Jaron Lanier’s broadside against “open source religion” in Discover Magazine was well-timed. The turn of the year, and the evident turning of an era, offers a great time to see the success, and possible excesses, of the open source ideal with fresh eyes. Lanier first came to prominence through virtual reality, which has become both more and less than he anticipated, through the interplay of commercial and open source models. Lanier’s VPL Research, created to commercialize his immersive 3D technology, went nowhere fast, and its patents were eventually acquired by Sun. Yet non-commercial development kept his ideas alive, and elements are seen in such things as flight simulators and Second Life. There’s an interplay between entrepreneurship and shared research, in…

In the Talkback section of my earlier post on XP versus Vista adoption (Who’s choosing XP over Vista?), several commenters pointed to a PC World Techlog post by editor Harry McCracken that they believe contradicts my conclusions. Here’s what Harry had to say: On January 30th, Microsoft released Windows Vista to consumers, who have been adopting it in ever-growing numbers. But those numbers have been creeping along rather than rocketing: As of now, Vista … is used by 14 percent of visitors, while 71 percent use Windows XP… How much of an accomplishment is it for a new version of Windows to get to 14 percent usage in 11 months? The logical benchmark is to compare it to the first…

I got middle-seated again- in the back row - courtesy of Delta Airlines.  Not only that, we sat on the tarmac for 2 hours waiting for the “traffic” to clear (heh?).  So I got thinking about some of the things in life that irritate me….. Being middle-seated - in the back row LinkedIn invitations from people I don’t know, or will ever have the need to know Being middle-seated - in the back row Bacardi (ugh) Victoria Beckham Basketball…the first 59 minutes Bowflex infomercials Being middle-seated - in the back row People who talk incessantly about themselves Stale coffee in airports Hotel room service charges Bluetooth headsets Just being middle-seated Taxis with no A/C Taxis that smell Being middle-seated The…

Here’s an easy prediction to make. In 2008 the media will gin up a “war” between Red Hat and Ubuntu for “control” of Linux. It’s already started. The latest distribution of Red Hat Fedora, Fedora 8, is called “an assault” on Ubuntu at MadPenguin. If by assault you mean potentially better, worthy of comparison and interesting, then please sir may I have another assault? The new Fedora 8 has improved support for notebooks, for gamers, and for programs like PulseAudio. These are good things, and it will be interesting to see how Ubuntu raises the bar in 2008. But we are still talking about open source code here. Open source improvements are not proprietary, they benefit everyone. That’s the idea. Another way in which…

In short, no there wasn’t a big virtualization story in 2007. In my view, there were many. The market for virtualization technology is dynamic and growing. I’ve been watching well over 100 different companies or communities that have been trying to push things forward. Interesting announcements appeared concerning every layer of virtualization technology. It’s hard to pick out a single announcement I’ve seen go by and just know that there will be a “yes” answer to the question, will this announcement will be seen as a critical step five years from now? In any case, I’m looking forward to the exciting events that I just know will happen in 2008. Have a great New Year!

Sometimes when I fly, it just drives me nuts when flight attendants make an announcement about turning on your “Palm Pilots.” Well, they don’t make them anymore. The only pilot you are likely to see aloft is on the flight deck, getting ready to dodge that big cumulonimbus by flying around it. We hope. That’s my rather wordy way of introducing our most-read (and most commented-on) post of the year: Clueless flight attendant to passenger: Turn off that iPhone movie NOW! The flight attendant in this true story didn’t know that the Apple iPhone allows movie watching in airplane mode. No risk in captain-to-tower communication. But because this flight attendant probably was technology illiterate, well, the post title tells what…

The IT word for 2008 will, I think, be either “continuation” or “consolidation” as existing trends become more obvious to more people and little new enters the market. Herewith, however, some predictions I hope not to be apologizing for next December. At the top of the list of continuations is SCO. No matter how the legal action pans out, it will continue to dominate direction setting in the Linux community - and until or unless IBM gets its collective head straight on the issue and cleans house, the polarization this case has led to will continue to undermine Linux legitimacy. Oddly, however, the number one Linux influencer for the year may turn out not be SCO, Torvalds, IBM or…

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  Seems that after “Cathy” realized that her boyfriend seemed to care more about checking BlackBerry messages in bed than devoting his undivided attention to her, she reports that their relationship is in the process of ending. Maybe, as Boston Globe freelancer Alison Lobron writes, the seeds of what sounds like a breakup was planted after Cathy’s boyfriend checked his BlackBerry during post coital-cuddling. “The BlackBerry-to-bed scenario reflects a widespread difficulty: how to separate oneself from technology,” writes Lobron. So dude let’s see you take your BlackBerry out on New Year’s Eve. Meanwhile, Cathy will be out with her girlfriends, calling you a weirdo.

Pinstack BlackBerry forum member marian_h writes that he (she, perhaps?) has been a BlackBerry user for the last two years. After two years of BB ownership and use, marian_h makes a post listing nine suggestions for future BlackBerry feature development: Don’t shut off the red led light for new alerts after a while, let the user shut it off to acknowledge the alert Alarm Utility - More then one alarm, more snooze options, unlimited ringing option Postponed Events and Task by a number of minutes you select when they come on, preset snooze times are lame Add birthdays and Anniversaries to contact, synchronize with outlook Phone numbers with extension are not showing in the caller ID with the name associate with…