The depth of Microsoft loathing among our clan is perhaps only second to our penguin loving. This loathing makes sense, given that Linux and open-source people are so fiercely merit driven, and great products have failed to end Microsoft's hegemony. But times they are a changin', for a post-Gates, post-Microsoft age has already begun.

Does a system with dual Quad Core processors, 128GB of RAM, and a Tera-Byte RAID array seem pretty tame to you? Does writing a program with a dozen threads seem about as complex as an abacus to you? Does a database with a million records seem like something you'd put on a USB memory stick? Do you know who John Backus was? Are you cleared for ridiculous by the US Government?

If you don't get the title, you're probably too young to get the rest of this. If you don't know who John Backus was or what his contribution to computer science was then you're also, probably, too young.

We Linux folk are the reliable early adopters of innovative applications like Skype who have done a disproportionate amount of work to make it popular. The gift horse we've gotten in return is a usable but much less feature-rich version that is years behind the other platforms.

The popular social bookmarking site Reddit announced yesterday that their code would now be open and free for scrutiny and contribution from the community. Citing transparency and giving back to the community that has given them the tools to build Reddit, they encourage users to visit http://code.reddit.com and participate.

We're having a few Linux Journal readers over to the office tonight at 5:30pm CDT. We'll talk about Linux, maybe exchange some tips and have good time (think Wii). We may even get a special guest or two. If you can't join us in Houston, join us online!

Everyone's favorite Linux Journal Editor Doc Searls has been in the hospital suffering from pancreatitis with complications this last week. He'll be the first to tell you he'll be fine, but some well wishes never hurt anyone.

I'm about to travel which usually means getting my ASUS Z3300 ready to travel. While it is less than perfect (mostly because of its small keyboard) it is the right size for a trip. The only real irritation I have had with it is the synaptics touchpad. Or, more accurately, the tap to click feature. It just doesn't seem to be compatible with the way I type.

Ever wonder why a guy like me writes all these articles, pens all these books, gives talks at trade shows, universities, or appears on radio and television. It's not the fame and glory (there isn't much anyhow). No, it's something entirely different.

I've been doing some research on browsers for an article about Firefox and have uncovered some pleasant surprises.

I needed an FTP client that would resume a put. I had been using a firefox plugin but it isn't available for firefox 3 yet. I had also used Kftpgrabber which works but is (newbies beware here) hard to use because it has a GUI instead of being a nice, clean, easy-to-use command line.

Webware for Python 1.0rc1 is out there with, in theory, the real release to follow soon. That may be wishful thinking as version 0.8 was released over five years ago but let's hope it does happen.

So, what is it? From the web page:

Goosh.org is a Google interface that behaves similar to a UNIX shell. You type commands and the results are shown on the page.

ls

will list all of the working commands. For instance, I can:

video linux journal

to get search results that feature all LinuxJournal.com videos or

wiki linus torvalds

Just thought I'd give the Flock browser a little love here since it hasn't gotten any yet here in our pages. Though I have just begun to test out Flock and will share more of my experiences, my initial impression is that it is cool and flexible.

http://my.barackobama.com/page/s/techinterest?foo

You must have:

* At least 5 years of professional web development experience
* A deep understanding of LAMP development processes and best practices
* Experience building complex applications using PHP and MySQL