Somewhere in 2001, I bought a computer magazine which came with a Linux CD. I had heard of Linux before, but while we did have broadband back then and was technically capable of downloading a Linux distribution, this method was far easier. This was my first foray into Linux - it was Mandrake. Now, though, it seems the curtain has really dropped for the French Linux company.

"Canonical is indeed bringing a TV to CES. But it's not about hardware just yet: Ubuntu TV is a brand new derivitave of Ubuntu, with a full-in TV-optimized UI inspired by Unity, and full-on media center and DVR features. There's a movie, TV and music store, a YouTube app, and of course it's all optimized for a lean-back remote experience. The software will be free for manufacturers to package with their TVs, and Ubuntu says there will be TVs on shelves by the end of the year."

Linux 3.2 has been released . The changes include support for Ext4 block sizes bigger than 4KB and up to 1MB, btrfs has been updated with faster scrubbing, automatic backup of critical filesystem metadata, detailed corruption messages and tools for manual inspection of the metadata; the process scheduler has added support to set upper limits of CPU time usage to groups of processes; the desktop reponsiveness in presence of heavy writes has been improved; TCP has been updated to include an algorithm which speeds up slightly the recovery of connection after lost packets; and more. New drivers and small improvements and fixes are also available in this release. Here's the full changelog.

Well, well, well, what have we here? Hackers have gained access to internal documents from the Indian Military (shared on the web), and in it, it is revealed that RIM, Nokia, and Apple have added backdoors to their mobile software (BlackBerry, S40 (supposedly), and iOS) which the Indian Military's intelligence service then used to spy on the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (the USCC). The backdoors were added by RIM, Nokia, and Apple in exchange for Indian market presence.

And so the smartphonification of the general purpose computer continues. This time around, though, it might actually be for the better. Microsoft has detailed two new features in Windows 8: refreshing and resetting your computer. Reinstalls will be a thing of the past.

"Though a deeply divided Congress is currently considering Internet website censorship legislation, the US has no such official policy - not even for child porn, which is voluntarily blocked by some ISPs. Nor does the US have a government-backed 'three strikes' or 'graduated response' system of escalating warnings to particular users accused of downloading music and movies from file-sharing networks. Yet here was the ultimatum that the US Embassy in Madrid gave the Spanish government in February 2008: adopt such measures or we will punish you. Thanks to WikiLeaks, we have the text of the diplomatic cable announcing the pressure tactics." Isn't it funny that one of the main driving forces behind the push for more stringent copyright laws, Disney, has built its empire almost entirely on appropriating European public domain stories? As a European, that's just insulting.

Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister sees a glaring omission among the proposed plans for the new Application Developers Alliance for mobile app developers: any clear focus on easing cross-platform mobile development. 'Currently, the leading mobile operating systems are all vertically integrated "walled gardens," and developing versions of the same app for multiple platforms is both challenging and costly,' McAllister writes. 'That's where an organization like the Application Developers Alliance could help. By organizing app developers from all across the mobile OS market, it could act as a unified voice to put pressure on Apple, Google, and others to lower barriers to entry for their platforms. ... But as long as it's being underwritten by leading proponents of the status quo, it seems unlikely that the Application Developers Alliance would rock the boat by taking a stand against walled-garden-style mobile platforms.'

This rumour is not new, nor is it particularly earth-shattering. However, with Windows Phone 7 failing to make a dent in the market place, and Nokia's Lumia 800 not making huge waves either, the rumour's been taken out of the shed again: Microsoft is supposedly acquiring Nokia's smartphone division later this year. Stephen Elop will resign from Nokia shortly afterwards.

According to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Web site, Google acquired 188 patents and another 29 patents pending from IBM in a deal recorded December 30.The newest batch of patents from IBM have only a handful of mobile telephony applications. Instead, they are rich in database intellectual property.

Microsoft is preparing to launch a new persistent virtual machine feature on its Azure cloud platform, enabling customers to host Linux, SharePoint and SQL Server there . . . To date, Microsoft has been balking at customer requests to add persistent VMs to Azure, hoping to get customers to develop Azure apps from scratch instead. But the lack of the ability to host apps like SharePoint and other third-party business applications with persistence was a deal breaker for a number of business users who were unwilling to consider Azure until Microsoft added this support, one of my contacts said.

So, this one slipped by completely undetected late last year (no, I don't grow tired of saying that). CNet reported that Google, Amazon, Facebook, and similarly large, anti-SOPA companies are mulling over the option of taking their websites off the air to replace them with an anti-SOPA message, asking users to contact their elected officials.

"Under intense pressure from a group of shareholders, Research in Motion is preparing to unveil a corporate shakeup at the beleaguered BlackBerry maker that could see co-founders Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie relinquish their titles as co-chairmen of the board, according to sources. Barbara Stymiest, an independent director who joined RIM's board in 2007, is believed to be the leading candidate to replace Messrs. Balsillie and Lazaridis as chair, sources familiar with events said."

"Of all the ways you might have imagined Microsoft screwing up, 'making something fantastic' is probably last on the list. As every business student will tell you, the first and most important step to success is making a quality product. Yet, Microsoft seem to have found themselves in the very strange situation of making something very good - their mobile platform, Windows Phone - and actually doing worse than before. Even more confusing, however, is that it might be Microsoft's commitment to finally get it right this time that has hurt them. And somewhere in this mess, there are a number of lessons for some very new challenges to businesses."

Last year, Google implemented one of its more ambitious changes to its core consumer products (that would be search, in case you lost track) with Panda, an effort to reduce the amount of pointless and low-quality review sites and the like from the top of Google's search results. Interesting, then, that there's hints Google is actually generating garbage content to promote Chrome, as SearchEngineLand and SEO Book. Or is there a more reasonable explanation? Update: And this is why - rightfully so or no - Google tends to get more love than, say, Apple or Microsoft. The company has announced that even though the sponsored posts were not the company's fault, Google will still penalise the Chrome browser's homepage, lowering its pagerank for at least 60 days.