Asus will bring the Eee Box desktop to the UK in August, the company announced today. However, it confirmed to Register Hardware that machine will initially only ship with Windows XP Home Edition.

Windows Vista will accept incorrect passwords, at least on system s set up to use multiple keyboard layouts. It's probably "a convenience to the user", but it seems odd that they would add such a convenience, and then continually bombard the user with inconvenient "are you sure YOU clicked that .exe file?" dialogs.

Reactions from prominent open source figures suggest that Microsoft's new participation is unwelcome

It has just been made easier to keep an eye on whether ODF gets subverted or not

Further moves towards restricting digital freedom and banning (Goodness forbid!) of FOSS

A roundup of software patent news that Free software watchers need to know about

Many of us have been saying for a long time that Microsoft's Windows product would be better if the company open sourced it. But today marks the first day that the Wall Street Journal has chimed in to second the motion:

Slashdot's front page contains slightly aggressive and grossly inaccurate GPL and open source FUD. An observation and rebuttal to it you can find here. (thanks for the headsup, Tracy).