One of the biggest problems for the current crop of gadgets, as outlined in The Digital Camera Fights for Survival, is that to keep people buying the gadgets, you have to continue giving people reasons to do so.

For example, I've been using my mobile phone for four years - why didn't I upgrade? Because I couldn't see a reason to do so. Even now, the only reason I upgraded was because my original phone was going wrong. Hardly a compelling reason for everybody. The same is true of Digital Cameras. My old one was 3 years old before I replaced it recently, and I can't see me changing it any time soon.

I've got three machines on my desk right now, not one of them is from what you would call a traditional supplier of PC equipment, and yet each one is capable of running an amazing range of operating systems, including those from major competitors.

Case in point, two of the machines are from Apple (a Mac Book Pro and an iMac). They are capable of running OS X, Windows, Solaris and Linux.

Also on the desk is a Sun Ultra 20M2 that I have on test at the moment (see Ultra 20M2 Arrived). That runs Solaris, Windows and Linux.

I've got three machines on my desk right now, not one of them is from what you would call a traditional supplier of PC equipment, and yet each one is capable of running an amazing range of operating systems, including those from major competitors.

Case in point, two of the machines are from Apple (a Mac Book Pro and an iMac). They are capable of running OS X, Windows, Solaris and Linux.

Also on the desk is a Sun Ultra 20M2 that I have on test at the moment (see Ultra 20M2 Arrived). That runs Solaris, Windows and Linux.

Last week I posted about Virtualization pitfall warning, and now I've just found this survey result story here at Computerworld: Survey: Interest in server virtualization overstated.

The headline is that while 38% or respondents said they would try virtualization within a year, the reality is that less than half of those would actually go ahead and do so.

The article also goes on to point out virtualization, even taking into consideration the current hardware virtualization options in CPUs from Intel and AMD, and software-based solutions like VMware, it is currently more of a buzzword and less an active principle and that it'll take some time before it becomes more popular and mainstream.

Last week I posted about Virtualization pitfall warning, and now I've just found this survey result story here at Computerworld: Survey: Interest in server virtualization overstated.

The headline is that while 38% or respondents said they would try virtualization within a year, the reality is that less than half of those would actually go ahead and do so.

The article also goes on to point out virtualization, even taking into consideration the current hardware virtualization options in CPUs from Intel and AMD, and software-based solutions like VMware, it is currently more of a buzzword and less an active principle and that it'll take some time before it becomes more popular and mainstream.

Asterisk have announced an updated version of the Asterisk PBX, an open source, VoIP solution. I've written about Asterisk many times, and I've never failed to be impressed by the quality or the feature set.

If you are still unfamiliar with the technology, there's a detailed exposition of the software and it's abilities in Throw away your PBX: Why Asterisk may be the VoIP future of your network and Asterisk 1.4 unveiled.

Asterisk have announced an updated version of the Asterisk PBX, an open source, VoIP solution. I've written about Asterisk many times, and I've never failed to be impressed by the quality or the feature set.

If you are still unfamiliar with the technology, there's a detailed exposition of the software and it's abilities in Throw away your PBX: Why Asterisk may be the VoIP future of your network and Asterisk 1.4 unveiled.

There's an interesting piece on the 10 Programming Languages You Should Learn Right Now.

The article compares the number of available jobs against the different programming languages. There's an interesting mix here, and four of those quoted are directly open source, including the big three (Perl, PHP and Python) and of course Ruby.

My only criticism of the article is that it quotes AJAX as a language (it isn't, it's a technology, and you can do AJAX with Javascript and just about any backend language you like); and Ruby on Rails is a web environment for Ruby, and probably shouldn't be considered as a different entity (they both get the same ranking).

There's an interesting piece on the 10 Programming Languages You Should Learn Right Now.

The article compares the number of available jobs against the different programming languages. There's an interesting mix here, and four of those quoted are directly open source, including the big three (Perl, PHP and Python) and of course Ruby.

My only criticism of the article is that it quotes AJAX as a language (it isn't, it's a technology, and you can do AJAX with Javascript and just about any backend language you like); and Ruby on Rails is a web environment for Ruby, and probably shouldn't be considered as a different entity (they both get the same ranking).

I've been criticized on my post yesterday (HP head does the decent thing) for not calling what has happened at HP 'incompetence'.

James Earl, who commented this fact, has some other strong opinions on what should have happened, and I don't in any way disagree with him.

Incompetence is not the right word though; Incompetence implies that HP don't have the skills to do the job properly.

What the chairwoman did here was not incompetent, it was malicious, AFAIK illegal, and well executed, if , as we'll all agree, very badly thought out. What the board did when they found out was not incompetent either, it was instead the comparatively typical response for a group of people who's responsibility is to the shareholders and the company. As I mentioned yesterday, those shareholders hold a significant amount of sway in any company.