Bugs are a fact of life in the technology world, and the Open Source community is no exception. What is exceptional, however, is the open way these vulnerabilities are handled, as the developers behind Mozilla's Firefox browser have aptly demonstrated.

One of the most unforgettable quotes on Earth — witnessed live by some six hundred million people — wasn't uttered here. "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind," the famous words of astronaut Neil Armstrong upon becoming the first person to set foot on another world, have a lasting legacy not likely to be met until human exploration eventually reaches our planetary neighbors.

"All Things have an End," said Jonathan Swift, "and a Pudden has two." Such is the case for Ubuntu as well, and later this month the first of the ends will come due for its longstanding legacy, the Dapper Drake.

Google will eventually take over the world. Oh, sure, we delude ourselves into believing otherwise, but deep down inside we know that one day, gLife will come out of beta.

HTML 5 — the next generation of the language that defines the World Wide Web — has made great strides in the way browsers handle media. Rather than utilizing proprietary technologies like Flash or Silverlight, HTML 5 will implement audio and video tags that provide multimedia content outside the existing frameworks. For all its progress, however, it's now known that what the specification won't have is a standard video codec.

It goes without saying that nobody wants to be in the hospital. Bland food, no privacy, and gowns that leave nothing to the imagination — not to mention the procedures being performed — don't exactly make ones visit a relaxing trip to the spa. We all know, however, that Linux can make anything better, and now, whether you're recovering from a lung transplant or liposuction, Linux is there to make your life in the infirmary just a little bit sunnier.

The Triple Crown of Linux conferences — if there is one — is surely the Linux Symposium, the Linux Kongress, and linux.conf.au. It was just a month ago that we passed on the message to LinuxJournal.com readers that the time to get their name on the Kongress program was nigh, and now it is time to do the same for the southernmost jewel in the crown.

Google's Linux-based mobile operating system — Android — has become a popular choice for phonemakers worldwide. Now, if Firefox developers are getting what they think they are, we may finally see the combination of Google's power OS with Mozilla's groundbreaking browser

The Drupal content management system is one of the most popular engines for dynamic websites — indeed, it powers the site you're visiting right now. All this powering doesn't happen by itself, though, and the developer community that does the dirty work behind the scenes is in need of a bit of Linux labor.

It's doubtful that very many users enjoy reboots. Although system uptime is often worn like a badge of honor — as though power-cycling were some form of humiliating defeat — the majority of us can probably agree that having to restart is a pain, if only for the lost time involved. It almost seems as though the annoyance grows exponentially the more frequent they come.

It was right about a year and a half ago that we first learned of Google's plans to enter the mobile phone market. While everyone expected it would be a full-fledged handset — the Googlephone — we quickly learned it would instead be a mobile operating system, the now well known Android. Just under a year ago, the first of the Googlephones, T-Mobile's Android-powered G1, was rolled out — literally — by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, on rollerblades, no less. Now it's time for T-Mobile to add more to the fold: the recently announced myTouch.

The OpenSource World conference — previously known as LinuxWorld — is fast approaching — it convenes in San Francisco from August 12 - 13, showcasing everything Open Source and more. Conference organizers this week drew back the curtain on one of the conference's main attractions, its keynote speakers, and the lineup promises to be an interesting listen.

If you're not sick of the SCO litigation by now, you've obviously not been following it very closely. As we've reported before, the SCO v. Novell lawsuit has concluded, and now sits before the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. SCO's business is in bankruptcy, and as of our last report, awaits a decision on the U.S. Trustee's motion to convert from a Chapter 11 reorganization to a Chapter 7 liquidation. But as anyone who's been paying attention knows, nothing involving SCO ever goes as planned — we warn you, this is a long one, you may want to pack a lunch.

In March, the ever-innovating Linux Foundation announced a new program aimed at bringing the brains behind Linux together with developers-to-be in order to supply the increasing need for Linux talent. Now the program is going online, with the first two courses set to call roll by mid-month.

Last fall, the openSUSE Project achieved an important milestone: the first-ever openSUSE Board election. Two new members joined the two victorious incumbents and the Novell-appointed chairman to form the project's first elected board. Now the composition is changing once again, as one of the board's original members takes a step back.

There are never adequate words to describe tragedies, especially those that involve loss of life. Today we find ourselves struggling for words to report the apparent suicide of LXLabs founder K. T. Lingesh on Monday.

LinuxCon, the Linux Foundation's brand new conference intended to draw "the best and brightest...including core developers, administrators, end users, community managers and industry experts," is still several months away. What isn't several months away, however, is the deadline for Early Bird registration — if you want to catch that worm, you'll have to get to running.

Anyone who doesn't know the economy is unwell has obviously been off the planet or in a cave for the last nine months. Despite the government's attempt to stop the bleeding, one company after another has collapsed — the latest to join the list is General Motors, a fixture in American automotive culture. GM's situation, which included filing for bankruptcy this week, comes with an additional blow to the company, if not fiscally then to its corporate pride: the company's bankruptcy filing has disqualified it from inclusion in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, an honor it has held for eighty-three years, a record second only to General Electric's 102 years.

Android — the mobile phone platform, not the AI-bearing robots — is the buzzword of the moment for netbook developers. Though the majority of the ultra-light devices are said to be utilizing a massively scaled down version of Windows XP — despite favoring Linux initially — the über-portable boxen are poised to be Googlified.

It's been the better part of a year since the Large Hadron Collider — the massive particle accelerator operated by the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN) — was in the headlines, and even then it wasn't good news. The LHC has suffered from everything from poor craftsmanship to hackers to death threats from a paranoid populace — but it looks like the Device of Doom or Discovery will be back online and launching us into the future, or oblivion, by the time Santa makes his annual appearance.