Operating Systems

Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu Linux, wants to know if proprietary programs should be included in their distributions and, if so, which ones.

Worried about the security hole in Internet Explorer that was used to launch attacks by China against Google and others? There are ways to help close it and limit your exposure to similar threats --- and it won't take more than a few minutes. Here's how to do it.

According to Google, it's Ext4, and that's why they're moving their servers to it.

Apple has worked for years to build a company image as freedom-loving and iconoclastic. But the truth is far darker: Apple is cooperating with the Chinese government to ban iPhone applications in China related to the Dalai Lama and Uighur activist Rebiya Kandeer, even though it once highlighted the Dalai Lama in its "Think Different" campaign. One word describes Apple's behavior: hypocritical.

Even in bad times, IT shops want Linux experts.

Microsoft has yet to say whether it will follow Google in standing up to Chinese censorship, but a former top Microsoft executive played a key role in Google's Chinese business --- and his unexpectedly quitting Google last year may have signaled the impending cyberwar between Google and the Chinese government.

Once upon a time you needed to know shell commands and how to edit configuration files to use Linux. Today, all you need to know is how to handle a mouse.

Kudos to Google for finally standing up to the Chinese government, refusing to cooperate with Chinese censorship, and possibly pulling out of China altogether if it can't operate without censorship. Now it's time for Microsoft's Bing to follow suit.

Microsoft won't ever catch Google in general Internet search, but today it launched a new Bing health search that could pay big dividends in the long run. It's a winner, and far superior to anything of Google's. It may give Microsoft a leg up in the coming war over who gives you control over your medical records.

In all the hurly-burly of CES, a second SUSE/Moblin Linux netbook was quietly released. This one comes from Samsung.

Another week; another set of Apple tablet 'PC' rumors. As speculation seemingly reaches fever-pitch, new nuggets of information continue to get dug out of the frozen ground. In IT Blogwatch, bloggers ponder Apple's acquisition of FingerWorks, ARM's Cortex A9, and an apparent lapsus-de-langue by a Frenchman. Not to mention The Unbroken Thread...
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The news that Microsoft for the first time is allowing people to rent Windows and Office sounds at first blush as if it's a big change in Microsoft's business model. But that's not at all the case: Microsoft is merely allowing some businesses to do what they've already been doing illegally for years. Most people will still have to pay full freight.

Microsoft has quietly made it possible to "rent" both Windows and Office.

Google is sitting on top of the world right now, but a prominent analyst warns that the company's business is based largely on a single service -- Internet search -- and so Google may become a "one-trick pony." Because of that, he says, Google may eventually become irrelevant.

Yes, but not in the way you might they will.