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I heard that cnet news has an article about the same Sony Airboard, which is a wireless web pad with a 10-inch touch screen that also doubles as a television and a remote control for other appliances. The Airboard will be introduced in Japan on December 1. Interesting, but judging by the picture, it's not entirely flat, so it will be more of a counter-top appliance, rather than a knee-top.

There's also an article on cnet about the same thing

Somedays, it just ain't your day.

I heard that cnet news has an article about the same Sony Airboard, which is a wireless web pad with a 10-inch touch screen that also doubles as a television and a remote control for other appliances. The Airboard will be introduced in Japan on December 1. Interesting, but judging by the picture, it's not entirely flat, so it will be more of a counter-top appliance, rather than a knee-top.

There's also an article on cnet about the same thing

Somedays, it just ain't your day.

To which supposed monopoly are you referring? If you're referring to the supposed OS monopoly then how is MSN Explorer leveraging that? It has nothing to do with Windows. If it's a monopoly of Internet client software you're referring to, then I'd defer to the numbers on that: AOL has 23 million members vs. MSN's 3 or so million (despite being on the desktop since Windows 95).

"

First they were announced in 1997 to be released in mid 1998.

Then they were "on track" for volume shipments by the end of 1999.

Now they finally have some of them in products in late 2000.

Very impressive. Heck, weren't we supposed to have UltraSparc IV's by now?

For anyone interested in reading some other news and viewpoints on the announcement, check out articles in VNU net, PC World and Cnet.

Supposedly, Sun is (was?) having a hard time ramping up production of the higher-speed Ultra Sparc III's (heh, kinda like Motorola & their 7400 (aka G4)), so they were planning on selling several of the lower-speed models (like 550-650MHz) on Ebay. (Here is a CNET News.com link that confirms possible eBay sales...)

IBM has an protein folding intiative called Blue Gene that was reported on back in Dec. 1999.
CNet's article is here, and IBM's is here.

Look, the market right now for technology is getting weaker and weaker. IPOs are shaky business... some are venturing out (such as AvantGo), but others, such as say transmeta, which are plan nin g an IPO really need to bolster how they look to investors. By claiming a potentially false lead over other chip makers in technology, you try to put in the minds of potential investors that transmeta is a long-term investment.
Most strategists are done with the dot-coms. Stocks need to have some semblence of real world value in order to survive. Without much technology to speak of other than "we are another AMD", which has not been a wall street killer until this year, they need to project the image of a long term strategy.
Its all about business. This is just one facet of it. Keep in mind who is publicly traded and who wants to be
--jay

Sun rises with new generation of servers and introduces the UltraSPARC III Wednesday

Enjoy!

to the CNET story (which is actually from Bloomberg News but fairly content free AND from the 18th)

--meredith

CNET Article
For those who dont want to cut & paste

Sun has just "announced" J2ME (Java 2 Micro Edition), which they of course hope will be the next standard.

The standard is called the mobile information device profile (MIDP) and will be in mobile phones from Motorola, Nokia, LG Electronics, Nextel and NTT DoCoMo.

Story on java.sun.com.

Story on News.com

**** The Fish License Sketch ****
**** Transcribed 4/18/87 from Monty Python's Previous Record ****
Man (Cleese): (whistles a bit, then) Hello. I would like to buy a fish
license, please.
Postal clerk (Palin): A what?
Man: A license for my pet fish, Eric.
Clerk: How did you know my name was Eric?
Man: No, no, no! My fish's name is Eric. Eric the fish. He's an halibut.
Clerk: What?
Man: He is an halibut.
Clerk: You've got a pet halibut?
Man: Yes, I chose him out of thousands. I didn't like the others, they
were all too flat.
Clerk: You must be a loony.
Man: I am not a loony. Why should I be tarred with the epithet 'loony'
merely because I have a pet halibut? I've heard tell that Sir Gerald
Nabarro has a pet prawn called Simon - you wouldn't call him a loony!
Furthermore Dawn Pathorpe, the lady showjumper, had a clam called
Stafford, after the late chancellor. Alan Bullock has two pikes, both
called Chris, and Marcel Proust had an 'addock! So if you're calling
the author of 'A la recherche de temps perdu' a loony, I shall have to
ask you to step outside!
Clerk: All right, all right, all right. A license?
Man: Yes!
Clerk: For a fish.
Man: Yes!
Clerk: You *are* a loony.
Man: Look, it's a bleeding pet, isn't it? I've got a license for me pet
dog Eric, I've got a license for me pet cat Eric.
Clerk: You don't need a license for your cat.
Man: I bleedin' well do and I've got one! Can't be caught out there!
Clerk: There is no such thing as a bloody Cat License.
Man: Yes there is.
Clerk: No there isn't.
Man: Is!
Clerk: Isn't!
Man: I've bleedin' got one, look! What's that then?
Clerk: This is a dog license with the word 'dog' crossed out and 'cat'
written in in crayon.
Man: The man didn't have the right form.
Clerk: What man?
Man: The man from the cat detector van.
Clerk: The loony detector van, you mean.
Man: Look, it's people like you what cause unrest.
Clerk: What cat detector van?
Man: The cat detector van from the Ministry of Housing.
Clerk: Housing?
Man: It was spelt like that on the van. I'm very observant. I've never
seen so many bleedin' aerials. The man said their equipment could
pinpoint a purr at four hundred yards, and Eric being such a happy cat
was a piece of cake.
Clerk: How much did you pay for this?
Man: Sixty quid and eight for the fruit-bat.
Clerk: What fruit-bat?
Man: Eric the fruit-bat.
Clerk: Are all your pets called Eric?
Man: There's nothing so odd about that. Kemel Attaturk had an entire
menagerie called Abdul.
Clerk: No he didn't.
Man: Did!
Clerk: Didn't!
Man: Did, did, did, did, did and did!
Clerk: Oh all right.
Man: Spoken like a gentleman, sir. Now, are you going to give me a fish
license?
Clerk: I promise you that there is no such thing. You don't need one.
Man: In that case give me a bee license.
Clerk: A license for your pet bee.
Man: Correct.
Clerk: Called Eric? Eric the bee?
Man: No.
Clerk: No?
Man: No, Eric the half bee. He had an accident.
Clerk: You're off your chump.
Man: Look, if you intend by that utilization of an obscure colloquialism to
imply that my sanity is not up to scratch, or even to deny the
semi-existence of my little chum Eric the half bee, I shall have to
ask you to listen to this. Take it away, Eric the orchestra-leader.
Eric Idle: A one, two, a one two three four!
Man (sings): Half a bee, philosophically, Must, ipso facto, half not be.
But half the bee has got to be Vis a vis, its entity. D'you see?
But can a bee be said to be Or not to be an entire bee
When half the bee is not a bee Due to some ancient injury?
Singing.
Chorus: La dee dee, one two three,
Eric the half a bee. A B C D E F G, Eric the half a bee.
Man: Is this wretched demi-bee, Half-asleep upon my knee,
Some freak from a menagerie? No! It's Eric the half a bee!
Chorus: Fiddle de dum, Fiddle de dee, Eric the half a bee.
Ho ho ho, tee hee hee, Eric the half a bee.
Man: I love this hive, employ-ee, Bisected accidentally,
One summer afternoon by me, I love him carnally.
Chorus: He loves him carnally, Semi-carnally.
Man: The end.
Clerk: Cyril Connolly?
Man: No, semi-carnally!
Clerk: Oh.
Chorus: Cyril Connolly. (Whistle end of tune.)

This News.com article has quite a bit more information on the VisorPhone, including a picture.

This News.com article has quite a bit more information on the VisorPhone, including a picture.

"However, in the long term, Sun expects to move Cobalt's products over to
Sun's UltraSparc CPUs and its Solaris operating system, Schwartz said."

If you look at this cNet article, you'll find that Forrester Research has announced that the DCMA is doomed in their attempts at blocking Free Music.

(Normally I would use 'No Score +1 Bonus' for this post, but Taco has decided that my karma is too high, so go ahead and mod me down to 1)

No. This problem affected small customers as well. And this solution proposed by Microsoft still doesn't help them. The only reason they changed their agreement was because the large customers had the voice and pocketbooks to make life difficult for MS. The smaller businesses don't have the ability to do *SQUAT*.

Sure the small businesses can go and put on whatever software they please...just don't let any auditors get close to them...or that company will be toast.

Here's a quote from the CNET article on it if you're curious:

But the company's new position, as posted on its licensing Web site, does not include small businesses or other companies with fewer than 500 licenses

The article is here.

What you are referring to is IBM and Dell's intention to begin offering wireless networking in their laptops later this year. Apple has been shipping its built-in Airport wireless networking for over a year, having debuted with the original iBook last summer. Every Mac made today comes with a built-in Airport antenna and is ready to accept the optional $99 Airport card. Like Apple's Airport, both IBM & Dell products will be based on the same 802.11 standard, but cost significantly more than the Apple products. Here's the story you probably read.

It is because Corel Linux is currently #3 in sales and by next month should be number 2. The stats given in the article was from Dec 99. Corel Linux was only released in Nov 99 so obviously it did not have much of a market share in Dec. Since then Corel has launched WPO2K-L, CD9-L, PP9-L and CLOS SE. Since Corel is after the desktop and RedHat is in the server market it is hard to compare. Here are the IDC stats from Jul 2000

Retail sales in July 2000 - Source: PC Data With a 32,966-unit-sample selected by PC Data

1 - Linux-Mandrake: 31,5%

2 - Red Hat: 24,9%

3 - Corel: 23,0%

4 - TurboLinux: 8,4%

5 - SuSE: 6,1%

6 - Caldera: 4,3%

The only reason Mandrake has these numbers is that it is bundled with MacMillan's books. I can tell you that I have their cds in one of the books I bought but they have never been used. If you could find out what people actualy have installed I am sure that Corel would fair better. Now if I can find these stats why can't the rest of the media? Here is IDC for Feb and Nov

Linux®: US RETAIL MARKET SHARE PCDATA RETAIL

Revenue - Share_____Feb-00 _____ Nov-99

Red Hat________ 40.4% _____ 58.5%

Macmillan _____ 19.6% _____ 21.5%

Corel ________ 19.3% _____ 2.3%

S.U.S.E. _____ 7.1% _____ 0.7%

TurboLinux _____ 4.1% _____ 1.1%

Caldera _______ 3.0% _____ 6.9%

The CNet download stats are interesting also. While downloads don't directly translate into revenue they are a good indication of popularity, brand recognition and potential upgrade_apps sales. Total download stats from CNet show:

Corel Linux (since Nov 99) 307,840

RedHat (since Mar 98) 334,857

Caldera 39,495

Mandrake 86,505

SuSE 5,946

WordPerfect 8 for L PE (since Dec 98) 1,134,190

Star Office PE (?) 160,644

If you look at the monthly trend this year you can see that CLOS is more popular than RedHat by 30% and WP almost 350% more than Star Office.

Summary since 30 Apr 00

___________________WP84L_____CLOS_______RedHat____ ____Star Office

27-Aug________________ 5,610______ 3,188_______ 2,728______1,634 weekly snip

25 Jun - 16 Jul_________21,730_____13,304 _____12,501(monthly total)

28 May - 18 Jun_______27,318_____19,573 _____15,106

30 Apr - 21 May ______25,900 _____24,805 _____15,512

Totals________________107,149______81,478_____61 ,103 BTW the above story is just a rip off of a CNet article of 31 Aug Red Hat holds huge Linux lead, rivals growing By Stephen Shankland It also cited these 'recent figures from IDC.

It is because Corel Linux is currently #3 in sales and by next month should be number 2. The stats given in the article was from Dec 99. Corel Linux was only released in Nov 99 so obviously it did not have much of a market share in Dec. Since then Corel has launched WPO2K-L, CD9-L, PP9-L and CLOS SE. Since Corel is after the desktop and RedHat is in the server market it is hard to compare. Here are the IDC stats from Jul 2000

Retail sales in July 2000 - Source: PC Data With a 32,966-unit-sample selected by PC Data

1 - Linux-Mandrake: 31,5%

2 - Red Hat: 24,9%

3 - Corel: 23,0%

4 - TurboLinux: 8,4%

5 - SuSE: 6,1%

6 - Caldera: 4,3%

The only reason Mandrake has these numbers is that it is bundled with MacMillan's books. I can tell you that I have their cds in one of the books I bought but they have never been used. If you could find out what people actualy have installed I am sure that Corel would fair better. Now if I can find these stats why can't the rest of the media? Here is IDC for Feb and Nov

Linux®: US RETAIL MARKET SHARE PCDATA RETAIL

Revenue - Share_____Feb-00 _____ Nov-99

Red Hat________ 40.4% _____ 58.5%

Macmillan _____ 19.6% _____ 21.5%

Corel ________ 19.3% _____ 2.3%

S.U.S.E. _____ 7.1% _____ 0.7%

TurboLinux _____ 4.1% _____ 1.1%

Caldera _______ 3.0% _____ 6.9%

The CNet download stats are interesting also. While downloads don't directly translate into revenue they are a good indication of popularity, brand recognition and potential upgrade_apps sales. Total download stats from CNet show:

Corel Linux (since Nov 99) 307,840

RedHat (since Mar 98) 334,857

Caldera 39,495

Mandrake 86,505

SuSE 5,946

WordPerfect 8 for L PE (since Dec 98) 1,134,190

Star Office PE (?) 160,644

If you look at the monthly trend this year you can see that CLOS is more popular than RedHat by 30% and WP almost 350% more than Star Office.

Summary since 30 Apr 00

___________________WP84L_____CLOS_______RedHat____ ____Star Office

27-Aug________________ 5,610______ 3,188_______ 2,728______1,634 weekly snip

25 Jun - 16 Jul_________21,730_____13,304 _____12,501(monthly total)

28 May - 18 Jun_______27,318_____19,573 _____15,106

30 Apr - 21 May ______25,900 _____24,805 _____15,512

Totals________________107,149______81,478_____61 ,103 BTW the above story is just a rip off of a CNet article of 31 Aug Red Hat holds huge Linux lead, rivals growing By Stephen Shankland It also cited these 'recent figures from IDC.

I'm also on the download.com mail list which gives out the top 10 downloads each week. ICQ has been in the top few each week for well over a year - AIM just doesn't feature. There's no way AIM is the most common.

that the experiment and the glitch are not related? Think about this, the original story states (paraphrased) "the difference between the price you paid and the lowest price offered" now.. if there were a "glitch" in the experiment that offered these prices to everyone on a couple of days, but normal prices on the other days of their experiment then, by their own statement, they would be refunding the difference between those 75% off prices and the rest of the orders placed on those items. Do you really think amazon is going to want to bite that bullet? I think they're trying to cover whats left of their a$$ as they watch their customer base dwindle like a pile of sand in a wind storm.

just my $.02 on that... on a seperate note... if you read the cnet article here amazon should NOT get away with this! If you walk into a store, see something priced for $20, take it to the register, it rings up for $20 and you buy it with your credit card. When the store realizes they had the wrong price for that item they, legaly cannot force you to pay what they feel was the correct price. Why should an online retailer be governed by different laws regarding prices, sales, bait and switch etc then a brick and mortar retailer?


BillyZ

Well, to (attempt to be) fair, the CNET article reports that there was both a test and a glitch. One might well guess that the glitch was a bug in code changes for the test. Also, the article says that the glitches led to lower prices, not higher ones. OTOH, Amazon was apparently demanding that people pay the "correct" higher price rather than the one they had agreed to pay or cancel their order.

A botch, to be sure. But not necessarily a cover-up.

Read the fucking article.


--

Check out the Review and Demo

Through a few links, found this interesting discussion :

Hacke rs don't upset TiVo--yet

Looks like the discussion started from this site :

The unofficial TiVo Hackers Site

And the fact that the CEO is _okay_ with it is pretty interesting. But what's kinda scary is this quote

"One of the reasons we've created the receiver the way we have is that the disk is sealed into the receiver; you cannot get access to the digital information. So we are somewhat concerned about the ability of people to hack in and get access to the copyrighted material because obviously our partners in the media industry are very concerned about this. "

What! A SEALED disk is what's protecting this information?! Okay, I'm sure this isn't the case (let's hope not!) but still, kind of a funny quote nevertheless ;) Also, I can see the following as a challenge don't you?

Q: So you're afraid that people will save a bunch of movies, then transfer them from TiVo to their computers and eventually the Net. How possible is this?
A: It's an incredibly difficult task. It's one thing to record what you see onto the TiVo drive, but the format on that drive and how you get access to that drive is totally proprietary to us. It would be very difficult for somebody to actually hack into that. And as far as we know, no one is doing that today.

-- .sig --

From the article

Hint, the link is there to remind you to read it

Microsoft defended the feature and pointed out that the vast majority of Web surfers already are knowingly vulnerable to the same level of exposure. "This feature has a trade-off, like almost every other feature on the Web--in this case, between functionality and a minor, potential privacy exposure" [...]

Not to rant, but I cannot understand how such specious reasoning would find its way out of the mouth of a Microsoft representative. How could they possibly argue that since users are already at much greater risk from other features/exploits, one more "minor" inconvenience shouldn't matter?

Clearly documented explanations of the security features that one can toggle in the Internet Options -> Security tab would be one thing, but the lack of context-specific, right-click help (try it and see) or even the word persistence in the indexed help file (search and see) is somewhat silly.

Why would I have to journey to the developer's corner (link lifted from article) to learn what features are present in my browser? Maybe it's time that end-users insist on better [more immediate] documentation from Microsoft, especially with regards to things categorized under the heading of security

ps - SlashDot still has its woes when dropping in long URLs. God bless the preview button

His name is Ed Reed, and he's a college student here at RPI. He's a sophomore and has no intentions of paying

Cnet's story

In short, a bit of URL hacking exposed their whole customer database. Dan Huddle (CTO of xanga.com) said: "What a spammer's dream!", commenting on the potential for abuse of that privacy breach.
Continuous coverage of butt-headed, idiotic eCommerce web page designs continues after these dotCOM messages.
---

See news article http://new s.cnet.com/news/0-1004-200-2458275.html?tag=st.ne. 1002.bgif.ni

Publius itself is at http://cs1.cs.nyu.edu/waldman/publius/

c|net's article has a little more information about the hack.

It was unclear whether the hackers obtained any personal account information. No fraudulent transactions had been reported by late yesterday [...] Only Web site users who conducted online transactions would have been affected. Company officials were using email, letters and phone messages to alert between 10,000 and 20,000 consumers to cancel their credit or debit cards and get new ones.

After years of hearing about them we can finally get a chance to see what the Crusoe can really do.

There was an article about this on CNET.com two days ago.

Sony's Transmeta-powered laptops to hit market next month

Hitachi has a Crusoe powered laptop coming out in November.

After years of hearing about them we can finally get a chance to see what the Crusoe can really do.

There was an article about this on CNET.com two days ago.

Sony's Transmeta-powered laptops to hit market next month

Hitachi has a Crusoe powered laptop coming out in November.

Another point to make in the US is why new laws are needed to "protect" computer companies when Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and others are widely known as the richest men in America, and 39 of the top 40 richest Americans under 40 are all techies. Where are all the sports stars ? Only Michael Jordan made it at number 40. Will the general public really support laws aimed at making them even more money ?

I know this is offtopic, but I have to post this:
http://new s.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-2723858.html?tag=st.ne. 1002.thed.ni
It's an article about Transmeta that DOES NOT mention Linus Torvalds!
What the hell is going on over at c/net?!?!
heh heh heh

"Don't try to confuse the issue with half truths and gorilla dust."
Bill McNeal (Phil Hartman)

They did the same thing with MP3 players three months ago.

-thomas

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."

Actually, I just tried visiting amazon via lynx with cookies disabled and got the lowest price (based on the new.com article that was mentioned earlier).

Either Amazon's killed the price variation mentioned (which might be good publicity to do with the mentioned items -- everyone'll read the article, check the items in question, and decide they must be getting the best price) or leaving cookies off gets you the best price (although I haven't tried to actually buy stuff with cookies off; it may not work).

Yet more reason to get the best price information and that layer of anonymity provided by those comparative shopping engines:

Pricewatch
My Simon
CNet Shopper

News.Com has a story on it -- a little more depth.


-Davidu

No, I think you have this backwards.I seem to recall the buyback being announced in articles serveral weeks ago.

8/17/00 Transmeta announces IPO . This article mentions the buy back so I don't know why this is new news. So does the VNUNET article that the spawned the slashdot discussion you linked to.

The IPO article predates Toshiba article. Perhaps Transmeta's board formally finalized the deal recently, but I suspect it is in their S1 filing.

So perhaps it sour grapes on Toshiba's part. IBM got cash and the fab business while Toshiba just got shares. They'll probably make money, but they could have made a lot more. This situation resembles when Apple cancelled the Mac cloning effort. That didn't exactly make them any new friends.

Software requirements and specs:

"Where do you want to go ...

Not only that, but the continues to persist is at least 8 mutations that the operating system doesn't stop. In case your selective ms memory has faded, allow me to quote the headline again:

Staff Writer, CNET News.com May 5, 2000, 11:55 a.m. PT

"The "Love Bug" computer virus has caused an estimated billions of dollars in damage and has disabled tens of millions of computers.

How you can watch all of this happen say that it's the mailservers fault for forwarding the virus is just beyond me.

Read this and tell me you still stand bhind your belief that ms doesn't deserve to take ( I believe all) some of the blame for the billions in lost productivity.

Not only that, but the continues to persist is at least 8 mutations that the operating system doesn't stop. In case your selective ms memory has faded, allow me to quote the headline again:

Staff Writer, CNET News.com May 5, 2000, 11:55 a.m. PT

"The "Love Bug" computer virus has caused an estimated billions of dollars in damage and has disabled tens of millions of computers.

How you can watch all of this happen say that it's the mailservers fault for forwarding the virus is just beyond me.

Read this and tell me you still stand bhind your belief that ms doesn't deserve to take ( I believe all) some of the blame for the billions in lost productivity.

Not only that, but the continues to persist is at least 8 mutations that the operating system doesn't stop. In case your selective ms memory has faded, allow me to quote the headline again:

Staff Writer, CNET News.com May 5, 2000, 11:55 a.m. PT

"The "Love Bug" computer virus has caused an estimated billions of dollars in damage and has disabled tens of millions of computers.

How you can watch all of this happen say that it's the mailservers fault for forwarding the virus is just beyond me.

Read this and tell me you still stand bhind your belief that ms doesn't deserve to take ( I believe all) some of the blame for the billions in lost productivity.

Not only that, but the continues to persist is at least 8 mutations that the operating system doesn't stop. In case your selective ms memory has faded, allow me to quote the headline again:

Staff Writer, CNET News.com May 5, 2000, 11:55 a.m. PT

"The "Love Bug" computer virus has caused an estimated billions of dollars in damage and has disabled tens of millions of computers.

How you can watch all of this happen say that it's the mailservers fault for forwarding the virus is just beyond me.

Read this and tell me you still stand bhind your belief that ms doesn't deserve to take ( I believe all) some of the blame for the billions in lost productivity.

Overall I agree with your well thought-out (esp. for an empty stomach) post Jeff and there's a couple of points I'd also like to mention. I have to agree that for the really big jobs (ie enterprise critical or enterprise scale for established large companies) OS/390, VM or a commercial *NIX is the way to go, but IMHO Linux is less than two years behind some of these, in features at least.

• AIX's JFS does provide the same capabilities as you mentioned for AdvFS.
• Red Hat has recently released a high-availability clustering package that allows multiple types of OS'es to take part in the cluster (although I haven't looked at the details to compare capabilities to say an IBM S/70 HA system running AIX, which I'm familiar with, or OS/390's Parallel Sysplex capabilities, which sound almost identical to the ones you spoke about for DEC/Compaq. The S/390 servers in the cluster can be physically separated by a distance of 10-20 miles and still participate in the dynamic load balancing and failover responsibilities).
• Kernel level auditing - I can't recall for certain if Linux has kernel level auditing which you alluded to with the system auditing point, but I believe that it does (as do all enterprise level OS'es, and NT).
• As you mentioned, several vendors are jumping in with hot-swappable core system hardware components, this brings Linux (interestingly also probably NT) into the arena with E10K's and S/390 hardware.
• Scalability is being addressed, but I don't expect that Linux will hit what OS/390, VM or Solaris offer (and AIX 5 is slated to introduce) regarding scalability and running multiple instances of the OS on one box. (unless you consider VM Ware, which while it may be a fine product I seriously doubt is at the capability or stability level of the other systems mentioned - anyone with solid info to the contrary please post a reply).
• Multiple physical and logical paths to one physical device, including logical connections to the device from multiple instances of the OS. Let me try to explain this further for those unfamiliar with OS/390 & VM architecture. Let's suppose you have a box with a SCSI drive. Now imagine that you have more than one SCSI cable that attaches to that drive. Further imagine that each physical cable can support multiple logical connections, from more than one instance of your OS (all of which are running on one physical box). I don't know if there are any other OS & hardware systems out there that have this ability (forgive my ignorance of other hardware and OS'es of which I have only fleeting knowledge).
• The ability to control the priority of processes and threads with fine granularity (255 levels IIRC). Under OS/390 you can control each thread or process running under the OS, so even if there are various types of threads that are spawned by the Webserver (just for instance - could be any thread running on the system from any app or process), I can specify what priority each has (ie I could give the thread that serves up the order form a high priority - say 255 - and the thread that serves up the complaint page low priority - say 1) for when the CPU's are at 100%.

And it's becoming ever more difficult to determine where Linux ends and commercial *nix begin... Gnome will soon be standard on numerous commercial OS'es (which is difficult for the unwashed masses to differentiate from the OS if they see the same interface) and AIX 5 will offer extensive compatibility with many core Linux / open-source apps & utilities. While this obviously doesn't mean that AIX is using the Linux kernel, the cross-pollination is occurring much faster than anyone would have dared guess even 2 years (or 1 year?) ago.

Flamers please note that I am a staunch Linux booster and have used it at home for approximately 3 years. I can't wait to see what promise it holds, but nonetheless could not go to upper management and suggest that we run our enterprise processes on it yet. Our enterprise still relies on OS/390 databases, with AIX taking on an ever larger role, and NT doing it's best to try and weasel it's way in. NT has been largely relegated to an OS for the desktop and user frontend where I work, with the backend being on AIX or OS/390 (with a couple of HP boxes hanging on by their fingernails because of apps that we can't seem to kill no matter how hard we push!)

----

They make it clear that it is not a 'true alternate browser' and that it is just a 'browser within a browser' and some other stuff like that.

--