The weeks just keep flying by, don't they? It's time for another Week in Review, and this time, we actually have a few interesting things to review. Microsoft is going on the full assault against Apple and Linux on netbooks, Canonical retaliates, the IBM-Sun deal is still the talk of the week, and we did a podcast. This week's My Take isn't a happy one, but it is an important one.

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols at Computer World asks himself when he first started using Linux after attending the Linux Foundation Summit where several others were asked the same question. The Linux Foundation has posted a video of some of the answers; boy, do I feel young.

"Moore's Law is maxing out. This is an oft-made prediction in the computer industry. The latest to chime in is an IBM fellow, according to a report. Intel co-founder Gordon Moore predicted in 1965 that the number of transistors on a microprocessor would double approximately every two years - a prediction that has proved to be remarkably resilient. But IBM Fellow Carl Anderson, who researches server computer design at IBM, claims the end of the era of Moore's Law is nigh, according to a report in EE Times. Exponential growth in every industry eventually has to come to an end, according Anderson, who cited railroads and speed increases in the aircraft industry, the report said.

PC-BSD, the desktop-oriented FreeBSD variant, has released version 7.1, dubbed Galileo. In case you don't know, PC-BSD is a FreeBSD distribution with lots of customisations focussed on the desktop user. Its most defining features is the Push Button Installer, a self-contained package format with handy installers/uninstallers. PC-BSD 7.1 comes loaded with changes and updates.

The advertisement wars are really heating up, with Microsoft going on the full assault against Apple with several TV advertisements, after Apple had been pounding the Redmond company with its "I'm a PC" campaign. Just as Microsoft published the third Laptop Hunters commercial, the Linux Foundation announced the winner of the "We're Linux" contest.

After the more-or-less positively received "You find it, you keep it" television advertisements, it seems as if Microsoft is quickly falling back to its previous mistakes of relying on easily countered FUD-like tactics. We already discussed the blog post regarding Linux on netbooks, which was easily countered on virtually every point made. However, it gets even worse: Microsoft has ordered a study detailing what the company calls the hidden "Apple tax" that you are supposedly paying if you go Apple. Now, I'm the first to state that Apple simply doesn't provide the optimal pricing for everyone, but this Microsoft sponsored study is so completely and utterly ridiculous it makes me wonder just who on earth would look at it and go "Yeah, this looks pretty convincing!"

We've all seen the early demos of something called "BumpTop", a sort of 3D desktop where files are presented as 3D objects with physical properties. Recently, the project moved from concept to product with the release of BumpTop 1.0. The big question now is: are we dealing with the next big thing in desktop computing, or just a gimmick?

Microsoft on Wednesday was hit with a USD 388m verdict in a long-running patent-infringement case. In the suit, Uniloc alleged that Microsoft used its patented technology as part of the software giant's product-activation methods. A federal jury in Rhode Island found that Windows XP, Office XP and Windows Server 2003 infringed on a Uniloc patent.

Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu Linux, has struck back at claims made by Microsoft's Brandon LeBlanc about Windows' success in netbooks compared to Linux. Most of the claims made by LeBlanc are refuted quite accurately by Canonical's Chris Kenyon in a blog post titled "Microsoft, FUD and the netbook market".

It's been a long time coming, but yesterday Google has announced that Java will be available on their App Engine. While the SDK is available for everyone to develop their applications locally, the initial sign up allowing people to upload their applications to the App Engine is limited to 10,000 users. The Java environment provides a Java 6 JVM, a Java Servlets interface, and support for standard interfaces to the App Engine scalable datastore and services, such as JDO, JPA, JavaMail, and JCache.

At the Intel Developer Form in Beijing this week, Senior Vice President Anand Chandrasekher introduced and detailed Intel's 'Moorestown' - the next generation of the Intel Atom-based MID platform. In addition, Intel used the anniversary of the introduction of the Atom processors to offer two new Atom chips: the Z550 and Z515. These two new Atom processors are designed with gaming and small form factors in mind.

"The Mono Migration Analyzer tool, or MoMA, helps users port Microsoft .NET programs to Mono, with the ultimate goal of porting Windows software to Linux. But is it really necessary? eWEEK Labs puts MoMA through its paces."

The world's largest netbook manufacturer, Acer, has just presented its forecasts for its own second quarter, as well as the rest of the year, and it is very positive about the netbook market and its own part in that market. In line with IDC predictions, the company predicts a 100 growth in 2009 for the netbook market, and predicts its own notebook and netbook shipments to rise with 35-40% this quarter.

It's rare to see some truly interesting ideas in Linux distributions, as most seem content to just remaster Ubuntu with a different theme. Therefore, we at OSNews are always interested in fresh and interesting distributions that try to add something of value to the landscape. One such distribution is xPUD, a fast-booting, kiosk-like distribution that uses the Mozilla Gecko Runtime to display a simple user interface that allows you to launch normal desktop Linux applications.