"One of the benefits of the direction that's been taken with the next release of Ubuntu is that there is no longer a need for a separate netbook edition. The introduction of the new shell for Ubuntu means that we have a user interface that works equally well whatever the form factor of the PC. And the underlying technology works on a range of architectures including those common in netbook, notebooks, desktops or whatever you choose to run it on. Hence the need for a separate version for netbooks is removed"

Grizzled Unix vet Paul Venezia tips his cap to the Windows Server crew, suggesting that the lessons of Unix history have not been lost on Microsoft -- and that's one reason why Windows Server has become so complex. 'The Windows Server of today has more in common with Unix than many people want to admit. The upside: more stable servers, greater scope of services, better adherence to standards, and Microsoft's newfound willingness to work with its competition. The downside is that Windows has become more complex than Unix from a management and administration point of view,' Venezia writes, even if he still sees some Windows admin practices as prime examples of how not to administer servers.

I have to admit I've been struggling with this one for a while, most importantly because I haven't used GNOME 3 yet; I'm setting up my own little company right now, so time's a little short. As such, all I can do here is cover the arguments given - which, in my book, have both their strong as well as their weak points. Yes, GNOME 3 will not have buttons for minimising or maximising windows.

HP recently posted new videos of their developer sessions at Mobile World Congress. As it turns out they aren't just interesting for developers - in particular, Part 3 offers a glimpse of the TouchPad UI that's a bit more in-depth than what we've seen so far. For developers, there's also an overview of the development environment(s) (part 4) and an introduction to the new SDK "Enyo" (part 5).

"In this post I show step-by-step how you can setup your own "Super computer cluster" using Ubuntu MPI Cluster from multiple machines with the goal of bruteforcing strong encrypted passwords with John the Ripper for academic purposes. Owners of quad core machines will also benefit from this setup as the "john" binaries found in the Ubuntu Repositories are compiled to run on only one core. I managed to decrease the time required to crack password hashes using this setup."

Well, this rumour, coming from the reputable Wall Street Journal, isn't entirely unsurprising. Apparently, the omnipotent people familiar with the matter have told the WJS that the US Department of Justice and the California State Attorney General's office are investigating the MPEG-LA for possible anti-competitive practices regarding VP8.