The open source community operates from a different point of view as it relates to intellectual property ownership and in generally abhors the concept of patents. However, patent and intellectual property rights exist and the open source community has been forced to both defend itself from patent infringement suits and pursue those who misappropriate open source code.

If you do a lot of writing, a desktop dictionary tool can be a powerful asset. With it, you can highlight a word within any program and then click the dictionary icon in your menu bar, which will open a new Web browser window containing the definition of the word.