Ah, life, liberty and the pursuit of ... a notebook computer battery that last more than a couple of hours, if that.

Oh, there have been promises made in the past, but most of them have proven to be little more than wishful thinking. But there may be hope, dear friends, and in the near future, thanks to methanol.

The IDG News Service reports that Samsung, the South Korean electronics giant, has successfully developed a direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC). These cells mix methanol with air and water to create power. Samsung wants to use the technology to develop "long-lasting" batteries for electronic devices like notebook computers and mobile telephones. Samsung says these new batteries could last up to ten hours without a charge.

So when will this brave new battery world be upon us?

DMFCs for smaller devices like mobile telephones or PDAs are being developed now and are expected sometime within the next one to three years, according to estimates from companies developing the technology.

Meanwhile in Redmond....

TechWeb reports that Microsoft pulled a bit of a shocker this week: it posted source code under the Open Source Initiative's Common Public License. (For my mom, et al., this means Microsoft freely shared 'some' of its proprietary code, which is equivalent to Scrooge McDuck sharing one of his nickels.)

The source code posted to the Internet was for a tool set, dubbed WiX for Windows Installer XML, that targets developers building Windows installation packages from XML source code. These are the same tools that Microsoft uses internally to create installers for its products, including Office, SQLServer, and BizTalk Server. Code for the tool set, which consists of a compiler, linker, a library tool, and a decompiler, has been posted to SourceForge.net, a hosting site for open source projects and code.

A Microsoft employee, Rob Mensching, explained on the SourceForge site that several years ago most people inside Microsoft didn't understand "what the Open Source community was really about," so he "wanted to improve that understanding by providing an example."

Hmm. I think the European Commission's recent decision to fine Microsoft $613 million dollars for breaking EU competition law, and the numerous other lawsuits that the Redmond company still faces in the US (and Japan, and elsewhere), provided a much clearer example to Mr. Gates and Mr. Ballmer of the benefits of embracing the Open Source movement, even in this relatively mild way. (by Tom Regan)