When computers--evolutive machines which may be reprogrammed at will--became widely available, it generated a well-deserved buzz. Some (scientists, banks, insurance companies) felt like they were dreaming, others (like some SF writers) rather thought of it as a nightmare. Today, like it or not, they're everywhere However, part of the individual-oriented computers are going rather far from the original programmable machine model. They rather look like usual tools, with a fixed use. Their customizable internals are only accessible to the people who engineered them. Is there no market anymore for general-purpose personal programmable machines, able to do about anything? I'll try to answer this question, taking into account two major trends in the personal computing market : touchscreen-powered devices and cloud computing.

"Android is fairly unique in the ways it allows multiple applications to run at the same time. Developers coming from a different platform may find the way it operates surprising. Understanding its behavior is important for designing applications that will work well and integrate seamlessly with the rest of the Android platform. This article covers the reasons for Android's multitasking design, its impact on how applications work, and how you can best take advantage of Android's unique features."

This blog post details how the Gentoo Developers have added a "deblob" USE flag to remove any non-free code within the Linux Kernel. Its goal is to "remove binary blobs from kernel sources to provide libre license compliance". While we're at it, Kernel News has an in-depth look at Gentoo Linux.

This article examines the implications of 4KB-sector disks, including benchmark tests illustrating the likely real-world effects on some common Linux file systems. As disks with 4096-byte sectors become more common throughout 2010 and beyond, strategies for coping with these new disks will become increasingly important.

Holier-than-thou, an adjective, meaning "marked by an air of superior piety or morality". Everybody has moments in their life where they get into a "holier-than-thou" attitude, and I think Steve Jobs' open letter regarding Adobe, and Flash in particular, really fits the bill. There are three specific points I want to address to illustrate just how holier-than-thou, hypocritical, and misleading this letter really is.

Well, if we had one of those obnoxious "BREAKING!"-tags on OSNews, this would definitely fit the bill. While we were busy discussing whether HTC or Lenovo would snap up Palm, another major worldwide computer company picked up the Sunnyvale-based mobile outfit: Hewlett-Packard has bought Palm. Updates from the conference call inside.