overhaul by the CodeWeavers team.

Now's the time for a congregational sigh of relief. After the DTV transition was postponed from February 17th to June 12th, several millions of Americans waited impatiently for government funding to get their $40 converter-box coupons. Now our reliable Congress has approved another $650 million for the program, and the 4.1 million-deep waiting list can begin to flow again. NITA, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, plans to eliminate that pending list in a mere three weeks. If you're not already on the waiting list, you had better skedaddle and get on it because who knows if the money poured into this project will dry up again?

Ertan D. has managed to install and run Android on the Dell Axim X51v, and there's a video demonstrating the working system, complete with a lovely sound track to keep one company. Android currently isn't completely friendly with the handheld computer as it still lacks WiFi support and has some power management issues (to name a few), but it's still a good beginning. Though the Axim was discontinued several years ago and is aging and getting more and more out of date when compared to today's mobile devices, the X51v still packs a punch with its 624 MHz processor, 3.7-inch VGA screen, and 2700G graphics processor. Ertan hopes to develop the project further to a point when Android can be a viable replacement OS to Windows Mobile 5 on the X51v.

The recent text-to-speech craze dealing with the Kindle 2 eventually got to the top as we all knew it would. Amazon has now released official word that their TTS feature is completely legal, but not to challenge those who were causing a fuss over its legalities earlier. They're stating that they're reprogramming the Kindle's system and are going to let the rightsholders decide whether to allow their book to be read by the Kindle's TTS on a title-by-title basis, and also that Amazon has much commercial interest in the audiobook business and believes that TTS will help the business, not detract from it. In Amazon's own words: "With this new level of control, publishers and authors will be able to decide for themselves whether it is in their commercial interests to leave text-to-speech enabled. We believe many will decide that it is." Phew. Glad that legal squabble has been dealt with. Lawyerless, courtless, suitless resolution; if only all disputes could be solved this way.

AMD recently said that they'd be starting onto the 32nm track, beginning production around the fourth quarter of 2010. Intel, on the other hand, has already demonstrated some of its prototypes and will be rolling these babies out to the public come the fourth quarter of-- ah-- this year. AMD isn't manufacturing these chips, however, and is instead laying the load on the newborn Foundry Company, which was created with the help of AMD out of ATI.

Developers willing to dish out the $400 required for an unlocked Dev Phone 1 won't be happy to find that access to paid market applications has been disabled by Google. It was possibly done to sloppily patch up a loophole that supposedly gave users of the unlocked phone the ability to download all applications for free. What little information Google would give as to why they made this decision included, "These phones give developers of handset software full permissions to all aspects of the device... We aren't distributing copy protected applications to these phones in order to minimize unauthorized copy of the applications." What makes this more interesting is that, at least according to Engadget, an unlocked original G1 doesn't have this limitation. It's rather ironic that a developer using said phone won't be able to access his or her own paid app. Let's hope Google remedies this quickly as you never know when an angry mob of app-deprived developers will storm the Googleplex with torches and sporks.

The Author's Guild has been having some trouble coping with the Kindle 2's Read to Me feature because it supposedly undermines author's rights. Their argument? "They don't have the right to read a book out loud." It sounds ridiculous; we've been reading out loud since we were wee little children, and text-to-speech has been in use since before the Google Empire (by hundreds of years technically, and by decades literally). However, after explanation by Engadget's very own pretentious ex-copyright attorney, the blurred lines of law and lawlessness gets even blurrier. Does the Author's Guild have a valid point, or are they splitting hairs?

Calm down, calm down. It was simply a manner of speech. No, they haven't developed the all too popular garments that render the wearer invisible, but we are about to take a look at some pretty spiffy technology that will doubtlessly save you some space in the family room as well as give you something to brag about to your somewhat less technologically inclined friends: "invisible" speakers.