ArsTechnica Ovatio Awards posted

ArsTechnica has some year-end awards, the Ovatio Awards, online. With any type of awards like this, there will be plenty of arguments about what is missed and what should not be on the list.

I find it interesting that none of the Year's Biggest Stories section includes anything directly related to security. If I was making a list (maybe I will?), I can think of a number of important stories related to security that had or will continue to have a huge impact. They did choose "cloud computing" as Buzzword of the Year, which I think is a good choice and is definitely a big topic on security blogs recently.

I can't say I understand the choice of PlayStation 3 as Product of the Year, but I haven't been a serious gamer for years, which may explain why I own a Wii. In addition to being launched more than two years ago, the PS3 doesn't seem particularly innovative and the price makes it a tough buy for a lot of people. Still, ArsTechnica is fairly focused on gaming so it may make some amount of sense. It will definitely get a lot of page views and some comments in their forum!

The Hardware Trend of the Year, netbooks, is definitely a good pick. Really, it seems like this is something customers have wanted for years and companies just didn't realize that there would be a big market even where traditional laptop sales were strong. I know that my laptop philosophy has light weight higher on my priorities list than performance. I don't mind a laptop as a desktop replacement around the house, but I sure don't want to travel with it if I have a lighter option.

The pick of OpenSUSE as a Linux Distro of the Year surprises me, but that may just show that I haven't used it in years. It may not have been part of their criteria, but if I had to pick a distribution with the most community and end-user impact, I would definitely have to say Ubuntu. There is no other distribution besides possibly Red Hat that has had as much name recognition among my non-technical friends and acquaintances. My 91-year-old neighbor even tried running Ubuntu on a live CD for a while because he was thinking of ditching Windows.

I enjoy reading year-end articles like the one posted at ArsTechnica because it gets me thinking about the topics I thought were important or significant over the past year.

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