Fortune Magazine reports that Michael Dell, who has already become Linux-friendly, is interested in licensing Apple’s Mac OS.

…Dell (the company) has for several years fearlessly—and lucratively—sold servers loaded with Linux, the operating system Microsoft reviles and dreads. And as the industry’s top dog it wields more bargaining power with Microsoft than other PC-makers. So I emailed Michael Dell, now the company’s chairman, and asked if he’d be interested in the Mac OS, assuming that Apple CEO Steve Jobs ever decides to license it to PC companies. (For now, Jobs says he won’t.)

Bill Gates arrested in his younger days (photo in public domain)

How long can this go on? The BBC reports that yet another Windows flaw has been discovered. And once again, hundreds of millions of obedient users will go out of their way and patch up their operating system.

Windows users are being urged to download the latest security updates from Microsoft to fix critical flaws.

The software giant has warned that three loopholes affecting Windows and Internet Explorer allow an attacker to take control of a personal computer.

In the mean time, ever since the Apple move to Intel, some people have installed pirated versions of Tiger (Mac OS X 1.4) on their Intel PC‘s.

CNN have published an insightful article on the rebound of big dot-com Web sites. Although their arguments seem convincing, many will remain skeptical. Scott Kessler is among the skeptics:

I’d hesitate to characterize this is as comparable to what was going on in the late 1990s,” said Scott Kessler, an equity analyst with Standard & Poor’s. “Not every Internet stock is doing well.

Picture from CNN

The hard-drive peripheral in for the Playstation 3 will run Linux. This news is by no means surprising as Sony’s direct opponent in the realm of home gaming is Microsoft. This news item, as usual, opens the door to common jokes (snippet from my post at Slashdot):

Who wouldn’t buy the Playstation 3, even just to play a game that no-one can resist: compiling the Linux kernel. That sure can keep one up until 5 AM.

…

Salesman: Here you see the latest Xbox which renders a zillion polygons per second.

Customer: Does it come with gcc?

Salesman: Is that one of the latest patches?

Customer: *sign* Not interested…

Google take their satellite maps service one step further:

…trucks would drive along every San Francisco street using the lasers to measure the dimensions of buildings, to create a 3D framework onto which digital photos can be mapped…

One wonders if they can acquire full-colour information. Perhaps their 2-D, top-down pictures can be mapped onto 3-D surfaces. We shall wait and see.

In other news, Google Maps have come under fire recently.

Several sites are running an article on the recent statistical figure: laptops sales surpassed desktop sales in the States.

Will it take another 5-10 years until PDA‘s outsell laptops? Hardware is becoming smaller and cheaper; CPU speed increases rather slowly; RAM matters very little at this point where the O/S just doesn’t require it. So, smaller units might be equally good. To get a convenient workspace, one can attach an external monitor and other peripherals to the PDA while having the choice to just pull the PDA out of the pocket.

Where there’s smoke, there must be a fire. The streets of Manchester are full of smoke at the moment so there must be a large-scale wildfire. There was no evidence of a fire while I was walking home for breakfast; only half an hour later (now), the streets are foggy with smoke.

As it occurred around 5-6 in the morning, there is no word yet from the BBC. Google News can indentify no source either.

9 AM update: there is no longer a trace of smoke. Good riddance.