Then he noted the recent introduction of Atom, Intel's highly power efficient processor for mobile devices.  "I discussed with (CEO) Paul Otellini a few months ago that we'd been working on low power processors for quite a long time. " He noted at  Atom's big rollout  "there was no mention of the very smart people who worked for years" on research related to its development.

"There were at least three attempts to sell the company on a low power IA (Intel Architecture)," he recalled, starting in 1999 when a group of researchers undertook "significant work" to come out with much lower power versions of the Pentium line to as little as a few watts. "It was reviewed by the senior staff, but didn't make the cut," Rattner said.

Work on the Atom began in 2004 and Rattner said he's gratified it's been so well received -- finally.

"We believed in the idea wholeheartedly," he said.  "It's a clear example of a long term, persistent research effort ultimately having a big payoff. We believe Atom is the fastest CPU in the sub-3 watt space."

He then traced similar long haul efforts to when vPro and work on WiMax was started -- 2002 and 1999 respectively.  He said Intel had a vision for fixed and portable mobile connectivity superior to cellular back in 1999. WiMax "didn't just fall out of the sky" he said.

Giving new tech a chance

Later during a Q&A session Rattner said in year's past some technology would end up on a shelf for years "because no one on the product side took a look at it." He said in recent years Intel's changed the way research presents its ideas, now interacting more with business product managers to see what's viable. "The hit rate has gone up dramatically," he said.

So is Rattner bitter that some of the research efforts took so long to see the light of day? I didn't get a chance to talk to him afterwards, but at a minimum, it sounded to me like he wanted to be sure the research crew at Intel got some overdue love for its accomplishments.

Nathan Brookwood, Research Fellow at Insight64, said Intel, like most other large tech firms, work on projects that will never see the light of day.  "It's useful for a company the size of Intel to have programs going on because you never know when they'll need it."

He noted that Intel didn't appear to make a big push into lower power chips until after Transmeta burst on the scene.  "Nobody at Intel was interested in low power in 1999," he said.

Except a group of researchers.

"We're putting the patent issue to rest with the settlement of patent litigation involving Firestar Software, Inc. and DataTern Inc. that provides broad protections not only for Red Hat customers, but for the larger open source community, " Red Hat spokesperson Kerrin Catallozzi wrote in an email to InternetNews.com.

Under the settlement, customers receive a license that grants a perpetual, fully paid-up, royalty-free, irrevocable worldwide license to the patents in suit to engage in any and all activities with respect to Red Hat products. Customers also receive a perpetual covenant not to sue with regard to all of DataTern's and Amphion's other patents on claims related to Red Hat products. The settlement will therefore provide a defense that should prevent DataTern and Amphion from bringing similar suits against any Red Hat customer based on use of a Red Hat product.

"Before filing these lawsuits, we contacted both companies and gave them the opportunity to remedy their violations privately, but they were continually unresponsive," said Aaron Williamson, SFLC Counsel in a statement. "When companies are contacted by SFLC or anyone else about a GPL violation, they need to respond by taking good faith steps toward compliance. If they do not, lawsuits like these are the predictable consequences."

The GPL is a reciprocal license requiring license users to make the software available to end-users. While BusyBox is a collection of Unix utilities that have been optimized for size and are most commonly used in embedded environments.

10. Plaintiffs have at no time granted any permission to any party to copy, modify or distribute BusyBox under any terms other than those of the License.

Considering their successful track record to date, I would think that it is safe to assume that it's only a matter of time till an out of court settlement is reached in these two new cases as well.

Well, in one corner of the economy that's become pretty important to anyone who hangs out on the Internet, the impact is less clear. Will a slowdown, contraction (anything but a recession!) hit the online advertising economy, that sublime necessary evil that makes all that content on the consumer Web free?

It's a great speculative debate, and today research firm IDC offered us some numbers suggesting that no, Internet advertising is doing just fine. IDC's figure: total online ad spend in Q1 2008 increased to $7.1 billion, up 24 percent from the first quarter of 2007.

IDC analyst Karsten Weide sides with the bulls when he argues that a collective belt-tightening means that advertisers are going to ditch the expensive traditional media in favor of the cheaper and hopefully more engaging online channels.

"What happens is that the current economic crisis puts pressure on advertisers to save money and find more effective marketing channels," Weide said. "Effectively, the crisis accelerates the shift of advertising budgets from traditional into new media."

That may ultimately be the case, but the print-to-digital shift won't be an overnight process. It seems likely that the immediate macro effect might be a decline in overall spending, which would then be followed by the shift that Weide described as advertisers assess and regroup.

But for the sake of sustaining all the content and services that are making our Web the hub of "free" content that is becoming, I like IDC's numbers.

Even with overall ad spending (all media) in danger of declining by as much as 7 percent this year, IDC looks for quarterly increases in online spending of 15 percent to 20 percent.

What does Mozilla - arguably the most popular open source project in the world - use for its telephony solution?

It shouldn't surprise you that they use a solution built in open source should it?

When I was at Mozilla's Toronto office - I made sure to check out all the 'flashing lights' and being an admitted geek I like to see what kind of phone systems people use (no I know nothing about phone phreaking....).

It looks like Mozilla uses an Asterisk phone system to connect their various locations. I've been following the Asterisk project for years and am always amazed to see it in use (yes I know it's 'boring' to some but I still find it interesting).

Mozilla developer Mike Beltzner answered my questions (or tried too..thnx Mike!) about Mozilla's use of Asterisk...check out the little vid below of the exchange.

I'm not part of the in crowd or the smart crowd, or the living crowd. All those crowds following the hype this weekend as the second generation Apple phone comes to market.

It's embarrassing to admit, and it's no reflection on Apple's savvy mobile device, but I just have no yearning to see it, touch it, play with it.

Heck if I didn't see the word iPhone again for a year I wouldn't miss it.

Am I suffering mobile device malaise? Or mobile device dysfunction? Or maybe just plain dysfunction?

The thing is I love mobile innovation. New technology stokes me.

So why doesn't the iPhone give me a thrill? I mean I'm a huge Macintosh person. If I was a huge music person I'd like be a Pod person.

Maybe it's the electromagnetic rays from the nearby cell tower doing brain damage.

Oh wait, I don't have any tower near me. Maybe it's standing in the rain talking on a cell phone that is causing my iPhone dysfunction.

The one thing I have enjoyed these past weeks have been those blog-fueled conspiracy theories about iPhone deliveries, or lack of deliveries, and sightings of Apple crates on loading docks around the whole issue on the dearth of the device in the past weeks.

That tweaks my twitch.

Is Apple hoarding first generation devices? Did they 'really' sell out or just pumping the market?

Will the first generation of iPhones disintegrate in users' hands instantly come Monday when the second generation goes live?

But then again conspiracy always intrigue me.

I mean really, who doesn't like a good conspiracy now and then.

I'm not saying those theories, or the supposed thought behind them, hold water. I'm just sick of the 'what will the next iPhone have' conversation.

A bigger screen? A smaller display? A bigger keyboard? A smaller keyboard?

Unless it has some 'beam me up Scotty' function that takes Steve Jobs to Mars right from his presentation stage, I can't get excited about it for some reason.

And no, before any Apple people come calling, I'm not wishing Steve an unexpected trip anywhere ok.

But come on. It's a phone. I like phones. I love innovation.

But yikes, the media overload on the iPhone arrival is more intense than CNN coverage on the change in smoke when a new Pope is named.

And who's to blame? Well, yes, the media. More likely the blogsphere.

I know what you're thinking. Stop reading about it. Right. I try.

But thanks to email alerts, RSS feeds and every other push-to-me technology it just keeps coming in waves.

I think I'll just take the Family Guy strategy.

I'll just sleep in very late Monday. By noon it will all be over.

Amazon.com, the Web's largest e-commerce site (well, not counting eBay) and a bellwether for the entire Internet industry, is experiencing technical difficulties.

Everyone, you are now cleared for mass hysteria.

Still Down.!!!!!!!

Still down. Rats. Any catastrophic event in Seattle?

Could have been DoS'ed? (denial of service attack)

This is what happens when you sell pre-orders of the MGS4/PS3 bundle.

Those are just a few samples of the user reactions on Digg.

It's not clear what the problem is. Amazon's seller forums carry only a terse statement from the company, calling the outage an "Un-Planned Event" [sic]:

We are currently investigating an issue that has impacted the availability of the Amazon.com website. Engineers are actively engaged in resolving this issue and we will provide an update once the issue is resolved. We appreciate your patience during this time.

It's a coarse abbreviation to say that their response was simply that the top-down model is still very much in effect, but I'm going to stick with it for our purposes here (for a fuller account of their discussion click here).

The most colorful moment of the panel came when a self-identified "IT guru" asked the panelists how they planned to adapt their new models of marketing to the older generation.

"I deal with a lot of people who are interested in the technology but find it inaccessible. The biggest problem is it's very complicated. And there's a generational gap," he said. An unspecified older generation "doesn't get Twitter," and while they might be able to wrap their understanding paw around a cable remote, DVRs and streaming video are a "mystery wrapped in an enigma." So how do you reach these aging consumers?

The panelists didn't get a chance to answer.

"We're going to die soon, they don't care," an audience member called out. Peels of laughter shot around the theater. "The people they want to sell stuff to are not me. You're talking about lounge acts. This is the main show."

Oh. Is that so?

"I don't know if anyone on stage can top that." -- Scott Donaton -- panel moderator and Publisher, Entertainment Weekly

"I'm glad you said it and not me." -- Gillian Sheldon, Supervising Producer, TMZ

"Oh my god, I love it." -- Charlie Walk, President, Epic Records

"We'll leave that as the answer." -- Donaton

A serious question that got a flippant answer. And that answer was from an audience member; no panelist wanted to touch the issue. Perhaps amid the boisterous mood of the room, no clear-minded address of that important issue -- whether an older generation will ever relate to new media, or if the media industry will simply chalk them up as a collateral loss in the digital arena -- could be found. Maybe outside that room, the panelists would have something more to say on the subject. Maybe, and I hope so.

GPLv2 is more compatible with more of our partners' licenses and community open source distributions than GPLv3 is today.. Pentaho could move the platform components mentioned above to GPLv3 at a later date, based on partner and community feedback.

Because the GPL is what's known as a "reciprocal license" it ensures that the software is open and remains open.