When gale-winds blow and rain pours down Spain goes off-line. That happened to Southern Spain between December 15th and 27th. Several parts were inundated, those typical Spanish balconies got their battering, roofs collapsed and utilities were interrupted. People died. Much damage was done. On December 23rd our desert-region was hit by violent storms and the Internet coming from Granada-City was interrupted. When the light went up again I noted to my amazement that not all Internet had ceased, leaving truly a few dozen bits per second usable for some revealing experiments. However foremost it appeared how vulnerable one gets when relying too much on working in "the Cloud", using resources that are hosted on the Internet for applications that suddenly couldn't be used anymore. Some lessons to be learned?

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There come moments that you would tear your hair out when working with computers. Hardly two weeks before Ubuntu would launch its newest 'Karmic' release a technical problem occurred in our region, suddenly cutting the Internet and power. The combination and rapid sequence of events caused hard drive and caching failures. Bang! My two RAID-chained hard drives couldn't initialize Ubuntu's GRUB anymore. After having restored that using the LiveCD from my 'Jaunty 9.04' I found out that the DeskTop didn't show its panel, sound came mono and loud only and there were other tiny inflictions like a total loss of access-speeds. It looked worse than Vista. What was going on? That the Internet was down plays an important role to explain this! Whatever the case I had to work and needed my OS.
A reinstallation appeared inevitable. From this there is a lesson to be learned...

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Fiddling with the Gnome 3 Kernel reminded me of the time with Apple Computer, Inc., almost 30 years ago. Yes, the time of the 'largerly integrated system architecture' (LISA) that became the hallmark for the PC desktop and was so brilliantly exploited by Microsoft in its 'Windows' on its archeological MS-DOS operating system. Who remembers those days? Most of the guys working on the very first 'Lisa' and 'Mac' are retired, old or senile by now, some are dead. Time passes by, but so didn't our computer desktop. Did it evolve in those 30 years? Hardly. Microsoft added fancy graphics to its archeological products to pretend something 'new'. Apple took the pseudo-3D road looking over its shoulder to what SUN Microsystems were doing, particularly when their Project Looking Glass took on shape several years ago. Their 'Blue' theme (or engine?) seems based on it. Linux-Gnome with Compiz Fusion took a hybrid way adding 3D effects to its old-fashioned Windows imitation. Yes, I can be nasty when I speak about desktop evolutions. Then I wonder, was there any? However, should we reinvent the wheel? Is our current desktop such a wheel?

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It always happens when you're off guard. On holidays for example. When you return home you are surprised by suddenly changed laws, unexpectedly raised taxes and the arrival of a pile of bills as if the world is afraid not to get hold of your money anymore. But also technology announcements during the Summer months are worthwhile to evaluate. The world is changing, so does the IT world it seems. In an excellent blog article Reinout Meier Mattern recently exposed the connection between Microsoft, Mono, Gnome 3 and Ubuntu 9.10. Not truly 'news', but his inference is clear: us await a 'coup'! A transition from PC based software to Internet based application with Browsers as Operating Systems. However how far can you go? Is this what people want and what about Linux that surely will overtake Windows with its multitude of personal distros and free software?
So: where do we go in 2010?

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