Triplesourced

That old adage about 'My Enemy's Enemy Is My Friend" might have something in it. I have never had much respect for Bill Gates before but if this is what we can expect from post-Microsoft Bill then hats off to him - who else in the word can literally afford to say what he likes to anyone:

Bill Gates urges Silvio Berlusconi to put aid before beauty

Silvio Berlusconi's hair transplant took centre stage today when it was ridiculed by Bill Gates during a blistering attack on Italy's poor foreign aid record.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/28/bill-gates-silvio-berlusconi-hair

When the iPhone was launched one of the criticism leveled against it was that it was just too slick for its own good - literally. Cases of the phone flying out of a user's hand like a greased banana did the rounds. As an iPhone owner, slippage hasn't been a major problem but it has certainly happened a few times - certainly more than any other phone I have held.

Now what concerns me about the iPad is that it is similarly slick but a lot heavier and as a result more prone to damage I suspect. I guess the device is meant to nestle on your lap - like a book - but it still feels like it will be slightly unwieldy - like using half a laptop. It's surely going to be quite hard to interact with the thing without covering it is greasy fingermarks - or is Apple planning the same kind of perspex case that I have for my iPhone? There must be some kind of screen protectors planned as that big flat screen looks like a magnet for scratches and scuffs - but maybe I am just more careless than the average gadget fan.

After just receiving my second invite to a Champagne-fueled IT launch for next week - is it safe to assume the recession is over?

Microsoft is promising champagne at lunchtime to mark the launch of Windows 7 next week, and if lunch-time boozing wasn't indulgent enough - Dell is hosting a champagne breakfast later in the week to launch something or other (lost interest after the mention of champagne)

Google claims the recession is over too this week and it's hiring again - and along with US banks making obscene profits once more - those nasty old-days of questioning the ethics of capitalism and progress may be safely behind us.

The news has just broken that the European Commission is about to kick-off a protracted investigation into Oracle's purchase of Sun Microsystems. EU authorities are concerned about the implications for the open source database MySQL owned by Sun.

An analyst I just spoke to reckons that the EC fundamentally doesn't understand open source or it would realise their is no real threat to MySQL as the community will simply fork the platform if it thinks it is under threat from Oracle.

Full story on its way.