Slashdot Mirror

xombo writes "iPoding and Mac Rumors as well as eWeek newsletter and Reuters seem to think that Apple will be introducing either a video-capable iPod -or- even better a Tablet Mac which may run into direct competition with Microsoft's similar product. "The one thing you can say for sure is that they do have a lot of product out there right now and they're going to be hesitant to draw too much attention away from their existing products" by introducing new ones now, said Roger Kay, an analyst at market research firm International Data Corp. Instead, Apple may unveil the long-anticipated video-enabled iPod, which will likely work initially only on Macintosh computers, Enderle said. Apple's existing inkwell and Newton technologies seem to make them in the perfect position to take on Microsoft in what could be the biggest battle for the most worthless market sector (Tablet PCs), however as a Newton owner I think that the some-what-larger-than-Palm device size that the Newton line sported is much more user friendly and usable. Read the Reuters article at reuters.." It'd be nice, but I'm skeptical on it actually being that.

twos writes "I just read the newly released novel Deadly Perversions, by 2002 ComputerWorld Top 100 IT Leader , well known computer columnist for eWeek, and now author Brett Arquette. The book really rocks with a real virus that's spread via hardware/software during 3D Cybersex encounters. Poof! Kills you in 72 hours." Read on for the rest of twos' review. Deadly Perversions author Brett Arquette pages 406 publisher Lighthouse Press, Inc. rating Excellent & Refreshing. Can't wait to read his next book reviewer twos ISBN 1932211004 summary Deadly virus is spread internationally via the use of Cybersex software/hardware.

This wild novel has a great caricature of Howard Stern and his crew. If you love Howard, he's in the book. If you hate him, Arquette kills him off in chapter 15 (and quite violently I may add). Lots of good computer stuff in it for bit-heads. Tons of Cybersex for chick-heads. It's written in a fascinating self-effacing style where there are just as many laughs to break up the tension as there are chills. I highly recommend this read for anyone under 40. Over that, (unless you're somewhat feral) I don't think you'll get it.

I can't think of a way to traditionally walk you through the book and summarize it, because there are simply too many subplots and wacky characters to do a scene-by-scene breakdown, so if that's what you're looking for it's best to read the back cover of the book.

I'd like to concentrate on Arquette's writing style, which is so unique that I feel there are many reasons this book will become a breakout cult classic bestseller.

First, the novel moves at the speed of light, short, quick, entertaining chapters that keeps you flipping pages trying to find a stopping point, but to no avail. I found I had read half of it before even realizing I had spent hours doing so.

Second - it's fun! How many books can you say were really fun to read, especially fiction thrillers that spend half the time describing characters that get violently killed off right after you get to know them. Arquette's book has zero fluff in it. He has traded in the violence for sex (one of the two are a must for any best selling novel), yet he wrote the book in a way where it doesn't take itself too seriously. I found myself laughing my ass off many times, wondering if this was a thriller or a comedy, but Arquette structured the chapters so the laughs come in just where they're needed, cutting some tension, allowing the reader to take a breath before being consumed in the plot, yet again.

Third - Arquette keeps you guessing. Just when you think you have it figured out, another twist pops up, another character is introduced, and another finding from the CDC comes out, which leads you off in another directly. If you've read the first 21 chapters off his website (for free) don't presume to think you've actually read any of the book or could guess the ending. Not possible unless you have a crystal ball running Linux.

Fourth - It's written in a style I've never read before. I can't compare Arquette to any other writer, which in itself is something of an accomplishment. There are so many authors whose work just blends in with others until their styles all seem the same. Arquette's style, however, is smart and blunt. Where other authors imply things, Arquette writes them in black and white. He takes on subject matter that other authors would just assume leave alone, yet does a wonderful job of spinning it so the characters actions seem perfect reasonable to the character himself.

And lastly, there is freshness in the author's soul, and he writes young, as if he's catering to an 18 through 39 demographic. Most best selling author's are over forty and really don't write their books for the 'instant gratification' world the younger generation is experiencing. For example, books such as Stephen King's bloated 900-page Dream Catcher would have been a tight and quick 400 page novel if Arquette had written it.

I also like Arquette's website and the fact that he's determined to let readers download and read roughly a third of each of his books, before you buy. Some authors let you read a few pages, maybe a few chapters, but Arquette believes if you are going to shell out $15 bucks for a book, you should be able to read enough of it to really know it's something you want to purchase. It will be interesting to see how long his editors let him get away with that, but I find it refreshing that he has that mindset.

You can purchase Deadly Perversions from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

MatthewRothenberg writes "Apple has announced that as of January, new Macs will boot with Mac OS X only, but now MacInTouch reports that there might be a reprieve in the works for booting with Mac OS. According to one reader, a Quark representative has been calling pro publishers to ease their worries about the lack of a Mac OS X-native version of its QuarkXPress DTP program; after talking it over with Quark, Apple has agreed to move back the Mac OS X-only deadline until June." I can imagine that conversation with Jobs: "Why don't you just finish porting your freaking product already?"

ceebABC writes "In a long interview with eWEEK, AMD's CEO Hector de Ruiz talks about struggling to compete with Intel, but more importantly about their upcoming 64-bit processors. He says that AMD's 64-bit chips will be comparatively priced to the 32-bit ones, and backwards compatible. He also thinks there will be a market for desktop 64-bit systems. Skip to the last page for the most interesting stuff."

ceebABC writes "In a long interview with eWEEK, AMD's CEO Hector de Ruiz talks about struggling to compete with Intel, but more importantly about their upcoming 64-bit processors. He says that AMD's 64-bit chips will be comparatively priced to the 32-bit ones, and backwards compatible. He also thinks there will be a market for desktop 64-bit systems. Skip to the last page for the most interesting stuff."

torre writes "This article would suggest that there seems to be some chaos in the Liberty Alliance fight against Passport. Between Sun's Jonathan Schwartz claiming defeat to Microsoft as it has the market tightly controlled with the help of windows to Novell's Justin Taylor who says that Microsoft's Passport has got nothing to offer when it comes to the enterprise. Should be interesting to see how things pan out."

ceebABC writes "Linus Torvalds talks about the upcoming Linux 2.6 kernel, in an interview with eWEEK. Linus discusses the scalability and memory management in the new kernel. They also have a story about what's supposed to be in Linux 3.0."

ceebABC writes "Linus Torvalds talks about the upcoming Linux 2.6 kernel, in an interview with eWEEK. Linus discusses the scalability and memory management in the new kernel. They also have a story about what's supposed to be in Linux 3.0."

gsfprez asks: "This article documents the stories of three Microsoft customers (organizations that voluntarily buy Microsoft products) who are clearly unhappy with the product offerings of Microsoft - but are simultaneously petrified of this fact being made public. My question to the crowd is not regarding the subject matter of the article: rather, I want to know what is it that could scare a company away from telling a product vendor that they are unhappy and merely *considering* not buying their next product? Fear of reprisal (in the form of a software audit) is simple extortion...no? More ethereally - do we actually live in a world where MS not only 'demands' you buy their new products, but appears to have people pissing their pants at the thought of doing otherwise?"

Qnal writes "e-Week is reporting that Microsoft Windows 2000 has been awarded Common Criteria Certification.. Read more of the propaganda here. Basically, according to the article Any user running Windows 2000 with Service Pack 3 is running exactly the same system that was evaluated. The Common Criteria certification is an internationally recognized ISO standard established for evaluating the security of infrastructure technology products. Too bad it takes 3 Service Packs..."

overunderunderdone writes "According to eWeek, Apple Computer is planning to introduce a new journaling file system code-named 'Elvis' with the 10.2.2 release. Supposedly it will run on top of HFS+ and will be turned off by default. Though it will cost you 10% to 15% performance penalty the article says it is more extensive than NTFS and is on par with BeOS's 64-bit journaling file system. Not surprising since it is being developed by the same person - Dominic Giampaolo." I've been super impressed by OS X having used it as my primary laptop for the last couple weeks. It really is a great unix box- and this is one of the important missing puzzle pieces.

overunderunderdone writes "According to eWeek, Apple Computer is planning to introduce a new journaling file system code-named 'Elvis' with the 10.2.2 release. Supposedly it will run on top of HFS+ and will be turned off by default. Though it will cost you 10% to 15% performance penalty the article says it is more extensive than NTFS and is on par with BeOS's 64-bit journaling file system. Not surprising since it is being developed by the same person - Dominic Giampaolo." I've been super impressed by OS X having used it as my primary laptop for the last couple weeks. It really is a great unix box- and this is one of the important missing puzzle pieces.

An anonymous reader writes "Sun VP John Loiacono told eWEEK that the company is scrapping its plan to limit Solaris 9 support to Sun x86 hardware. Loiacono said the version for non-Sun hardware will retail for $99 for a single CPU and that the company is committed to supporting both Sun and non-Sun hardware in the future. Sun will also publicize the compatibility test suite it used internally, and said it may ultimately open the code for the product to the open source community."

An anonymous reader writes "Sun VP John Loiacono told eWEEK that the company is scrapping its plan to limit Solaris 9 support to Sun x86 hardware. Loiacono said the version for non-Sun hardware will retail for $99 for a single CPU and that the company is committed to supporting both Sun and non-Sun hardware in the future. Sun will also publicize the compatibility test suite it used internally, and said it may ultimately open the code for the product to the open source community."

Currawong writes "eWeek reports that IBM Microelectronics is working with Apple on a 64-bit PowerPC processor called the GigaProcessor Ultralite (GPUL). Unlike previous reports, eWeek now reports that Apple is testing the chip for use with future hardware. IBM apparently also plans to use the processor in linux-based servers. It's believed IBM will disclose some details of the processor in October at the upcoming Microprocessor Forum in San Jose, California. While this story is similar to recent stories about Apple using Power4-based IBM chips in future Macs, the GPUL, unlike the Power4, is smaller, runs cooler and consumes far less power, making it suitable for desktop machines and small servers. The processor is described as having the same 8-way superscalar design fully supporting Symmetric MultiProcessing." We had a previous story about these new chips.

Currawong writes "eWeek reports that IBM Microelectronics is working with Apple on a 64-bit PowerPC processor called the GigaProcessor Ultralite (GPUL). Unlike previous reports, eWeek now reports that Apple is testing the chip for use with future hardware. IBM apparently also plans to use the processor in linux-based servers. It's believed IBM will disclose some details of the processor in October at the upcoming Microprocessor Forum in San Jose, California. While this story is similar to recent stories about Apple using Power4-based IBM chips in future Macs, the GPUL, unlike the Power4, is smaller, runs cooler and consumes far less power, making it suitable for desktop machines and small servers. The processor is described as having the same 8-way superscalar design fully supporting Symmetric MultiProcessing." We had a previous story about these new chips.

Jon James writes "Microsoft is pushing further into digital rights management with a plan for a DRM server due to go into beta testing later this year, eWeek is reporting. Microsoft has already applied for a patent for a DRM operating system but would not say if the DRM server would be based on this. In an interview last week with eWeek, Jim Allchin, Microsoft's group vice president for platforms, said a DRM server is but one of three server infrastructure applications coming next year."

prostoalex writes: "While fuel cells have been touted as a revolutionary innovation for the electronics industry, they have not hit the market yet. This article in eWeek talks about the current problems with fuel cells, and claims that 'these devices, designed to last as much as 10 times longer than a standard lithium-ion battery, should hit the market by 2004.'" There are a few fuel-cell devices on the market, but this article points out a few reasons they're not yet more widespread.

Earlybird writes "According to this eWeek article, Apple has ported the whole of Mac OS X to the x86 architecture and is maintaining it in parallel with the PowerPC builds. Dubbed Marklar, the project is perceived as a fall-back plan, and, quoth the article, 'has apparently gained strategic relevance in recent months, as Apple's relationship with Motorola has grown strained and Apple looks to alternative chip makers.'" Believe what you will ...

An anonymous reader writes "For the second day in a row at the XML Web Services One conference here, a keynote speaker got up and signaled the impending end to the Web services era, at least on a standards level. Don Box, an architect in Microsoft Corp.'s developer division told an audience of Web services conference attendees Wednesday: 'The end of the XML Web services era is near. I predict two years from now we won't have this conference.'"

Slashback's blizzard of updates, corrections and amplifications includes some more information about Win2K and HIPAA, another notch on the Browser Progress Chart, Dreamcast ethernet jacks, the Hoopla'd Red Hat Menace and more. Read on.

Who said what now? bratgrrl writes "eWeek's "Red Hat: Next Redmond?"article was quietly and without comment altered- they deleted the crucial "Red Hat backlash" quote from the original article. No retraction, no explanation, just an Orwellian revision. Thank goodness for Google, which cached the original article.

I suspect the original quote never happened."

Because not everyone needs Chatzilla. Mozilla gets a lot of attention around here -- after all, it is the giant lizard of the open source browser world. But to the question "What about Galeon?", Nachtjäger writes: "The answer: LOTS is happening to Galeon. Given the length of time since the last release, we decided to write up an update on how things are going on Galeon2. Check it out here"

I hope certain aspects of Galeon (tab-name shortening and color coding, for two) are soon rolled back into Mozilla.

OK, now you can have it. Esekla writes "Slashdot did an article about the announcement of Kylix 3 (the first Kylix to support C++ code), but at the time it was not actually available for download. Now both Open and Enterprise Trial editions finally can be downloaded."

Now you can assemble your yard-sale cluster. Speaking of things now really available, BJH writes: "The site featured in last week's Dreamcast BBA story is now accepting orders! The good news is, they're only $US80 each. The bad news is, they're not accepting orders from outside Japan ;) (If there's enough interest, perhaps someone could be convinced to do a bulk buy and ship to people overseas...)"

Anyone who offers something interesting enough in trade can have my Dreamcast for mucking about ;)

When you trace things back far enough ... Dennis writes: "Although Chris has a valid point about the catch 22 between Win2K, SP3 and HIPAA, his example is not accurate because medical records that are related to students are protected by FERPA regulations and not by HIPAA. Here's a reference link with more info."

The fat ladies are still warming up. john82 writes "With all the hoopla still swirling about MP3s, there is fresh information in the JPEG saga. Dateline Berlin: Algovision-Luratech GmbH says that Forgent's patent claim (4,698,672) is all wet. Technical experts have laid out the technical and legal arguments against the claim. And they intend to air the dirty laundry at a meeting Sept 4. The announcement by Forgent earlier this year caused quite a stir here. Wonder if Sony can get their money back?"

Of especial interest to iBook owners. Earlier this month, Slashdot posted the news that rather than wiping your Mac's OS to put on a GNU/Linux system, you could order Yellow Dog Linux preinstalled on Apple hardware. Ray Sanders of Qli Tech Linux Computers writes: "We also are selling Apple Systems with Linux installed, however, Terrasoft is only installing Yellow Dog Linux, we offer Gentoo PPC, Debian PPC, Mandrake PPC, and SuSE PPC. We also have full working sound and video on the iBook and Powerbook with XFree86, whereas YDL Does not yet support the mobile Radeon chipset found on those two units."

Competition is good.

RadioheadKid writes "This article featured on eWeek asks the question 'Red Hat: Next Redmond?' It quotes an IBM VP who says, 'There is a backlash against Red Hat from many consumers and government agencies, who fear it is increasingly becoming the Microsoft of the Linux world with respect to its dominance and attitude,' while Red Hat states: 'Our commitment to open source remains absolute, no matter what our competitors are saying.' Is this just some pro-UnitedLinux spin, or a valid concern? What do you think?" Such characterizations are nothing new, but a response on NewsForge from Red Hat's Jeremy Hogan supplies a counterpoint to make the eWeek article worth reading. (Has anyone really seen a Red Hat backlash?)

The Pi-Guy writes: "Hoping that I won't screw up again about Solaris 9 on x86 again, this time I'm sure I got it right... eWeek is covering that indeed, Sun will be shipping Solaris 9 for x86 after all!!! Also in that article, they note that Sun is shipping a x86 based server, which will ship the 26th. It will be running a Sun Linux distro... Many surprises from Sun today!!"

An anonymous reader writes: "Despite all the fuss about Microsoft's booth at LinuxWorld next week, a security bug doesn't seem to care about the difference between open- and closed-source systems. The bug, found in a code library included in several popular applications, affects Windows 2000, Solaris, Mac OS X, and Linux, reports eWeek's Dennis Fisher."

An anonymous reader writes: "Despite all the fuss about Microsoft's booth at LinuxWorld next week, a security bug doesn't seem to care about the difference between open- and closed-source systems. The bug, found in a code library included in several popular applications, affects Windows 2000, Solaris, Mac OS X, and Linux, reports eWeek's Dennis Fisher."

A user writes that eWeek reports "A tweak to new models in its Macintosh line of desktop and portable computers will prevent booting into Mac OS 9, sources said, leaving the Unix-based Mac OS X as the sole operating system." That's a great idea, if they want to prevent people from upgrading their hardware, and to future versions of Mac OS X. I hope it's merely a rumor; there's apparently no technical reason for it, so if true, I imagine it is just to force more people to adopt the Mac OS X.

Slashback tonight has an important correction about the role of the Apache Foundation (none) vis a vis yesterday's ".NET for Apache" post. Also, another view of the recent DRM (stacked) roundtable in Washington, a review of Red Hat's new beta, and more. Anyone who has successfully downloaded the new Mandrake beta want to comment on that?

Those guys did not ride in with us. Sascha Schumann of the Apache Software Foundation wrote to correct the story presented in Monday's post (".Net for Apache"), writing "this is _not_ a joint Apache Software Foundation/Microsoft stunt. It has not been approved or endorsed by the Apache Software Foundation, nor does it require any of those acts -- it is a deal between two private companies, Covalent and Microsoft."

Fly on wall video, anyone? kikensei writes: "DSL Reports has a story summarizing last week's DRM round table that was stacked with corporate panel members. You can read it here. It presents a much more apt framework for discussion than the overly sensitive, passive account from Al3x that defined our discussion last week."

Dancing in limbo, limbo, limbo. Earlier this month, we mentioned Red Hat's new beta, called Limbo. wiredog writes "From eWeek, a review of RedHat 8.0 beta. With gcc 3.1,the latest versions of GNOME, Mozilla and OpenOffice, and Apache 2.0"

The force is strong in these metallic boxes. Verizon Guy writes "CNet is reporting that Industrial Light and Magic, the group responsible for rendering the special effects in the Star Wars films, is moving away from their proprietary SGI/IRIX/RISC based systems and is instead moving to Dells running Linux. This will give them 100% performance at 20% of the cost."

Here's a link to our post with the recent Linux Journal article on same; look for more on this soon.

Wear name tags, please. mpawlo writes "Slashdot meetup day is only a week away. Some 4 500 people have already signed up to meet all over the world on Thursday July 25, 2002, 7 pm. We need more fellow Swedes to meet in Stockholm and I guess the same goes for other cities."

A reader writes, "eWEEK talked with Apple about the state of its hardware line at Macworld Expo/New York, six months after Apple said it was going all-flat panel with future Macs. Greg Joswiak, senior director, hardware products, with Apple worldwide product marketing, says that while LCD Macs are still 'the future,' surprise boosts in flat-panel prices mean CRT systems like the eMac and old-school iMac will stick around a while longer."

Billy_D_Goat writes "Talk about control, Apple has now decided it can block users from recieving media passes at MacWorld Expo It blacklists these users by deciding if they run "rumor promoting" publications. This includs the webmasters of sites which have little to do with rumors or speculation such as Graphicpower.com/." Probably just bitter cuz Steve's thunder seems to get stolen at every show, and their lawyers can't seem to stop it ;)

Bistronaut writes "Reports are in today on the final arguments between the 9 State Attorneys General and Microsoft (articles from eWeek). CNN also has a summary. Spoiler: States say, "Here are our priorities for reforming MS." - MS says, "We don't need no stinkin' remedy.""

Bistronaut writes "Reports are in today on the final arguments between the 9 State Attorneys General and Microsoft (articles from eWeek). CNN also has a summary. Spoiler: States say, "Here are our priorities for reforming MS." - MS says, "We don't need no stinkin' remedy.""

Anonymous Coward writes "eWEEK reports on a memo from Steve Jobs announcing that Apple's education sales and marketing have been combined under the direction of John Couch. Couch was the vice president and general manager in charge of Apple's Lisa project and was frequently at loggerheads with Jobs before exiting the company in 1982."

Anonymous Coward writes "eWEEK reports on a memo from Steve Jobs announcing that Apple's education sales and marketing have been combined under the direction of John Couch. Couch was the vice president and general manager in charge of Apple's Lisa project and was frequently at loggerheads with Jobs before exiting the company in 1982."

Jon James writes "eWeek is reporting that a number of Linux vendors will announce on Thursday that they have agreed to standardize on a single Linux distribution to try and take on Red Hat's dominance in the industry. " The vendors in question are SuSe, Caldera, Conectiva, and Turbolinux. However, as the article also points out - Red Hat has a very well established lead in the corporate market - and Sun's decision to create Yet Another Linux Distribution (Sun Linux! Now With McNealy Vision!) will make the waters even more muddy.

guacamolefoo writes: "It was recently reported in eWeek that "A senior Microsoft Corp. executive told a federal court last week that sharing information with competitors could damage national security and even threaten the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan. He later acknowledged that some Microsoft code was so flawed it could not be safely disclosed." (Emphasis added.) The follow up from Microsoft is even better: As a result of the flaws, Microsoft has asked the court to allow a "national security" carve-out from the requirement that any code or API's be made public. Microsoft has therefore taken the position that their code is so bad that it must kept secret to keep people from being killed by it. Windows - the Pinto of the 21st century."

Lawrence Teo writes "News.com, Infoworld.com, and eWeek are all reporting that Sun's StarOffice 6.0, which will be released on May 21, will cost a measly $75.95. That's less than a quarter the cost of Microsoft Office. Details are also available at Sun's own StarOffice 6.0 website." Sun's press release mentions the new features, although if you're familiar with openoffice.org, you've got a pretty good idea of what StarOffice has to offer. An anonymous reader also points out that Sun has effectively one-upped Microsoft's various schemes to get its software into schools by making an unlimited donation of StarOffice to China's Ministry of Education.

frankie_guasch writes: "The award is "Innovation in Infrastructure" (i3) award for best Enterprise Software! And we beat out Sun Microsystems Java 2 Platform Standard Edition Version 1.4 and Bea Systems WebLogic Server 7.0 for the award, so I'm stunned that we won. These guys have marketing departments and a *budget.*" It's a strange contrast to the kind of attention that Samba is getting from Microsoft. (See these earlier posts for more on the CIFS situation.)

EyesWideOpen writes "The merger between Hewlett-Packard Co. and Compaq Computer Corp. (originally reported in this Slashdot story) is now official according to eWeek as well as SiliconValley.com. From the eWeek article:'Hewlett-Packard Co. today announced that it will complete its $19 billion buyout of Compaq Computer Corp. and that the merged companies will formally launch as the new HP on May 7.'For you investors out there, HP will begin trading under the new symbol HPQ on Monday." A message to the Interesting People list gives some insight into the shareholder voting procedure.

NZheretic asks: "Microsoft will be including Interix in it's next release of Services For Unix (SFU). How can Microsoft use GPL licensed products, such as GNU GCC, for the express purpose of 'interoperating' with Unix and Linux systems and at the same time deny everybody else the right to use GPL licensed products to interoperate with Microsoft's own products?"

AK47 writes "eWeek has a very positive review of Apache 2.0, entitled "Apache 2.0 Beats IIS at Its Own Game." They recommend the native Apache version on Windows over IIS for production use, citing superior security with no loss in performance."

AK47 writes "eWeek has a very positive review of Apache 2.0, entitled "Apache 2.0 Beats IIS at Its Own Game." They recommend the native Apache version on Windows over IIS for production use, citing superior security with no loss in performance."

fabiolrs writes "LinuxPlanet has a cool review on KDE 3.0. You can also view a changelog of version 3.0 here." Still no debs, but I'm looking forward to checking this thing out. I'm hoping that some of the rough edges on Kmail have been smoothed out. Update: 04/09 16:58 GMT by M : EWeek also has their own review.

panker writes "eWeek is running an article about a company who converted their IBM mainframe into a Linux email server. "The technical support manager at Winnebago Industries Inc. recently oversaw the deployment of Version 7 of SuSE Linux AG's Linux operating system on an IBM zSeries mainframe to run his company's e-mail server supporting 700 users." "

sbsea1 writes "Here is another instance where Microsoft is going one way and everybody else going to other. eWEEK Labs found that Microsoft is using a different implentation of digest authentication which differs from the W3C's digest authentication standards. Internet Explorer Version 5.0 and higher--as well as Microsoft's IIS Web server--has a significant security incompatibility with other major Web browsers and with the Apache Software Foundation's Apache HTTP Web server."

coolgeek writes: "In this previous Slashdot story, we discussed Dell's claims of slow sales as their reason for dropping Linux support. (article on c|net News.com). Today, this article on Reuters news reports: 'Citing internal Microsoft memos, the nine states also said that in 2000 and 2001 Microsoft pressured Dell Computer Corp. into dropping plans to offer the open-source Linux operating system on some machines it sells.'" Update by HNQ: eWeek got more details about the memos. Update: 03/19 12:26 GMT by M : I think Hetz accidentally changed this story's setting when he added the update above. Fixed.

coolgeek writes: "In this previous Slashdot story, we discussed Dell's claims of slow sales as their reason for dropping Linux support. (article on c|net News.com). Today, this article on Reuters news reports: 'Citing internal Microsoft memos, the nine states also said that in 2000 and 2001 Microsoft pressured Dell Computer Corp. into dropping plans to offer the open-source Linux operating system on some machines it sells.'" Update by HNQ: eWeek got more details about the memos. Update: 03/19 12:26 GMT by M : I think Hetz accidentally changed this story's setting when he added the update above. Fixed.

securitas writes "Interesting article over at eWEEK that asks who is and should be legally responsible for insecure software. Some say it's the manufacturer. Currently software is exempt from product liability as we've come to know it in the physical world. Others say the software licenses should make users responsible if they don't install patches and updates. Infosecurity czar Richard Clarke said in his speech at RSA that Nimda cost US companies an estimated $2 billion. Imagine if Microsoft was legally liable and a $2 billion suit was filed. Now extend that to the other jurisdictions outside the US. What does this mean to open source software, which is being used to a greater extent in corporate environments? Food for thought."

tarpitt writes: "According to this article in the LA Times, repeated software flaws in Microsoft products has begun to raise concerns that they 'threaten the stability of a major piece of the world economy and to raise questions about Microsoft's future.' Flawed security is seen as a stumbling block to accepting Microsoft sponsored on-line services. It is also driving discussion about making software manufacturers liable for damages caused by flawed products." This piece in eWeek on troubles with XP's automatic updates is an interesting companion; releasing often doesn't seem to be enough. Update: 01/15 15:00 GMT by J : Bruce Schneier's January Crypto-Gram came out this morning, and is also topical: "Microsoft treats security vulnerabilities as public relations problems. Until that changes, expect more of this kind of nonsense..."

lar3ry writes: "eWeek has a lead story about companies that have been catching the ASP bandwagon, and now are finding themselves high and dryas ASPs are going out of business. I may be old, but I remember when I was writing applications being used by other companies, that the contracts had agreements that provided for the source code to be held in escrow in case the company that I was working for went out of business. Does this mean that common sense is no longer a virtue in the Internet age? Just whispering a few hot terms like "ASP" makes the CIO of a company blind to any financial exposure that an application has to another company's future? Geez!" This is one thing that scares me about various companies' plans to take care of your data and apps. And unlike "Perpetual Care" at ye olde cemetery, you're still around to feel if the perpetual care stops.

alexhmit01 writes "One of the better articles that I've read covering Linux in real deployments, eWeek has an article entitled, The state of Linux: Live free or die?, gives coverage of where Linux has improved in 2.4 and what it needs. It covers Linux's success as a web server, where it comes up short against other Unices, etc. It's a good read for the non-programmers in the Open Source Movement... for it focuses upon market adoption, not just technical capacity." Nothing exciting and new here, but its a nice little article, especially talking about whats new and wacky in the 2.4 kernel.