… And that is a weakness that, try as they might, the DoJ, the FBI, the MPAA, et al., can never come to grips with: their very existence is predicated on massive, centralized, bureaucratic incompetence. To give that up would be to begin their own dismemberment.

via They’re Coming for Your Internet | Liberty Unbound.

The desktop remains central to our everyday work and play, despite all the excitement around tablets, TV’s and phones. So it’s exciting for us to innovate in the desktop too, especially when we find ways to enhance the experience of both heavy “power” users and casual users at the same time. The desktop will be with us for a long time, and for those of us who spend hours every day using a wide diversity of applications, here is some very good news: 12.04 LTS will include the first step in a major new approach to application interfaces.

via Mark Shuttleworth » Blog Archive » Introducing the HUD. Say hello to the future of the menu..

A lot of Ubuntu’s stuff has been hit or miss lately, but at least they are not afraid to try new things. Also, it seems that this new HUD interface might be an attempt to show that Ubuntu is not abandoning the desktop/laptop platforms, after all the discussion about Unity being a step toward the tablet market.

But I can’t help but wonder why they would introduce this on 12.04. It’s supposed to be a Long Term Stable release. I think it might have been better to wait until 12.10.

Nevertheless, I am curious to try this out, and I suspect I’ll at least install Ubuntu in a Virtual Machine to see whether it is awesome.

I really like Linux Mint. I’ve been using it for a few months after so many years of Ubuntu. I like the Mint Menu and I like that you don’t have to fiddle with codecs after installing.

Microsoft contributes open-source code to Samba | ZDNet.