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Recent revelations about the way that Windows 8 will make use of UEFI, the next generation PC BIOS, have caused speculation that this may cause problems for people wanting to install Linux. Potentially, this could cause the PC to switch away from its historic position as the standard bearer for open platforms. more>>

Did you learn all your Linux console skills from books or from forums? Or, did you peek over someone's shoulder to see the real action? Once in a while, we stumble upon new projects that deserve some attention, like Playterm. What's the reason for this command-line "peep show"? To spread GNU Linux command-line knowledge. more>>

If you are an Ubuntu user and a fan of the new Unity interface, you might be interested in a new lens in development by David Callé. The Books Lens provides a real-time search interface for e-books. It currently interfaces with Google Books, Project Gutenberg and Forgotten Books. By the time you read this, that list probably will have grown. more>>

One area that chews up a lot of cycles on machines around the world is CFD. What is CFD? CFD is short for Computational Fluid Dynamics. The general idea is to model the flow of gases and liquids (or fluids) as they interact with solid surfaces. more>>

Making delirious dictators worldwide quake in their boots, the Tails Project recently announced numerous improvements to its anonymity-obsessed Linux distro, The Amnesic Incognito Live System, aka Tails. more>>

If you've ever been outside on a summer night, then come indoors to find you've been attacked by bloodthirsty mosquitoes, you know that those little buggers must be able to see in the dark. In fact, mosquitoes use infrared light to hone in on our body's heat in order to find our juicy bits. more>>

Dropbox, or one of the alternatives like Ubuntu One or SparkleShare, are great tools for keeping computers in sync. They offer some unique abilities as well. Here are a few of our favorites:

Keep config folders, like Pidgin's .purple directory in your Dropbox, and symlink to it in your home directory. It saves entering the same information on your computers. more>>

I've been covering various scientific programs the past few months, but sometimes it's hard to find a package that does what you need. In those cases, you need to go ahead and write your own code. When you are involved with heavy-duty scientific computing, you usually need to go to parallel computing in order to get the runtimes down to something reasonable. more>>

For many years, JavaScript had a bad reputation among developers. Sure, we would use it when we needed to do something dynamic in the browser, but we also would avoid it as much as possible. As I (and others) have written numerous times in the past year, however, JavaScript is going through a multidimensional renaissance. more>>