Some people have difficulty remembering their painful mistakes. Not me: At the drop of a hat, I can call up any number of past gaffes in excruciating detail. And if I leave out the best (worst) parts, some longtime friend... Some people have difficulty remembering their painful mistakes. Not me: At the drop of a hat, I can call up any number of past gaffes in excruciating detail. And if I leave out the best (worst) parts, some longtime friend or acquaintance always manages to keep me honest.This week’s featured article, “Tech’s all-time top 25 flops,” is dedicated to keeping the technology industry from losing its collective memory about its biggest blunders. If a good lesson comes from a mistake, you’ll find a Wikipedia’s worth of education in this gallery of gaffes. We have everything from ancient IBM products to disasters ripped from today’s news feed.As you may imagine, contributing editor Neil McAllister had all kinds of snarky fun putting this story together. And he had no shortage of suggestions from us, some of which he was more enthusiastic about than others. The top disaster of all time was the source of greatest contention, of course, but I won’t spoil it for you. Neil did a terrific job despite our interference. If you think he missed some obvious flops, don’t hesitate to let us know by commenting or sending e-mail to editor@infoworld.com. We’d like this chronicle of goofs to be as complete as possible. After all, what doesn’t embarrass us to death can only make us stronger. The rescue of Windows XP When we launched our Save Windows XP campaign last week, we had no idea what to expect. At InfoWorld, we feel strongly that Microsoft should keep XP alive past the June 30 deadline, mainly because businesses should have a choice: For some, the switch to Vista may make perfect sense, but for others there are bigger priorities with much greater ROI. Apparently many of you feel the same way. At last count, more than 40,000 people around the world have signed our petition. By the time you read this, I can confidently predict that thousands more will have done so. If you haven’t taken the few seconds required already, sign up here. Remember, we will present Microsoft with a list of petitioners verified by their e-mail addresses, but we will never send the e-mail addresses themselves to Microsoft. Keep your malware off my Mac For years, Mac users have scoffed that end-point security was something for Windows users to worry about. But as InfoWorld senior writer Matt Hines makes clear in “Apple growth will draw malware attacks,” it’s time for Mac users to wake up and smell the malicious code. No, nothing has reached epidemic proportions yet. But as the Mac’s market share rises, evildoers shall follow. After all, that’s human nature. Technology Industry