Cody Taylor

willclem writes “According to Reuters, it seems that Cuba has launched it’s own variation of Linux in order to fulfill its government’s desire to replace Microsoft operating systems. “Getting greater control over the informatic process is an important issue,” said Communications Minister Ramiro Valdes, who heads a commission pushing Cuba’s migration to free software.”

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GovTechGuy writes “The federal government is on the verge of reaching an agreement with YouTube that would allow agencies to make official use of the popular video-sharing service. A coalition of federal agencies led by the General Service Administration’s Office of Citizen Services has been negotiating with Google, YouTube’s parent company, since summer 2008 on new terms that would allow agencies to establish their own channels on the site. Agencies have not been [allowed] to post videos to YouTube (although many already have) because under the current terms of service, people who post content are subject to their state’s libel laws. Federal agencies must adhere to federal law. On Tuesday, government officials said the negotiations were “very close” to being completed.”

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kokito writes “OSNews managing editor Thom Holwerda reviews Haiku, the open source successor of the Be operating system. According to the review, Haiku faithfully/successfully replicates the BeOS user experience and ‘personality,’ boasting very short boot times, the same recognizable but modernized GUI using antialiasing for fonts and all vector graphics as well as vector icons, a file system with support for metadata-based queries (OpenBFS) and support for the BeAPI, considered by some the cleanest programming API ever. The project has also recently released a native GCC 4.3.3 tool chain, clearing the way for bringing up-to-date ports of multi-platform apps such as Firefox and VLC, and making it easier to work on Haiku ports in general.” (More below.)

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eldavojohn writes “Ars Technica has a story on a Texas judge who has ordered Topix.com to hand over the identifying details of 178 trolls that allegedly made ‘perverted, sick, vile, inhumane accusations’ about Mark & Rhonda Lesher. Mark Lesher was accused of sexually assaulting an unidentified former client (and subsequently found not guilty) which prompted the not so understanding discussions on Topix. Topix has until March 6 to give up the information. Let’s hope the Leshers don’t visit Slashdot!”

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