Silverlight looks better by the Moonlight, Jul 12, 2007

... while not every geek was delighted about a Microsoft technology appearing on Linux, many of them aren't too keen on the rival Adobe Flash system, either.

... in an SEC filing, TiVo says: "If the currently proposed version of GPLv3 is widely adopted, we may be unable to incorporate future enhancements to the GNU/Linux operating system into our software, which could adversely affect our business."

An industry giant could drive support for Ogg, but why would they bother? What's the profit margin on free?

Dell's latest launch has really taken off. Unfortunately for Dell's crumbling profitability, it's a website called IdeaStorm, not a new PC. IdeaStorm is designed to get ideas and feedback from Dell users, and the mechanism is much the same as Digg: people make suggestions and everybody votes for the ones they like best.

I want to get a new PC, whilst if possible avoiding "lock in" to suppliers of hardware or software. I was thinking of a Linux system, but I have some DOS and Windows programs I'd like to retain, and I'm too short of time and brainpower to become technically involved.

The rest of the open source world will either react with hostility or try to do similar deals with Microsoft - or both.

"We are not anti-open source," says Martin Taylor, Microsoft's general manager of competitive strategy. In fact, he makes a point of hiring people with Linux and open source skills for his R&D team and Linux lab.

According to ITV's director of technology operations and infrastructure, Nick Leake, the company is moving most of its servers to Linux and would like to move its desktops too, although it plans to standardise mainly on Windows XP and Citrix for the next five years.

"We had servers that had cost hundreds of thousands of pounds only a few years ago," Leake says. "We took them out and replaced them with (Linux) servers with half as many processors, and the hardware cost of those servers was less than the hardware maintenance bill of the ones we were taking out. And with half as many processors, we were getting a 20-30 per cent performance gain. The economics of that are quite compelling."