Once upon a time, operating systems used to matter a lot; they defined what a computer could and couldn't do... Today, there's only one operating system: Unix (okay, there are two, but we'll get to that). This is why I contend that the OS doesn't matter - or that we need to take another look at the word's content, at what we mean when we say 'Operating System'.

Last week, a study was published that showed how 15 popular applications in the Android Market shared location data with advertisement servers, while 10 shared unique identifiers with them, as well. Glad you're using an iPhone? Not so fast - another study, published over the weekend, shows that the iOS ain't much better in this regard.

So, yeah, it's been ten years in the making, including a number of rewrites, but the day has finally come: the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries, which, surprisingly enough, form the foundation of, among other things, Enlightenment, have reached beta status. This is a major step towards the final release of Enlightenment DR17, which should hit before year's end.

If you follow the keyboard collectors market (yeah, didn't think so . . .) then you'd certainly know that the IBM model M15 split ergonomic is pretty much the most desirable keyboard out there. A small number of them were made over a short span of time (1994-1995), and their clunky plastic knob and super-adjustable design meant that over years many of them broke. So when one lands on eBay, it's a big deal.

Anyone who did not see this one coming after Microsoft's patent deal with HTC and Apple's meticulousness in avoiding Windows Mobile in its suit against HTC hasn't been paying attention. Microsoft has filed a patent complaint with the US International Trade Commission, as well as a patent lawsuit in the US District Court for the Western District of Washington against Motorola over its Android-based devices.

We've got some good news for Symbian, and we've got some bad news. We already had Sony Ericsson abandoning the Symbian platform, but today Samsung joined them in leaving Symbian behind. The good news is that Nokia has released some figures on downloads from its Ovi Store, and it ain't that bad, actually.

"Arm plans to add multithreading capabilities to future architectures as it tries to boost the performance of its processors, a company representative said on Tuesday. The company is looking to include multithreading capabilities depending on application requirements in different segments, said Kumaran Siva, segment marketing manager at Arm, at the Linley Tech Processor conference in San Jose, California"

"To mark the first anniversary of Microsoft Security Essentials, the company has released some sobering statistics it has gathered during the past year via the free anti-malware software. According to Microsoft, Security Essentials has been installed on 31 million computers worldwide. Out of that group, 27 million users reported malware infections during the year."

Artificial intelligence is going mobile . The technology that can help machines behave more intelligently, popularized by such films as 2001: A Space Odyssey, is finding its way onto tablet-style computers and other handheld devices.

"I am truly shocked that so many people are being duped by BlackBerry's recent announcement of their tablet, the PlayBook. I have read endless comments from people who are saying they can't wait to get this tablet computer. Well, I think I have some bad news for you folks. There is no evidence that the PlayBook exist as advertised. Why do I say this? I will make it brief..."

Researchers at IBM now know how long a single atom can "remember" its state. The events that take place inside of atoms occur at speeds that are normally much too fast to capture. Now researchers at IBM's Almaden Research Center have developed a technique that lets them watch this atomic action with unprecedented resolution"

OCZ Technology, today unveileda proprietary drive interface called "High-Speed Data Link" (HSDL) that's expected to boost I/O for solid-state drives (SSDs) in high-performance computing environments.

There are some things in this world that just happen. There's really no logical reason for it to happen, there's no explanation as to why it happens now, and not, say, three years ago. Minecraft is one those things. It's a game, but not entirely. It's digital Lego, but not entirely. It's impossible to explain what it is in words alone - you need to experience it. All I have to point to is this: someone has created a working 16bit ALU inside Minecraft. Which is a videogame. An ALU running inside a videogame running on a processor which has an ALU. In blocks. Wait, what?

The Fedora 14 Beta was released today, but as a Network World article points out, it "will be the first Red Hat supported distribution to let users choose MeeGo as their desktop." This new release will also include the Sugar interface, intended for netbooks, and "will also be the first version to fully incorporate Red Hat's VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure), called SPICE, or Simple Protocol for Independent Computing Environments. SPICE will allow Fedora to host virtual desktops that can be accessed over a network."