Revenge is a dish that is best served cold…

Much like Khan detonated the unstable doomsday “Genesis Device” in Star Trek II before his defeat at the hands of Captain Kirk and crew, Miami-based Psystar’s last deed may very well be to inflict as many casualties on Apple Computer as possible before it dies. (Photo: Paramount Pictures)

In two weeks, last April’s blockbuster re-imagining of the classic Star Trek series and characters will be available on Blu-Ray, on November 17th. Since buying my Blu-Ray player I’ve only bought a few HD discs, saving my purchases for those films I really am a big fan of and am likely to watch multiple times. Star Trek will be one of those films, and I can’t wait to see it again on my home theater system.

Still, the ultimate Star Trek movie for me will always be 1982’s Star Trek II: the Wrath of Khan, which was released in restored Blu-Ray format this last July. I haven’t seen the newly restored footage yet but it’s definitely going to the top of my Netflix queue, if my wife can ever get through the first few seasons of Mad Men.

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Tony Maro, Linux Superhero

Tony Maro, CIO of EvriChart, a hospital records management and archiving business, successfully migrated his company’s Windows-based line of business document management extranet application and his employees’ 40-odd Windows-based desktops to a 100 percent Linux-based server and desktop infrastructure.

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Want to make Steve Jobs’ head explode? There’s a phone for that!

Many carriers and device manufacturers have claimed to have iPhone-killers. They tried and failed to unseat the giant, which has a huge following of users and a massive application store. But right now, at least in the United States, iPhone is tied to AT&T Wireless, which has been riddled with 3G coverage problems, much to the frustration of the company’s subscribers.

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You too can use the preferred OS of the maxi-zoom-dweebie

There are certainly ideal groups of people who are capable of moving towards a 100 percent Open Source or Linux environment in both their professional and personal lives. I’m not really interested in discussing the political and ideological aspects or why someone would want to make that choice.

The greater and more important question is, who CAN switch to Linux?

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I Love a Shiny New Reptile.

In my last reviews of openSUSE 11.1 and openSUSE 11, I had a number of stability issues with KDE 4.0 and 4.2 which led me to stick with the GNOME interface. However, there had been numerous reports on various mailing lists and community discussion forums that KDE 4.3 is now the fully “baked” version of 4.x, so I wanted to give KDE 4 a go again. I’m glad I did.

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That Bear is Seriously High on Eucalyptus

Koala looks like it’s going to be a nice release, I’m looking forward to the final version with all the various buglets and glitches I’ve encountered all cleaned up. For those of you who like to be on the bleeding edge, definitely give the beta a whirl.

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Stallracasaurus Rex

While RMS’s hatred of all things proprietary has fueled the FSF’s and GNU’s mission to create Free software alternatives for what seems like eons, the overwhelming desire for interoperability between open and proprietary systems makes his narrow-minded Cretaceous world view ripe for extinction.

As I have said in previous columns, I live as a citizen of two distinct worlds with diametrically opposing software development ideologies — the world of Microsoft, Windows and 3rd-party vendor developed proprietary software and systems, and that of Open Source and Free Software.

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Best Buy: Dress all the sales reps up like Dumbledore!

My colleagues Mary Jo Foley and Adrian Kingsley-Hughes wrote today about the plans that Microsoft has in place to train retail sales staff at Best Buy how to position PCs with Windows 7 for prospective systems buyers against Apple’s Macintosh systems and of all things, Linux.

This sort of grassroots negative campaigning against the Mac and Linux is really not the way Microsoft should address buyers in the upcoming year and holiday season. Just like negative political campaign advertising and grassroots door to door stomping, it often leaves a bad taste in everyone’s mouth and comes off as completely without class. Worst case, it has even been known to even backfire as a campaign technique. From the perspective of effective sales and marketing tactics, at best I would classify this as bottom feeding.

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Snow Leopard Coulda Been a Contenda

I have said on numerous occasions that Apple has missed the boat when it comes to enterprise adoption. This is sad, really, when you consider how good an operating system Mac OS X really is, in that it is the only UNIX-based OS that really could have had any chance in displacing the status quo of Windows and Microsoft hegemony in large enterprise environments with a “full stack” for end-user acceptance as a desktop OS. Consumers may enjoy its niche status, but In the enterprise, Apple is a “Coulda Been” contender of unfulfilled potential.

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Who is this company and what did you do with the old SONY?

As covered by ZDNet Assistant Editor Andrew Nusca in his Live Blog today, SONY announced the immediate release of two brand new e-Readers, the “Touch” and the “Pocket”, as well as pre-announcing for the holiday season a larger format, 3G wireless-enabled 7-inch “Daily” that will compete with Amazon’s Kindle DX.

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