Towards the end of the following program, Charlie Rose speaks to Steve Ballmer. Ballmer (Microsoft’s CEO) insists that Microsoft merely innovates while making IE virtually impossible to remove from Windows.

The following grilling shows that this type of thing was done by design.

The same charade goes on today. Google is only one among the suffers of restricting choice.

Where else would you find some invaluable videos that are otherwise difficult to get hold of?

Just ignore the disgraceful adverts at the start.

A lot of hostility has been directed at an extraordinary project which strives to bring inter-connected laptops to each child in the developing world. Access to information and self expression may even be more important than the immediate need for food and shelter, assuming that you already have them. Watch the following video and decide for yourselves if access to the Internet can actually make a different in exploited and suppressed parts of the world.

The same old argument returns, but it seems evident that while operating systems are not going away, their role will be lessened.

The importance of an operating system will always be tied to fundamentals such as hardware detection (driver support) and the ability to run a Web browser with simple services. Watch this video.

Be aware that Microsoft strives to end this nirvana of platform-independent use of a PC. It recently introduced Silverlight, which is a Web technology that is tied to Microsoft’s desktop technology. Essentially, Microsoft wants to make the Web (including services and mashups) more Microsoft-dependent. Under the guise of choice and functionality, Microsoft strives to regain lockin. It schemes to do so by making the Web work better (or work only) with Windows.

Lightweight GNU/Linux distribution which packs a lot of eye candy. Elive is shown in this brand-new video.

Be aware that Elive can run on computers that are very old, even Pentium I/IIs.

2007 will be remembered as the year when large OEMs finally gave up on deals with an exclusive nature. They began offering Linux preinstalled on their PCs. Big names include Epson, H-P, Acer, Dell, Toshiba, Nokia, and Intel.

Here is a nice video showing the unique aspects of this operating system, which does not receive enough exposure in the media.

Remember this: 2007 is the year when many major companies began preinstalling Linux on their UMPCs, tablets, and PCs, not just devices. phones, servers, POSes, thin clients, and supercomputers. Next some someone jokes about “the Year of Linux on the Desktop”, be sure to set him/her straight. Significant progress is being made.