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Linux has no chance of catching Windows on the desktop, but many have held out hope it may overtake Windows when it comes to servers. But the latest figures from IDC show that's going to be tough to do, considering that Windows has just widened its already sizable lead over Linux on servers.

Oracle has just announced that they're making their own Linux and throws brickbat at Red Hat. If that sounds familiar, it's because they've done it before.

In the long run, Microsoft's Live Mesh cloud-based service may be, as my colleague Preston Gralla writes, the future of computing. But its current free beta incarnation feels like it was rushed out the door to take advantage of the troubled launch of Apple Inc.'s similar, $99-a-year launch of MobileMe service.

"Somebody messes with me, I'm gonna mess with him," says Robert De Niro, playing gangster Al Capone in one of my favorite movies, The Untouchables. That line popped into my head while reading Mike Manos' vigorous, occasionally-mulish rebuttal to my article last week with, admittedly, the rather provocative title, '6 reasons why Microsoft's container-based approach to data centers won't work' (and, yes, the even more goading kicker, 'Are you listening, Microsoft?')

Pilot fish is asked to write a script to keep an eye on a server at a remote site to make sure it's up and operational. The code says the server is down -- but management insists it's up and running.

IBM buying Sun is a done deal. But, what does that mean for Solaris and OpenSolaris? Java? NetBeans? Here are my best guesses.

Storage analyst Stephen Foskett took a look at the interior images of Apple's data center Mr. Jobs briefly flashed up during his WWDC presentation to tell us he thinks the iCloud runs on kit from HP, Teradata, NetApp and others, and wonders if Apple's gone to Oracle to help find the future for iCloud.

If you use a colocation service provider, it will reap all of the savings of your hard-fought consolidation. Most providers don't plan to spread the wealth around any time soon, so ask first.

I wonder if there is a tech exec "curse of the cover" somewhat like the curse of sports stars that end up on the cover of Sports Illustrated only to see their star start to fall?

Server shipments have been relatively flat over the last five years.

In the wake of massive layoffs and huge losses at Sun, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols attributes the compay's decline to its inability to decide key issues such as whether wanted to be a hardware or software company, an open source software company or a proprietary software company.

Here's a slightly different perspective on the carnage.

IBM's Roger Schmidt argues that replacing power-hungry air conditioning systems water-based cooling may be cheaper, and more energy efficient, and necessary to cool future data centers.

Some users like to sit on virtual servers that they're no longer using - just in case.

Our jobs, although technical by definition, are really about how we solve human problems in the workplace. The art of what we do lies in how we develop creative, technical solutions to workplace challenges. We're artists and, instead of paints or clay, our palettes consist of code, scripts, cables, servers, and routers. Oh, and an ability to communicate in meaningful ways with our users. This blog is about the human side of technologists' jobs.

This pilot fish writes a program to check activity on a particular server, then starts it up and leaves it running -- and learns a lot more than he wanted to.