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Waiting for a PC to boot up can be quite boring. Who wants to sit there and watch the Microsoft Windows hourglass graphic for a seemingly interminable amount of time? This problem has plagued the PC industry for years. But a solution could be at hand, at least for entertainment PCs -- those PCs buil...

If you were to make up your own list of the top 10 issues likely to affect computing over the next five to 10 years, would you include liability reform in the American legal system? I think you should, even if you live, as I do, in Canada or some other country where American law doesn't apply direct...

The publication in the Harvard Business Review of an article by Nicholas Carr titled "IT Doesn't Matter" raised much controversy. Carr's fundamental argument is that every widely used business technology conferred significant strategic advantage on early adopters but lost that potency as it m...

Novell has announced it will indemnify users of its newly acquired SuSE Linux software systems. Following the lead of Hewlett-Packard, which was praised for its savvy in being the first Linux vendor to indemnify customers in the face of SCO's source-code claims last September, Novell said enterprise...

I've been thinking a lot lately about the future of computing -- and that, of course, has to include Microsoft's future. Microsoft's own vision of its future seems clear. The company sees a transition to a secure Windows OS environment, continuing strength in Office and server applications, and deve...

The word "pusillanimous" is normally used to label actions judged to reflect a lack of moral courage on the part of the person taking the action. Thus people who can be rather easily pressured to undertake actions contrary to their own beliefs are often said to be pusillanimous, cowardly or weak-spi...

Linux is poised to claim a major victory: the bourgeoning market for robot software. The battle is not over yet, but if developments in Japan are any indication of what the future will bring, Linux will rule the world of robots. The stakes are high. Carmaker Honda believes that robots will become th...

I've been trying to imagine what the computing universe will look like in late 2008. The exercise not only highlighted the degree to which Linux has become the focal point for anti-Microsoft feeling, but also underscored the risk that the Linux community now faces from commercialization. My belief i...

Australia. Down under. Oz. For most of us, those words conjure up images of kangaroos and coral reefs, of red deserts and a landmark opera house. But behind those icons lies another reality -- that of a sophisticated, technologically advanced society; an economy that has outperformed the rest of the...

While watching CNN last week, I suffered one of those brain spasms that leave you holding an idea you can neither rationally assess nor forget about. I still can't assess the idea -- and I'm about to ask you for help on that -- but my attempts to do something with it did give me a deeper insight int...

Mohandas Gandhi, a master of the tactics of civil disobedience against civilized foes, once had this to say about the stages of a successful campaign for an idea whose time has come: "First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win." Advocates of open-source software...

Claims and counterclaims now have turned into dueling subpoenas, as IBM and SCO continue to spar over allegations that a Linux kernel promoted by Big Blue was copied from SCO's Unix System V source code. Earlier this month, IBM issued subpoenas for SCO investors and analysts, including Bay Star Capi...

What is the world's most widely used operating system? It's not Windows, Unix or Linux, but ITRON, a Japanese real-time kernel for small-scale embedded systems. ITRON runs on mobile phones, digital cameras, CD players and countless other electronic devices. The T-Engine Forum, a project that counts ...

A looming October 14th deadline could result in a widening of SCO Group's legal assault on Linux and distributors of the open-source operating system as the Lindon, Utah-based company mulls plans to pull another Unix license, this time from SGI. SCO laid the groundwork for the move -- which would ex...

Asia's PDA markets have long been dominated by local players that have developed their own proprietary operating systems, with support for local languages serving as one of their strongest selling points. But Palm and Microsoft have targeted the Asian PDA market, and regional players are increasingl...