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I find it amazing that all these instant pundits and press-release-repeaters haven't noticed that the IDC study was funded by Microsoft; this could call the results into question.

At least at eWeek, someone noticed this:

"Study Finds Windows Cheaper Than Linux (continued)
"Many drivers of cost need to be uncovered in such an examination and evaluation, and the 'risk/return' trade-offs of Linux versus Windows may not be as obvious as they appear at first glance," they said.

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The fact that Microsoft paid for the research is likely to be used as a weapon against the findings by some in the Linux community and will also elevate the debate about how valid calculations of total cost of ownership are for any given comparison.

A Microsoft spokesman confirmed to eWEEK that the firm had completely sponsored the White Paper but said that IDC had controlled the methodology, data and findings. IDC analyst Al Gillen agreed, telling eWEEK that the firm undertook a lot of custom research for individual companies and customers."

And Galli also goes into detail about the methodology, so you can have fun picking that apart.

I find it amazing that all these instant pundits and press-release-repeaters haven't noticed that the IDC study was funded by Microsoft; this could call the results into question.

At least at eWeek, someone noticed this:

"Study Finds Windows Cheaper Than Linux (continued)
"Many drivers of cost need to be uncovered in such an examination and evaluation, and the 'risk/return' trade-offs of Linux versus Windows may not be as obvious as they appear at first glance," they said.

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The fact that Microsoft paid for the research is likely to be used as a weapon against the findings by some in the Linux community and will also elevate the debate about how valid calculations of total cost of ownership are for any given comparison.

A Microsoft spokesman confirmed to eWEEK that the firm had completely sponsored the White Paper but said that IDC had controlled the methodology, data and findings. IDC analyst Al Gillen agreed, telling eWEEK that the firm undertook a lot of custom research for individual companies and customers."

And Galli also goes into detail about the methodology, so you can have fun picking that apart.

Well, some details are found Here at Eweek. The study was done by IDC.

The study compared the five-year TCO of Windows 2000 server environments with Linux server environments from multiple Linux vendors at some 100 different North American companies.

"The TCO metrics are described in terms of five-year costs for 100 users. IDC's TCO methodology ... takes into account the costs of acquiring and supporting the hardware and software required for each of these specific workloads. Costs are broken out into six categories: hardware, software, staffing, downtime, IT staff training, and outsourcing costs," says the white paper.

You can pretty much bet that Microsoft defined a limited space for the study and let IDC produce a white paper, knowing in advance it would be fodder for press releases. It mostly comes down to management tools for some tasks in which Mickeysoft has GUI tools.

Of course, defining 5 year TCO for an operating system that will not be supported for 5 years is a little silly...

If you sat throught this fine review, then ou may also be interested in an article. that states at one point:
"The poster child for security glitches is no longer Microsoft; this label now belongs to open source and Linux software suppliers."

Since I got my Kyocera 6035 I use my PDA all the time. It is great having all my addresses, meetings, etc. integrated into my phone. On top of that, I use my Internet access with a VPN client and manage servers, routers and switches via telnet, 5250 and VNC clients. I also use remote hot sync through the VPN. I can't wait until the 7135 is available. Here is a review of the 7135.

eWeek has another write up...

XML to Drive Office Update
By Peter Galli

The next version of Microsoft Corp.'s Office productivity suite will come with XML support baked into Word, allowing users to, among other things, more effectively mine their data.

Code-named Office 11, the suite will feature built-in support for XML in Word, allowing developers to create "smart" documents that automatically search for code or updates as needed.

Microsoft XML Architect and Co-Creator of W3C's XML 1.0 Standard To Unveil XML Vision for "Office 11" at XML Conference & Exposition

XML Visionary Will Put the Microsoft "Office 11" XML Pieces Together for Attendees

REDMOND, Wash. -- Nov. 14, 2002 -- Jean Paoli, Microsoft XML architect and co-creator of the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) XML 1.0 standard, will be a featured speaker at the IDEAlliance XML Conference & Exposition 2002 in Baltimore next month. Sponsored in part by Microsoft Corp., the conference is the world's largest exposition on XML-based software and services. Paoli's presentation, titled "Bringing the XML vision to the desktop with 'Office 11,'" will detail Microsoft's vision for XML and provide attendees with a first look at the technical architecture in the next version of Microsoft® Office, code-named "Office 11." The presentation will take place at 4:45 p.m. EST (1:45 p.m. PST) Wednesday, Dec. 11, at the Baltimore Convention Center.

"[Allchin] later acknowledged that some Microsoft code was so flawed it could not be safely disclosed."

Our products just aren't engineered for security.

Back to source, closed source will no longer enjoy the market it once had (why pay for work twice, thrice, etc.?) Right now new, profitable economic models are replacing the out-moded failing models in use by Microsoft. Despite this month's multi-million dollar campaign of ads and astroturfing, with people's attention now on security and TCO, the bottom would drop out of Microsoft's market if the code were accessible, even despite illegally leveraging their desktop monopoly.

Microsoft has just fallen too far behind in technology. Microsoft dropped the ball in regards to the Internet and has frittered away the time it needed to catch up. Arguments against using Macintosh or Linux usually center on retraining issues. However, heavy retraining occurred when migrating between Win3.11, WinNT, Win2000, and - for the chumps - WinXP. So if you have to retrain anyway, then why not go with something easier to both use and maintain like Macintosh OS X or Mandrake/Redhat?

When you consider the bizarre nature of the service pack EULAs, the migration to Macintosh or Linux should be the obvious choice

journaling

More about the journaling file system:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,634720,00.asp

It won't be IM. Anyone who wants to roll their own for that will just use Jabber. It'll probably be some kind of Palladium server clone that will authenticate everything instead of just what you're supposed to see. Then you'll really see some cease-and-desist letters fly, if not outright DMCA-sanctioned arrests.

check Popular Linksys Router Vulnerable to Attack
on eWeek also

There are a few alternatives (having just opened a retail business, I've looked). We couldn't find a commercial Linux solution for our business that could handle what we needed our POS system to do, but for that matter the solutions that did exist on the Windows side were very expensive per site, and for us not cost-effective. So like many companies, we had to get a custom-made POS system up & running. Unfortunately, the programmers I knew were only comfortable with Windows systems - and therefore that's what we went with. I'm sure this situation has happened for many businesses: despite us being aware of the cost benefits of non-Windows systems (and quite frankly, most busness decision makers are not) and actively looking for an OSS solution, we had to roll our own on Windows.

Some of the best *nix POS solutions out there:

Viewtouch, the original makers or touchscreens, with FreeBSD/Linux systems

IBM, with some Linux-based solutions (mostly for medium to larger businesses), but recently successful

Quasar POS from Linux Canada - a great, professional & full-featured POS solution with integrated accounting (based on the OS Firebird db). Growing fast.

MacPOS with so many solutions on the Mac platform to choose from (and many being migrated to MacOS X) it's almost as bewidering as looking for a Windows solution.

We would have gone with a MacOSX or Linux solution if we had only found a programmer that was comfortable working with them. Long-term, either would have been cost-effective.

As for your belief, business, the one's spending the BIG cash, do have to buy their software, and they still buy Microsoft products, so I can't agree with that belief.

Belief? I think it's more than just belief. If you read some feedback from businesses that are spending this cash, they are complaining that they are being forced to constantly upgrade, pay, subscribe, and fall into whatever one of the recent Microsoft licensing schemes orders them to do... and then it is so! Not because they voluntarily agree to, but because they are forced by a monopoly.

And, it is has to be weighed in also that Microsoft has been convicted of abusing its monopoly on the desktop OS market to illegally kill off its competitors. It is also subject of further investigation in Europe with similar tactics involving server software, including Win2k.

So, while I agree with you, that for any desktop OS to become popular it has to be extremely easy to use, support all hardware, most software, etc., etc., it is also not too difficult to see why the circumstances are not perfect. For example, as far as the hardware gadgets are concerned, Microsoft doesn't make drivers or software for most of these gadgets, the hardware manufacturers do. If MS was successfully stopped to inflict its wrath on OEMs so they are free to ship PCs with any other OSes (read what happened with BeOS) without requiring most users to delete or uninstall (already paid for) Windows, then you would see what competition could bring to the desktop market. Other OSes, preinstalled, would gain some market share; hardware manufacturers would actually make software for them; MS OSes would not support *all* hardware flawlessly because all software would not be made specifically to satisfy MS. Regarding the last point, if you haven't seen already, check out the "driver signing" in WinXP, looks pretty close to extortion if you think about it.

Finally, it is OK if you choose to ignore any of the above. State the obvious - "all hardware and software is made for Windows, therefore I use it". But it is not OK to put undue blame or make it look as if - "hey! MS does it, why can't these Linux guys? They really suck!" without at least noting why things are certain bad way in the desktop market. Failure to recognize that may make stating such a belief seem like unreasonable at best.

BTW, I have been using SuSE since 5.x versions, I never experienced the problem you describe.

Or, for much less than $129 I can get an OS (Windows XP), that absolutely runs MS Office and which definitely runs vrtually all other Windows apps.

First, See the retail XP home edition pricing.

- Upgrade from Win98/ME: $99
- Full version: $199

Sure you can get it cheaper from other sources legal or not. Most of them still end up above $129 even for home edition. That's for retail pricing.

Linux is useful and fun for us nerds, but is a bit of a sell to non-nerds, and I don't see the above selling proposition as favoring SUSE for desktop applications -- Linux has no inherent appeal to non-nerds.

Second point, it's not about nerds or non-nerds. You need to read the referenced article from SuSE about the product release. The title in the heading says "SuSE Linux Develops Linux Desktops for Enterprises" in big letters, cannot be missed. Later in the article - "For the first quarter of 2003, SuSE Linux projects the release of SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop. With a focus on easy central administration, this Linux version will be optimized for deployment in large-scale enterprises, public administrations and companies with multiple locations." Now, when you talk enterprise, it's a slightly different animal. Licensing and contract terms are different, prices are different, etc. MS has a tendency of forcing customers to upgrade even if said upgrade is met with firm resistance from customers. In the same eweek article read the figure that 60% of MS' customers still run Win95/98. Clearly, these customers are resisting the cost of upgrade as well as being locked in one of the new controversial licensing schemes from Microsoft, some of them even ending up paying more than once for the same software.

From what I read and know, there is definitely a market there that will explore and consider an alternative supported OS that will run MS Office reliably; since they will not have to incur significant user training costs. They definitely will not switch everyone from Win9x to Linux overnight but they will be willing to evaluate and implement on a smaller scale as a starting point. SuSE's job is 1. marketing to and convincing these people, 2. delivering a reliable product. Once you pass the test, have few key happy customers under your belt, then others will start noticing you.

This new Linux cluster, which IBM and the Chrysler Group will detail on Monday, is based on 108 IBM IntelliStation M Pro 6850 workstations powered by dual Intel Xeon processors operating at 2.2GHz each with enhanced 512KB L2 cache.

There's another article at eWeek.com: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,642716,00.asp

There's another article at eWeek.com: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,642716,00.asp

eWeek
Computer Graphics World
Business Week
Globetechnology.com
ZDNet

The wonders of news.google.com.

Actually, let me make an educated guess here.

I think they've seen the writing in the wall as far as NetWare goes, and are thinking of taking the best parts of it and porting those parts to Linux. This story on E-Week shows that they've re-organised thier engineering units to make a "Cross Platform" group with Linux as a specific target. MySQL on NetWare may be the first step in a wholesale change at Novell.

If they can pulll this off, they'll survive - quit nicely too, I think. Dunno if I'd mortgage the house to buy thier stock, but they seem a survivor in the IT world.

Soko

What they conveniently fail to mention is that they loathe the idea of releasing their source code, and that is why they hate the GPL. That is my theory.

-- Caron Carlson. "Allchin: Disclosure May Endanger U.S." EWeek. 13 May 2002.

Basically, Microsoft is so far behind in the security game that they have no realistic chance of catching up. IBM and others have already found ways to

make money from Free Software and Open Source Software. Their only chance is to use DRM and DRM legislation to lock users into a subscription model of pay per use/month/quarte/year/whatever not so much for the software, but for continued access to documents encoded in one of Microsofts proprietary and undocumented formats.

It's not like Apple is doing so well that they can afford to play the role of protester. Don't they think that if they stay away from the east coast trade show because "IGN is no longer investing in New York", there might be a significant number of people on the east coast who decide not to invest in Apple? Especially after Boston lobbied hard to bring the trade show back, this is definitely a slap in the face. Apple deciding to take their ball and go home just doesn't make any sense.

If you're talking about phones made by a US company, Motorola T720i is probably the first one to come out. Eweek says that it's an 1xRTT Java phone that has an optional camera attachment. If's seems to be available for sale at Verizon's website, however no mention of the camera attachments there. Maybe Eweek confused T720 with A820... Anyway, the relevant links are below.

• Article describing recent phones supporting multimedia
  
• new 2002 handsets from Motorola
  
• Verizon selling T720i
  

Even better is when you read the story about Allchin saying [Microsoft source] Disclosure May Endanger U.S. and there's a big fat Microsoft ad sitting in the middle of the article... that mentions security no less.

Oh, the irony...

The IBM 64-bit processor is reported to be much lower power than the Power 4 chip it is derived from, and the actual chip is rougly the size of the Intel Celeron. See article.

here

/me wonders if http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&q=microsoft&btnG =Google+Search is the next slashdot (w/o karma)

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,503863,00.asp

Look, larger companies don't want standards. That's the reason why companies don't want standards (if all possible). It's just that their internal management foils them from operating efficiently enough to capitalize.

Reading the article gives me the feeling that the author is the sort of person who enjoys starting a flame war and sitting and watching the trolls move in. Much of what is said in the column is FUD. To quote two parts:

Here's the most compelling reason to abandon Motorola's PowerPC chip: It's falling further behind in the speed race as Intel's chips leave Motorola's in the dust.

Yes, if you are going per Mhz this is true, but once again Intel is a CISC chip with plenty of legacy components and the PowerPC is a RISC chip,
with plenty fewer transistors. Mhz is not an indication of work or performance. It is on the other hand a good indication of the heat that the chip will emit.

Several engineers familiar with the hardware work that goes on inside Apple wrote to say that, yes, it has quietly developed a Pentium microprocessor that could power a Mac.

It is a known fact that Apple has an internal project, known as Maklar, where MacOS X works on Intel chips. Apple is a hardware company and while plenty of R&D might be going on, only so much actually ends up as a product. It may end up being real, but any smart company has backup plans, even if they never see the light of day.

Add to all this that e-week, the same source that started this hornets nest, also mentioned that Apple is working with IBM to use the 64-bit PowerPC chip in future Macs. The truth is, Apple is likely to abandon Motorola, as Motorola is incapable of developing any chips that have a market other than embedded solutions. Motorola has really appears to be trying to get out of the desktop processor market.

These are my points of view - you are free to disagree.

IBM's claim seem reasonable - that MySQL isn't suited for extreme high end use. This seems reasonable.

I just completed my own multi-user benchmark tests and the great performance of PostgreSQL vs the not so great performance of MySQL with InnoDB was quite revealing.

Well, since MySQL can keep up with Oracle, are you suggesting that Oracle has "not so great performance" and that PostgreSQL can outperform Oracle?

MySQL wins on only one major front, and as you've noted the degree to which it wins on that front seems to be diminishing: speed.

That's true as long as you only have a couple or fewer users using your MySQL database concurrently and then, only when they are performing very simple selects.

That is not true. It's another old myth that has been disproven.

MySQL wins on only one major front, and as you've noted the degree to which it wins on that front seems to be diminishing: speed.

That's true as long as you only have a couple or fewer users using your MySQL database concurrently and then, only when they are performing very simple selects.

That is not true. It's another old myth that has been disproven.

...they won't be making their latest version of Solaris available to non-Sun platforms.

There is an article on eWeek that discusses how people are responding to Sun's refusal to release Solaris 9 to non-Sun x86 hardware.

Your estimate may be too low by more than a factor of 10. This eWeek article puts the number at $300/year per employee (compared to your $25.60).

It is not only Microsoft that is to blame for the creation of faulty software, said Chandra Mugunda, a software consultant with Dell Computer in Round Rock, Texas, who attended Valentine's presentation here. "It's an industry-wide problem, it's not just a Microsoft problem," he said. "But they're the leaders, and they should take the lead to solve these problems"

Valentine, too, took the opportunity to point out the widespread bugs that have been discovered in competing operating products such as Linux and Unix.

"Every operating system out there is about equal in the number of vulnerabilities reported," he said. "We all suck."

The result is that is far easier to exploit an easy, scriptable vulnerability in a Microsoft system, that has no patch for months, than to exploit a difficult, binary hole in a LInux/BSD system that has a patch within days.

eWeek has a slightly interesting article here about a company putting together a bonded sender program, where people who receive unwanted mail from such a sender would be able to charge against the bond.

Interesting, though it won't work of course. As the article points out, legitimate mass emailers are less likely to have large scale complaints compared with unbonded/unwanted mass mailers, but personally I wouldn't mind being able to charge for each Viagra, HGH, mortgage, and credit repair email I've gotten just today.

eWeek has a couple of articles on spam (see the homepage), and Spam is the cover banner on the hardcopy magezine this week.

eWeek has a slightly interesting article here about a company putting together a bonded sender program, where people who receive unwanted mail from such a sender would be able to charge against the bond.

Interesting, though it won't work of course. As the article points out, legitimate mass emailers are less likely to have large scale complaints compared with unbonded/unwanted mass mailers, but personally I wouldn't mind being able to charge for each Viagra, HGH, mortgage, and credit repair email I've gotten just today.

eWeek has a couple of articles on spam (see the homepage), and Spam is the cover banner on the hardcopy magezine this week.

Telstra wouldn't bother producing anything that a prestigious publication like Eweek says there is no interest in would they?

But when it comes right down to it, MySQL is a niche player. It's niche, luckily, is the average consumer. It's a very well designed DB, but it was built for speed, not combat.

Don't pretend that it's something it isn't. Don't bash it for not being something it wasn't ever designed to be. Don't try and convince me that it's no good because it doesn't yet have features I don't need.

Oracle is a tank, MySQL is a sedan. I don't drive a tank. I don't need to. You may work where you need to drive a tank, but that doesn't make it any more appropriate for what I do. If you need that added benefits that only a tank can provide... well then I hope you can afford one. They cost a lot of money to own and to operate. MySQL is free, it works very well, it's surprisingly reliable, and it does what almost everybody needs.

I work for a VBC that's known as one of the best managed companies in America. We love companies with the attitude you describe. We call them "also-rans". Each year our businesses are given a target cost they must remove using IT projects. Spending on the projects comes from projected savings. The business owns the budget, but has to spend it through a centralized IT group. In our business, the number was $270 M (our revenues are about $10 B). Miss the number one year and the VP's don't get bonuses; miss it twice and the VP's don't have jobs. The trick is measuring the benefits, and auditing after project implementation to make sure they aren't playing games with the numbers. Does it work? This year, we expect to save $1.6 Billion (across all business) while increasing IT spending 12%.

Microsoft has no good intentions for the LWCE. I have come to learn that they intend to only do two things: promote their Services For Unix software and promote Windows XP Embedded.

I have been trying to find the original Newsforge article with that information, but I've only been able to find the article at Eweek.com.

They try to make it out as though it's really about talking to customers that need to work in a mixed environment, but I have my doubts. They also try to make it out as being a dialog between them and the rest of the OSS and Free Software communities.

If IBM is talking openly about a Power PC processor, they probably don't have a deal with Apple. That's the opinion of an analist included int this article. So nexx-generation Macs may ship with Motorolla processors.

There is also an eWeek story.

The number one reason was performance.

That was most likely for some 1.x version of Apache. The Windows version of Apache 2.0 has been written as a native Windows application, instead of being ported like earlier versions. Now it performs as well, or better than, IIS 5.0.

E-Week has an article on this.

If it is, then it seems a bit dishonest for the microsoft message author (Dave at the Security Response Center) to say that they don't consider it to be a bug.

If it isn't, then there must be another problem which is even more serious. Oh dear!

If your database only has one user, and you spend a lot of time truncating tables, then MySQL is probably the correct choice.

Look at the eWeek tests. MySQL is keeping pace with Oracle even when scaled to 1000 simultaneous users. Read the article.

If your database only has one user, and you spend a lot of time truncating tables, then MySQL is probably the correct choice.

Look at the eWeek tests. MySQL is keeping pace with Oracle even when scaled to 1000 simultaneous users. Read the article.

In a recent database benchmark, the Alpha version of MySQL beat DB2, SQL Server and ASE. It kept up speed right along with Oracle (a expensive product to say the least). Check It Out

According to folklore in the database world,
Oracle was the first to have the restriction
for publishing performance data.
This is documented in here

This is a little bit old, but I am very glad that Mozilla has been recognized by eWeek. They had a nice review (see the link above) and I do agree with the author: there is nothing that Mozilla lacks (compared to the existing browsers). The only thing that I'd like to see in the future is anti-aliased fonts!