Best of the blogs: Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer and Eric Schmidt declaring that the war is over and that they’ll jointly develop all products moving forward — that’s merely the beginning of Ephraim Schwartz’s list. Others unwanted events range from video ads to too many friends sending photos to him via cell phones, and it even includes one non-techie item regarding the next Super Bowl and all its hoopla. Oh yes, and Apple dropping the iPhone price again, “thus obligating the entire blogosphere, including me, to fill the world wide Web with millions of words of worthless commentary.” Top 10 things I don’t want to see happen in 2008. Open source: Now that a bootable 4 GB Flash Drive boasting Mandriva is available, Martin Heller gives it a run. “The general idea is that you can take this little memory stick with you and be able to run Linux from it,” Heller writes in this Strategic Developer post. Trying it on a new laptop and an old desktop, he found it worked on one system, albeit after configuration issues, but not on the other. The first of a few hurdles, of course, is getting the computer to boot from the flash drive. In the end, Heller notes, “it’s a reasonable portable desktop system for casual Linux users, which might be more convenient than carrying around a Linux Live CD and a separate flash drive.” The news beat: The Apple patches keep on comin’ with a new round fixing Mac OS X and a Safari beta, and marking the company’s 35th and 36th updates this year. Sprint-Nextel names Dan Hesse as its new CEO; the former head of AT&T Wireless and Embarq replaces the resigning Gary Forsee. An Intel-backed group will receive a WiMax license in Japan, according to reports. And a presidential hopeful in Taiwan says he will push for looser tech-transfer, specifically referring to the exchange of chipmaking technology to China. Software Development