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The XML support is cool, and definitely will gain traction. If nothing else, think storing (?:.*)Office documents directly in database and searching via XQuery...

There is a very interesting product in the pipeline:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1889012,00.as p?kc=EWRSS03119TX1K0000594

If it's not a pricey boondoggle, this Information Virtualization Server could be pretty clever, a sort of auto-Hibernate + web services kind of platform. I'm hopeful that JBoss can respond faily easily to this - at first blush, it's basically just a question of figuring out how to comprehensively auto-update the mappings for database objects, as well as dealing with transactions and performance issues.

The nice thing about IBM's version is that they can control the database-Virtualization Server communication, so they can really optimize perfomance out of the box.

It looks like we may finally be reaching some meaningful convergence of object models and storage models.

As much as I laughed at your post, i remembered that "microsoft and symantec were consulted to ignore the rootkit," meaning they knew damn well what it was and their lawyers advised them to feign ignorance for fear of fisticuffs with Sony.

Now Microsoft and Symantec are going to hang out together and tell us what the new threats are? I wish I could be there to voice concerns over the "private backroom deal for corporate interests" attack vector. It's an old one, but it's only getting bigger.

If you really want to see how bad it is, consider the above then read aticles such as this one
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1884677,00.as p
and note the wording. Oh, Microsoft is now "concerned," are they? As of the 9th or so when the back really hit the lash? What pathetic public posturing they've perfected. But the various news sites report this - you can find a dozen easy with identical copy, from the 9th and 10th - with no comment on their earlier complicity. They couch it terms of "not sure what kind of threat," instead of "not sure which way the wind is blowing" or "how little they can get away with doing" or "stabbing their buddies in the back to damage-control the PR angle."

Microsoft and Symantec know, do nothing, then pretend to be "concerned" when the pressure grows. F4I screams and points at Symantec, "But but but they said it wasn't malware when we asked!" Sony has done nothing wrong, just ask 'em. The RIAA, meanwhile, as we all i'm sure have read by now, realized its Stupid Statement Quota wasn't met this month and came out to spew some nonsensical gibberish about All Our PCs Will Belong To Them.

It's too soon to declare this a Victory of the Blogs over the Giants, as some euphorically have. The spin continues, and even the short-term promises of those involved have yet to be fully imped.

It's interesting to note how all the players here point fingers at all the others for the responsibility, while, say, wielding the Australian legal system to hold Kazaa's creators and maintainers responsible for every past, present and potential user of the software.

This is a significant ground gain, no question. But that's when it's time to press the attack, not sit back and congratulate each other how we stuck it to the man. It's time to get legislation changes and public awareness that WILL stick, and force the issue of equal enforcement that will demonstrate all current and planned forms of DRM and the DCMA as undesireable, impractical, unenforceable crap. It's buggy, hole-ridden, crap legislation like the code of this damn rootkit.

We use Microsoft Windows Media Digital Rights Management software to make sure all the music you have is fast, safe and protected. For more information about Microsoft DRM, click here.

Won't play on any open systems or open source operating system, won't play in any open-source player, can't be burned to an audio CD, won't play in either of my MP3 players (only one of which is an iPod), won't even play on Windows 2000 unless I agree to let Microsoft install a rootkit called Windows Media Player 9 (Windows XP comes with Microsoft's rootkit pre-installed, which is another reason I'm sticking with Windows 2000 for my game console).

Since I don't have a Golden Ear, I'll stick with the honor-system DRM that iTMS uses, or buy physical CDs since they're often cheaper than iTMS for classical music, and there's a much better range available, and the great stuff I find on audioblogs is rarely available through label-driven digital music stores anyway.

For more information about Microsoft DRM, click here.

> From what I understand

not really all that much, as it turns out, huh?

You may have not heard, but a company called First 4 Internet actually developed and licensed this "DRM Solution" to Sony

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1887181,00.as p

Dan Kaminsky, an independent security researcher, discovered evidence that so-called "rootkit" style stealth programs developed by U.K. firm First 4 Internet Ltd. and used by Sony while conducting an audit of the DNS (Domain Name System) infrastructure.

This has been all over /. for the last couple weeks. Are you really that stupid to ignorantly post something contrary to what has been very public knowledge for some time now, or are you just a stupid troll?

Also, be aware that Skype, (developed by those who brought you Kazaa) is, like Kazaa, a p2p app and rather rudely uses your resources. In addition to that, it's proprietary and conflicts/is incompatible with the emerging SIP standard. More info:

Beware Skype's Hype http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1517548,00.as p

Skype: Hazardous to network health? http://www.networkworld.com/columnists/2005/092605 tolly.html

SCO has even given their blessings to OpenSolaris.
Here-s the article: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1785664,00.as p

Seriously, who would retain control over this group? This is the same Yahoo that recently released an anti-spyware toolbar that not only plays favorites with detection, but outright ignores (regardless of settings) certain products that Yahoo has a financial tie to. The last time people tried to agree on a consortium promising to certify apps as "spyware free", it failed miserably for the same reasons - the model of selling such a certification provides a clear financial incentive geared toward certifying products/companies rather than rejecting them.

If you read a couple of the articles about this certification it becomes apparent that they are actually certifying ADWARE! They are saying that it will be easy to remove... but who really cares? Adware is Adware and I am not going to voluntarily put it on my pc. What are they thinking? Take a look at the fifth paragraph in the following article. http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1887914,00.as p

Saying "I can provide real and reliable sources" without actually doing so is just as dodgy, maybe even more so, than not talking about reliable sources at all.

Mircosoft is also planning to remove the DRM through their MS AntiSpyware.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1886122,00.as p?kc=EWRSS03129TX1K0000614

THAT, is why I use and actually trust MS AntiSpyware over other competing scanners. However, using two doesn't hurt.

Linux Backers Form Patent-Sharing Firm SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters)--Three of the world's biggest electronics companies--IBM, Sony and Philips--have joined forces with the two largest Linux software distributors to create a company for sharing Linux patents, royalty-free.

Well, some of us could have told him that as soon as Novell took over Suse. Novell has a terrible track record of making anything work.

The warning signs were there when Richard Seibt and a few others left some time ago, as well as other Novell employees who didn't even come from Suse like Alan Nugent. And despite the positive spin some people in the company have tried to make of this for their own ends, there's no denying that a lot of people from different parts of the company have been layed off. Yes, even a lot of Gnome oriented people have gone, which means that Novell has no resources and people whatsoever to carry out all of those desktop plans some people say they're doing. They're going to need to spend even more money just to tread water and maintain everything. Looks like there's some truth to Kurt Pfeifle's article, and Mantel's swipe that they should be able to find someone talented to replace him as a kernel developer from Ximian is telling.

Novell may end up with no Gnome or KDE at all, or even worse, no Linux. People talk about KDE and Gnome a lot, but the fact is that Novell haven't even moved to Linux - that's where the real problems are. Open Enterprise Server is a bastardised Linux OS with Netware running on top of it. What customer wants that and what's the point?! No one judging from the people not buying it and going Red Hat instead. Unless this new COO really does understand his market, the technology and what's required we're seeing Novell go bust right here. Judging from this he's got the basic concepts of how to make people redundant badly wrong. Get that wrong, throw in the towel because it's not worth the effort. You need the right people on your side, not to alienate them.

Looks like they already did. Gator is your friend now. http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1834607,00.as p

So true .. It has happened before creating illusion for novice users that they are protected ... Another question is why are they gonna release it for Vista ..? I thought Vista was built around Secure Architecture ..

Considering that IBM only recently announced the beginning of production of the chips for the 360 maybe the shortage is more due to the chip supply than it is artificial.
Article in question.

How many chips can they make in a month? 10000, 100000?

Perhaps MS is about to learn why Apple switched from IBM.

July 28, 1962 -- Mariner I space probe. A bug in the flight software for the Mariner 1 causes the rocket to divert from its intended path on launch. Mission control destroys the rocket over the Atlantic Ocean. The investigation into the accident discovers that a formula written on paper in pencil was improperly transcribed into computer code, causing the computer to miscalculate the rocket's trajectory.

1982 -- Soviet gas pipeline. Operatives working for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency allegedly (.pdf) plant a bug in a Canadian computer system purchased to control the trans-Siberian gas pipeline. The Soviets had obtained the system as part of a wide-ranging effort to covertly purchase or steal sensitive U.S. technology. The CIA reportedly found out about the program and decided to make it backfire with equipment that would pass Soviet inspection and then fail once in operation. The resulting event is reportedly the largest non-nuclear explosion in the planet's history.

1985-1987 -- Therac-25 medical accelerator. A radiation therapy device malfunctions and delivers lethal radiation doses at several medical facilities. Based upon a previous design, the Therac-25 was an "improved" therapy system that could deliver two different kinds of radiation: either a low-power electron beam (beta particles) or X-rays. The Therac-25's X-rays were generated by smashing high-power electrons into a metal target positioned between the electron gun and the patient. A second "improvement" was the replacement of the older Therac-20's electromechanical safety interlocks with software control, a decision made because software was perceived to be more reliable.

What engineers didn't know was that both the 20 and the 25 were built upon an operating system that had been kludged together by a programmer with no formal training. Because of a subtle bug called a "race condition," a quick-fingered typist could accidentally configure the Therac-25 so the electron beam would fire in high-power mode but with the metal X-ray target out of position. At least five patients die; others are seriously injured.

1988 -- Buffer overflow in Berkeley Unix finger daemon. The first internet worm (the so-called Morris Worm) infects between 2,000 and 6,000 computers in less than a day by taking advantage of a buffer overflow. The specific code is a function in the standard input/output library routine called gets() designed to get a line of text over the network. Unfortunately, gets() has no provision to limit its input, and an overly large input allows the worm to take over any machine to which it can connect.

Programmers respond by attempting to stamp out the gets() function in working code, but they refuse to remove it from the C programming language's standard input/output library, where it remains to this day.

1988-1996 -- Kerberos Random Number Generator. The authors of the Kerberos security system neglect to properly "seed" the program's random number generator with a truly random seed. As a result, for eight years it is possible to trivially break into any computer that relies on Kerberos for authentication. It is unknown if this bug was ever actually exploited.

January 15, 1990 -- ATT Network Outage. A bug in a new release of the software that controls ATT's #4ESS long distance switches causes these mammoth computers to crash when they receive a specif

Security Focus eWeek CNet

So? Roll your own distro. Can you do that with Windows? No. Can I tweak XP and sell it as my own? No. Better yet, can I tweak the codebase for Windows Server 2003 so that I have a company wide distro for our internal systems? Hell no. Sorry to burst your bubble, but yes, you can. And Microsoft offers the tools to do this. While it's not as "full" as the Linux Distribution modification it allows you to create one standard image for all internal systems. However it's more applicable to XP than 2003 -- you generally don't install Servers on 50 machines or more (but it's still possible). And while I'm on this topic, I think it's also possible to modify the source. Not only that, but if you're an MVP, you get to do if for free[eweek.com].

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (30 Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

Patience grasshopper http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1879130,00.as p

As for abnormality, hey, there's no free lunch, you want to cram 14 2Way servers and SAN switchs and GBE switchs into 7U of rack you gotta give something up. You want something that behaves like a "normal" computer then get 14 1U pizza boxes and break out the cable ties.

I saw some HTML + webified versions of Office when I worked there. Probably around 2000. They cancelled it. I wish I could remember more about it.

Most likely you're thinking about NetDocs, which, though it never shipped as a single product, did actually contribute many pieces to Office (InfoPath in particular), MSN (parts of their billing and support system, Messenger, pieces of MSN Explorer), and other Microsoft products that did ship. Alternatively, you might have seen pieces of Hailstorm, which was later named ".NET My Services" before being killed. Again, much of Hailstorm's knowledge made its way into .NET (Hailstorm was all about Web Services right when the whole .NET thing was starting up, and it's no coincidence that .NET has very robust support for SOAP-based web services).

This is not all that different from what other companies do, with the exception of Microsoft publicizing projects that are eventually killed or integrated into something else. This is not even unusual for Microsoft. For example, where do you think the Office Assistant (Microsoft Agent) stuff came from? Microsoft Bob (especially the dog and cat). While it was patronizing and simplistic, it was also way ahead of its time -- task-based interface, scaleable vector graphics, "interactive" help (say what you will about Clippy and the Office Assistant crap, but many people liked them and you can't really argue with the cuteness factor), etc. This is how companies grow and innovate. What Microsoft learned from Hailstorm surely has a direct effect on Windows Live, just as what they learned from NetDocs affected Office and what they learned from Bob affected Windows and Office. For example, they've learned to use open betas to their advantage, and to incubate fresh ideas with little intervention (Start.com, the origin of Live.com and arguably the cornerstone to the whole project, was developed, shipped, and supported by a team of only two or three developers with no management overhead or other BS, and who were allowed to be open about the process through blogging and customer interaction -- they were even allowed to support Firefox!).

People scoffed at the first couple versions of Internet Explorer, but when Microsoft got fired up they really blew everybody away. Hopefully this time they've learned that follow-through is just as important as shipping, and Windows Live doesn't stagnate the way IE did.

Some analysis and context is usually beneficial to all. I've seen other commenters say that they haven't seen the original patent. I always find it helpful to read as many original source documents as possible although it's obvious that some people don't agree that it's important or useful information.

2005-10-31 21:45:58 Supreme Court Rejects Microsoft IE Patent Appeal (Index,Microsoft) (rejected)

Reuters reports (via eWEEK) that the US Supreme Court declined to hear Microsoft's appeal of a 2003 $521 million patent infringement ruling. A lower court previously ruled that the Microsoft Internet Explorer Web browser had infringed on technology developed by Eolas Technologies and the University of California for embedding, invoking and downloading plug-ins and applets. eWEEK's Ben Charny writes about how 'an adverse court ruling ultimately forces changes upon Internet Explorer'. You can read the patent in dispute, Patent No. 5,838,906 'Distributed hypermedia method for automatically invoking external application providing interaction and display of embedded objects within a hypermedia document' at the USPTO site.

Some analysis and context is usually beneficial to all. I've seen other commenters say that they haven't seen the original patent. I always find it helpful to read as many original source documents as possible although it's obvious that some people don't agree that it's important or useful information.

2005-10-31 21:45:58 Supreme Court Rejects Microsoft IE Patent Appeal (Index,Microsoft) (rejected)

Reuters reports (via eWEEK) that the US Supreme Court declined to hear Microsoft's appeal of a 2003 $521 million patent infringement ruling. A lower court previously ruled that the Microsoft Internet Explorer Web browser had infringed on technology developed by Eolas Technologies and the University of California for embedding, invoking and downloading plug-ins and applets. eWEEK's Ben Charny writes about how 'an adverse court ruling ultimately forces changes upon Internet Explorer'. You can read the patent in dispute, Patent No. 5,838,906 'Distributed hypermedia method for automatically invoking external application providing interaction and display of embedded objects within a hypermedia document' at the USPTO site.

It has been quoted elsewhere that the cost is roughly 2 percent per million dollars of coverage. So, $2 million coverage would cost you about $40,000 per year. That money can be paid out in different ways under different circumstances, and each client is expected to negotiate a plan and premiums that best suit its own situation.

Note: I am not affiliated with any of these people or this insurance plan, but I have heard the full-length pitch.

eWeek has this queit a while back: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1879130,00.as p

Much better to take on an insurance against SCO than this FUD disguised as "insurance".

This was reported last week in eWEEK.com

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1877924,00.as p

More to the point, it seems to me that instead of catching news as it breaks, anymore Slashdot is days behind breaking news.

I won't even mention dupes. ;-)

Could folks be... I don't know, a little more proactive about what they turn in to Slashdot?

It's getting to be 'Old News for Nerds,' and that doesn't help anyone.

Jack

Man, I LOVE /. posters.

And I love how deceptive posts like yours get modded up as "insightful."

> So you have three reports on /.

No. There are _four_ report -- one each from PCWorld, EWeek, WindowsITPro, and the current one from Ward Ralston (three of these just happen to be linked on Slashdot). Plus, there was my fifth point about Microsoft porting .Net to BSD.

So right off you start trying to deceive your readers.

And you can't count.

> One of them describes a feature that's been in Windows since NT 3.1 (and exposed as a public API since Windows 2000) (symlinks).

First of all, the Windows NT "symlinks" have never been the same as Unix symlinks.

Second, in the current article, Ward Ralston is talking about symlinks (Unix-style, from the description) as a NEW capability of Vista. Why we he be doing that, if he was talking about the old NT-style symlinks?

By the way, Ward Ralston is a member of the Windows server team, so I suspect he knows more about it than you.

> The other describes an existing feature that's been available for Windows since NT 4 and is now apparently being included in the OS base (SFU).

Again, then why did Microsoft announce that they were SHUTTING DOWN SFU, because the new Unix capabilities would be BUILTIN to Windows?

As stated by Samm DiStasio, director of product management with Microsoft's Windows Server division, "Having Unix interoperability functionality integrated in to the OS (operating system) helps customers to programmatically access Windows and Unix resources at the same time, which is super important and something that couldn't be done with the previous architecture."

What new architecture would that be? Could it be... BSD?

I'll give you one thing, you're more capable than the average astroturfer. Your attempts to deflect the issue sounded very believable. If Microsoft had more posters like you, their reputation as an innovator would be secure.

How do you know ? Are you some sort of expert ?

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1841266,00.as p

http://www.phrack.org/show.php?p=63&a=8

It's 2005 because it was developed during 2005?

Developed in 2005?

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1656883,00.as p
http://news.com.com/The+long+road+to+Yukon/2100-10 12_3-5129900.html

SQL Server 2005, previously codenamed Yukon, is about two years behind schedule.

Just one sidenote: These morons that run Slashdot really blow me away. I hardly think I'm the only one, but I put in a submission just after the RTM yesterday with more information, that was worded better, that was more accurate, and that had several interesting historical links. It was REJECTED before the submission they accepted was even submitted (how do I know that? Because the submission referenced some lame blog post that happened about 11 hours after the release, after anyone who actually cares for this sort of info had heard it from someone who heard it from someone [repeat that about 7 times]).

Am I bitter? Absolutely - These morons seem to just randomly pick and choose their tripe stories. When one carefully crafts a submission to do the job that these clowns are too incapable of doing, to know that they're rolling dice between swigs of Jägermeister. And then, for the people dumb enough to actually rely on Slashdot for any sort of info (there might be a few left), they get to hear it a day or more later. Timely!

Also the street price for a 20A circuit in a datacenter is $200-$300, while the cost of a megabit is $100 or less. So a rack of servers that requires two power circuits and pushes 3Mbps (not an unusual scenario) costs twice as much in power than in bandwidth.

And here's another article on this issue. And another.

This was covered in january: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1748425,00.as p

I believe that this one has already been anticipated:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1530733,00.as p/

and shouldn't that be "congrats" instead of "congrads"? :p

This article says it's 13 watts, with 25 watts at peak. A little early start on the number juggling eh?

Things around /. are really boring without the mother of all tech lawsuits to bandy about, for a good recap and some fun! go here if you are as bored as I am.

Commercial versions of Linux were available before that case was filed, just like they are now for Apple Macs. So, just because the U.S.D.O.J. says Microsoft is a monopoly, that doesn't mean that they actually are, at least according to the definition found in any respected dictionary. Of course, Microsoft wouldn't be the first victim of special interests using the D.O.J. as an attack dog.

Argh. I'd forgotten that 64-bit XP was *still* only XP Pro.

As for the Pentium 4's 64-bit capability, a quick Google search turned up a couple of sources and dates. The first Pentium 4 processors with EM64T support -- Intel's version of AMD64 (because there's no way they'd actually use a name with AMD in it!) -- came out in March, and apparently the "majority" of the Pentium 4 line has been 64-bit since June. Maybe PR is keeping quiet because the average user will be using XP Home?

January: The Pentium 4 adds 64-bit Extensions
March: Intel's 64-Bit Pentium 4s Hit The Streets
June: Intel Shifts Pentium 4 to 64-Bits

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD, for When Portability and Stability Matter (Oct 2004)
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
OpenSSH (OpenBSD subproject) has become a de facto Internet standard.

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
BSD Success Stories (O'Reilly, 2004) (pdf) ~ from Onlamp BSD DevCenter
"The BSDs - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, and others - have earned a reputation for stability, security, performance, and ease of administration."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

The problem with this is that Microsoft might lose that battle.

So does this mean MS has tried to defeat the GPL through the courts, failed, and moved on? Yes IMHO. There just isn't much of a legal leg to stand on, especially now that IBM has taken sides.

MSN and Yahoo are cooperating

that whole SCO/MySQL partnership thing. WTF are they thinking? http://www.eweek.com/article2/0%2C1895%2C1855483%2 C00.asp

What is the real impact on MySQL 5.0 now that Oracle has bought InnoDB?
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1869989,00.as p

Geez, Apple killed off OpenDoc years ago. Give it up Microsoft.

That's a neat trick, seeing as it was only made a standard last May!

Do they rent out their time-machine?

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD, for When Portability and Stability Matter (Oct 2004)
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
OpenSSH (OpenBSD subproject) has become a de facto Internet standard.

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
BSD Success Stories (O'Reilly, 2004) (pdf) ~ from Onlamp BSD DevCenter
"The BSDs - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, and others - have earned a reputation for stability, security, performance, and ease of administration."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

Stanford has spent more than seven years transferring its financial systems onto applications from Oracle called Oracle Financials....Stanford has spent a lot of money on software and still has work to do. According to the university's annual budget plans, the board of trustees since 1999 has been asked to approve $93.4 million in capital expenditures for applications and infrastructure . The trustees had approved $60 million in 1994 to overhaul Stanford's entire administrative information systems, a project they expected would take five years...What makes Stanford's troubles all the more ironic is the institution's proximity to Oracle and PeopleSoft. Stanford, with its gracious red-tiled roofs, and Oracle, with its gleaming metal-and-glass towers, sit just 10 miles apart along Route 101, the main thoroughfare through Silicon Valley. Three Stanford professors serve on Oracle's board of directors ...

Now faced with budget cuts and layoffs, Stanford's information technology department has successfully sent coding and maintenance work to outsourcing firms in India, which are helping with Oracle report writing and an upgrade to PeopleSoft v. 8.

There's nothing like a little bit of conflict of interest to snag lucrative contracts. Sitting on a board of directors will get you at least $30,000 per year, if not more. Everybody wins -- the professors sitting on the board of directors win because they get the money for sitting, Oracle wins because they snag the contract, programmers in India win because they get money to do the work.

Everybody wins, except for undergraduate students who subsidize this activity with their tuition. See http://www.epinions.com/content_73675148932. Many issues raised in that article are verified by in the May 19, 2004, issue of the weekly Stanford Report, writt

FWIW, some more analysts weigh in at an article in eWEEK. They agree that one problem would be that ripping a DVD would be illegal. Still, they kind of say that there's no reason Apple could, but what's the angle? Of course, none of us could figure out the angle before Jobs introduced the iPod -- and then it was all clear. That's why he earns the big buck ($1/yr).

FWIW, some more analysts weigh in at an article in eWEEK. They agree that one problem would be that ripping a DVD would be illegal. Still, they kind of say that there's no reason Apple could, but what's the angle? Of course, none of us could figure out the angle before Jobs introduced the iPod -- and then it was all clear. That's why he earns the big buck ($1/yr).

> With MySQL AB's new relationship with SCO...

Yeah. Kinda like PostgreSQL's relationship with SCO. Now that you mention it.

> PostgreSQL will still be sleeping around with dozens of other companies as well.

Including SCO.