2009 may be the year of the Netbook. But there's a big if. Here's the choice: Will consumers buy a thin, light, relatively fast $1,800 MacBook Air or a thin, light, ultrasmall, not-as-fast $450 Hewlett-Packard Mini 1000 Netbook? (Correction: the HP Mini 1000 configuration cited here was originally stated incorrectly as $700.)

I believe that it is making a fundamental mistake by choosing to play by the rules laid down by the two biggest proprietary computing companies - Microsoft and Apple. In doing so, it throws away all its natural advantages - notably its differentness - and attempts to compete on its enemies' terms

I have become concerned about some actions and thoughts that people have started taking and expressing. The latest was some guy at a French sounding blog who wrote a rambling contradictory hissy fit trying to validate his reasons for leaving Linux.

Last year, when my youngest son was 5 ½, he was keeping me company in my home office and found my Linux box (this was before The Big Switch, and my main laptop was still in Windows full-time). The boys each have a Windows machine in their room, and he can start a game or a browser on his own, though he still needs help on the urls (“Daddy, can you get me on power rangers dot com?”).

An analysis of the badness of the OpenSUSE FAQ from Novell

Perl's 21st anniversary of release is next Thursday, 18 December. Perl 5 is already 14 years old. Though the language has seen many changes since 1994, it can't stand still. Perl 5.10 added many wonderful features and Perl 6 will change the landscape for programming languages, but what's the vision for Perl 5? How can the language stay relevant?

Live CDs of various Linux distributions are frequently given away as a way of promoting Linux. It's a great idea, but there is a problem.