In an effort to better understand how people use the web, Mozilla has launched a new data gathering project for usability studies called Test Pilot. It's still just a concept, but as an aggregation model, it shows great promise.

There are a number of netbooks on the market, but I wanted to get my hands on one loaded with the Linux operating system, Ubuntu. With a number of cell phone companies switching to Linux, I think it's only a matter of time before more and more laptops, see the light. System 76 is a company that is dedicated to the Linux operating system.

Palm is taking a page from Apple's iPhone strategy book when it comes to keeping things quiet regarding its newly-announced Pre smartphone and webOS mobile platform. The two things Palm (NASDAQ: PALM) will say is that it is focused on completing software development and network certification requirements and expects devices to be available by June.

In a previous article, I went over some of the basic functions of ssh. In that article, I mentioned that simple remote shell access was not the most interesting thing you can do with ssh. I pointed out that remote command execution was more interesting than mundane remote shell access.

Use this Ubuntu Linux distro at your immortal soul's peril ;)

"Richard Matthew Stallman (RMS), the farther of the gnu project, will be speaking in Toronto Febuary 2nd @ 5pm, in the Bahan Center (Bahen Center, 40 St. George Street Room 1160). This event is open to everyone and you can find the original notice here..."

Since I'm currently mulling buying another computer in the spring, I'm sharing them now. I figure that many other people share my insatiable curiosity, and, like me, can find a benefit or two by seeing how someone else approaches the task of preparing a computer to run with their favorite free operating system.

Back in 2002, Jim Allchin was co-president of Microsoft's Platforms and Services Division and was, in his own words, "scared" of the momentum behind Linux, as noted in an email [PDF] sent to several of his direct reports. So what did Allchin do? As court documents in the Comes vs.