Columnist’s corner: A new bandwidth breakthrough, one capable of changing the ways humans behave, comes in the form of three words: polymer integrated circuits. “So what do you think will happen when technology delivers 1Gbps Ethernet bandwidth over the Internet?” Ephraim Schwartz poses that question in this Reality Check installment. Well, at least according to Third-Order Technology CEO Hal Bennett, the killer app will be videoconferencing. “If Bennett is right,” Schwartz explains, “in the future, thanks to truly high-speed connectivity, we will be totally satisfied with the videoconference experience. And, because our level of satisfaction is taking place at a subconscious level, we won’t even know why.” Hint: Marshall McLuhan’s work in the 60’s, right alongside psychologist Paul Ekman’s theory of micro-expressions.The news beat: Security researchers at SkyRecon Systems say that Microsoft will patch the Windows password flaw today, Patch Tuesday; the hole affects Windows 2000, XP, 2003 Server and could permit attackers to access passwords on a victim’s PC. Sony demos Transfer Jet, a system it claims is faster than USB at close range, and wireless. EMC points its Clariion AX4 directly at SMBs and their growing storage needs. And as Mitchell Baker steps down, Mozilla gets a new CEO: John Lilly, the current chief operating officer.Show of the week: Highlights from CES 2008. Quoteworthy: What if Red Hat, JBoss, MySQL, SugarCRM, MuleSource, Hyperic, Alfresco and Zend all woke up tomorrow and told the market they are going to offer great OSS products and proprietary/gated access to other (OSS or OSS-based) products. The reason for doing so, as these vendors would explain, is to capture a higher percentage of revenue from the user base who is receiving a lot of value from OSS today. The additional revenue would be used to fund further product development, both for the OSS product and for the proprietary/gated access product. The extra revenue would be invested in growing the company, thereby expanding the reach of OSS in general. Now, OSS purists would claim that these vendors are trampling on the true vision of OSS. But, wouldn’t the average user benefit from better products that reached a wider user base? — Savio Rodrigues. Clearing up my views on OSS, part 2 of 2. Software Development