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Holiday writes "Sun Microsystems has changed the name of Solaris 2.7 to Solaris 7. Apparently they wish to follow HP's lead into large version numbers." In related news Microsoft's NT 5.0 will be renamed Windows 2000. And since we're talking NT, here is a review of its latest features. I find it amusing that command line enhancements are among them. It's also interesting to see that while data may be imported from NDS, it can't be exported back again -- reducing the value of Novell's NDS... Thanks to Vertigo1 and Phantom of the Operating System.

The ever yellow News.com is running a *nix feature right now, covering everything about SCO's reported losses and it's new alliance with IBM, as well as Solaris' updates.

The ever yellow News.com is running a *nix feature right now, covering everything about SCO's reported losses and it's new alliance with IBM, as well as Solaris' updates.

ST Microelectronics released the first x86 system-on-a-chip today. It's an enhanced 486 integrated with the equivalent of 5 other chips, allowing manufacturers to build complete systems for less that $100, and a 486 is probably sufficient for the types of IA applications ( XC's) Acer's chaiman was talking about.

Vidar Hokstad writes "Apparently, IBM will team up with SCO and Sequent to create a new Unix for IBMs entry-level to large enterprise servers. I expect that means mostly hardware that runs Aix or AS/400 today, but why don't they just port Linux or *BSD instead? This article at news.com has more details" S: IBM's website has further details on this Project Monterey, in which they spell out that the partnership is to deliver only one variant of Unix running on PowerPC, IA32 and IA64 platforms. Can anyone make any sense of this? A cynical first analysis would be that IBM has realised that there is still money to be made in Unix in particular by using its position of a single large vendor to reduce support-FUD; IBM would use SCO to gain market share very quickly while SCO benefits from a shield from Linux' penetration into the "enterprise market". I guess I just don't get what technical reason there could be to yet another variant of Unix. Do you?

Ed Finch writes "There's an article on InfoWorld Electric in which Oracle reaffirmed its commitment to Linux at ALS." Interestingly Oracle stated that existing support from Red Had, SUSE and the like betters their own, somewhat casting doubt on previous reports that Oracle was to provide its own support service. (Speculation: perhaps that news came from internal discussions at Oracle. The director of Oracle's Intel Technical Divison, Parikshit Bhaduri seemed pretty open to some idea of Linux support by his company.) Ed continues: "Note the sharp contrast about the eventual support of Baan, PeopleSoft and SAP on Linux between Oracle's statements and HP's "

Mark Newton writes " Telcos lose Everyone else wins. Calls to ISPs are still local calls, and settlement be damned. " It seems like every year or 2 someone tries to do this. Nice to know they failed again.

According to news.com Corel will give away it's word processor, Word Perfect 8 Personal Edition. The company, however, will sell a "Server Edition" and a "full suite of applications" for Linux. It seems that Corel is trying to grab a share of the Linux market which already got suites from Applixware, Star Division and others.

HP is thinking of incorporating Linux into its product plans, but it does not quite know how yet: low end unix boxes? embedded OS? Obviously they are worried about cannibalizing sales of HP-UX. If HP did provide Linux in this manner, it would provide also provide support. This follows up on Unix Review's recent article.

Netscape has acknowledged a bug present in the Unix version of Navigator from version 3.0 to 4.5. News.com has the story. It's a security exploit involving browser plug-ins. Kind of makes me feel safer knowing I don't use plug-ins. A patch is in the works.

Netscape has acknowledged a bug present in the Unix version of Navigator from version 3.0 to 4.5. News.com has the story. It's a security exploit involving browser plug-ins. Kind of makes me feel safer knowing I don't use plug-ins. A patch is in the works.

First off, an article in news.com regarding the upcoming 2.2 release. Pretty positive, with the exception of some of Mr. Wilson's comments (though, admittedly, some are true..) Next, ZDNet UK (who seem to have more of a clue than their US counterparts) have opened their Linux Lounge. Next up is a Linux article at MSNBC. Finally, another article in news.com about the recent release of Informix on Linux.

First off, an article in news.com regarding the upcoming 2.2 release. Pretty positive, with the exception of some of Mr. Wilson's comments (though, admittedly, some are true..) Next, ZDNet UK (who seem to have more of a clue than their US counterparts) have opened their Linux Lounge. Next up is a Linux article at MSNBC. Finally, another article in news.com about the recent release of Informix on Linux.

ninster writes "Clinton signs the huge spending bill that includes the "Child Online Protection Act". Why do I have to live in this country? " proof positive that our government nothing but our best interests at heart.

Napkhuria writes "Somebody spoofed an InterNIC update form and changed the listed DNS servers for AOL. We notified AOL and they were (as usual) acting rather clueless. AOL is currently trying to force the InterNIC to perform an early root server update to fix this. "

The RIAA has served a restraining order to Diamond Multimedia in order to halt the sale of the Diamond Rio. Because the Rio doesn't have any or not enough anti-piracy protection ("it cannot make serial recordings"), the RIAA says it violates a federal law.

zeta writes sent us a story from news.com where you can read about some Ugandan rats that ate the wiring of the system that contained all the exam results. I've considered using the old 'rats ate the wires' excuse to get out of homework, but I don't think using that excuse to not get accepted to college isn't as good of an idea.

Our favorite company has been having difficulties remembering what they innovated (ever) lately. So much so, that on the one hand they claim Linux is a competitor (built by a single individual...) and on the other don't see Linux as a threat because no company owns it. (This last statement was not made by Microsoft itself, but probably reflects what they believe. However, even if Linux were to dominate the PC market, they would still be a dominant force: webTV and Dreamcast are two very effective means of dominating the market of those who would like to access the internet (and want to play games) while not having the money to buy a complete PC. WinCE targets both the above and many PDAs, while Embedded NT will attack markets such as hospital equipment (adding new meaning to the phrase "Oh my God!") and network routers. True, Linux ports may be attempted to some of these platforms, but if they cannot run the games, who will use them?) Now we need only wait until Monday for the fun and games to begin. However students at the Auburn University have already started to have their fun. Read on below. shaldannon writes "Mark showed up a Microsoft recruiting agent tonight in front of an audience of 200+. The Auburn University chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery hosted a meeting for its membership at which Microsoft recruiters spoke on the subject of 'why Microsoft is the place to work.'

Mark, an easy-going guy who also runs the Linux Support Services site, showed up in his green penguin shirt. As the meeting progressed, the recruiter, named Colleen, asked eight volunteers to come forward to help her demonstrate the composition and duties of a Microsoft product team.

I nudged Mark, and we both headed to the front to participate. A half dozen Linux users in the room began to nudge each other and grin when they saw Mark's shirt, which has a quote by the great Linus on the back. The recruiter asked for someone with vision to step forward, to represent the "Project Leader." Mark was the natural choice--because his vision is Linux--but she was totally oblivious to this.

The meeting progressed, with the recruiter going through the various positions in a software team while some of the Linux users in the back (John, in particular) passed notes around explaining the irony of the situation to the rest of the audience.

Towards the end, she asked where we thought Microsoft got ideas for its products. From on stage, behind her, Mark piped up with "from other companies!" She turned and observed, "Someone in here is a smartass," not realizing that Mark was flaunting the greatest challenge to Microsoft, right on his chest--the happy penguin."

Thanks also to Cowering In Fear, ColonelPanic, and Dan Kegel for some of the material used here.

Our favorite company has been having difficulties remembering what they innovated (ever) lately. So much so, that on the one hand they claim Linux is a competitor (built by a single individual...) and on the other don't see Linux as a threat because no company owns it. (This last statement was not made by Microsoft itself, but probably reflects what they believe. However, even if Linux were to dominate the PC market, they would still be a dominant force: webTV and Dreamcast are two very effective means of dominating the market of those who would like to access the internet (and want to play games) while not having the money to buy a complete PC. WinCE targets both the above and many PDAs, while Embedded NT will attack markets such as hospital equipment (adding new meaning to the phrase "Oh my God!") and network routers. True, Linux ports may be attempted to some of these platforms, but if they cannot run the games, who will use them?) Now we need only wait until Monday for the fun and games to begin. However students at the Auburn University have already started to have their fun. Read on below. shaldannon writes "Mark showed up a Microsoft recruiting agent tonight in front of an audience of 200+. The Auburn University chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery hosted a meeting for its membership at which Microsoft recruiters spoke on the subject of 'why Microsoft is the place to work.'

Mark, an easy-going guy who also runs the Linux Support Services site, showed up in his green penguin shirt. As the meeting progressed, the recruiter, named Colleen, asked eight volunteers to come forward to help her demonstrate the composition and duties of a Microsoft product team.

I nudged Mark, and we both headed to the front to participate. A half dozen Linux users in the room began to nudge each other and grin when they saw Mark's shirt, which has a quote by the great Linus on the back. The recruiter asked for someone with vision to step forward, to represent the "Project Leader." Mark was the natural choice--because his vision is Linux--but she was totally oblivious to this.

The meeting progressed, with the recruiter going through the various positions in a software team while some of the Linux users in the back (John, in particular) passed notes around explaining the irony of the situation to the rest of the audience.

Towards the end, she asked where we thought Microsoft got ideas for its products. From on stage, behind her, Mark piped up with "from other companies!" She turned and observed, "Someone in here is a smartass," not realizing that Mark was flaunting the greatest challenge to Microsoft, right on his chest--the happy penguin."

Thanks also to Cowering In Fear, ColonelPanic, and Dan Kegel for some of the material used here.

Our favorite company has been having difficulties remembering what they innovated (ever) lately. So much so, that on the one hand they claim Linux is a competitor (built by a single individual...) and on the other don't see Linux as a threat because no company owns it. (This last statement was not made by Microsoft itself, but probably reflects what they believe. However, even if Linux were to dominate the PC market, they would still be a dominant force: webTV and Dreamcast are two very effective means of dominating the market of those who would like to access the internet (and want to play games) while not having the money to buy a complete PC. WinCE targets both the above and many PDAs, while Embedded NT will attack markets such as hospital equipment (adding new meaning to the phrase "Oh my God!") and network routers. True, Linux ports may be attempted to some of these platforms, but if they cannot run the games, who will use them?) Now we need only wait until Monday for the fun and games to begin. However students at the Auburn University have already started to have their fun. Read on below. shaldannon writes "Mark showed up a Microsoft recruiting agent tonight in front of an audience of 200+. The Auburn University chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery hosted a meeting for its membership at which Microsoft recruiters spoke on the subject of 'why Microsoft is the place to work.'

Mark, an easy-going guy who also runs the Linux Support Services site, showed up in his green penguin shirt. As the meeting progressed, the recruiter, named Colleen, asked eight volunteers to come forward to help her demonstrate the composition and duties of a Microsoft product team.

I nudged Mark, and we both headed to the front to participate. A half dozen Linux users in the room began to nudge each other and grin when they saw Mark's shirt, which has a quote by the great Linus on the back. The recruiter asked for someone with vision to step forward, to represent the "Project Leader." Mark was the natural choice--because his vision is Linux--but she was totally oblivious to this.

The meeting progressed, with the recruiter going through the various positions in a software team while some of the Linux users in the back (John, in particular) passed notes around explaining the irony of the situation to the rest of the audience.

Towards the end, she asked where we thought Microsoft got ideas for its products. From on stage, behind her, Mark piped up with "from other companies!" She turned and observed, "Someone in here is a smartass," not realizing that Mark was flaunting the greatest challenge to Microsoft, right on his chest--the happy penguin."

Thanks also to Cowering In Fear, ColonelPanic, and Dan Kegel for some of the material used here.

Yesterday, AMD unveiled some details about K7, and today Intel gives us details about the Merced chip. Also, check out some these pages on Micro Design

Lisa wrote in to tell us about a report in Wired that Microsoft has been denied the use of tapes of Netscape executives used as book research by two professors. You can also read another report about it at news.com as well.

Lisa wrote in to tell us about a report in Wired that Microsoft has been denied the use of tapes of Netscape executives used as book research by two professors. You can also read another report about it at news.com as well.

What if we no longer had to depend on the whims of the ISPs? What if, instead, for $500, we could get free unlimited lifetime Internet? Sounds like a dream, but self-employed Timothy J. Shepard wants to put his PhD thesis into practice His idea: a network of personnal radio transceivers capable of 200 Mbits/second. However, two problems lie on his path: cost reduction and routing. Sounds like good material for a free hardware project to me.

Intel is planning to deliver a 1Ghz x86 design with cache on-board in 2000. To achieve this, they will rely on a new design rather than the current P6 core which is used in the Pentium Pro and Pentium II. The article also mentions that Unix will be a key OS for Merced: "Ask analysts, it's more scalable than [Microsoft's Windows] NT" said Fred Pollack of Intel.

HP's newest PDA will include a StrongARM 1100 running at 190Mhz and a StrongARM 1101 chipset. Interestingly, the chipset and the CPU come to a total cost of $51, similar to the price of an x86 combination. This shows that StrongARM can compete on performance/power consumption and not just price, despite its percieved disadvantage of not running x86 software. HP has also licensed the ARM 7 core directly from ARM suggesting that it will develop its own ARM variants. All this is good news for Corel and Acorn RISC PCs, and a possible indication that x86 may not spearhead the lowcost appliance market. Indeed, Jim Pick's speculation appears a plausible scenario, with the exception that Microsoft has another trick up its sleeve: embedded NT.

Synchro writes "The House passed the Child Online Protection Act today to penalize commercial sites that give minors unfettered access to "harmful" material."

vipw writes "news.com is running an article about a Korean Company named emachines that plans on shipping $399 computers (+$100 for monitor). They are supposed to look like iMacs and run windows. If they went with a free OS i wonder what their profit margin would be."

vipw writes "NSI got a new contract for two years to administer the common domains, so i guess this isn't going to be internationally run anytime soon."

Well, in the trend towards consoldiation, Lycos has bought Wired Digital. Wired is the holder of HotWired, Wired et al. Lycos has purchased them in their continuing bid to shore up their portal options. I'm sure more details will be following.

Intel has lost its dominance of 85% of all CPUs sold: now only 54% of all CPUs sold are Intel. AMD (x86), IBM and Motorola (Power PC) are the big gainers. Could this affect the FTC's now delayed antitrust case?

Intel has lost its dominance of 85% of all CPUs sold: now only 54% of all CPUs sold are Intel. AMD (x86), IBM and Motorola (Power PC) are the big gainers. Could this affect the FTC's now delayed antitrust case?

HoserHead writes "Canada has agreed not to impose mandatory key escrow and seemingly kept strong crypto exports loose. I'm glad to see our government behaving intelligently - perhaps the United States could take a hint? "

Well, as I reported yesterday, the Tax Free Net Bill will be hitting the Senate floor today. However, it appears that two bills maybe potentially attached. The first, pushed by Senator Lott (R-MS) would repeal the approval Congress made of the domain name tax. Essentially, this would make it possible to sue and recover domain name costs (30$ collected by the NSF) -possibly rebating a big number of people. The other amendment that might be tacked on is CDA II. This would string out the political fighting that is occurring over the bill itself.

Well, although the House of Representations passed it way back in June, the US Senate is finally getting close to passing the bill which would temporarily close the Internet to any new taxes. It will be considered today. It has been twice blocked by Senator Bob Graham (D-Florida), but Senator McCain (R-Arizona) has pushed it forward.

Next year, Microsoft will publish an english dictionary. The company has been working for three years with an Australian firm, and a British firm. It will hit the shelves in August of next year. Perhaps arrogantly, the company called English "the first global language since Latin". Cavete Microsoft et MSSpeak venire.

Our favorite company, NSI, has had their contract with the US Federal Government extended one more week. The company, which administers all the domain names, was due to have their contract expire this week. However, wanting to "avoid chaos" the Feds have extended the contract for one more week. Currently, the Federal Government is waiting for submissions from some other parties. The present gov policy is to hand it over to an international agency, although the actual implementation of that has been, ah..., sticky.

Bob Young, head of Redhat, gave an interview to news.com today. Apparently, Red Hat will now gain all Intel proprietary information at the same time as Microsoft does. It also believes that its new powerful friends will encourage MIS directors of large corporations to trust Linux. Moreover to further encourage this, it will be spending its newly won money on improving its support infrastructure. Ed: Given some other information I'm not at liberty to disclose, Redhat's support options may be on the verge of increasing vastly. However, there is no need for Redhat bashing since not only do they have a history of giving back, but moreover any improvements they make to Linux on the basis of proprietary information must be released with any product thanks to the GPL. Indeed, more support will only help establish Linux as a viable platform, as Marc Andresssen explains. Notice Linus' confidence in the availability of Linux apps in 3 to 5 years.

Bob Young, head of Redhat, gave an interview to news.com today. Apparently, Red Hat will now gain all Intel proprietary information at the same time as Microsoft does. It also believes that its new powerful friends will encourage MIS directors of large corporations to trust Linux. Moreover to further encourage this, it will be spending its newly won money on improving its support infrastructure. Ed: Given some other information I'm not at liberty to disclose, Redhat's support options may be on the verge of increasing vastly. However, there is no need for Redhat bashing since not only do they have a history of giving back, but moreover any improvements they make to Linux on the basis of proprietary information must be released with any product thanks to the GPL. Indeed, more support will only help establish Linux as a viable platform, as Marc Andresssen explains. Notice Linus' confidence in the availability of Linux apps in 3 to 5 years.

Redhat has now announced that Intel, Netscape, Greylock and Benchmark Partners have invested in it. Intel wants to target ISPs with their Linux strategy. Intel will also be joining Linux International. It will be interesting to see in which way Red Hat will react to UDI given the discussion about it on the kernel list, summarized by Linux Weekly News. (updated) Further info at news.com which is sporting Tux today.

Redhat has now announced that Intel, Netscape, Greylock and Benchmark Partners have invested in it. Intel wants to target ISPs with their Linux strategy. Intel will also be joining Linux International. It will be interesting to see in which way Red Hat will react to UDI given the discussion about it on the kernel list, summarized by Linux Weekly News. (updated) Further info at news.com which is sporting Tux today.

Informix is stepping up its Linux support with a ports of Dynamic Server (expected to ship by the first quarter of next year) and the Dynamic 4GL toolset (to ship within days). Plans are also being made to bring Universal Server to Linux. This turnaround in Informix' strategy is due to the realization that deep-pocketed corporate customers also use linux.

A new study came out today, containing it in the estimated market share of each of the major browsers. For the first time, it appears that Netscape's Communicator fell below the 50% mark. Internet Explorer is up to 27.5%, the AOL version of IE is at 16.1%, Netscape is at 41.5%, and "other browsers" rose to 14.7%. Well, looks like Opera is doing better at least. (/me looks for silver lining)

maynard writes "Microsoft is accusing Caldera of releasing confidential information through depositions and has filed a motion for contempt of court. " For those of you who need a remindar as to how Caldera would be this situation, this might help. Basically, Caldera and Microsoft were engaged in a legal battle, and Caldera got a whole slew of source code from MS. Any guesses as to how happy Microsoft was about that? I thought so.

Microsoft expects Windows to have competition from Linux, according to its annual filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission: "Over the past year the Linux operating system has gained increasing acceptance, and leading software developers such as Oracle and Corel have announced that they will develop applications that run on Linux." Indeed, the first salvo of the war has perhaps been launched with the recent changes to the smb encryption defaults making Samba more difficult for newbie system administrators to setup (section 8 of the current samba-bugs FAQ) Thanks to Oxymoron ;-) for the second reference.

Steve writes "S.u.S.E. has launched it's Linux Office Suite 99 and plans to start shipping it on Oct. 15th, according to this CNet Article "Priced at $79.95, S.u.S.E's Linux Office Suite 99 includes a spreadsheet, word processor, presentation graphics, a database, fax program, and other traditional business applications, the company said." and "Linux Office Suite 99 is also able to exchange document data with Microsoft Office 97" Woo-hoo! "

Ray Cromwell writes " There's a new story on news.com called Microsoft's Holy War on Java detailing the efforts Microsoft has gone through to derail Java. As someone who used Intel's JMF, I can tell you it is a loss. Let's hope Sun wins the case." The lengths to which Microsoft went to make Java into a lone lame duckling are quite incredible: adding extentions to Java on Windows which other Javas lack, convincing Intel to drop its Java work, buying other companies that had key technologies Sun was interested in using, etc.

This year's Microprocessor Forum looks like it's going to be rather interesting. Two new x86 vendors will be presenting their latest work: Rise and Transmeta. Rise is attacking the x86 market with low power designs, somewhat like IDT did with Centaur, (although their efforts appear to be waining). Transmeta will be presenting a RISC chip that can read x86 instructions.

homebrewer writes "Here is an article talking about AMD helping to drop notebook prices. Maybe I can even afford to buy one.... They even mention Transmeta a bit, saying they are working on a new chip...is this what Linus is working on?" In related news, Trident revealed that it has designed with VIA Technologies Inc an integrated chipset combining a graphics chip and core logic on a single die. Socket 7 still seems to have a long life in front of it.

Mike Townsley wrote in to tell us that Iomega if being sued over a zip drive noise which indicates a damaged drive or disk. The article seems to be a bit confusing. It's not actually the noise, it's data getting damaged. It also talks about a problem with daisy chained SCSI zips, but that doesn't seem to be related to the noise problem. Strange. Maybe it's just to early for me to comprehend today.