Ultimately, Apple may decide to lower prices, perhaps as much as 10–20 percent across the board. That should also result in some significant increase to market share without Apple having to seriously compromise quality. But Apple better be prepared to keep prices at those levels, and be satisfied with the margins at those prices—even after the economy digs itself out of the ditch. Apple can always be subtle about how it raises prices, but it won't go completely unnoticed.

Congress is back on the war path about file sharing systems that critics say make it a little too easy for consumers, businesses, and even government agencies to accidentally disclose confidential records.

"Peer-to-peer systems make it possible, and in some cases too easy, for people to share personal files," Davidson explained. "There is evidence on major peer-to-peer networks of users sharing very sensitive documents like their tax returns, inboxes, or check registers, certainly in most cases by mistake."

The experts call this "inadvertent file sharing"—sloppiness that exposes consumers to identity thieves. Basically, some newbies don't get that when they install P2P software, they need to be mindful of which of their computer folders are being shared (free advice: don't leave a PDF of your divorce settlement in "C:\Documents and Settings\User\MyDocuments" and let LimeWire read the folder).

"OLPC is excited to announce that a refresh of the XO-1 laptop is in progress. In our continued effort to maintain a low price point, OLPC is refreshing the hardware to take advantage of the latest component technologies," Watlington wrote. "We're excited to be finally able to make this news public. While members of the technical team have been working on this for several months, it was not until last week that we could with any certainty say that we were going to refresh the hardware and what that refresh was likely to be."

Finally, when Congress eventually turns to overhaul copyright law again, Samuelson and Wheatland have a final suggestion. "Congress might even want to reconsider whether statutory damages are serving a truly useful purpose in copyright law, given that the rules of evidence about proof of damages and profits are much less rigorous now than they were when statutory damages were first created and given how few other countries have statutory damage regimes."

In my former life, one in which the sermons of Bishop Lancelet Andrewes seemed inestimably important, the Modern Language Association's Handbook for Writers of Research Papers was my secular citation bible. MLA style reigns supreme in literature and various other humanities, so MLA's recent move to ditch its "print-centric" default style last month has been controversial. And URLs for Web content? They're gone too.

In its continuing efforts to experiment with new ways of handling its content, the BBC has started producing a monthly technology program that it will make available for download under a Creative Commons license.

But it's not so much the ready availability of this material that makes it a bold step forward, but the license under which it's released: the Creative Commons non-commercial attribution license, v2. As the accompanying Read Me file (complete with the old-school ASCII BBC logo) says, "you can watch, rip, redistribute and remix all the contents of this package." As long as you don't try making money from the videos, you're set.

The recording industry, no doubt gnashing its teeth at such research, will be even less pleased to note that it was all funded by Uncle Sam through a pair of National Science Foundation grants.

Zemlin also took advantage of the keynote to take less-than-subtle jabs at Linux's competitors. He showed one of Microsoft's recent commercials, which featured a cost-concious consumer buying a Windows-based computer to avoid the higher price of a sexier Mac. Zemlin remarked comically that this could be the first time ever that Microsoft has attempted to compete on price—a battle that Zemlin believes Microsoft will ultimately be unable to win against Linux.

Linux is the most affordable platform in the market, he argues, but it is also much more than that. He contends that Linux is altering fundamental assumptions about how software is built. From its humble origins as a technical experiment to its current-day role as the foundation of a massive ecosystem of free and commercial technologies, Linux has had a long journey and significant impact.

Mozilla has unveiled its roadmap for Firefox 3.6, which is codenamed Namoroka. This version, which will follow the upcoming Firefox 3.5 release, is expected to arrive in 2010. Mozilla has some highly ambitious plans for 3.6, including a new task-oriented user interface paradigm and deep integration of Prism-like rich Internet application functionality.

Jackson would not comment directly on what's in store for Gmail, though he did leave the possibility of a dedicated iPhone client on the table. From his responses throughout the interview, it sounds like we can expect a generally healthy pace of innovation. Google clearly knows it has an audience of power users who, Jackson said, "are representative of where all users will be in two years." You can expect Labs to be used even more for experimentation and prototyping of new features, and for Gmail itself to keep pushing the boundaries of not only e-mail, but modern communications.

Microsoft's has tethered Internet Explorer to long development cycles with huge changes. This strategy is driven in part by the fact that it has businesses to keep in mind; the company does not want to overwhelm them with frequent minor releases. The leaps Microsoft has taken between IE6 and IE7, as well as between IE7 and IE8, are arguably larger than those any other browser maker has made in its major versions. Now that it is back in the game though, Microsoft needs to step it up and start delivering more quickly. The progress that Microsoft's competitors are making—both in terms of features and standards—is still outpacing Redmond's development effort. To truly compete with Opera, Safari, Chrome, and Firefox, the software giant is going to have to match their release cycles—early and often instead of slow and steady.

Nuclear power is safe, affordable, and the waste problems are much more manageable than the public realizes. That was the take-home message from this year's American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Chicago, where a group of experts from the US and EU participated in a session called "Keeping the Lights On: The Revival of Nuclear Energy for Our Future."

Currently, the US lags behind Europe when it comes to new nuclear plants. There are several plants under construction across the Atlantic but, despite plans for 34 new light water reactors in the US, ground has yet to be broken on any of them. I'm not a betting man, but I'd be surprised if that remained the case a decade from now.