Yesterday the OpenBSD Foundation announced its inception as a legal entity in charge of donations of money and equipment for the OpenBSD operating system and its associated projects. Today we have an interview with Ken Westerback, one of the foundation's founding members.

Over the years I've dealt with a number of people in the public relations field. Some work directly for a particular company, others work for PR or marketing firms that a company outsources its PR work to. Some of the people in the tech PR world are very good at what they do and understand their role in the the process. There are a few rogue PR people out there, however, that make it their mission to stymie article and news story efforts, redirect information requests to the circular file, and in some cases, even try to take revenge on journalists for writing things that interfere with PR's message. Here's a quick story about some of the more ridiculous PR moments in my career as a journalist.

In the majority of the software world, companies and open source projects alike compete with one another in terms of quality, cost, documentation, ease of use, and necessary program features. A small, unethical portion of the market sees things a different way; companies in this minority category want to find a way to force people to buy their products. Today I present you with two examples of such underhanded business tactics: Microsoft and SafeMedia Corp, both of which are petitioning governmental entities to legislate them into hyper-profitability at everyone else's expense.

Last week the Talent First Network announced the launch of a new monthly publication geared toward greater understanding and dialogue between businesses and open source software projects. The free monthly's title is Open Source Business Resource, and it's geared toward the local business, open source, and academic communities in Ontario, Canada, though if it does well, there are plans to expand it beyond the region.

A long time ago, when I first started doing motherboard reviews, I vowed to disclose if I was using pre-release engineering sample hardware in my reviews so that readers would know that the results and findings could be different from the finished product. I also said that I would try not to use engineering samples whenever possible, because there is a dangerous potential for the manufacturer to enhance and buff up a sample that a reviewer will work with. I don't do as many hardware reviews anymore, and I rarely get any engineering samples, so it's not as much of an issue. More of a problem these days is the publication of pre-release copies of software, which flood the Web with useless drivel to the point that when a real release review comes out, its importance and impact is diluted.

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are not difficult to learn how to create and implement, but going beyond the basics take a lot of thought, creativity, and knowledge. The thought and creativity part are up to you, but the knowledge portion has to come from a competent source that can show you some real technical wizardry. O'Reilly's CSS Cookbook, 2nd Edition is the perfect book for anyone interested in advancing from a beginner's CSS level to an expert's.

A recent scientific study at the University of California has discovered the process by which a hard drive magnetically fails. The solution is, somewhat obviously, to use better magnetic materials in drive platters. While this discovery could lead to better quality hard drives in the future, it won't solve other drive failure types. Maybe we won't even have to worry about this for very much longer if light replaces magnetism as a data storage and retrieval mechanism.