The netbook craze is currently in full swing, with these small laptops being advertised everywhere (at least here in The Netherlands); in fact, you can already get netbooks with 3G from the mobile phone carriers at severely reduced prices (but with a one or two year contract, of course). Netbooks are also welcomed by the Linux community as the break they've been waiting for: many netbooks are available with Linux pre-installed. One of the more successful (and powerful) netbooks out there is MSI's Wind, which is also sold under different brand and model names by other companies. In an interview with LaptopMag, MSI's Director of US Sales Andy Tung, however, has some bad news for those that believe the netbook will be the foot in the door that the Linux desktop has been waiting for.

Windows XP just refuses to die. Have you ever notice that in movies they hit the bad guy just hard enough to stun him, then go about their business with their back turned to him while he slowly gets up and surprises them by attacking again? In this allegory, Microsoft management is the cute couple and XP is the villain: "Microsoft's deadline for allowing OEMs to sell PCs with systems that are "downgraded" from Windows Vista to XP is still a moving target. Initially planned to expire on June 30 of this year, Microsoft at first granted an extension to July 31. However, OEMs are still selling the downgrade option (often for a premium) and, according to new reports, the deadline apparently has been officially extended for six more months to January 31, 2009. The information is based on one leaked email sent to an OEM."

Gutsy/foolhardy Mac clone maker Psystar responded in August to Apple's copyright infringement lawsuit with an anti-trust lawsuit against Apple. Earlier this week, Apple's lawyers filed a motion to have the suit dismissed, calling it "deeply flawed." In its statement, Apple contends: "One of the bedrock principles of antitrust law is that a manufacturer's unilateral decision concerning how to distribute its product and with whom it will deal cannot violate the Sherman Act."

The GIMP Project has released GIMP 2.6.0. Among some UI-based changes and additional fixes, it comes the long promised integration of the GEGL library. The promise of 16 bit per-pixel non-destructive editing goes back to 2002, but it's at last here. This means that GIMP is now ready for prosumer (and in some cases even professional) photographer's usage, and this can only be big news and a big win for the F/OSS movement. GEGL will also help in future releases with proper support of CMYK. UPDATE: I guess things are not as good as the release notes want us to think. GEGL was turned "on" in the Color menu as per instructions, but I still got a no-support message for high depth TIFF pictures. If GIMP can't read existing 16bpp pictures, the feature I earlier gave them so much credit for, is useless.

Who said community pressure doesn't work with big companies? Apple has announced in a note titled "To Our Developers" that it has removed the non-disclosure agreement for iPhone developers, stating it placed "too much of a burden" on iPhone developers. The NDA was one of the two major problem points among iPhone developers, so the community has responded in a way that can only be described as rejoicing.

"Nokia announced today the launch of Qt Extended 4.4, a complete mobile and embedded development platform based on the open source Qt toolkit. It is designed with a modular architecture that provides building blocks for assembling a Linux-based software stack for various embedded devices ranging from phones to set-top boxes." ArsTechnica showcases the various features and enhancements of the platform. There are some impressive screenshots of the Qt widgets as well.