SlinkySausage writes "Linux is burdened with 'enterprise crap' that makes it run poorly on desktop PCs, says kernel developer Con Kolivas. Kolivas recently walked away from years of work on the kernel in despair. APCmag.com has a lengthy interview with Kolivas, who explains what he sees is wrong with Linux from a performance perspective and how Microsoft has succeeded in crushing innovation in personal computers."

CRE writes "An article at the OS News site details how Microsoft could best avoid Windows 7 becoming another Vista-esque release. The author advises Microsoft to basically split Windows in two. Windows 7 would be a new operating system based on the proven Windows NT kernel, but with a completely new user interface, with backwards compatibility provided by VMs. In addition, to please business customers and other people concerned with backwards compatibility, Microsoft should create 'Windows Legacy', basically the current Windows, which will receive only security and bug fixes. Relatedly, APCMag is reporting that Microsoft has moved Julie Larson-Green (the driving force behind Office 2007's Ribbon UI) over to work on Windows 7's interface."

hhavensteincw writes "Details of Microsoft's answer to Google's Analytics have leaked online. Screenshots have been posted on the Net of the new "Gatineau" Web analytics tool that Microsoft now says will be available in beta this summer. In a blog post, Microsoft's Ian Thomas also reveals that Microsoft will use Live ID (formerly Microsoft Passport) profiles to get its demographic data."

Jiilik Oiolosse writes to tell us Ars Technica is reporting that after years of existing seperately, KHTML and Webkit are finally coming back together. "In open source terms, this may be as big of a deal as the gcc and egcs merger of yonder days. KHTML and Webkit are definitely coming of age. The KDE developers, responsible for the original creation of KHTML, are dedicated to seeing this unforking happen and are taking a leading role in that effort."

jdelator writes to mention ComputerWorld is reporting that Microsoft's Windows Vista has increased their market share steadily every month while their main opponent, Mac OS X, has remained essentially flat. "According to Net Applications, in June Windows Vista accounted for 4.52% of all systems that browsed the Web, up from January's 0.18%. Vista has grown its usage share each month since its release to consumers Jan. 30, hitting 0.93% in February, 2.04% in March, 3.02% in April and 3.74% in May. Apple Inc.'s Mac OS X, meanwhile, accounted for 6.22% in January and hit its high point of 6.46% in May, but it slipped back to 6% in June. If Vista's uptake trend continues, it should pass Mac OS X in Web usage share by the end of August."

An anonymous reader writes "Last week Sony finally launched its super slim, super sexy TZ series of laptops in the US. If you've been waiting to get your hands on one of these, check out this first review of the top drawer TZ12VN, complete with solid state hard disk. It's a lot of money, but it sure looks sweet!"

larry bagina writes "GCC 4.2.1 was released 4 days ago. Although this minor update would otherwise be insignificant, it will be the final GPL v2 release; all future releases will be GPL v3. Some key contributors are grumbling over this change and have privately discussed a fork to stay as GPL v2. The last time GCC forked (EGCS), the FSF conceded defeat. How will the FSF/GNU handle the GPL 3 revolt?"

An anonymous reader writes "'E-mail is, like, soooo dead' is the headline at News.com, where a piece looks at youth attitudes towards communication mediums. A group of teenage internet business entrepreneurs confessed that they really only use email to 'talk to adults'. Primarily, these folks are using social networks to communicate. 'More and more, social networks are playing a bigger role on the cell phone. In the last six to nine months, teens in the United States have taken to text messaging in numbers that rival usage in Europe and Asia. According to market research firm JupiterResearch, 80 percent of teens with cell phones regularly use text messaging. Catherine Cook, the 17-year-old founder and president of MyYearbook.com, was the lone teen entrepreneur who said she still uses e-mail regularly to keep up with camp friends or business relationships. Still, that usage pales in comparison to her habit of text messaging. She said she sends a thousand text messages a month.'"

Paris The Pirate writes "This article at Whitedust displays some very interesting logs from Vista showing connections to the DoD Information Networking Center, United Nations Development program and the Halliburton Company; for no reason other than the machine was running Vista. From the article 'After running Vista for only a few days — with a complete love for the new platform the first sign of trouble erupted. I began noticing latency on my home network connection — so I booted my port sniffing software and networking tools to see what was happening. What I found was foundation shaking. The two images below show graphical depictions of what has and IS trying to connect to my computer even in an idle state'."

newsblaze writes "In the Media space, the internet has been threatening to be a highly disruptive technology for some time now. So far it has done quite a number on newspapers, who still don't understand the internet. There are a lot of people who like to have the paper in their hands, though, so newspapers are holding on. Television has no such ties to a physical medium. When Murdoch bought Myspace, I wondered how long it would be before he either found something to do with it — or gave up. Now it seems Murdoch has found a way to leverage his position, and put a massive squeeze on television. How far can he take this — and what will be the result?"

NewmanKU writes "Eric Bangeman at Ars Technica writes that the University of Kansas has adopted a new, and very strict, copyright infringement policy for the students on the residential network. The university's ResNet website states that, 'Violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is against the law. If you are caught downloading copyrighted material, you will lose your ResNet privileges forever. No second notices, no excuses, no refunds. One violation and your ResNet internet access is gone for as long as you reside on campus.' According to a KU spokesperson, KU has received 345 notices in the past year from organizations and businesses regarding complaints about copyrighted material downloading."

kashif.ahsan writes "A ComputerWorld article discusses the inherent privacy dangers of carrying around our ubiquitous technological assistants. They're like miniature stalkers, right there in your pocket. 'Camera phones contain all the necessary ingredients for completely invasive stalking: a microphone, camera, personal data on the user, location information, a chat and call history — you name it. And victims carry them everywhere they go. All that's missing is the software that lets stalkers take control ... new software, called snoopware, does just that.'"

Chris Lindquist writes "Think your storage headaches are big? When it goes live in 2008, CERN's ALICE experiment will use 500 optical fiber links to feed particle collision data to hundreds of PCs at a rate of 1GB/second, every second, for a month. 'During this one month, we need a huge disk buffer,' says Pierre Vande Vyvre, CERN's project leader for data acquisition. One might call that an understatement. CIO.com's story has more details about the project and the SAN tasked with catching the flood of data."

NaijaGuy writes "Facebook has purchased Parakey for an undisclosed sum. We have previously discussed how Facebook recently opened up development opportunities for third-party developers. With this acquisition some observers have noted that Facebook might be trying to become a Google alternative, by providing an application development platform based on Parakey's technology. Facebook's 'Web OS' has also been discussed, and the company has made headlines partly because of the fame of one of its founders. Blake Ross helped launch Firefox, and it was enthusiasm for helping less geeky users like his mom to thrive on the web that got him through the doors of Netscape at the age of 15. A recent interview charts how that same enthusiasm led him to start Parakey, 'a Web operating system that can do everything an OS can do.'"

Riding with Robots writes "NASA reports that a severe ongoing dust storm on the Red Planet has blocked 99 percent of the direct sunlight that powers the Opportunity rover. If these conditions persist for too long, it could finally bring an end to the marathon mission of this robot geologist, and perhaps of its partner Spirit as well. 'Before the dust storms began blocking sunlight last month, Opportunity's solar panels had been producing about 700 watt hours of electricity per day, enough to light a 100-watt bulb for seven hours. When dust in the air reduced the panels' daily output to less than 400 watt hours, the rover team suspended driving and most observations, including use of the robotic arm, cameras and spectrometers to study the site where Opportunity is located ... A possible outcome of this storm is that one or both rovers could be damaged permanently or even disabled. Engineers will assess the capability of each rover after the storm clears.'"