You may not realise it, but today one of the most important pieces of technology celebrates its 40th birthday. In November 15, 1971, a company called Intel released its Intel 4004 processor - the first single-chip microprocessor, and one of the most important milestones in computer history.

Microsoft just posted on its blog about how Windows 8 is going to handle automatic updating and the consequent system restarts - and they're changing a few things around. They want to make the process less disruptive, and there's reason to cheer: no more popup notifications begging for restarts.

It's no secret OSNews has a bit of a thing for the BeOS. I can only speak for myself, obviously, but relatively speaking, BeOS was the best operating system ever made. The man who started all this was Jean-Louis Gassee, former executive at Apple, who founded Be, Inc. in 1991. In the second half of the '90s, Apple was looking for a replacement for its heavily outdated Mac OS, after several failed attempts at developing its own - it came down to Steve Jobs NeXT, or BeOS. Be didn't make it, and Gassee is happier for it.

When I decided to take on this article I thought it would be easy. Grab a few quotes from some developers, re-hash WINE support, check out the latest version of Battle for Wesnoth... Simple stuff.

According to InformationWeek: "Just over a hundred days after Google last provided an update on the status of Google+ for businesses, the company has introduced a way for companies to participate in its social network. Google+ Pages, like Facebook Pages before them, provide businesses and brands with a place to promote conversations related to their products and services." A number of U.S. government agencies are trying out Google+, including NASA, the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Marine Corps, and the National Nuclear Security Administration. Since release of initial Google+ components on June 28 2011, the product is claimed by Larry Page to have over 40 million users, versus some 800 million for Facebook.

"Yesterday, Logitech hosted an Analyst and Investor Day and during his remarks, CEO Guerrino De Luca pulled absolutely no punches in describing the 'mistakes' the company made with its Logitech Revue Google TV set top box. Calling the company's Christmas 2010 launch 'a mistake of implementation of a gigantic nature', De Luca told investors that the company had 'brought closure to the Logitech Revue saga' by making plans to let inventory run out this quarter and that there are 'no plans to introduce another box to replace Revue'."

Remember yesterday when I said Solaris 11 goes way over my head? Well, today we're talking about where operating systems and biology intersect. Scientists at the University of Nottingham are trying to develop the in vivo biological cell-equivalent of a computer operating system. The project's name is AUdACiOuS.

I just emerged, blinking, from the world of Skyrim, only to realise Sun Oracle has released the 11th version of Solaris (well, technically it's the 7th, but okay, we'll roll with it). I'll be honest and upfront about it: Solaris is totally out of my league, and as such, it's very hard for me to properly summarise what this release is all about, so I won't even try.

Way back in 2002, MIT decided it needed to start teaching a course in operating system engineering. As part of this course, students would write an exokernel on x86, using Sixth Edition Unix (V6) and John Lions' commentary as course material. This, however, posed problems.

To anyone who has been reading anything on the web over the past few months, this shouldn't come as a surprise. Barnes & Noble is currently embroiled in a patent lawsuit started by Microsoft, after the bookseller/tablet maker refused to pay protection money to Redmond. Barnes & Noble has now openly said what we already knew, and has filed an official complaint at the US Department of Justice: Microsoft is engaging in anticompetitive practices. Update: Here's the slide deck B&N presented to the DoJ.

"The following are major features for Fedora 16: enhanced cloud support including Aeolus Conductor, Condor Cloud, HekaFS, OpenStack and pacemaker-cloud; KDE Plasma workspaces 4.7; GNOME 3.2; a number of core system improvements including GRUB 2 and the removal of HAL; an updated libvirtd, trusted boot, guest inspection, virtual lock manager and a pvops based kernel for Xen all improve virtualization support."

Mozilla has announced the release of Firefox 8 for Windows, Mac, Linux and Firefox for Android. This release appears to be a relatively minor update. Perhaps the main feature of this update is the ability for user control over third-party addons. "At Mozilla, we think you should be in control, so we are disabling add-ons installed by third parties without your permission and letting you pick the ones you want to keep." A detailed technical description of this new Firefox release can be found in the release notes.

InfoWorld's Galen Gruman offers a breakdown of iOS 5 capabilities that work differently across devices. From multitasking gestures, to calendar views, to image editing, not all of iOS 5's limited-availability functions make sense. 'Don't worry — it's not your mind playing tricks when that feature you thought you saw doesn't appear on the device you currently have in hand.'

According to Wired, "The Senate is likely to vote within days on a measure that would undo net-neutrality rules adopted by the Federal Communications Commission in 2010, even though they've yet to go into effect... The House passed a similar measure, but Obama has threatened to veto it. It was not immediately clear whether the Senate has the necessary votes for passage."If you care about net neutrality, now is a good time to head on over to Save The Internet and get involved in this issue.