Microsoft fears that if applications increasingly reside on the Internet, rather than on the desktop, all that is needed to gain access to them is a browser and a basic operating system.

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For five years smart companies have been incorporating those social technologies into their basic enterprise operating system.

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In the summer of 1975 a Harvard junior, Bill Gates, drove to Albuquerque and with his friend Paul Allen started a company, Micro-Soft, to write an operating system called BASIC for the Altair 8800.

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One market-research firm, IDC, went so far as to say that Windows 8 did more than fail to revive the PC market it actually turned off users with changes to basic elements of the widely used operating system.

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After some investigation, the problem appeared to be in the Linux network file system (NFS) kernel, the piece of the operating system responsible for some basic server functions.

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The NOR type needs to be ultrafast because it is directly connected to the central processing unit of a computer and stores its basic input-output system (the operating system used by the microchip that lies beneath user-interface operating systems, such as Windows).

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Another basic precaution against the small-fry hacker is to turn on security features built into the operating system, Winkler said.

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