Sony just reported that through the fourth quarter of 2008, their profits plummeted a staggering 95%, losing $1.67 billion. The reported down profits were taken from last year's Christmas season, usually the time of the year that all companies including Sony sell the most products. This is the first loss that Sony has reported since 1995 when they produced several box-office flops. In lieu of the situation, Sony is reportedly cutting 8,000 jobs and going to shut down five or six of the 57 worldwide factories. Will the headless chicken that is the economy ever recover?

From the announcement email: "On behalf of the NetBSD Release Engineering team, I am proud to announce that the first release candidate of NetBSD 5.0 is now available for download. Those of you who have been paying close attention will have noticed that RC1 was tagged on Sunday. A few hiccups delayed the availability of binaries, but they can now be downloaded from here."

SkyOS has always been criticised for the fact that you have to pay for it in order to beta test it. I personally never saw a problem with this construction, especially since the price included a full copy of SkyOS 5 (they dropped the five) once it was completed. However, as of late, it has become increasingly clear that there may never be anything like a final version - or another test release for that matter. Update: In the comments, Robert Szeleney explained the current SkyOS situation in more detail. For future readers who find this article via a search engine, I've attached Robert's comment to the actual story for completeness' sake. The reply can also be found on the SkyOS website.

The usually reliable Wall Street Journal claims that Dell, the world's no. 2 computer maker, will enter the smartphone market in an effort to make up for the lost income due to the economic downturn. They say the Texas company is planning on releasing several models, pitching them against RIM's and Apple's phones.

"As someone who wants Microsoft to be cooler, I'm all for them making an aggressive pitch to consumers. I say make Windows 7 a simplified, colorful, fun experience for everyday users. Emphasize how it can store and share music and photos. Keep those potential Mac users from switching. Heck, open up retail stores while you're at it. But of course Microsoft has to walk the line here. By kowtowing to consumers, it runs the risk of neglecting its core customer, the business user. In a recent interview on CIO.com sister site Network World, Windows blogger and editor of Supersite for Windows Paul Thurrott contends that Microsoft is biting the hand that feeds it by leaning heavily on consumer features with Windows 7. Enterprise needs have been reduced to an afterthought, he says."

Currently, NVIDIA is really missing out on the netbook market, which is dominated by all-Intel platform designs. NVIDIA has finally woken up to this reality, and the outspoken cofounder, president, and CEO of NVIDIA, Jen-Hsun Huang, has launched an all-out campaign to promote his company's Ion platform - and he isn't shy of flinging some poo to Intel and netbooks in general.