I last booted Windows on my year-old laptop on October 8, according to my SETI@Home stats. I hadn't realized my conversion had been so complete, but over the course of the last few months, I found myself in Gates World less and less for fewer and fewer things.

"PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA has successfully tested the first deep space communications network modeled on the Internet.

"Radical militant librarians are out to destroy the music industry. Or at least, that’s what you might come to believe if you listen to the RIAA’s arguments. The recording industry and other corporate lobbies have convinced policymakers for decades that intellectual property protections are necessary to motivate the production of creative works.

A number of sites have noted this interesting study of a particular kind of con-trick, known as "The pigeon drop". What really caught my attention was the following:

Matthew Szulik, chairman of Red Hat, Inc., was today named the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year(R) 2008 overall national winner. He was also named the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year(R) 2008 national winner in the Technology category.

The question of whether business can co-exist with free and open source software (FOSS) was settled long ago. It can, and not only successful companies like Red Hat but also the willingness of venture capitalists to fund FOSS business models proves the case.

It all started at the beginning of last week. I wanted my 11th and 12th Grade ICT students to start using Ubuntu Linux on their laptops/netbooks at the beginning of the second quarter. I knew it would take me nearly two weeks to get them working Ubuntu Linux systems on their laptops or netbooks...

“They order, said I, this matter better in France.” So wrote Laurence Sterne in his 1768 book A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy. Alas, things have changed much since then, at least as far as the Internet is concerned. In the light of recent events, now he would we have to say: they order this matter worse in France.