It's that time of the week again, where Neowin takes a look back at all the recent front page news articles and goes over the top items. This week we take a look at the declining IP availability, Kinect hacks and the Facebook email service.
#5 Windows celebrates 25 years of computing
By: Alan Cone
Microsoft Windows turned the big 25 this year, celebrating a quarter of a century of computing. The evolution from Windows 1.0 to Windows 7, as we see today, has been astonishing. The blocky, colour-mismatch operating system has turned into one of the fastest selling operating systems in history.
Windows 1.0 launched with nothing more than an ugly GUI and came with very limited functionality. It wasn't for another 10 years that Microsoft finally had changed the world with Windows 95. So 25-years later, and this is where we are today. It will be interesting to see what Microsoft comes up with in another 25-years.
#4 A peek at Facebook's new @facebook.com email service
By: Tom Dwyer
Earlier this month, Facebook announced that they would be launching their email service to Facebook users - some 550 million - but with a twist. The service isn't an ordinary email service, but instead it acts like a regular email, but it also shows up under your Facebook account. The optional email allows for users to instantly get notifications through the website, allowing you to communicate in real time.
#3 Microsoft backflips on Kinect hacking
By: Matthew Jones
In the recent days since Kinect was released, hackers began their search for open-sourced drivers to use the product in others things than the Xbox 360. It only took three days for the first Kinect driver to become available, then the developers began swarming in. Shockingly, Microsoft isn't against the idea of developers making programs for the Kinect on the PC; they are actually enthusiastic that people have taken the device and made projects from it.
#2 7-year-old becomes web sensation over Star Wars drink bottle
By: Matthew Jones
A 7-year old became an Internet sensation after she was bulled at school for carrying a Star Wars drink bottle. The original story was posted on ChicagoNow, and quickly went viral over the Internet. Facebook and Twitter users began "liking" and tweeting the hashtag "#MayTheForceBeWithKatie" to support the 7-year old.
What did our readers have to say?
Drunken Beard said, "Owww, she's so cute :> Good for her 
"
Foub said, "I still have my Empire Strikes Back glass."
#1 The IPcalypse is only 100 days away
By: Owen Williams
For the last couple of years, we've known that this day would come. With our IP allocations quickly diminishing, we need to look past IPv4 and make the final switch to IPv4. The current protocol only allows 4,294,967,296 total addresses, which is quickly running out. IPv6 supersedes this number by a great margin, allowing everyone in the world to connect to the Internet. With so many devices requiring IP addresses, these is little room left. In a 100 days, we'll finally come to that point.
What did our readers have to say?
Swerz said, "If those companies are paying for those ip blocks then the ISPs can't really say much. It is terribly wasteful, indeed. I can see a lot of bandwidth issues happening with ISPs "renetworking" with shared public ips.
IPv6 needs to roll out harder. NetAdmins need to step up."
tiagosilva29 said, "It's time to pull the plug on IPv4."
