The Best of News Feeds #28

Round-up of stories that have recently found their way into my newsreader – here’s a selection of my favourites together with a one line comment.

Is Open Source really cheaper?

by Josh Lerner and Mark Schankerman: Open Source More Expensive Says MS Report

doperative writes on Slashdot: “”Much conventional wisdom about programs written by volunteers is wrong. The authors took money for research from Microsoft, long the archenemy of the open-source movement — although they assure readers that the funds came with no strings attached. Free programs are not always cheaper. To be sure, the upfront cost of proprietary software is higher (although open-source programs are not always free). But companies that use such programs spend more on such things as learning to use them and making them work with other software”…

Welcome to the 3rd millennium folks!

by James Chessell: Savvy net surfers brace for third wave

FEW industries can create and destroy wealth as efficiently as technology. And few companies demonstrate both sides of this investment equation better than Facebook. In a little over six years, Facebook has grown from an unknown startup based in Mark Zuckerberg’s Harvard dorm room to the world’s biggest social networking website with more than 600 million registered members…

I’ve been hearing this for years…

by The Australian: Web addresses drying up

With everything from smartphones to appliances and cars getting online, the group entrusted with organising the web is running out of the “IP” numbers that identify destinations for digital traffic. The touted solution is a switch to a standard called IPv6 that allows trillions of internet addresses, while the current IPv4 standard provides a meagre four billion or so. “The big pool in the sky that gives addresses is going to run out in the next several weeks,” said Google engineer Lorenzo Colitti…

Despite the ban one can still buy beer in Madang!

by Stephanie Elizah: Madang liquor ban to be reviewed

LIQOUR ban imposed on businesses in Madang is into its ninth month with pressure mounting from private and public sectors to lift the ban and allow for business to earn income. Since imposing the ban last May, the provincial government has lost over K150,000 in internal revenue; however, a source at the provincial headquarters said the loss in revenue had not impacted on the province’s budget…