Ken “Caesar” Fisher of Ars Technica posts The earthquake in southeast Asia and you. The earthquake and resultant tsunamis in southeast Asia and beyond are devastating, but you can help. By caesar@arstechnica.com.
2004: A year of high-tech changes. “The year 2004 defied predictions: IBM sold its PC arm to a Chinese competitor, Oracle managed to swallow PeopleSoft, and — perhaps the most dramatic of all — Microsoft and Sun Microsystems aligned to make their products interoperate.” Source: InfoWorld: Top News. So begins the end of the year summaries, flashbacks and punditries. Brace yourself for two weeks of reviews.
Why NOT to Upgrade Your Linux System. Nathan Willis writes, over on NewsForge, “I’m not upgrading my Fedora Core 2 machine to Core 3, even though the new version has been out for a couple of months. There’s not anything wrong with FC3 itself, it’s just that system upgrades are both a blessing and a curse.” Link via OSNews
True of every operating system out there, machines tend to build up cruft over a period of time, and a clean wipe-and-reinstall are called for. However, the incremental difference between FC2 and FC3 can be addressed by careful upgrades of only those applications you need, rather than a haphazard upgrade from one distribution to another, I think
A Journalism Giant Retires. 
Dan Gillmor’s eJournal Notes “Bill Moyers has completed his last episode of NOW with Bill Moyers, a PBS program that looked in depth at critical issues… Moyers is a hero in journalism. He’s not always right, but he’s been asking the tough questions… He’s been especially tough on the press, which in many ways has abdicated its public trust in recent years. We need more voices like his, not fewer.”