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[NOTE FROM THE M.E. For over two decades, I've made a living in one way or another from being "the Windows guy." And in recent months, what you've been seeing from us at Betanews has been Windows 7, Windows 7, Windows 7 -- at one point, ten times in a row. Last month, I concluded our ongoing series about my picks for Top 10 Features in Windows 7. And I received a number of letters from folks who claimed that Linux did this first, or already did that several years ago, or does this better.

Really, now? Well, perhaps so. To find out for sure, I've commissioned a new Betanews series that seeks out whether, for features that Microsoft touts as supreme or new or of special value, similar functionality exists in some form or fashion for users of Linux client operating systems. To make sure I get a fair answer on this -- one that isn't biased in favor of Windows -- I've asked our Angela Gunn, who has more experience with Linux than I, to start digging. And to make sure she's digging in the right place, we've asked Jeremy Garcia, founder of LinuxQuestions.org, one of the Web's leading Linux user communities, to lend his voice to our evaluation. You and I are about to find out, once and for all, the answer to the musical question...]

All throughout the testing phase of Mozilla's Firefox 3.5, we've been tracking the often very granular, very minor speed tweaks that developers have been making to the browser -- a one percent improvement here, a two percent dip there. And some of our readers have been wondering why. With computers that are already fast enough for many consumers, will it matter much that Google Chrome completes some operations in two blinks of an eye versus Firefox's three blinks?

We posed those questions to two of Mozilla's browser engineers: Senior Director for Platform Engineering Damon Sicore, and infrastructure developer Vladimir Vukicevic. Their answers include items we can share with you directly, and demonstrate to you explicitly.

A fire that started at around 11:15 PDT Thursday night has taken a wide assortment of Seattle businesses, media outlets, and government services offline. It's believed that a fire in a data center at Fisher Plaza set off the automatic sprinklers, which in turn soaked the generators.

A partial list of affected businesses in Seattle shows the importance of the Fisher vault, which is located near Seattle Center and the Space Needle. (Grey's Anatomy fans will believe it to be the location of Seattle Grace.) The payment service provider Authorize.net was knocked out; that company has set up a Twitter account to keep clients posted as they work their way back online. Adhost.com is also offline, right down to the phone system.

In a comically blatant display of bravado this morning, George Hotz -- who gained fame last year as the first to post an unlocking utility for the new Apple iPhone -- has unveiled a new utility that he claims enables iPhone 3G S users to download, install, and utilize the applications of their choice, outside of Apple's and AT&T's control.

In so doing, Hotz -- who uses the handle "GeoHot" -- publicly paraded his prowess in front of Dev-Team, the independent group of iPhone developers who had been racing to produce a similar tool for this latest model. Complete with poor punctuation and curious references to "holes," Hotz wrote, "Normally I don't make tools for the general public, and rather wait for the dev team to do it. But guys, whats up with waiting until 3.1? That isn't how the game is played. We release, Apple fixes, we find new holes. It isn't worth waiting because you might have the 'last' hole in the iPhone. What last hole...this isn't golf. I'll find a new one next week."

Seattle nerds are hereby ordered to appear in costume and with a canned-food donation in Fremont at 6:00 pm PDT today (Friday) to help set the world record for largest gathering of lurching zombies. (Zombies and silly world-record attempts: It doesn't get geekier. Xbox 360's even co-sponsoring, for pete's sake. Also, BRAAAAINS!) The pyrotechnicans among us are enjoined to keep safe.

Federal judge admonished (and that's all) for explicit material on personal site

The largest commercial communications satellite ever has been launched. The Terrestar-1 from Terrestar Networks lifted off from the ESA (Europe's equivalent of NASA) aerospace center in French Guiana on the northern coast of South America.

The satellite's network will operate in two 10 MHz blocks of contiguous MSS spectrum in the 2 GHz band throughout the United States and Canada with a footprint that covers a population of nearly 330 million. The company will offer both wireless broadband and voice services which will improve inconsistent rural coverage and dead zones throughout North America. Connection to the satellite, however, requires a clear line of sight with the southern sky.

The fact that Microsoft will continue to offer consumers multiple versions of Windows when the company's new Windows 7 premieres on October 22, continues to stick in the craw of many who doubt there's any real demand for a less-than-complete edition of the operating system. Retailers continue to require a three-tier marketing approach, although Microsoft's choice of the name "Home Premium" this time around to refer to the lesser of its good/better/best tiers, continues to raise eyebrows.

But the questions about what's so Ultimate about "Ultimate" have only resounded more loudly, especially after CNET's Ina Fried brought the issue to a head early this morning. Since the only two differences that Microsoft's Web page mentioned between the Professional and Ultimate editions are the inclusion of BitLocker drive encryption and the multiple language pack (typically included with Windows' business licenses), prospective customers are asking what it is that makes Ultimate really worth $120 more than Professional.

In his SyScan presentation in Singapore today, Mac security expert and Pwn2Own 2009 champ Charlie Miller discussed a vulnerability on the iPhone that allows remote code execution through SMS, which can tap into an iPhone's GPS or microphone, to divulge the phone owner's location or eavesdrop on them. Phones that have been compromised can also be used in a botnet or DDOS attack.

Miller is reportedly working with Apple to patch the vulnerability, so he did not go into great detail about the methods of exploitation. However, Miller did say, "SMS is a great vector to attack the iPhone...The iPhone is more secure than OS X, but SMS could be a critical vulnerability."

After nearly three years in development, Oracle yesterday officially launched Fusion Middleware 11g, its vast enterprise middleware suite, and kicked off the related "100 Days of Innovation" campaign, where the company will travel the world to show off the massive amount of new services contained in this release.

In the course of Fusion 11g's development, Oracle acquired more than 50 companies, and pulled in some 2,000 individual software improvements as a result. When you have a middleware platform as all-encompassing as that, unity among the platform's different services is critical to success.

European wireless network operator O2 has reportedly reached a deal to exclusively carry the Palm Pre in the UK. O2, a subsidiary of Telefónica, is Britain's largest wireless carrier, and has a similar exclusivity agreement with Apple for the iPhone.

UK paper The Guardian reported last May that O2 was vying for an exclusive agreement with Palm for the Pre, and that competition with rival carrier Orange was fierce.

For anyone still burning a torch for Windows Vista, its time is rapidly approaching. Buy now or forever hold your peace.

I can't say I'm surprised at how any of this has turned out. After all, Vista's launch was, to be charitable, rocky. When it first arrived just before Christmas 2006, it was late, bloated and, for some, expensive. It may have looked pretty on the outside, but critics quickly pounced on it for driver incompatibility, sluggish performance on mainstream -- and sometimes even high-end -- hardware and enough bugs to fill a family-sized tent on a weekend camping expedition. Microsoft didn't help matters with its ill-fated "Vista Capable" designation -- a public relations debacle that convinced buyers who were too lazy to read the fine print that Vista would run just as well on hardware barely suited for XP.

As first reported by Dow Jones this morning, the ongoing technology infringement battle between DVR pioneer TiVo and Dish Network has only entered yet another new chapter. A federal appeals court early this morning granted Dish Network's request for a stay of an injunction that would have barred the continued sale and use of Dish's DVRs, after a district court ruled last month they infringed upon TiVo's patents for timesharing technology.

The stay does not mean that Dish is out of the woods. An appeal of last month's decision was inevitable, and courts will typically delay injunctions pending appeal, even if it ends up that the appeal is upheld.

The first of the month always brings a bountiful harvest from Google's blogging troops, and two posts yesterday pointed us to some nifty changes to Gmail's labels features and passed along some cheerful numbers concerning spam levels as measured by the company's Postini group.

With one notable exception, those who rely even moderately on Gmail's labels ought to like where things are going. The section is finally positioned above the chat area, for starters, and your labels can be easily grouped and rearranged for your convenience rather than only in alpha order. (Gmail attempts to help you out by picking a few to put at the top of the list, hiding the rest, but we found that it didn't guess well at all; fortunately, sorting it out was drag-and-drop simple.)

Not only do people in your vicinity fantasize about smacking you for that annoying "Play The Funky Music" ringtone you've been rocking since dirt was invented, ASCAP says that every time your phone rings, you're executing a public performance of the tune. And they want money.

ASCAP -- the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers -- has advanced the matter to (PDF available here) Southern New York's District Court, suing AT&T and Verizon over royalties the group says are due for content using music. That can mean, as ASCAP tells its members in a statement on its site, "delivery of full track songs, music videos, television content, ringtones and ringback tones." In other words, if your phone audibly rings, you've entertained someone and now you must pay.

How far would you go to save a life?

How far would you go to save a business model?