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DARPA has been funding in one way or another the premiere researchers in speech recognition, Dr. James and Dr. Janet Baker. Perhaps DARPA should have shown a little more foresight before the Bakers were permitted to sell off Dragon Systems to the Belgian corporation Lernout & Hauspie, which subsequently collapsed in bankruptcy amid fraud allegations, auctioning off assets such as Dragon Systems to ScanSoft, a Xerox spinoff.

If DARPA doesn't in the name of national security (look at the languages that are the candidates for the initial Babylon competitors) simply override what noncompete clauses, patents, etc. that would keep the Bakers from working full-time on this project then they have learned nothing from almost decades of the Bakers' kicking the ass of the entire speech recognition community with their superior statistical approach. Unfortunately I suspect that various government regulations would not permit DARPA to pay a fair market value for the Bakers' services. This to me illustrates how far the United States has fallen from any capacity to mobilize the scientific and engineering community for modern equivalents to the Manhattan Project, except for medical technology.

Butterfly.net and IBM unvailed a gaming Grid build on Open Source software and IBM infrastructure. They claim the Grid can handle up to one million concurrent gamers. I don't see any mention of specifick games out there nor any mention of pricing. You can read the press releases from Butterfly.net, Infoworld and CNNalso vovered the story. And the toolkid can be obtained here if you want to get a headstart.

Sun Makes Gains In Unix Market As IBM Slips
http://www.informationweek.com/shared/printableArt icle?doc_id=IWK20020514S0004

You're obviously not on an H1B visa.

See also:
http://www.iowa2010.state.ia.us/news/06_11.html
http://www.rediff.com/news/2001/may/24us1.htm
http://www.zazona.com/ShameH1B/H1BFAQs.htm
http://lists.tamil.com/lists/it/2001-01/msg00029.h tml

woof.

You want lower cost-per-seat and easier maintenence overall? Spend half that money on a powerful server, and convert the desktop machines for use as thin clients. No more tweaking settings on each system! No more cleaning up after settings screwed up by users on each system!

I'm surprised not to see more references to the stories about other organizations doing this, such as:

Binson's Hospital Supplies

Newspaper Association of America

(vendor) Integrity Networking Systems

City of Largo

Home Depot

. . .

And if you'd like to really cut down on MS licenses, don't forget about Crossover Office.

Web Services: the stuff that dreams are made of, or more hype from our
favorite technology gurus?

"You can say this has been a dream of computer
science for many decades. The momentum is there to drive [Web services] to the
same kind of central position that the graphics interface and HTML had across
all the different systems in the past." -- Bill Gates (Source: Informationweek.com,
Feb 11, 2002)

In all the battles that Microsoft has had, the one that
has been disproportionately ignored by the technology media relative to its effect
on Microsoft's hopes and ambitions would have to be Microsoft vs. The Internet.
J2EE, Linux, open source and countless other fears of The Stronghold have taken
the show, while few have noticed the potential fundamental impact of the Internet
on Microsoft's business strategy. Microsoft loudly acknowledged the Internet around
1994, pointing out what a good thing it was, hoping that they would be able to
come up with a strategy to defend itself before people realized the Internet was
going to give Microsoft its greatest challenge. The distraction appears to have
worked, as few have considered the consequences this quantum leap in technical
progress could have on this industry giant. To technology purists, the Internet
was about open standards, connectivity, interoperability, peer-to-peer, and, inevitably,
distributed computing. While each of these arrows has threatened to chip away
at Microsoft's proprietary closed Windows platform, none has promised to devalue
the individual machine, Microsoft's pinnacle of success, more than distributed
computing. What became clear in the browser wars was that open standards was the
only way to win any war on the Internet. One may be able to truthfully say that
Microsoft has won the browser wars. Yet, what is also true is that the browser
has just enough holes through the open standards to ensure that no one can stop
the flood of new competitive technologies and open standards from leaking through
it. In this respect, open standards won the browser wars, even if we have to live
with a few idiosyncrasies that can make our browsers a bit obnoxious. Distributed
computing is about getting components and systems to interoperate to create something
bigger, independent of the physical machines the parts are hosted on. As each
computer reaches out to connect to another to create something bigger, the individual
machine becomes less noticeable. It becomes just one of thousands, then millions,
then billions of machines in a world of massive information flows to create what
we call the Internet. In order for this to happen, it was clear to all players
we would have to agree on the standards used to integrate all the components and
processes. While Microsoft had a chance of winning browser wars, in part because
the standards, notably HTTP and initial versions of HTML, were already defined,
and the browser is a user interface on, yes, the individual machine, distributed
computing promises to be different. In the new architecture, value will be defined
by the sum of the [distributed] parts. The ability to participate will define
the value of each piece of code. Aware that this phenomenon was inevitable, there
wasn't a single heavyweight in the industry willing to let Microsoft control how
all the world's computers and components were to connect to create this new era.
IBM, Oracle, Sun, HP, and countless others, with plenty of experience working
on projects to erode Microsoft's influence, were determined to doom any efforts
by Microsoft to control the standard protocols. With everyone willing to agree
on open standards, if, for no other reason, to ensure that Microsoft did not have
a chance, even Microsoft had to concede that the standards would have to be open,
and accepted by all major parties. We call the package containing these standards
for inter-process communications across the Internet "web services". They include
XML based protocols such as Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), and Web Services
Description Language (WSDL), and Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration
(UDDI). It is true that SOAP's inception started with The Borg, in addition to
IBM and Ariba. Yet, when it was submitted to the World Wide Web Consortium's open
standards process, and upon review we concluded there was nothing in there that
gave Windows a distinct advantage, or Microsoft in general, it quickly gained
acceptance even before being declared an official standard. SOAP is the primary
protocol for implementing web services. This XML based standard permits a consumer
to utilize the services of a web services provider. In short, this is a simplified
XML version of COM, CORBA or EJB, only without the specific requirement of a "component",
"object", or "bean", or anything except... well... a "web service". While all
the other web service standards have their place, SOAP is the only one that is
essential for the consumption of a web service. It is possible to create a simple
service and a simple consumer using nothing but SOAP, leaving out UDDI and other
overhead. What's the difference between web services, and COM, CORBA and EJB?
You are not likely to get a straight answer from the owners of the earlier technologies,
because doing so would be tantamount to admiting that they should have begun by
agreeing on open standards in the first place. The important thing is web services
is different; and the real important thing is that, for the first time in history,
all the IT giants in the industry appear to agree. Now we can finally begin large
scale distributed computing. Let's just start wrapping our COM, CORBA, and EBJ
objects in pretty little web services packaging, and pretend like the last decade
of bickering didn't really happen. UDDI, currently managed by UDDI.org, promises
to increase both the value and rate of growth of web services by enabling a more
structured version of what one can think of as a "web search for web services."
By allowing providers to submit descriptions of their offerings, and allowing
consumers to locate all the various web services available for a particular need,
UDDI promises to increase the benefits for both sides of the equation. Currently,
Microsoft, HP, SAP and IBM all manage UDDI Registries. It is worth noting that
Microsoft originally had something called DISCO that does what UDDI does. However,
when it became clear that UDDI was already popular, Microsoft replaced their proprietary
DISCO with its open standard counterpart. Let's give thanks, once again, that
disco is dead! WSDL does not appear to be an offical open standard, yet, as it
has only been submitted to and accepted by the W3C
as a "note", meaning that no one other than Microsoft, IBM and Ariba appear
to have worked on it. Don't tell every else, though, lest you ruin the web services
celebration. For all intensive purposes, it is being endorsed as a standard for
describing in a highly technical and structured way how a consumer of a web service
can access all of a services' parts, or at least that was my take on all the jargon
I read about ports, end points, bindings, messages, operations and french fries.
OK, maybe it didn't mention french fries; but, by the time you are done reading
it all, the one realization that will come to you is that you are probably ready
to eat again. The W3C has a working group called the XML Protocol (XMLP), which
builds upon SOAP to offer standards for implementing SOAP in many different communications
contexts. In trying to be all things to all people, XMLP is committed to being
independent of both programming model and mode of communications between peers.
It is likely to define at a higher level than the original SOAP submission how
our web applications will talk to each other, creating an XML based foundation
upon which we can build, at a distributed level, traditional development concepts
such as even-driven, state-transition and multi-threading programming models.
Why did Microsoft concede the inevitable so quickly and openly and bluntly, not
only giving in to, but helping to foster the open standards, when they have such
a history of fighting tooth and nail for every inch of Internet space? I suspect
that, like the Internet in the past, an offense with strong marketing can once
again hide the fact that Microsoft faces its greatest threat. With all eyes on
Bill's offensive .NET team, who would notice they were really on the defense?
Instead of openly opposing the enemy, Microsoft has chosen to embrace it, hug
it, love it dearly, for the world to see. How, with all that affection, can the
Internet possibly be a threat to Microsoft? Thus, .NET and the open distributed
computing protocols that enable web services are being sold like a marriage made
in heaven. To be sure, despite the Internet, growing global unity on open standards,
and the promise of distributed computing on a scale never before seen in the age
of computers, all hope is not lost for Microsoft. The theory that Microsoft has
chosen to prove is that the individual machine, and its intangible components
(software objects), will still have value in this new world where interconnectivity
is essential. Instead of arguing about how the world's components will connect,
Microsoft is seeking to prove that it can help to produce the best components
at the lowest cost. This is where .NET enters the picture. This is the new sexy
machinery Microsoft is showing off as the primary contender in the oncoming web
services war. With all its marketing might, Microsoft is betting the house on
this new architecture. After all, the only other option is to become irrelevant
in a world where a computer will no longer be considered "booted up" until it
is connected. Microsoft is not alone on the playing field. It has Sun to contend
with. Of course, Sun isn't just a company, but the representative of every J2EE
vendor and Java user out there. Together, they are a force to be reckoned with.
Heavyweights like IBM, whose annual revenues Microsoft still dreams of approaching,
have made J2EE the center of their applications initiatives. Oracle, BEA, HP and
countless others are pooling their efforts together. And, let's not forget various
open source organizations, from Apache to JBoss, like grass roots operations,
they promise to pluck Microsoft from the hearts of countless individual devotees.
Is Sun late to the web services game, as some have said? To this I say what game?
It is clear there will be a game, but it is not clear that the game has really
gone past the kick off. The reality is, a shift like this can take years to evolve.
Web services are poised to grow far more in 2004 than they will in this year,
the year of their illumination. So far, all we see is a lot of gossip, and very
few real life stories. The vast majority of the enterprises that will use web
services have yet to make a commitment to the specific means of how they will
leverage this new technology. Indeed, most are still pondering how they can benefit
from it. If you compare Sun to Microsoft, one can debate who was first to enter
the web services arena. Yet, if you compare them both to the market they are hoping
to appeal to, they are either early, or just in time. Nobody is late. Is it true
that Sun's roadmap is unclear? This has to be viewed from two perspectives. From
a technical viewpoint, we are primarily talking about the ability to take business
processes, and expose them via open standards protocols over the Internet. Does
Sun have a library for doing this? Yes, it does. You can download it freely today,
and begin anytime you like to create your first web services. Is it better than
.NET? This I cannot answer, since I have yet to use either one. However, the question
I have is whether or not the Java community, with its large base, corporate support
and open source initiatives, can produce a better framework over the next year
or so. This seems more important than who was first, since I suspect a year or
two is a better time frame for when web services is likely to really be revved
up on a large scale. The second perspective the roadmap question has to be considered
with is in the area of business. Web services is about more than just distributed
computing. To a business, it is about creating and consuming new services, or
utilizing old services in an improved way. The question each business must ask
is how can they best leverage this new ability to either create new services for
the market, or consume web services in a way that increases their competitiveness
and improves their bottom line. Can Sun or Microsoft really answer this question
for all the businesses out there? Is there a map that any one company can provide?
The truth is, the hardest road to identify is not the technical path, but the
business opportunities. If there is a delay in this game, it is to give pause
to consider everyone's options. It is the great huddle of corporate decision makers
assessing how the next play can help them win the game. To this, I submit, silence
from Microsoft and Sun will do more good. It is not their job to run everyone's
businesses. To return to our original question, is the whole "web services" thing
hype? Web services is at least a solid beginning to a new era of distributed computing
that is as inevitable as paved roads. If web services is not hype, what remains
to be questioned are the tools and services the hype masters themselves know you
do not have to choose. Will .NET be the answer for everyone? Will Java take the
lead through its community involvement and open source support? Will supply and
demand for web services skyrocket in the next few months? These are things to
be hyped. Will web services and distributed computing change our lives? Now I
hear a ring of truth.

My favorite expression for these kind of top-down decisions, that essentially come down to "because I said so!", is:
"are we discussing this, or are we going to Tahiti."

I picked up the expression from this John Soat column where he told a story about the GAP and their decision to replace Lotus Notes with Exchange.

Gap is migrating its messaging infrastructure from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Exchange , a decision implemented by CIO Ken Harris shortly after he arrived at the company several months ago, according to a source close to the situation. Changing messaging infrastructure isn't easy, and the IT people at the Gap were hoping for some kind of explanation or justification. Instead, according to the source, Harris told the staff that when the captain of a ship tells the crew that they're going to Tahiti, the crew doesn't question the order-they simply steer the ship to Tahiti. "Going to Tahiti" has apparently become an oft-used phrase in Gap IT circles-i.e., when talking over strategy, people now ask, "Are we discussing this, or are we going to Tahiti?"

Just announced Friday; I submitted it as a story, but I guess the moderator wasn't interested. Single user student licenses will be $99; department-wide licenses will be $799 per year. The fact that these two stories appeared so close together suggests to me that Bill G. is rather concerned about the problem.

Yeah, him and that other goofball Stephen Hawking.

Information Week

... and just now., E*Trade is moving towards Linux.

The world is amazing.

What is seen as a good idea here can be extended.

There are various facets in use in the market today, in one form or another....... i.e.

"PC monitors that detach and become portable touch-screen tablets, allowing users to roam the house reading E-mail and accessing other information stored on a PC"

and of course this threads story on extigy

........in what is described below:
(replace "Linux system" where you see "amiga"!!!!)

Enclosures

Image of a modular system

another description of the image (note Raritan is not what it was in 1997 - which was a injection molding case manufacture)

and another perspective

Certainly a musician would find it beneficial to be able to add as many channels (actual hardware modules) into his processing/recording mix system.

Here's a link [zdnet.com] for ya. Ooh, here's a quote too:

"But though PHP thrives on hosted servers, it's too immature for a high-traffic business environment. As much as we were rooting for it to succeed in our testing, it failed--especially when we attempted to evaluate on Windows."

We were unable to get the ISAPI version working

the truth really is that IIS/ASP is for the more educated, business people, and PHP is for the 133t k1dd13z...

Guess who uses IIS? eBay, Dell, Gateway, Intel, Nasdaq, Compaq, most of the UK Government sites... etc.

My point being that most large corporations use IIS simply because of Microsoft's disinformation rather than it being a superior solution to everything else. Furthermore, I would suggest you are a victim of that disinformation, and urge you to base your opinions on wider range of reasonable and unbiased journalism in the future.

Circuit City is moving in the same direction. They're headquartered here in Richmond, VA. An acquaintance of mine is a lead programmer on a team responsible for creating custom GTK apps for their POS systems. I don't know all the details, but I believe they're using Red Hat as their base distro (which, I guess, isn't that suprising).

Other people that are deploying Linux are Home Depot, Burlington Coat Factory, and The New York Stock Exchange. Of course there's also IBM, but they hardly need mentioning.

I think it's fair to debate how well Linux fits certain needs, but so far there has been solid proof that it fits some very large needs for some vary large companies. By 2003, I think the outlook is nothing but positive. Shooting for world domination is a grand goal, and capturing the desktop world would seem to be a huge piece of completing that goal. As much as we talk about it, I think we all understand that our grandmothers won't be using Linux anytime soon. In the meantime I'll be perfectly happy knowing that Linux is being used for the high-scale, back-end systems, while Fischer Price My First Operating System hangs out on the desktop.

• Hacker School Teaches Security about a class in New York from March 2000.
  
• Hacker school open for business. Canada, February 2001.
  
• Cracking the Code. March 1999 (appears to be corporate seminars, rather than a truly public school though).
  

I believe, but cannot be sure, since I am not running it myself, that you can run linux on a Palm...

Information Week had an article about it.

How about you look at their financial statement from the last quarter or look at news reports like this before asserting that they didn't spend that much money?

Home Depot is using Red Hat Linux for a huge in-store system that its employees will use for tasks such as receiving, ordering, and inventory management. As many as 90,000 cash registers (etc) are running Linux there. Check out this article for details.

According to Information Week article, starting last month most of the USPS Priority and Express mail is being hauled by FedEx for the USPS in exchange for having FedEx drop boxes for returned goods at post offices across the US.

Innovation eh? I found this great quote linked from the Microsoft Research page ...

Microsoft didn't exactly have a reputation for innovation; after all, it bought its flagship DOS operating system for a pittance from a small Seattle company and then licensed it to IBM--and the rest of the world--for huge profits.

Today, the perception that Microsoft is incapable of innovation is slowly changing. But critics still decry the company's research efforts as unimpressive, particularly in light of those by Xerox Corp.'s fabled Palo Alto Research Center, the yardstick by which all other computer-science research labs have come to be measured.

I was researching Carly Fiorina and came across an InformationWeek.com interview with the 'boss', dated Friday, July 20th, 2001. It seems to provide some insight into why HP is buying Compaq. Here is the quote from the article:

Carly:

You made the comment that Compaq is becoming a services company. Look, all Compaq has done so far is follow our strategy by nine months to the letter. Including on [June 25], saying, "You know that IA-64 idea that HP has been on for seven years and co-developed the chip? We think maybe that's a good idea, we're going there."

So, what I see Compaq doing actually is following us and I do not think they have the systems-class capability that we do, nor do they have the experience around rich content, which our planning and imaging business gives us. And more and more of the applications are moving to rich-content kinds of applications.

Well, she's obviously a very intelligent woman coming from the rest of the article(and her COUPLE of BS and MS's), and this seems to explain a few things about her reasoning. So what Compaq is lacking HP will be filling in, to create this giant service-over-network beast which will be the Next Big Thing for the Internet.

In the UK, they do exactly that: Under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers (RIP) Act, every ISP or even operator of a private network (like a corporate LAN or a cybercafe) has to help the police by scanning their traffic for potential terrorist content. If they don't, it's five years in the slammer.

South Carolina has a similar law regarding child pornography.

Of course, if you're opposed to these laws, you must be a terrorist or a child molestor...

2001-04-09 21:20:02 Sun using Linux handheld (articles,news) (rejected)

--

Dell is supposedly moving into the services business. H-P has (so far unsuccessfully) been attempting the same thing.

IBM has (successfully) moved into the services business, but only because they were already diversified enough to make the move.

The trend isn't new. As long ago as 1999, the writing was on the wall. The problem is, most of these hardware OEMs are going to have a difficult time making the transition. They're used to competing on price, not on service. The OEM business is brutally competitive in the price arena, but let's be honest, most PC clone makers are not really innovating. All they're doing is trying to squeeze inefficiency out of manufacturing and distribution, making money on very thin margins.

Entering services will be difficult for Compaq, just as it has been for Dell, H-P, and all the other OEMs that are jumping on the bandwagon. Compete on price alone at your own peril.

Check out this one at Information Week.

Also, a good overview of XP can be found on developerWorks.

I work for RoleModel Software (on the Organon Teknika Project mentioned in the InfoWeek article) with the guys who wrote the developerWorks article. I'll try to answer any questions anybody might have, and I'm sure Chris and Roy will too (their emails are in the article).

There was an article on informationweek.com about this last week. The article talks about all the different flavors of Linux, and how great it is to have something which you can make so unique to you with so little effort, but how bad this can be to business. The main point of the article is that, without standards, Linux isn't a viable platoform for businesses.

It's an interresting read, check it out.

[Note: Informationweek updates a lot, so the article may get flushed to an archive soon. I suggest someone paste it below if they find it as usefull as I did.]


---

There was an article on informationweek.com about this last week. The article talks about all the different flavors of Linux, and how great it is to have something which you can make so unique to you with so little effort, but how bad this can be to business. The main point of the article is that, without standards, Linux isn't a viable platoform for businesses.

It's an interresting read, check it out.

[Note: Informationweek updates a lot, so the article may get flushed to an archive soon. I suggest someone paste it below if they find it as usefull as I did.]


---

I think the count of people that use S/390 is far less inportant than the importance of those people. S/390 has no peer in its class as a mainfraim. Sun's starfire comes close. Sun's Starfire, aka Enterprise 10000, comes as close to competing with the S/390 as a Cessna does to an SR-71. They both fly, burn stuff to get from point a to point b and get their jobs done, but they cater to different people entirely. Please allow me to consult Google and present you with this 13 September, 1999 InformationWeek story. "The RS/6000 S80 symmetric multiprocessing server will be available next week with between six and 24 450-MHz PowerPC RS64 III chips based on copper technology for enhanced performance. IBM says a 24-way S80 outperforms Sun's 64-way Enterprise 10000 server. Though Independent Transaction Processing Council benchmark results aren't final, industry analyst Brad Day of Giga Information Group confirms IBM's claim. Pricing for the S80 starts at $290,000 for a six-way server. The vendor says high-end versions of the server will cost 50% less than Sun's high-end versions of the Enterprise 10000. " Since then, the RS6k has continued to grow in speed. The S/390, on the other hand, does not specialize in massively parallel jobs like that. The S/390 is awesome at high volume data processing. I'm not sure who you insulted more-- the S80 for forgetting about it or the S/390 for not knowing what it did.

Yep, it looks like Home Depot is going Linux in a big way. Here's a story.

They are going through Red Hat, which is supporting the project pretty intensively. There's a large cost associated with that (the story quotes about $55,000), but probably less than the comparable Microsoft support. It looks like it started last May, and is a three-year program, involving back-store functions, floor terminals, and registers.

Now we just need the second part of the equation: demonstration that it's mission critical ready, and that it's profitable.

At the same time, this isn't really Microsoft's turf - I can imagine they would have needed a custom system, anyway, and employees won't really be using Star Office, or other office tools. They didn't mention moving to Linux boxes at headquarters, either.

John

Lynne Bradley, director of government relations for the American Library Association, says librarians are concerned that the ruling will severely limit the public's ability to quote from digital materials, especially those that are not published in nondigital formats.
It prevents those conducting such research from circumventing technological protection measures in seeking to refer to copyrighted material

http://www.slashdot.org/www.informationweek.com

Story poster is a FUCKWIT.

ZDNet Story
MSNBC Story
Information Week Story
CNN Story
SANS Story

Also : Microsoft security bulletin (irony)
Microsoft FAQ + Patch

Found some cases that make interesting reading.

lawsuit over implementation

cross examination. Note how subjective it gets.

more lawsuits

btw, I didn't work for any of the companies mentioned in any of my posts, just in case there are lawyers reading this. My main point is re. the legal fine points that determine whether a work of software is "shoddy" or done according to "expectations". Anybody who has used any software can probably sense the gaping loopholes which can result from describing how software performs, what was expected, etc. It just takes skilled lawyers to determine this in legal terms. Geeks tend to think of technical details when they talk about expections and good results. Lawyers think of law. The former is irrelevant in lawsuits...

This is precisely the type of thing that makes QoS (Quality Of Service) such a bad idea. All internet traffic should be handled on the first come, first serve basis, with no discrimination or preferences being supported along the way. Imagine being a system administrator, trying to figure out why your packets were being lost, when ping still worked, etc.
Equal rights for all packets!
--Mike--

Actually, Compaq and other vendors will be shipping systems with Win2K installed next month, as stated in this article.
Also, so-called "golden code" (not beta) CDs are available now to members of the early adopter program for Win2K... so it has been released.

I think the "Old Trick" that we should be watching for is what Microsoft does with Windows Online. The idea of having an "application server" for office applications can be pretty useful.

But according to The New Forces of Change at Information Week, Microsoft is planning to host Windows Online on MSN. This gives Microsoft the ideal way to leverage their applications monopoly so that they can supress competition in the emerging "application service provider" marketplace, and build up MSN. Of course, if people have the choice of signing with MSN and getting the newest versions of Windows Online all the time, or signing with another ASP that isn't so close to the OS source, which one are they going to choose?

Can you teach an old Microsoft new tricks?

I think the "Old Trick" that we should be watching for is what Microsoft does with Windows Online. The idea of having an "application server" for office applications can be pretty useful.

But according to The New Forces of Change at Information Week, Microsoft is planning to host Windows Online on MSN. This gives Microsoft the ideal way to leverage their applications monopoly so that they can supress competition in the emerging "application service provider" marketplace, and build up MSN. Of course, if people have the choice of signing with MSN and getting the newest versions of Windows Online all the time, or signing with another ASP that isn't so close to the OS source, which one are they going to choose?

Can you teach an old Microsoft new tricks?

Not quite the same thing. There are plenty of apps that run exclusively on certain operating systems. Tivoli should have the same freedom to innovate and choose a particular OS to target and support, especially if that strategy gives them an advantage:

From the article -

"If the only gateway we supported was Linux, it would be cheap, said chief technology officer Tim Bishop. "It would make configuration testing much easier and it would be easier to support."

I hardly think that Tivoli has a monopoly on network management applications. Whereas it can be argued, indeed, is being argued, that another company has such a monopoly on operating systems.

Besides, if Linus became like Bill, we'd just give him a noogie and tell him to stop it.

John Hebert