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InfoWorld also got an early look at the X4100, though the review doesn't specify that model number because it hadn't even been announced yet. The price tag is ten times more than that of the X2100 the parent mentions, but as far as I understand it, the X2100 is pretty much an Asian white-box system. It's the X4100 and X4200 systems, a 1U and 2U respectively, that are Sun's new flagship custom designs. The big news is that InfoWorld's reviewers actually seem to have some fairly complementary things to say about them, which hasn't always been the case for Sun's AMD hardware in the past.

Can be configured to scan make at DATA time in the SMTP conversation. A LOT of configuration work here to make it play nice on a massively scaled platform, but it can be done. Mostly it needs to have things like the auto whitelisting and bayseasn filtering turned off, as the extra DB file work is a bit excessive.

Actually, I'm sure there is a way to make it work with a less resource intensive repository, but using the standard SA rules seems to work well for my environment. *shrug*

I'm no professional at this, but wouldn't you want to start looking at adding some dedicated anti-spam pre-filtering hardware when you start getting into > 100k recipients? A recent bit in Infoworld had even the lowest reviewed appliance cutting server loads in half.

Come on, ESR is pretty much off everyone's radar at the moment and has been for some time.

It is here - http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/07/06/HNPalmso urce_1.html
- vineetb
(http://homepage.mac.com/vineetb/iblog

The same DOJ that abandoned the entire Office suite for WordPerfect six months ago (excepting Exchange). The NSA runs their servers on a custom Linux, and OS X is a government certified OS.

That's what Friendster used, the MySQL binaries you can download from the mysql.com site?

InfoWorld's Tom Sullivan has a blog post up that questions some of the findings in the study. Among other things, he notes that Solaris support was found to cost less than that of either Windows or Linux, and that the same study found Windows to be cheaper when studied over a three-year period. Most importantly, though, he points out that only 20 companies were surveyed to come up with this study, and with those kind of odds you can pretty much make the numbers say anything you want.

http://weblog.infoworld.com/techwatch/archives/003 900.html

I share your concern and everybody should. That's why IBM came up with this.

The job is great, except for our boss. He simply doesn't know nearly as much as he should. Our team finds ourselves teaching him or explaining remedial things far too often. Even when his own computer is acting up, he doesn't know what to do with it and has us fix it while he sits and watches. He spends hours and hours on the most insignificant tasks as if he has nothing better to do. Is it ignorant to believe an IT manager should be a knowledgeable in technology as a whole?

I refer you to:
http://www.infoworld.com/cgi-bin/displayNew.pl?/le wis/980518rl.htm
(and realize I don't necessarily agree with him totally, just the point that he makes that it may not all be maliscious)

and the sory he mentions; "The Political Engineer" (sorry, no links on the Web).

As one who has worked under such people (and, yes, some of them were people I respected outside of that particular incompetence) and was subsequently punished for it, I can only suggest that you leave and let them perish under their own incompetence lest you perish with them.

DRM is much larger then just some lame p2p copyright infringement idea. DRM will effect the very way we retain our knowledge as a society. The "keyholders" will dictate what information is acceptable and what is not.

Time and time again, I hear about some company sharing my personal information with another company against my will. Right now, my credit card company seems to be free to do whatever it wants with my info so long as it sends me a notice of its new policy disguised as a piece of junk mail. If I were able to DRM-enable my own personal information, on the other hand, I could prevent them from doing that in an active, technology-driven way. They couldn't arbitrarily decide that their policy allows them to use my info in a way that I haven't approved, because the pre-defined, explicit digital policies would prevent it.

Everybody's so caught up with rabid, dogmatic hatred of DRM that talking about alternatives, even open source ones, is the geek social equivalent of attending a NAMBLA meeting. Whether you accept the concept of pervasive DRM for all kinds of data or not, if we accept that DRM is an eventuality, isn't it better for DRM technology development to proceed through a community-based action than to let a few corporations control it?

You can lie all you want. Are your pants on fire yet?

Besides the Google Instant Messenger client rumor, there are quite a few other opportunities that Google might be trying to fund.

Well there's that Broadband over Power Line rumor. And the massive country-wide Wi-Fi rumor. Also the streamable Google Operating System. Oh and the Google Browser rumor

And lets not forget Google needs some money to finance their trip to Mars

http://arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.ars/2005 /8/13/957, which points to the statistics from http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/08/12/HNfirefo xloses_1.html
Their view was that sampling errors were not discussed, and this affects the reliability of the numbers.

I must admit it's all my fault: I've been viewing Flash pages in IE because I haven't installed a Flash player to MoFo's Deer Park Alpha 2.

Maybe not. FF LOST share last month while IE grew. http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/08/12/HNfirefo xloses_1.html

Apparantly the network was linuxservers at branch offices with MS Windows Desktops running StarOffice. To top it off expensive Sun servers running Staroffice stuff was in the mix. This was not what i would call a Linux migration in the first place! It was more of a Sun -> Microsoft migration.

Even more astonoshing is the fact that Microsoft apparantly promised to help develop an application that according to the Scottish would cost £100.00!

They only paid £60.000 for the licenses so i would say they got a VERY sweat deal on this. Can you get any cheaper than to get paid to use a product?

Read this article for some facts:
http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/08/11/HNscotti shpolice_1.html

Ed Foster of Infoworld described a situation with a license agreement on a pharmaceutical book. The shrinkwrapped book was mailed to a physician. The license on the book claimed that the book was the property of Omnicare. Breaking the seal would indicate acceptance of the license. Those who did not accept the license terms were directed to "promptly return the material unopened to your local Omnicare pharmacy." Furthermore, the license would "terminate immediately if the Licensee or his or her employer ceased to be an Omnicare customer." The physician was not an Omnicare customer, so keeping the book or disposing of it might violate the license either way. Would it come down to shipping the book back or becoming an Omnicare customer? Note: Postal regulations state that individuals are not obligated to return unsolicited goods.

Another article from Ed Foster talks about EULAs on non-software items, including a digital camera.

Ed Foster of Infoworld described a situation with a license agreement on a pharmaceutical book. The shrinkwrapped book was mailed to a physician. The license on the book claimed that the book was the property of Omnicare. Breaking the seal would indicate acceptance of the license. Those who did not accept the license terms were directed to "promptly return the material unopened to your local Omnicare pharmacy." Furthermore, the license would "terminate immediately if the Licensee or his or her employer ceased to be an Omnicare customer." The physician was not an Omnicare customer, so keeping the book or disposing of it might violate the license either way. Would it come down to shipping the book back or becoming an Omnicare customer? Note: Postal regulations state that individuals are not obligated to return unsolicited goods.

Another article from Ed Foster talks about EULAs on non-software items, including a digital camera.

I went to the Content Management page and was surprised to see no plone. What happened? Are the pythonistas no longer in vogue?

"If only these companies knew then what we know now: these internet services don't need to be marketed to the masses."

You hit the nail on the head. The level of misunderstanding at the time was immense. I vividly remember one keynote address at the 1999 World Wide Web Conference in Toronto, given by Bob Metcalfe.

Bob had this nice tight little riff he'd made up, wherein he announced that in order to thrive on the web, a company had to eyeballize, memberize and then monetize their website. His message, as much as any other, epitomised the Oklahoma-land-rush feeling at the time, where people grabbed turf first and asked questions later.

Unfortunately, some of those questions were rather nuanced. Like, for example, 'do you not like ads at all, or do you just not want to be distracted while you're reading online?' Google found the answer to that. Go.com and others did not, to their chagrin.

MSN has only recently begun learning the folly of 'memberizing'. And people are still struggling with the problem of 'monetizing' their websites.

At the time I heard Metcalfe's talk I remember shaking my head in disbelief. Now, don't get me wrong, I respect him greatly for inventing ethernet. But further proof of the folly of the Dot Com boom was the blind faith that investors put in the business acumen of the alpha geek. Visionaries, generally speaking, are not too great at dealing with the messy details of day-to-day life, and as often as not need to be protected from it (that's one good use for tenure in Universities, by the way). Investors allowed these same dreamers into the driver's seat, and paid in spades for the decision.

It's pretty hard to market any kind of Unix operating system these days without having an open source strategy at the same time. Sun does it. IBM does it. It may seem a little gross and certainly a little hypocritical, but it's not exactly a surprise that SCO would try it, too.

This is not unexpected. Quote from the article here: Linux sales help Oracle

Oracle has been heavily marketing Linux as a way for its customers to reduce costs, and the strategy appeared to pay off: Much of Oracle's 15 percent growth came from sales of its database on Linux, Gartner said. The Linux database segment remains relatively small overall, accounting for just $654.8 million of new license sales, but it more than doubled from 2003.


Oracle on Linux doubled, Microsoft sees that. If the trend continues look for Microsoft to run thier products on cheap linux clusters.

Bill and Ballmer won't put up with Larry owning a market segment of anything. Even if it means porting to Linux.

Enjoy,

Let the Cisco network defend itself. Just like on 24.

I submitted this as a story back on June 4. Since it was rejected (too verbose?), I posted it to my /. journal. My main question to other folks relates to how this would compare to using a regular ramdisk. The main deficiency with a ramdisk is that you'd have to reload the contents every time you reboot. Here's my article, with all its links:

Giga-byte Technology recently came out with a DRAM-based PC card that operates as a SATA hard drive. The product, iRAM, uses power from the motherboard to keep memory active when the system is shut down. During power outages, the product uses a on-board battery to retain memory for up to 90 minutes. The iRAM card is being talked about in the news (InfoWorld, itWorldCanada, engadget, PCWorld, multiplay forum) as a means of booting Windows faster. That is, you install Windows onto the iRAM drive to take advantage of the RAM's faster read-access time. Just hope that you don't lose power for more than 90 minutes.

Is boot time really that important, since many computers are on all the time? A ramdisk might have better uses, perhaps for caching frequently-accessed files such as databases and webservers. Or, if you insist on having faster bootup, instead of putting Windows on the iRAM disk, why not just store the hibernation file there?

I implemented a RAM-based database for an internet tool in 1998 to alleviate the read/write load on my local hard drive. It turned out to be a simple solution for the problem. At the time, it was just a matter of using a DOS-based ramdisk driver (ramdisk.sys). On application startup, it copied the database files to the ramdisk. During operation, everything was read/written to the ramdisk, and periodic backups were made to the physical disk. There are some inherent risks, such as loss of data during a crash since data isn't immediately written to a physical hard drive, so it may not be a great solution for a mission-critical production database. The iRAM product would make this type of database even more stable, in that the risk of loss of data is much less.

That was a while ago, so I thought I'd look into setting up a ramdisk in XP for some amusement. Follows are the results of that search. It seems that the options are relatively sparse beyond the DOS-based driver. A few freeware and commercial packages are available, though. One key factor beyond price is the size limit of ramdisk.

Microsoft's ramdisk offerings since Win2k are limited. Included with the XP OS is a ramdisk sample driver that "provides an example of a minimal driver. Neither the driver nor the sample programs are intended for use in a production environment. Rather, they are intended for educational purposes and as a skeletal version of a driver." Installation isn't simple enough for most users to benefit.

Alternatives include a shareware ramdisk, AR ramdisk (archive link: http://web.archive.org/web/20041011170408/http:/ww w.arsoft-online.de/products/product.php?id=1) (freeware, 2GB limit, discontinued, available for download here), a freeware (64MB limit) and shareware (2GB limit) version here,

But hey, Google buying up companies and offering the software for free to kill the competition is a honorable thing right?

I think now that Google is a public company it is inevitable that it will follow its motivation. The examples you cite, however do seem to be different. I don't see that any of these products are tied (pdf) to an existing offering, responsible for breaking a competitor's product or obtained through outright theft

This is the same sensationalist troll who coined "Open Sores" back in June 1999 to mock FLOSS, and called Stallman a communist, and Torvalds Lenin.

Mr. Metcalfe, if we wanted to read intelligent rants on how Everything is Wrong, I think we can pick from several better sources than you, and might learn something from it instead of suffering through your screeds...

• JWZ http://www.jwz.org/doc/java.html
• Richard Gabriel http://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html
• Rob Pike (pdf) http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/who/rob/utah2000.pdf
• Jef Raskin http://jef.raskincenter.org/humane_interface/summa ry_of_thi.html
• ... (others?)

I would like to contribute this link to your history, that one day search engines might pick it up: Pompous Windbag

That's good for Linux, & you "Jedi" (or, are you the Sith? Depends on your point-of-view, now, doesn't it?) can use that.

Here is what I use for my own system @ home, with some variation, it can be applied to Microsoft-Style networks as well (minding the NetBIOS/LanManager stuff in its content if you have a home LAN or larger one @ work):

Like your ideas for Linux? This one just cuts off the doorways into the system basically, & a BIT more:

All you need to do, is these steps, with a 1/2 hour time using regedit &/or notepad @ most, check it, & never get infected AGAIN (on Windows no less), ever, & most certainly NOT in 4 minutes time as was said here recently!

I posted this for those that have been victims because it works... @ least until nothing NEW that's malicious comes along that beats this list that is, & it's worked for myself & others online for 8 years running now almost in its techniques, which ALL work harmoniously in conjunction simultaneously with one another/concurrently... what "spooks" me some? Rootkit technology - that's GOING to appear in the virii of tomorrow, guaranteed: More on that towards the end & my opinions on it!

APK Online Security 20-points basic checklist. A combination of things really, layered security is the idea!

DETAILS:

http://www.avatar.demon.nl/APK.html [demon.nl] [demon.nl]

SUMMARY:

1.) IP Security Policy in place for adbanner servers blocking OR other "undesirable" IP addresses.

2.) A custom adbanner blocking HOSTS file with 35,000++ entries in it with known banner ad servers in it (which have been shown in some cases even as bearing malicious javascript etc. in them as well as just plain slowing you down as you surf the web by calling out to DNS' servers for URL to IP resolution & loading their remote data).

3.) Tcp/IP filtering @ the IP Stack levels (UDP & TCP) allowing ONLY port 80. Need others? Open then up, this is all I need personally here.

4.) Using up to date AntiVirus & AntiSpyware.

5.) Using .PAC file proxy filters in all web-browsers vs. adbanners & such.

6.) IE Restricted Zones (added to via .reg files which the first body of code in the HOSTS file I use is prepped for the .reg filedata for via a program I built in ObjectPascal delphi console mode ripping away the URL from the 127.0.0.1 loopbacks I equate adbanner servers to, etc. & then insert these here and into IPSecPols also).

7.) Custom adbanner filtering Cascading Style Sheets in webbrowsers when possible (via Opera).

8.) ZoneAlarm Pro or Native Windows Firewall. ZA is the better overall, the Windows one works though.

9.) Disable Java-javascript &/or ActiveX-activescripting in your webbrowsers.

Sorry webmasters, but too many holes popup here and ONLY IE gets that enabled here for Windows Update really only or sites that "demand" I use either. You will also find, as a bonus, that your webbrowser speeds go up IMMENSELY, with java &/or javascript (active X too) turned off. By FAR, it's way faster.

10.) Making sure the Operating System is up-to-date/fully hotfix or service pack patched.

11.) Disabling uneeded services (especially remote oriented ones, e.g.-> Remote Registry, Messenger service (this WILL hit you in minutes & I have seen this on initial setups getting folks online, generally JUST a message though not payload carrying), UPnP, RDP & yes, Terminal Services vulnerabilities) gaining not only memory & CPU cycles back, but also security:

The terminal services & RDP one are recent, MS is aware of them, & has "workarounds": That which I suggest in this point, see here:

http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/07/18/H

No security topic generates more spirited debate than intrusion prevention. Deployed on the edge -- and increasingly, deep inside -- the network, IPSes (intrusion prevention systems) purport to identify and stop attacks before they start based on constantly updated threat profiles. In this Point/Counterpoint, we've pitted Marc Willebeek-LeMair, CTO and Chief Strategy Officer of 3Com's (Profile, Products, Articles) security division, TippingPoint, against Martin Roesch, CTO and founder of Sourcefire (and the inventor of Snort). TippingPoint's Willebeek-LeMair is bullish on the supreme effectiveness of his IPS approach; Sourcefire's Roesch positions IPSes, which his company also sells, as just one component of an integrated network defense system. The clash of these two partisans reveals much about the state of network protection and the rivalry between hardware and software security vendors.

http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/05/09/19FEipsi ds_1.html

The chip can do 1.7GHz.

I bought a 1.2 last year - I'd upgrade for 1.7 but not 1.4.

Hopefully the PowerBook will see the new IBM G5 chips so they don't have to retard the iBook's G4. More L2 cache will be especially yummy since compiles suck on this thing (fink).

Metcalfe predicted in 1999 that Linux would disappear when Windows 2000 came out and referred to open source as "open sores". I see no more reason to take anything he says seriously now than I did back then.

Don't spoil it now by being Dvorak. Please.

To late. He seems to have a real grudge against open-source. Here's an article where he refers to it as "open-sores software" from 1999. Here's a choice quote:

The Open Sores Movement asks us to ignore three decades of innovation. It's just a notch above Luddism. At least they're not bombing Redmond. Not yet anyway.

I don't care what he invented decades ago, the guy's an idiot with a chip on his shoulder.

If MS gets its way, the browser will become merely a window that runs the thick client. http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/10/31/43NNpdc_ 1.html

As for physical objects, someone posted a link where a company selling a physical object (some sorta woodworking tool) has a EULA for it when you buy it. And per the EULA you can't sell the object without getting written permission from the company.

As for Cisco, yeah. Check thier page:
http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/csc/refurb_equipm ent/swlicense.html
"My company would like to re-sell or re-lease a used Cisco product that runs software that is no longer sold by Cisco. Can I purchase a license in this case?

Cisco will only sell licenses for current versions of software. This means that to use Cisco software in conjunction with the equipment to be transferred, a license for the current version must be purchased"
Some info here:
http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/04/11/15gripe_ 1.html
"He also said companies that buy used Cisco gear from authorized channels have an easier time getting software licensing and support because they are included with the sale of a Cisco Authorized Refurbished Equipment product.

"If I go out and buy a box off of eBay, not only am I ineligible for a Cisco warranty, I have to buy a software license and pay for a Cisco inspection to make sure the box is in working order," before support can be purchased, Karmin said."
From: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3649/i s_200405/ai_n9439262
"Blanket prohibitions against licence transfer have been standard language in software licence agreements for many years. Only after the dotcom bust did it occur to hardware manufacturers that they could try to enforce them. IT managers report that Cisco Systems in particular has been aggressive in its demands for relicence fees."
"I made the mistake of showing a visiting Cisco rep the 2611 router I'd purchased on eBay for $1200," says Mark Payton, director of IT at the Vermont Academy. "Not only are they asking me to pay to relicense the software, but they are expecting me to get a one-year SmartNet maintenance agreement and to pay an inspection fee."

Although Cisco is only asking Payton for slightly more than $300 each for the software relicensing and the SmartNet agreement, the inspection fee alone is more than $850. Payton is still negotiating with Cisco. "If my sales rep can't get some of those costs waived, the total cost to me for the 2611 router is over $2700. Brand new through CDW without my additional discounts, I could get this same unit today with one year of SmartNet for $2300."
From: http://www.infoage.idg.com.au/index.php/id;9035707 40;fp;4;fpid;675408222

I'm sure there's more info on the net if you want to search around.
Essentially Cisco says its a liscense you are getting (not the ownership of your copy of the software) so they can control it anyway they want.

It's a pen name and it isn't really ever officially abbreviated or otherwise shortened.

And as for "How many Robert Cringley's are there who write tech columns and host PBS computer shows?", there are at least 2 Robert X. Cringely's that write tech columns (though one is barred from writing them in tech publications). Mark Stephens started using the pen name when writing for InfoWorld and continued to use it after leaving, but InfoWorld had a trademark on it.

They sued and it eventually ended up that Robert X. Cringely means Mark Stephens everywhere but InfoWorld and InfoWorld continues to host a column under that name which isn't written by Stephens.

Wikipedia has more information.

Problem statelment: How to associate one string (domain name) with another string (username/password combination)? a.k.a. translate strings.

Here's a whacky possible solution: use a translator pen, such as this:"SuperPen Translator" - which supports 'custom dictionaries' , to store passwords. Run the pen across site's address bar displayed on the computer screen, and the pen translates it to your username/password for that site.

Here's another of those pens: C-Pen.

Of course, if none of their dictionaries are user-editable, and if they have no SDK, this won't work.

Here's a more sensible solution: Javascript password generator
(Video about it - flash format)

here already. I subscribe to InfoWorld, and this article discusses available systems from IBM using the dual-core Power5.

More likely, they will include their upcoming avalanche technology.

With FREE DRM!!

And for those of the 4400 where taken in 1990, searching for your special talent and still arguing emacs versus vi - you must have missed the shootout in Infoworld while you were gone.

Now what's that damn password?

By the same token, "for all intensive purposes" will not replace "for all intents and purposes", it's a symptom of our increasing move away from written language, not of our language evolving in any meaningful way.

See this site for a discussion of the phenomena.

Gartner just released a study of the top five reasons offshore deals go bust. I hope IBM was paying attention. It sounds like a lot of companies jump into these deals because of the labor differential and then find out later it wasn't such a good deal after all. There are a lot more factors to consider than just free trade, losing American jobs, and profit. Long-term viability has got to be high on the list of things to consider, right? (My blog on this)

"SPEC is subject to all kinds of problems."

All benchmarks are subject to problems. If you are testing for the CPU, somehow you must control for variables of compiler, OS, system architecture, and the amount of time and expertise of the tester.

Uh, how exactly do you get "GCC, is said to generate code that less well optimised than Intel's" from "GCC, is said to generate code that less well optimised for x86"?

Sigh. read: "Dell's own figures were calculated using different compilers and host operating system: Windows XP Pro, Intel's own C++ and Fortran compilers, and the MicroQuill SmartHeap Library 6.01. Secondly, the compiler used by VeriTest, GCC, is said to generate code that less well optimised for x86." QED less well than intels compiler in the previous sentence

GCC for PowerPC is not as mature: "The gcc scheduler is not really designed ideally for a processor like the 970 and the Power4...that was one of the things that we're continuing to work on to try to get the best performance out of the processor."

GCC on intel is far more mature with a long history, read a little of the history: "...When Intel released the Pentium some of their team produced a version of gcc with enhancements which gave 30% speed improvements on some benchmarks..."

Look at these redhat GCC 3.3/4.0 benchmarks. Notice how the 2-way PPC970 is twice as fast as the 4-way P4 on many tests and at close to par on the others. Now this is not the end all, am I'm sure you could come up with a different test that shows the P4 beating the G5, but certianly the G5 is not a "peice of crap".

You arguement about standardizing compilers is equivalent...

Standardizing of compilers is scientific method. Ideally you'd do a bank of tests, and unroll the variables: Standard compilers, standard OS, standard CPUs. Or you could tune each system to the max and then compare, that was LinPack and you didn't like that one either.

Hmm, does this appear to be vector processing done by a compiler?

Exactly my point! Intels compiler does auto-vectorization. GCC doesn't. If you test C code, P4+intel against GCC+G5, you are crippling the G5 by leaving out the altivec unit, which is a more capacble vector unit than SSE2

"hand coding...becomes completely out of reach for humans"

Hand coding is still done frequently on high performance algorithms:

• "I've also recently started hand coding the low level math kernels... P4, this gives a ~30% boost to performance on this particular MILC code."
• "However, once that level of optimization becomes necessary it's generally just easiest to hand-code the instructions, rather than jumping through a bunch of hoops to try to trick the compiler into doing what you want."
• "In some cases, complete vectorization is not possible and you may want to include hand coded SIMD instructions for the best possible performance"
• "Altivec requires hand-coding to exploit"

Actually, Windows NT at least *was* certified, even though there were controversies surrounding the whole issue: see this article, for example.

Kind of scary when you think about it.

"Wikis only give a voice to the last person who spoke."

The real power of the open power concept is that IBM is opening the design of the entire architecture. Has anyone else ever done that? Nothing on this scale that I know about.

The article is about a particular part of this open process - allowing developers free access to an OpenPower 710 server. Have you looked at these things? The price is hard to beat for the performance.

By the way - IBM does sell AIX 5.3 for POWER, just not for the "OpenPower" series of servers.

Wow, do you always like to show your ignorance and gullibility at believing rumors?

http://www.infoworld.com/articles/op/xml/02/03/18/ 020318oplivingston.html

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb; en-us;Q316666

Did you even read the quote you quoted? Where does it say that Apple would not be based on x86? This is an incorrect quote by whoever wrote the second part of this comment. The new Macintoshes will MOST CERTAINLY be x86. Go and read Apple's Universal Binary Development Guide. I don't know what's so hard to understand about #1) They're NOT using OpenFirmware; #2) The Intel platform IS x86 and 32-bit (although this article seems to suggest that OSX 10.5 Leopard will be the first 64-bit OSX from the ground up on both PPC and Intel Platforms); #3 speculation is that Apple is going to use a custom chip to prevent OSX from running on non-Apple hardware, which it will most certainly do (for a time), but it will not prevent Windows from running (as Apple has said, time and again -- showing that the Intel Macs will be close enough to vanilla x86 architecture to run it without too much trouble).

Too many Mac users that know NOTHING about hardware because they've been in Steve's RDF for 20 years. I can't tell you how many rants I've seen from third-party Mac hardware developers complaining about BIOS and how crappy it is and even, *gasp* real-mode! What idiots! What does BIOS and/or real-mode have to do with a modern operating system running in protected mode? What do 16 IRQs have to do with modern IOAPIC/APIC which can trigger up to 256 different interrupt lines? Nothing. FUD. They're upset because now they have to compete with PC hardware vendors, where they'll get roasted on quality, price and performance... Here's a hint to Apple users: If you want to know about PC Hardware, where the industry is going, what has happened in the past 20 years on this side of the fence -- ASK A PC USER, OR GO TO A PC HARDWARE WEB-SITE. STOP READING MAC SITES WHERE THE JOURNALISTS ACTUALLY KNOW LESS THAN THE USERS.

Sorry for yelling....

InfoWorld still runs a column by yet another columnist who goes by the name Robert X. Cringeley.

InfoWorld still runs a column by yet another columnist who goes by the name Robert X. Cringeley. It's sort of an IT industry gossip/society column, and it's often actually pretty good.

See Jon Udell's
Simple single sign-on article from May 2005:

It points out a few simple solutions that will solve many people's problems.

Depends on what you call "OS X". Darwin is freely available and running on Intel now. The only thing you can't get for free from Apple is the GUI, which can be replaced with GNOME or KDE. Tom Yager discusses: http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/06/03/23TCtige r_1.html