A pair of talented google researchers discovered a flaw in the linux kernel affecting 2.4 and 2.6 trees for all architectures.

This was of significant consequence this week for our organization as we prepared and then proceeded to patch a large amount of systems.

Mass defacers are quickly taking advantage of unpatched systems at a rate quicker than we’ve ever witnessed as a web hosting provider — quicker than distribution vendors such as red hat were able to audit, test and release their packaged kernels.

These experiences can show both the strengths and weaknesses of an open source foundation, which can in some cases feel like the wild west of early American history.

A recent article speaks for itself.

As a long time InfoWorld.com reader when it was print, then converged to online, this is about as bad as IT journalism can get.

*Delete* from the bookmarks.

For those of you who spend time around me, you are used to the REI water bottle I carry around 24/7. A few weeks ago I was using an older bottle and it made a mess in my bag, destroying my macbook pro.

My options were to wait 2-4 weeks for it to dry out and hopefully start back up, pay a $1250 flat rate water repair fee to Apple, or buy a new unit.

Recently we’ve been huge fans of the Apple refurbished store. Brand new units discounted as high as 30%. I was able to locate a MBP / 2GB / 128GB SSD for an extremely reasonable price point. I had never used an SSD drive in a desktop and figured it would be a good change, plus I could take my 4GB memory kit out of my failed MBP and put it in the new unit. (An extra bonus was the refurb unit was mislabeled and actually came with 4GB).

To keep it short and sweet, I’ll never go back to a desktop that isn’t running an SSD drive. What a night and day experience, particularly when needing to cold boot Parallels/Windows for those apps that won’t run on OSX.

A few days ago the failed MBP had reached its 4 week point and I tried booting it up again — to my surprise all is well, just needs a new battery.

As the months and years progress SSD will likely be the defacto standard for mobile computing based on my initial experiences.