Popular open source news

Judging from the back-slapping and high fives over at the FCC you’d think that America’s Internet was sailing smoothly into the future. Think again.

A deep and detailed survey by Focus.com concludes that the best job in the United States is a tech job: systems engineer. No. 2: physician assistant. No. 3: college professor.

The biggest story this past week on Ars was ad-blocking. You may not have realized it, but blocking ads truly hurts the websites you visit.

Apple’s suit against HTC could end one of two ways.
Either Apple becomes the next SCO, which ran itself aground claiming rights to Linux, or it becomes the next Microsoft, which is prospering while claiming to own Linux.
The answer depends on how hard Apple presses its case.
You can get a clue by looking at who Apple has sued.

The Download Sort add-on for Firefox can automatically save your downloads to various folders based on rules you define. This freebie might take a bit of work to set up, but once you've got it rolling your downloads will sort themselves right into place.

The success of open-source software raises a tantalizing question: Could the same design philosophy work for tech gadgets?

Genieo (free) automatically pulls in stories and feeds from sites you visit to create a custom home page. While largely effortless, you'll likely find it less customizable than similar online offerings.