I don't know if I should laugh or cry...

Have a look at this:
A Word-Wise Firefox Extension @ internetnews.com

and repeat those questions with me:

• Did I think about having that translation possibility since 2 years?!
• Did I today stumble across a great how-to on doing it?!
• They get assloads of money for it?!?
• They have a patent on it?!?!?
• They have Vint Cerf and Ted Nelson on their bord of advisers?!?!?
• What do I do wrong?!?!?!?!

In an open world, is marketing really the only thing, that makes you get something to bite between your teeth?

Since three years it is possible in germany to make one's tax return online without having to print anything or even running to the post office. It's not a web interface, but a special program, called Elster Formular:

Elster Homepage

One of the main problems with this solution is, that there is no Linux version of this program - it is completely tailored for Windoze users. (More severe is, that it is no free solution, but well... let's start small.. ;) ).
Lately I experimented with Wine again, mainly because I needed to use Flash for a university project. Because I heard a lot about WineTools, I also installed them and was amazed. Install of core Windows components was no hassle (I now have IE running here for cross testing web-site designs.. yes, it sadly is a core component ;) ). Perhaps even a little more interesting was the choice to install some mysterious DCOM on which Elster Formular relies and therefore refused to install on Wine in my first try. Looking some further I even found Elster Formular in the list of supported programs!

Well, now today I again had to do my monthly tax return and went to try it out with Wine. Doh, WineTools installed last years version - ok, get the latest from the Elster webpage - install - no problem!! :)
Then doing the tax computation. I had some flickering, but I have that with IE, too. I guess, it's because of my graphics driver - my bro has no problems with flickering in IE. Apart from that everything went smooth as a baby's butt. Great! :)

Don't get me wrong - we need a native Linux solution and we need a free solution - but this is great news never the less! :)

Informationweek seems to support open, collaborative information exchange by telling executives all around the world, how great Wikis are:

Wikis At Work @ informationweek.com

What makes this article especially interesting is the fact, that TikiWiki is the only mentioned Open Source wiki there and our Marc LaPorte provided some catchy phrases to this article in an interview. My favourite:

"Once people start using the wiki, they become part of the system it creates..."

Links to the pages 2-4 of the article(for caching purposes):
Page 2 - Page 3 - Page 4

Only some days ago I had a post referring to Linus' criticism of the GPLv3 draft, so it's only fair to provide a link to the opposite side, when I stumble across it:

Richard Stallman on P2P @ linuxp2p.com

It's not exclusively on the GPLv3 or the issues Linus brought up, but it might be an enlighting read for some people...

Much cooler it is to know such handy tricks, that are adapted to our times.

Cooking an egg with cell-phones