2007 is finally over, the ball has dropped, and we've been ushered into 2008. From all of us here at Linux Journal, we wish you the best in everything you do in the year to come. The Linux Journal News Team

The Netscape web browser, which revolutionized internet browsing in the mid-90's, has finally succumbed in its long march towards an inevitable demise.

A little over a month ago, Apple roused the torch-and-pitchfork crowd when it was discovered that Apple products were reporting back to the software giant on user's activities. Now Adobe has joined the spyring, with reports surfacing Wednesday that Adobe products are secretly sending user data to a third party.

The SCO Group, the infamous — and now bankrupt — source of anti-Linux litigation against IBM and Novell lost their slot on the NASDAQ last week after a three month fight to prevent the delisting.

A little more than two weeks ago, we brought you the news that Microsoft's FolderShare — an application intended to sync files on multiple systems — was deleting user's files instead of syncing them. Now, Big Evil is again in the news, with the announcement that using Windows Home Server is corrupting user's files.

Let's face it: If the internet is a series of tubes, well, sometimes the tubes get clogged. When that happens, sites go down, and edgy users get out their torches and pitchforks.

Most anyone who pays attention to Web 2.0 news knows about the privacy face-plant caused by Facebook's Beacon service. However, it looks like the guys at Google may have missed it, given the brouhaha brewing over Google's decision to open the doors to user's Google Reader feeds.

The KDE-branch of the Ubuntu family is all atwitter this week, with the announcement that Kubuntu 8.04 — better known as Hardy Heron — won't be designated as a "Long Term Support" or "LTS" release by the powers-that-be at Canonical.

If you're one of the millions of Americans who have an OnStar equipped vehicle purchased prior to 2002 — or in some cases, as late as 2005 — then come next week, you'll be pushing that little button in vain.

The Open Source community took a step forward in compatibility last week — and perhaps, towards the eventual downfall of Big Evil — with the announcement that the newly-founded Protocol Freedom Information Foundation has hammered out an agreement to gain access to Microsoft's protocol documentation.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation — in a move that smells more of the Ministry of Love — has announced a $1,000,000,000 plan to build the largest biometric database in the world, and to do it in the next ten years.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation — the web's version of the American Civil Liberties Union — hit the ball out of the park last week in New Jersey, winning a home run victory in the fight to recognize bloggers as legitimate journalists with — gasp — constitutional rights.

A special note to say Happy Holidays to all our readers from the News Team here at LinuxJournal.com. Thank you for being with us this year, and best wishes to each of you from all of us. The LinuxJournal.com News Team

In a decision highly anticipated by Silicon Valley, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission ruled Thursday that Google's proposed buyout of web-advertising firm DoubleClick can move forward.

The news these days is all about Firefox — including the recently-released Beta 2 of Firefox 3 a.k.a Gran Paridiso — but Mozilla is already on the move prepping for it's next greatest innovation, and they need some help.

Red Hat, Inc. — the company behind the popular Red Hat family of Linux distributions — announced today that President and CEO Matthew Szulik will step down from those roles effective January 1st, 2008.

Italy's Ministry of Economics and Finance has been bitten by the open-source bug, and has decided to take the Linux plunge in a big way.

The blogsphere is perpetually atwitter with rumors of buyouts, and today was no different, with reports on several top tech-gossip sites that Digg is looking to sell to everyone from Microsoft to Barry Diller.

The SCO Group — the cast of comedians responsible for the anti-Linux lawsuits against IBM and Novell — has been slowly sinking since 2002, when they filed the first of the infamous lawsuits. The descent sped up when they filed for bankruptcy in September, and now it appears the rats are finally deserting the bilges.

Faced with a full blown filibuster after resorting to procedural trickery to force through a pro-immunity amendment to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was forced to withdraw the controversial measure and allow the Senate to consider both versions after the Christmas holiday.