With the rise of new, ultra-small netbook computers, Linux has a chance to make its case to consumers. Windows Vista usually won't fit on netbooks, XP already has one foot in the grave, and many netbook buyers may give Linux serious consideration when choosing what OS they want pre-installed. Microsoft says Windows 7 will target netbooks, but until that OS is released, the ball's in Linux's court.

Microsoft learned valuable lessons from the Windows Vista experience, even though the company spent much of 2008 pretending that nothing was wrong with it and that the market hadn't given it a fair shake.

Code maintenance is an important aspect of application development, one that is often ignored in favour of a faster time-to-market. For some applications, this may not pose a significant problem, since the life span of those applications is short or the application is deployed and never touched again. However, embedded systems applications may have life spans that are measured in decades, which means some early mistakes can result in significant costs later.

Microsoft showed off new Windows 7 innovations at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference this week. The focus was how the upcoming version of Microsoft's flagship product will make it easier for hardware partners to create new experiences for Windows PC customers.

Windows senior vice presidents Steven Sinofsky and Jon DeVaan rallied hardware partners, encouraging them to begin testing their current products and building new products on the application programming interface (API).

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Don’t miss SQL Server Magazine Connections Conference, the premier event for Microsoft developers and DBAs, in Las Vegas, November 10-13. Every attendee will receive a copy of SQL Server 2008 Standard Edition with one CAL.

Virtualization.info, the most popular and trusted news source about virtualization technologies since 2003, invites you to attend its premiere conference: the Virtualization Congress. On a truly independent stage, you’ll see the top technical speakers from the biggest industry players presenting real products, side by side with newest startups, who will be announcing for the first time breakthrough technologies. Join the entire virtualization ecosystem for three days and meet the people that are changing forever the way we deliver IT infrastructures.

View this web seminar to see how you can virtualize the connections between servers and storage creating a shared pool of resources, and is a flexible and highly available platform for consolidating SQL Server infrastructure. Thus seeing no degradation in performance and management is streamlined making this an ideal solution for mission-critical SQL Server databases running SAP applications.

Join Microsoft for the 2nd Annual Microsoft BI Conference from October 6-8th in Seattle, Washington. You’ll gain insight from industry thought leaders; learn about how other Microsoft BI customers are having success; discover best practices and gain product insight from Microsoft’s product experts. Visit www.msbiconference.com for more information.

IndyTechFest is the premier Developer/DBA conference in Indianapolis. Hosted by IndyPASS and IndyNDA, this years' conference includes over 30 sessions to fill your day with training from product experts and Microsoft MVPs. Admission is free!

This two-day course will be most valuable to medical device software engineers, engineering managers, scientists, and quality engineers (particularly in product development). This course will also be beneficial to quality assurance and regulatory affairs personnel who are new to the industry or their current position and do not have an in-depth knowledge of Medical Device Software requirements.
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Complex, Trusted Systems (Guest Lecture by Professor Hal Abelson)

San Francisco is being forced to overhaul security measures on the computer network that controls data for its police, courts, jails, payroll and health services, as well as other crucial information, after the technology administrator entrusted with the system blocked access for everyone but himself last month and for days refused to reveal the password, even from jail.

Thousands of commercial passenger and cargo aircraft were thrown off schedule at dozens of U.S. airports today, Aug. 26, unable to take off or land on time due to a major shutdown problem with the Federal Aviation Administration's flight control network.

"The FAA is experiencing problems with the computer system that allows FAA air traffic facilities to exchange flight plan data around the country," FAA West coast press liaison Ian Gregor told me via email.

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Computer-maker Dell is attempting to off-load its computer manufacturing plants around the world, The Wall Street Journal reported in its Friday edition.

The company has approached contract manufacturers over the last few months offering to sell the plants, the newspaper reported quoting "people familiar with the matter."

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BlueThread Technologies -- an Ann Arbor, Mich.-based software company and the leading provider of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server-based enterprise content management (ECM) solutions -- has partnered with software maker K2 to create a SharePoint-based ECM solution package.