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

ECENTLY I came to discover more about the personaility of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, perhaps possessed by the measles. He has become yet another one of the ugly guys in the block, perhaps even topping the man above. He was caught yelling “I’m going to f—ing kill Google” and throwing a chair across his office. Anger management comes to mind.

Given the aggressive behaviour of Microsoft, it was not too surprising when Massachusetts prepared a proposal that will drop Office in favour of Open Source solutions. I wish them to best of luck in their future endeavours, which are sure to insire the remainder of the country over the long term.

Massachusetts is preparing to deliver another challenge to Microsoft’s core PC software business: a directive to force all 50,000 desktop computers used by state employees to be stripped of Microsoft’s Office, the suite of applications used on an estimated 95 per cent of PCs the world over. Instead, they would be required to run an open-source version, such as OpenOffice or StarOffice – software produced by volunteer programmers and distributed free of charge.

Mind the game or not, it carries on

somewhat laughable request for Office on Linux has been put forward by the OSDL. Some would argue that this was part of the recent mind game, wherein Microsoft wanted to fund a joint TCO study. An impartial TCO study from IBM has already shown that Linux is 40% cheaper to set up and maintain than Windows-based equivalents. It makes Microsoft feel very threatened. Also worth a mentioning is their proprietary video format/protocol, which DVD Jon reverse-engineered for the benefit of non-Windows users. This was only reported yesterday, as a matter of fact, so hacks must be circulating around the Net already.

In other news, Microsoft ends Services for UNIX, in a move which they claim will improve inter-operability in the long-term. Whose side would you believe?

Related items:

• Microsoft-funded Benchmarks
• Reasons to Use Linux

Sounds like a royal phone

OR a while I have been reading about a big announcement, which is bound to be delivered by Apple’s founder and CEO, Steve Job. It now seems as if the iPod will be combined with a mobile phone, but let us wait and see.

Related local items:

• All iPod Owners Can Get Compensated
• Computers Become Hosts

Even the Queen of England might fill out the form

Dear iPod users,

Be sure to read this earth-shaking item and fill the form if necessary.

A San Mateo County judge on Thursday approved the settlement of a class action suit that will offer relief to as many as 1.3 million iPod owners who may have been victim to poor or defective batteries.

• Claim Form

Only months after the release of Google Desktop, the much richer Google Desktop 2 has been announced. This native desktop software, as well as indexing and searching one’s hard-drive, incorporates a controversial sidebar. This sidebar contains RSS feeds, a virtual Gmail inbox, news headlines and more utilities and plug-ins like a scheduling toolset.

Will this truly provide the infrastructure to what might become a Google homebred Web browser? This kind of browser would make the Google-centric application everything that you will ever need. Would such strategy move all the users’ data on-line, namely mail, schedule and settings? Will this make our lives even more portable? Surely there is potential for this vision, which is not baseless. Google have strong ties with the Mozilla Foundation and they may have pondered the possibility of a Google browser in the past. Some sources claim they have.

Related items: Google OS – What if?, Towards On-Line Operating Systems

he Computer Business Review reports that Yahoo will soon join the VoIP market and target the hugely popular Skype. VoIP, which has become synonymous with Skype, is a method/service allowing telephone calls to be made over the Internet, making such calls virtually free. With a standard telephone connected to a standard line, call fares are very low too. In the latter case, international call fares equate to these of local calls.

Yahoo is planning to become a full-service VoIP provider, but declined to give a timeline on new product announcements beyond “coming months,” said spokesperson Terrell Karlsten.

Computers to be driven purely off the iPod/Handheld device

magine yourself the following scenario: To start up your computer you connect an iPod (or any other large-storage mobile device) to your (x86-based) work computer, which then launches the operating system (currently Knoppix Linux) from the iPod. It uses the processor and memory of the local machine rather than the iPod’s, which is merely used as a hard-drive. Then, once work is finished, you take your iPod home and repeat that exact same procudure, plugging in the iPod to a different computer. Not only can you resume your work, but your hard-drive (which contains everything that is personalised) gives you an identical environment, i.e. you have all your recent files, browser cookies, desktop settings, etc.

That vision is now real as IBM exploit the iPod for this purpose. The device could, in principle, be a Palm LifeDrive, which makes the exception among modern PDA‘s since it exploits very high data capacity. The large-sized hard-drive and high bandwidth (USB/FireWire) make it possible to use your machine merely as a host (computation, display, and peripherals), while your data (operating system, files and applications) always remain in your pocket. From an article just published in CNET:

The virtual computer user environment setup is called SoulPad, and consumers install it from a x86-based home or office PC. SoulPad uses a USB (universal serial bus) or FireWire connection to access the network cards for connecting to the Internet, the computer’s display, the keyboard, the main processor and the memory, but not the hard disk.

Also worth mentioning is the prospect for running your favourite operating system and programs to access your data on any computer. You could even use a workstation at your local library cluster. Plug in your mobile device and use the computer as if it was yours. This considerable step can give a major boost to devices such as the iPod and the LifeDrive. Perhaps Jeff Hawkins, Palm co-founder and R&D chief, had substance in his vision of the “Life Manager”. Could this be what Palm had in mind when switching to Linux?

On a less enthusiastic note, the entire idea of protable high-volume storage is not brand new. For quite some time it has been possible to install hard-drive housing units in one computer and slide in different hard-drives that suit different users of the same computer. This essentially meant that computers came without a hard-drive; hard-drives were provided by the users. However, with a handhelds like the LifeDrive, several major advantages spring to mind:

• Size, which is a major pro
• The ability to view and edit data on the go, unlike just carrying a ‘black box’
• Internet connectivity
• Infra-red communication

Cited by: PalmAddict