As these pages go to print, I notice that we have reached issue 147. The number 147 might not seem particularly noteworthy to the rest of the world, but I noticed it. You see, the first issue with my picture on page 3 was issue 48, and if you count by ones from the beginning of the issue 48 cycle to the end of the issue 147 cycle, you get to 100 issues. This number 100 is always good for a milestone moment in our base 10 universe. Celebrating a numeral is not so important on its own, but having these reasons to look back can provide some context for looking ahead into the future – or looking around at the present.

Use these advanced troubleshooting techniques to save lost Windows and Linux systems.

Let’s see. I need to write something for the Welcome column. I guess eventually it might get posted online, which means I’m writing something for the new web.

Getting Linux and Windows 8 to work together requires just a little know-how. We help you get started.

• Community Edition of ownCloud Released
• Phusion Releases Passenger Enterprise 4
• VMware Announces Micro Cloud Foundry Changes

Linaro announces the formation of the Linaro Enterprise Group (LEG). Linaro is a not-for-profit engineering organization that develops open source software for ARM architecture.

I’m looking at another crop of press releases and marveling at the ever-expanding market for products that fall under the ubiquitous heading of Big Data. Big Data is everywhere. (Or is it Big Data are everywhere – to reprise that classic quandary?) Gigantic file storage appliances from vendors like Oracle and HP and software tools like Apache Hadoop continually add new building blocks to the data infrastructure. And the goal of all this? Apart from more conventional uses for scientific modeling and analysis, one of the reasons for this huge interest in accumulating data is a phenomenon known as data mining, which Wikipedia defines as a process that “attempts to discover patterns in large data sets.”

Building a botnet doesn’t necessarily make you an outlaw; we show you how one programmer automated a timesensitive business application with a botnet. Next, get ready to hit the ground running with HTML5, and secure your websites with sound PHP programming principles.