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Aaron Swartz, who was arrested in 2011 and charged with stealing millions of scientific journals from a computer archive at MIT, is dead at 26.

A co-founder of Reddit and activist who fought to make online content free to the public has been found dead, authorities confirmed Saturday, prompting an outpouring of grief from prominent voices on the intersection of free speech and the Web.

This is a simple guide written in “Learn X the hard way” style, author of which is Zed A. Shaw. The purpose of it is to give you some experience in working with Unix-like system. There are many good UNIX-Like systems out there, for example FreeBSD, OpenBSD, OpenSolaris and even MAC OS X, just to name a few. When deciding which system to use in this guide I chose Linux mainly because it is most popular UNIX-like server operating system, which means what you have much bigger chance encountering it in the wild in comparsion to other UNIX derivatives. And Linux-related skills are relatively easy transferable to other UNIX-likes.

Tech heavyweights Apple, Adobe, Google, HP, Microsoft and many others have joined forces and launched a new resource – the Web Platform in a bid to create a “definitive resource” for all open Web technologies. The companies have come together to provide developers with a single source of all the latest, quality and relevant information about HTML5, CSS3, WebGL, SVG and other Web standards. The platform will also offer tips and best practices on web development as well as web technologies. “We are an open community of developers building resources for a better web, regardless of brand, browser or platform”, notes the WebPlatform site.

Today Microsoft announced TypeScript a typed superset of Javascript. This means that existing Javascript code can be gradually modified to add typing information to improve the development experience: both by providing better errors at compile time and by providing code-completion during development. As a language fan, I like the effort, just like I pretty much like most new language efforts aimed at improving developer productivity: from C#, to Rust, to Go, to Dart and to CoffeeScript.

Stand by, because the jury in Apple v. Samsung just reached a verdict. They'll all convene in the courtroom and then it will be read.

Lots are live blogging, but here's The Verge http://live.theverge.com/apple-samsung-verdict-live/ , which historically has been the most complete with the details, if you want to follow blow by blow. And you don't have to update the page.

The most popular mobile operating system is Android. One of the most popular non-Windows operating systems is Canonical's Ubuntu. And, Google's is really pushing its Chrome OS-powered Chromebooks in the retail market. What does all this have in common? Each operating system is based on Linux and neither Google nor Canonical is mentioning that fact.

For reasons mentioned in yesterday’s blog item, I’m not at the Ubuntu Developers Summit in Oakland. Oh, I could go up there and attend — it’s only 80 miles from the cozy confines of the Felton redwoods — but I value my life and I’d like to keep it, thank you very much.

This is not to say that I don’t hear about what’s going on there from friends, as well as from members of the Ubuntu Apocalypse, who are in attendance and are blogging, tweeting and communicating in some form or another (no smoke signals yet, sadly). I do hear a lot of what’s going on, and I thank everyone for posting the updates.

Microsoft and Barnes & Noble have settled their patent dispute and are forming a new venture to focus on e-reading and the education market. On April 30, the pair announced the formation of NewCo, which will include Barnes & Noble’s digital and college businesses. NewCo will create a Nook e-reading application for Windows 8, as well. Barnes and Noble will own 82.4 percent of the new subsidiary, and Microsoft will make a $300 million investment in the still-to-be-named NewCo and hold a 17.6 stake in the company. (None of Microsoft’s employees will be moving to the new subsidiary, a spokesperson told me.)

I was getting set to download and test the latest Ubuntu release (right now in beta), and decided it might be wise to skim the release notes to see what’s new.

Under “new features,” I spied this: “Beta-1 includes the 3.2.0-17.27 Ubuntu kernel which is based on the v3.2.6 upstream stable kernel.” The Ubuntu kernel? Give me a break, guys.

Lest you wonder whether this was an intentional naming decision, it does seem to be that Canonical is deliberately avoiding using the L word. The release notes were imported by Canonical’s Kate Stewart (release manager) with the “Ubuntu kernel” language.

C and C++ are apparently NOT languages for Beginners to first learn programming. Although executable binaries created from C or C++ generally run faster than interpreted source code, executable binaries (i.e., the actual applications) require the EXTRA steps of compilation and linking from original C/C++ source code, not to mention any necessary required debugging and optimization steps. Both C and C++ programming languages are especially useful for creating applications. C is more of a Procedural than an OOP language such as C++, and many describe C as being the MOST suitable for the system and in-depth OS tasks that Linux distros rely upon using the GNU Compiler Collection’s ‘gcc’.

Finnix is a small, self-contained, bootable Linux CD distribution for system administrators, based on Debian testing. Today marks the release of Finnix 104, the twentieth release of Finnix. Since the first public release of Finnix 0.03 in March 2000, there have been twenty releases and 37 ISOs released to the public, totalling 4.5GB . (All releases have included x86 and PowerPC ISOs, with the exception of Finnix 0.03, 86.0, and 100.) Finnix 104 is a maintenance and rollup release, including updated upstream Debian software, Linux kernel 3.2, small functionality updates and a large number of bug fixes. (Finnix 104 is being released on Valentine's Day, and while Finnix releases are sometimes timed to specific dates, today is otherwise a coincidence. However, rest assured that Finnix does love you.)

Because despite all we think we know about a company that counts a membership equal to more than 10% of the earth's population, Facebook's filing was the first chance for outsiders to see the different ways FB profits from users. A careful read of the S-1 reveals Facebook's plans to make even more money from members using the free service to connect with old friends. Earlier today my co-host Matt Nesto and I discussed 3 ways Facebook plans to exploit you the user, in order to justify their plans to increase revenues, profit, and valuation. The list may disturb you.

Barnes & Noble, you may recall, is asserting that Microsoft, partnering with Nokia and MOSAID, is plotting "to use patents to drive open source software out of the market," saying it is threatening companies using Android with an anticompetitive choice: pay Microsoft exorbitant rates for patents -- trivial, invalid, or not infringed, according to Nokia -- or spend a fortune on litigation. It wants discovery to try to prove its claims.

Steve Jobs told his biographer that Apple would rather wage "thermonuclear war" with Google Inc. than make deals to share its technology with the maker of the Android operating system.

That was no empty threat. In the 18 months before Jobs died on Oct. 5, Apple sued HTC, Samsung Electronics and Motorola Mobility, the three largest Android users. It alleged that the phone makers stole Apple's technology and asked courts to make them stop.

Now, as rulings start coming in, it might be time for a detente that helps Apple maximize the value of its patents, said Kevin Rivette, a managing partner at 3LP Advisors LLC, a firm that advises on intellectual property.

CrunchBang Linux is a power-user oriented, minimalistic distribution focused on clear, simple elegance of the Openbox desktop, with a low memory footprint, a robust behavior, and a spartan set of programs. Not one to fawn over you, it's the other way around, although, based on the facts and figures, it should not be too difficult to setup.

Apple sued HTC, while Kodak sued Apple, Samsung and Sony. RIM filed suit against Kodak and Motorola. And what are called nonpracticing entities (or patent trolls, if you prefer) such as Intellectual Ventures and NTP have sued pretty much the lot of them.

It can seem - and some have argued - that the patent system itself is broken, forcing companies to spend more time and money on legal battles than research and development. But that view betrays an ignorance of history, according to Horacio Gutiérrez, the deputy general counsel in charge of Microsoft's intellectual property group.

The newly released IPCop 2.0 Linux firewall distribution updates the kernel to version 2.6.32, adds hardware support for Cobalt, Sparc and PPC systems and includes a new installer that assists users with such tasks as setting up a network. The developers have also revised the user interface: for example, the system menu has a new scheduler for time-based actions, the web proxy menu includes more advanced settings, and the DHCP server menu has been simplified.

At the Black Hat and Defcon security conferences in Las Vegas next week, Mike Tassey and Richard Perkins plan to show the crowd of hackers a year’s worth of progress on their Wireless Aerial Surveillace Platform, or WASP, the second year Tassey and Perkins have displayed the 14-pound, six-foot long, six-foot wingspan unmanned aerial vehicle. The WASP, built from a retired Army target drone converted from a gasoline engine to electric batteries, is equipped with an HD camera, a cigarette-pack sized on-board Linux computer packed with network-hacking tools including the BackTrack testing toolset and a custom-built 340 million word dictionary for brute-force guessing of passwords, and eleven antennae.

Microsoft Corp. struck a deal with San Francisco officials to provide an online email system for the city's workforce, beating out competing products from Google Inc. and IBM Corp. Company and the city representatives said the new tool, Microsoft Exchange Online, will reduce costs, increase efficiency and improve stability. Most of San Francisco's roughly 23,000 workers are currently using desktop versions of Microsoft Exchange and IBM's Lotus Notes, with seven different installations running in various departments. The city will pay the Redmond, Wash. software company a little more than $1 million per year for the new product. There will be some up front migration costs, but the city expects to save money in the second year of the deal.

Microsoft Corp. is close to a deal to buy Internet phone company Skype Technologies SA for between $7 billion and $8 billion—the most aggressive move yet by Microsoft to play in the increasingly-converged worlds of communication, information and entertainment.