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A lot of open source advocates like to rage against the machine at Microsoft, but when a former Microsoft Research employee says that Windows 7 won't stop Linux from market domination, that's an opinion to note. Keith Curtis, author of the book After the Software Wars, says just that. But he goes further. He thinks Microsoft and its customers would be better off if the company ditched Windows and instead built its own version of the Linux operating system.

"I think we could all be running Microsoft Linux. I sent an e-mail to Steve Ballmer about this and he said he wasn't interested," he quips, but is only partially joking. "Microsoft could very easily dominate the Linux market if they wanted to. I don't think they should release all their source code ... nobody would use it."


Given the likelihood of Microsoft Linux (zippo), I asked him if he thought the IT industry, with its giant Microsoft ecosystem, would somehow be better off if Microsoft vanished rather than having the folks in Redmond figure out how to become more open.

Internet users throughout Europe accused of illegal file-sharing are to receive more protection from being cut off by their service provider.
The European Parliament and Council is due to make a decision on its Telecoms Reform Package in late November.
The package will entitle users in all 27 EU states to be put through a "fair and impartial procedure" before being disconnected.
The outcome is a compromise agreed during all night negotiations.
Some members of the European Parliament felt nobody should lose their connection until after they had been prosecuted in a court for illegally downloading content.
The new rules take the form of an amendment to a much wider revision of all Europe's telecoms regulations.
But they also represent a compromise between those who want greater protection for consumers and those who argue that copyright law is still being flagrantly disregarded by millions of computer users.
So far it is also less than clear exactly what will constitute a "fair and impartial" procedure.

One area of Web standards where both Mozilla Firefox (version 3.5.3 CRPI: 7.34) and Opera (version 10 CRPI: 6.38) have an edge over Google Chrome (build 3.0.195.25 CRPI: 15.85) is in the field of page-designated font rendering. It's where the code for the Web page specifies which fonts to use, and even triggers the downloading of those fonts where necessary. Actually, Opera 10 has led the way in scalable Web fonts support although Firefox 3.5 has followed close behind.
The problem here has been with the extremely proprietary nature of the fonts used for the Web. They actually are TrueType and OpenType fonts, the majority of whose licensing prohibits their use for anything other than installation in commercial operating systems on a per-desktop basis. Even though some typographers have created free renderings of their commercial font products (here's a favorite of mine: Museo Sans by Exljbris), there's some question as to whether type designers are technically allowed to use the proprietary underpinnings of font technology (mostly contributed by Adobe, Microsoft, and Apple) for use on the Web.

Facebook plans to let users buy music and other virtual products on its Web site, the company said Wednesday, expanding its sources of revenue as the company seeks to turn its huge popularity into fiscal profit. Separately, Google will let users sample and buy songs directly from its search results page with a service it plans to announce next week, according to reports. The move comes as Google looks to hold its dominance against Bing, which has stolen around 9 percent of the U.S. online search market since its launch earlier this year, according to Internet monitoring companies.
Songs and official sports icons are among the new virtual gifts Facebook will add to its store, the company said on its blog. Users in the U.S. will be able to pay US$0.10 to send friends a song that can only be listened to online, or $0.90 to send a copy that can be downloaded and transferred, the company said.
The service, powered by music streaming site Lala.com, will be available by the end of this week, a Lala representative said in an e-mail.
Google will let users stream songs from Lala and iLike.com, which is owned by MySpace, according to a report in the The Wall Street Journal. A Lala link will let users stream a full song once for free and pay about $1 to download a copy, the report said.

Oracle has failed to persuade the European Commission that it will provide a safe home for MySQL.
The Commission is currently looking at Oracle's takeover of Sun, and has previously said it is especially worried about the fate of free database MySQL.

A spokesman for Competition Commissioner 'Steelie' Neelie Kroes said the Commissioner had: "expressed disappointment that Oracle had failed to produce, despite repeated requests, either hard evidence that there were no competition problems or, alternatively, proposals for a remedy to the competition problems identified by the Commission", according to the Beeb.

The comments were made to Oracle president Safra Catz during a meeting in Brussels. The EC said it was happy to move quickly to approve the deal, provided its concerns over MySQL were met.
Without further reassurance the Commission could block the takeover or at least order Oracle to sell off the free database business first. This would put Europe at odds with US regulators which have already given the deal the go-ahead. The US initially said it was concerned about how Java would be licensed.

Google's Marissa Mayer Oct. 21 unveiled Google Social Search, a pending opt-in service that will let users with Google accounts, profiles and contacts find content created by people in social networks such as Twitter and FriendFeed. The news came just hours after Microsoft executives announced that Bing would be surfacing search results with Twitter tweets and Facebook status updates in real time. Google already has millions of users for its general search engine. If even a fraction of these millions begin using Google Social Search, it might not leave much room for challengers such as Aardvark, Mahalo and ChaCha.


A key Google search executive unveiled Google Social Search at the Web 2.0 Summit Oct. 21, attempting to upstage significant announcements from search challenger Microsoft Bing.
Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience at Google, got permission to make a surprise announcement this afternoon at the show here, mere hours after Microsoft executives announced that Bing would be surfacing search results with Twitter tweets and Facebook status updates in real time.
Mayer did a me, too play. When she took the stage, she told the audience that Google would also begin enabling users to search Twitter tweets in the coming months before demonstrating Social Search.

Microsoft is hoping that its newly-launched operating system will be one that "doesn't let you down".
Speaking at the official launch of Windows 7 in London, Microsoft executives said they had listened to consumers and delivered a more streamlined, feature-packed system.
It follows widespread criticism of predecessor Vista.
Windows 7 faces stiff competition from rival operating systems and new ways of storing applications.
Microsoft is hoping Windows 7 will reinvigorate its plans to be at the centre of the home with features that make it easy to connect to other machines in the house and stream movies and music to them.

In the UK, the software giant will tie up with Sky to offer its on-demand Sky Player service.
It will allow consumers to watch a range of live and on-demand TV programmes via the Windows Media Center, which is included in most editions of Windows 7.

New dawn
Microsoft's UK managing director Ashley Highfield said Windows 7 marked a "new dawn in Microsoft's relationship with the consumer".
"Windows 7 is much more than a collection of new features. We have listened to what consumers want and they want something that makes their lives easier," said Mr Highfield.
The operating system has already been in beta testing among eight million official users, and a farther seven million unofficial testers have also used it.

The software giant used one billion data sessions to find out how people navigate with Windows; information such as how many times people visit the start menu - around 12 times per session - and how many windows they have open at any one time - between two and seven is the average.

This is a WHQL-certified driver for GeForce 6, 7, 8, 9, 100, and 200-series desktop GPUs and ION desktop GPUs.
New in Version 191.07

• Adds support for OpenGL 3.2 for GeForce 8, 9, 100, and 200-series GPUs and ION GPUs.
• Accelerates performance in several gaming applications. The following are examples of improvements measured with version 191.07 drivers vs. version 190.62 drivers (results will vary depending on your GPU, system configuration, and game settings):
  • Up to 12% performance increase in ARMA 2
  • Up to 8% performance increase in Batman: Arkham Asylum with GPU PhysX enabled
  • Up to 50% performance increase in Call of Juarez: Blood in Bound with SLI enabled
  • Up to 14% performance increase in Fallout 3 (indoor scenes) with antialiasing enabled
  • Up to 10% performance increase in Far Cry 2 (DX9 version) with antialiasing enabled
  • Up to 34% performance increase in Prototype with antialiasing enabled
• Adds SLI support for Aion, Darkfall, Dawn of Magic 2: Time of Shadows, Dreamkiller, Fuel, Majesty 2: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim, Need for Speed: Shift and more.
• Includes numerous bug fixes, including the following key fix (additional bug fixes can be found in the release notes on the documentation tab): For graphics cards supporting multiple clock states, 3D clocks correctly return to 2D clocks after exiting a 3D application.

New in Release 190/191 Drivers

• Includes WHQL support for DirectCompute with Windows 7 and GeForce 8-series or higher graphics cards.
• Installs PhysX System Software version 9.09.0814.
• Supports NVIDIA 3D Vision Discover, a complete, low cost solution to start your immersive stereoscopic 3D experience. NOTE: If you are using NVIDIA 3D Vision active shutter glasses, you must download the separate 3D Vision driver which includes the driver for the 3D Vision IR emitter.
• Supports CUDA 2.3 for improved performance in GPU Computing applications. See CUDA Zone for more details.
• Supports a new user-controlled power management setting for select GeForce 9-series and later graphics cards (only available on cards that already support more than one power state). This option allows users to set a performance level for each DirectX or OpenGL application.

Existing Support:

• Supports single GPU and NVIDIA SLI technology on DirectX 9, DirectX 10, and OpenGL, including 3-way SLI, Quad SLI, and SLI support on SLI-certified Intel X58-based motherboards.
• Supports NVIDIA PhysX acceleration on a dedicated GeForce graphics card. Use one card for graphics and dedicate a different card for PhysX processing for game-changing physical effects. Learn more here.
• Supports GeForce Plus Power Pack #3. Download these FREE PhysX and CUDA applications now!
• Supports GPU overclocking and temperature monitoring by installing

This version introduces many fixes, notably for SSA decoding, v4l2, MacOS interface, ogg/theora, x264 modules and security issues. It also introduces the port to 64bits for Mac OS platform and 2 new languages (Kazakh and Croatian).