The little boy behind me was really excited about his first airplane trip. When the plane started to take off, he gave a very loud countdown to “blast off!” It was refreshing to hear that much enthusiasm, particularly because air travel has become a “magic elevator” for me. The doors close in one location and open in another, but I have little excitement in the journey, only the destination.

In our September issue, I wrote about mentors – specifically, how someone could find one.

My town has one cable company. One or two other options exist for high-speed Internet service – some (but not all) locations support DSL through the phone provider.

Linux usage and adoption poised for further growth.

Additional paper from Ibrahim Haddad added to the foundation's collection.

• IBM Announces Blade Center HX5
• InfiniteGraph Launches Free Program for Technology Startups
• Pliant Introduces New SSDs
• Harris Launches BeOn Push-to-Talk
• Texas Instruments Announces Power Line Development Kit and Software Library

Midwives battling bureaucracy, parties fighting against the general public’s lack of interest, and users needing to synchronize their data – here are three open source tools that attempt to solve the problems of the world.

maddog reflects on events from the early days of Linux and why you can’t always trust your memory.