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.