Over at Wired Gadget Lab, they're taking a look back at several people who've gone to a bunch of trouble to hack up and deal with the pitfalls of netbooks running OSX. As the story's title states, it ain't pretty. In a nutshell, they found that even if you load a nice OS onto a cheap, tiny computer, you still have to deal with the inherent downsides of a cheap, tiny computer, and when you run an Apple OS on a non-Apple machine, you'll have some software problems. I read this article with great interest, because a few months ago I bought an MSI Wind (the same netbook that this guy used) with thoughts of putting OSX on it. But this article set me to thinking about netbooks, the mythical Apple netbook, and Apple's Newton legacy.

Microsoft released the second service pack for Office 2007, with ODF and PDF support. "Now all Office users will have the option to load and save OpenDocument files, with today's distribution of Service Pack 2 of Office 2007. In something of a surprise -- contrary to what many at Microsoft led us to believe -- upon installing SP2 on our test systems, we immediately located an option for saving files in ODF by default. That means you don't have to "Save As" and export to ODF if you don't ever want to use Microsoft's OOXML or Office 2003 "compatibility mode;" you can at least try to use Word, Excel, and PowerPoint as substitutes for OpenOffice."

Drobe has scored evidence that Jeffrey Lee, with help from Uwe Kall and ROOL staff, have managed to port RISC OS 5 to the Beagleboard, a board with a 600Mhz Cortex A8 ARM processor and 256MB of RAM. Drobe has a photo of RISC OS 5 booting into a command prompt.

According to NeoWin, the second service pack for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 has gone gold, or RTM in Microsoft Land. "Microsoft has finally finished and compiled the RTM version of Windows Vista SP2 and Windows Server 2008. The full version string being 6.0.6006.18005, which company officials have confirmed is the final RTM version of SP2."

"Operating system vendors face this problem once or twice a decade: They need to migrate their user base from their old operating system to their very different new one, or they need to switch from one CPU architecture to another one, and they want to enable users to run old applications unmodified, and help developers port their applications to the new OS. Let us look at how this has been done in the last 3 decades, looking at DOS/Windows, Macintosh, Amiga and Palm."

The Open Innovation Network has found a few of Microsoft's patents in dealing with the past TomTom/FAT case a bit fishy and have therefore submitted them for review of prior-art to the Linux community at large.

Engadget reports that "just two weeks after the last revision went up, Apple's released iPhone OS 3.0 beta 4 to the developer community alongside an iTunes 8.2 pre-release. No word yet on what has / hasn't been updated, but we do know the new iTunes is required to activate beta 4."

Fedora 11 Preview Release has been announced with a large number of new features, even more so than previous general releases. This includes Presto (delta RPM updates reducing bandwidth usage over 80% typically), automatic font and mime installer via PackageKit, Nouveau as the default driver for Nvidia cards (3D support is not mature and disabled however), simplified Anaconda text mode installation and minimal installation support, automatic Bug Reporting tool, native access to Microsoft Exchange using OpenChange, Firefox 3.1 and ThunderBird 3.0, Windows Cross Compiler (MinGW and a comprehensive set of cross compiled libraries), Ext4 as the default filesystem, experimental support for the next generation Btrfs filesystem, improved I18N with the switch to IBus input system by default, much improved Kernel Mode Support, many virtualization and security improvements, RPM 4.7, GNOME 2.26, KDE 4.2, Xfce 4.6, Linux Kernel 2.6.29, Python 2.6. GCC 4.4 and several other changes.

The internet has heralded in a whole new era of citizen engagement and the latest innovations in social networking have just intensified the enthusiasm for creating a "virtual town square" where people can speak up, join together, and make things happen. And that's really happening! We're using the net to organize politically, communicate with other people who share our interests, and connect with long lost friends. But what about when people use the strengths of the network to undermine the collaborative process? You get tyranny of the minority. Update: Read below for an update on the bike-naming contest.

Engadget pointed out that USBfever has already begun selling USB 3.0 cables a year ahead of schedule. "Interestingly, the cable's feature list says, 'it is 10 times faster than USB 2.0.' Sure, as long as it's hooked up to a USB 3.0 SuperSpeed host which it won't be until 2010." That seems a bit low-- luring in the uneducated and those who don't read before they buy.

Earlier this month, Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, gave the go-ahead on a vast project that will establish a national high-speed network providing 90% of homes and businesses in Australia with fiber-optic 100Mbps Internet, courtesy of the government; the last 10% will be covered with a 12Mbps connection via wireless and satellite. Not only will a vast amount of taxpayers be guaranteed an Internet connection, but this will also provide 37,000 jobs at the apex of construction, a plus in these troubling times. Now CSIRO has jumped on the bandwagon with ideas of how to provide the last 10% (and anyone else who wants a wireless option) with a solid wireless Internet connection with speeds eventually reaching 100Mbps versus the government's proposed 12Mbps. They'll be utilizing the analog TV infrastructure for widespread wireless, which is obviously largely in place already. All in all, both networks most likely won't be available to any of the public for at least five years.

"It's possible to use Apple's iPods and iPhone with third-party software, and BluWiki's users wanted to make sure the world could find out how. Apple, however, was not fond of the situation and threatened BluWiki with legal action if the information was not removed. Now, BluWiki's operators are suing Apple in hopes of protecting the free speech of their users and getting a declaratory judgment that posting information does not violate the DMCA."

"A disc that can store 500 gigabytes of data, equivalent to 100 DVDs, has been unveiled by General Electric. The micro-holographic disc, which is the same size as existing DVD discs, is aimed at the archive industry. But the company believes it can eventually be used in the consumer market place and home players. Blu-ray discs, which are used to store high definition movies and games, can currently hold between 25GB and 50GB."

"One of the areas of any release of Windows that receives a significant amount of testing and scrutiny is the performance of graphics - desktop graphics all the way to the most extreme CAD and game graphics. The amazing breadth of hardware supported for Windows and the broad spectrum of usage scenarios contributes to a vibrant ecosystem with many different goals - from just the basics to the highest frame rates on multiple monitors possible. In engineering Windows 7 we set out to improve the 'real world' performance of graphics as well as continue to improve the most extreme elements of graphics. This post looks at this spectrum of engineering as well as the different ways performance is measured. Ultimately we want to inform you about what we have done in engineering Windows 7, while we leave room for the many forums that will compare and contrast Windows 7 on different hardware and in different scenarios."