The summary links to four different commentaries but not Asimov's original article. I'd rather get it from the source.

And like the Sirens beware what looks enticing from afar - the specs are great however the biggest problem with the Samsung Exynos processors appear to be that the largest consumer for Samsung ARM SoCs is Samsung and as such their external support, particularly for opensource projects is dire.

I don't have time to provide links but go and have a trawl through the Cyanogenmod and XDA developer forums in particular the comments from the developer Codeworkx.

http://www.google.com/search?q=codeworkx+cyanogenmod+Exynos

Support for Exynos based devices is far behind that of Qualcomm and TI OMAP that are reputed to be much more friendly to (opensource) developers.

Yes, but Download.com still assures users that they will never bundle that "extra stuff". Their Adware & Spyware Notice says:

Also, they make it look like a download link for the real installer (which it used to be), and then the user gets this CNET crap. But they still used our name liberally in the trojan installer as if we were somehow responsible for or involved in this abomination. I've got screen shots on my Download.com fiasco page.

Also, this "apology" rings hollow because they aren't fixing the problem along with it. In particular:

1) He claims that bundling malware with Nmap was a “mistake on our part” and “we reviewed all open source files in our catalog to ensure none are being bundled.” Either that is a lie, or they are totally incompetent, because tons of open source software is still being bundled. You can read the comments below his post for many examples.

2) Even if they had removed the malware bundling from open source software, what about all of the other free (but not open source) Windows software out there? They shouldn't infect any 3rd party software with sketchy toolbars, search engine redirectors, etc.

3) At the same time that Sean sent the “apology” to users, he sent this very different note to developers. He says they are working on a new expanded version of the rogue installer and “initial feedback from developers on our new model has been very positive and we are excited to bring this to the broader community as soon as possible”. He tries to mollify developers by promising to give them a cut (“revenue share”) of the proceeds from infecting their users.

4) You no longer need to register and log in to get the small (non-trojan) “direct download” link, but the giant green download button still exposes users to malware.

5) The Download.Com Adware & Spyware Notice still says “every time you download software from Download.com, you can trust that we've tested it and found it to be adware-free.” How can they say that while they are still adding their own adware? At least they removed the statement from their trojan installer that it is “SAFE, TRUSTED, AND SPYWARE FREE”.

It might be "only one-fifth that of the US" right now but I would imagine that is going to grow pretty quickly as China develops.

Investment for the future and all that...

The London Stock Exchange (LSE) have not yet moved on to the new Linux based Millenium trading platform - this is scheduled to happen on Feb 14th. It was supposed to have happened late last year but was delayed.

A subsiduary of the LSE, the Turquoise Multilateral trading Facility (MTF) has already migrated to the MIT platform though.

"the keyboard will soon be an irrelevance except for a few neandertal techno-luddites"

Then as a SysAdmin then spends 80-90% of his day in a command line interface (CLI) you can count me in the "neandertal techno-luddites" group that does not see the requirement keyboards disappearing anytime soon.

I can picture a SysAdmin dancing about like a frantic Raver on speed if front of a Kinect interface...its not pretty and not for me thanks.

I had high hopes for the Toshiba AC-100 but the reviews all say the same thing great hardware (with some odd keyboard decisions) badly let down by the Android implementation and self rolled App Store.

I don't understand why the OEMs seem so averse to taking a nice ARM netbook and partnering with one of the large and popular Linux distributions rather than rolling their own poor to unterley crap install or partner with some no name distribution, both of which fail to deliver a decent consumer experience or community.

ARM have been promising "ARM based laptops/netbooks will be out soon" for the last three years, so far their licensees and the OEMs have failed to deliver.

I'd say the market is there, I wonder now though if they'll just continue to chase Apple believing locked down tablets to be the market to chase rather than getting back to those of us who are waiting for a decent ARM netbook/laptop.

I really hope so, but I'm loosing faith that the popular Linux distributions will actually break out from their server (and to a small extent desktops) stronghold.

It's the OEM device manufacturers, if you look at the netbook/laptots debabcle, outside the rather significant Wintel strangulation, each OEM decided to roll their own or partner with some no name distribution for their initial Linux offerings which IMHO resulted in a rather poor consumer experience.

This gave Wintel their opportunity to get in a take control. You can see it happening again with Android, the frequently talked about fracturing of the platform will be matched by the plethroa of App Stores which are going to spring up.

Reviews of the Toshiba AC-100 all say the same thing great hardware (with some odd keyboard decisions) badly let down by the Android implementation and slef rolled App Store.

Unless an ARM OEM device and Android (or a popular big Linux distribtion) presents a decent consumer experience this will just be another "Year of the Linux..." meme in the making.

"and were branded as terrorists by the UK for doing so"

The legislation used to freeze the Icelandic banks assets were taken from "Part 2 (Freezing Orders) of the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001".

Notice how the dramatic word "terrorism" is only one third of the title. If it had just been the "Crime and Security Act" none of the press would have made such a big deal out of it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icesave_dispute
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-terrorism,_Crime_and_Security_Act_2001#Part_2_.28Freezing_orders.29

But hey, the propogation of nonsense is more fun.

We just today released Nmap 5.30BETA1, which contains the version detection signature described in this post for detecting the Energizer trojan. It also includes a detection and exploitation script for a major Mac OS X vulnerability which Nmap developer Patrik Karlsson found last month and Apple finally patched this morning. There are about 100 other changes as well, including 37 new NSE scripts. You can download it free here.

Pardon the Nmap promotion, but it seemed on-topic for the story.