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The Great Linux Experiment. The guys over at C|Net's Builder.Com are entering week 2 of Project Heresy. The technical guys over there are playing with Linux to test its viability as a real world OS. I have no doubts they'll catch some problems, but I know they'll be pleasantly surprised. Some RealAudio over there, too. Thanks to Marc Ewing for letting the world know.

Larry Pisani wrote in to tell everyone to check out news.com. They are running some major stuff on all the recent happenings in the Linux world. Check it out.

Per Wigren sent us this story where you can read that Microsoft's stock apparently is finally suffering a bit from all these lawsuits. I don't typically share this sort of stuff, but the article says the stock dropping is related to their "allegedly monopolistic practices". Perhaps Wall Street is noticing that there might be a problem in Redmond?

Eric Molitor sent us this link where you can read that sanity won out, and Wang's silly patent claim against NS has been tossed out. I wasn't really concerned. (thanks to John Burg for the newer link.

At C|net's News alerts we found that Netscape will soon release the source code of it's Netscape Directory SDK and the SDK source of Netscape Console.
On the same page we read that InterBase Software, a subsidiary of Inprise (formerly known as Borland), will release a free Linux version of its database server, InterBase 4.0, in Q3 of this year. Wonder how Oracle feels about this one...

Jason Boyles writes "See this news.com story. I can't believe that this is the first incident of e-terrorism out there, but some people seem to think so. Really, folks shouldn't be surprised. Computer knowledge is so pervasive I'm surprised we haven't seen more spectacular examples of this kind of thing. "

AMD will be renaming the chip formerly known as the "K6 3D" to be the "K6-2". The chip will use the 100MHz bus and likely be announced May 28th (coinciding with the Linux Expo).
The company also announced they are naming the 21 MMX-like instructions in the K6-2 "3DNow!". The instructions will be supported by Cyrix and IDT.

Alfred Landrum sent us this news.com story where you can read about the latest developments in Divx (the incompatible version of DVD that will splinter the market, confuse the customers, make sure that neither format ever becomes cost effective, cause sterility, global warming, deforestation, and increase the number of unwed mothers). Basically, the format isn't dead yet.

Samsung has begun sampling 256-megabit RAM chips, which is apparently ahead of schedule by a few years. Hopefully, the chip will be produced in volume by early next year, ahead of other manufacturers. Man, I have this wierd feeling the RAM in my next computer will be measured in gigabytes- not that I'm complaining or anything...

An interesting article is exploring the case of a reporter who was stung during one of the FBI's Innocent Images operations, their on-line anti- child pornography group. However, the reporter is saying that the counts arrayed against are invalid, because he was doing research for an article. This could be a litmus test for 1st Amendment rights, especially in the online arena.

Alex Prestin writes "Seems the fears about compaq just ditching the alpha were unfounded " Read this link for assorted information about Compaq, and how it will continue to support the old Digital stuff (like VMS! What a great plan!)

Leon Brocard wrote in to tell us about amazon.com buying imdb. I visit imdb several times a week. I love imdb. I can't wait to see what a little money can do to make it better. It looks like Amazon will probably be moving into movie sales though too.

The world famous Koko will be participating in a discussion on America Online. She will answer questions through an interpreter. The event is supposed to raise awareness of the declining mountain gorilla population, but I wonder if AOL is going too far...

Andy Tai writes "The US Federal Trade Commission issues an order motifying the Intel-Digital deal. The FTC disallows Alphas to be produced by Intel. Instead Digital has to certify another company such as IBM as manufacturers of the Alpha chip. Digital also will license Alpha to AMD, Samsung, and others. The FTC aims to keep Alphas as "viable competitive alternatives" to Intel chips. " Read about it here.

The United States government has confirmed that it will be pushing for a declaration from the World Trade Organization soon for a statement essentially repudiating any net taxes.

Barksdale has elected to return 300,000 shares granted to him in Netscape stock options. The most amazing part is that he did this on a day that the stock went up 6 points, on speculations of Netscape being bought-out by Sun. Realizing that Barksdale is pretty wealthy, this is still a pretty cool thing to do.

Each of these is pretty important and probably warrents its own post, buuut we've had a ton of articles posted already today, and these are pretty notable, so: I)ruid asked me to plug C Scene, a nice little E-zine devoted to C and C++ programming. Chris Short sent us this link where you can read the results of a shocking government study:After much research (and spending of tax payers money) they confirm that the web is growing! Wow. Amazing.

Andy Tai wrote in to tell us that another Open Source web site has arrived, this one is The Open Source Journal. Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that there are suddenly dozens of web sites focused on this stuff? It seems like a lot of duplication of effort is occuring. I'm all for variety, but a dozen decent sites could combine forces to create one super site.

Next, Adam Keys wrote in to tell us that Apple Posted a $55 million profit this quarter. Lastly we have this link, sent to us by Dave Blondell, where you can read about Linux at Comdex 98, and a few other related Chicago/Spring Comdex area events.

I have made some predictions about future of the x86 market. Some interesting possibilities, many of them involving IBM. Read on... Thanks go to Phillip R. Janeke for his gracious contribution to this article.

Recent developments in the x86 market may lead to the decline of Intel's monopoly power in the market. The increasing success of its competitors, as well as financial turmoil at the company may lead to increased competition, heaper prices, a more segmented market, and the rise of IBM as a powerhouse in the fabrication industry.

Yesterday, Cyrix introduced the MII chip. I expect the chip, along with the AMD K6 will dominate the low and mid-end markets. With the introduction of the MII, Cyrix has finally introduced a chip that will hopefully exceed Intel's chips in both integer and floating point performance, and exceed the price/performance of any chip on the market.

The rise of the K6 has lead to the resurgence of AMD in the x86 market. With the K6 3D, hopefully to be introduced next month, AMD will introduce a set of MMX-like instructions that will NOT be supported by Intel. IDT will also support the extentions. These two chips may take away a sizeable portion of the mid-end market from Intel.

IDT is a vendor with an as-yet unforseeable future. The vendor has been relativley successful, signing a foundry agreement with IBM, as well as exceeding sales expectations. Will the unsophisticated C6+ chip be enough to let the chip designer retain control of the little market share they have in the low-end? Maybe.

But there is something all three vendors have in common: all have signed foundry agreements with IBM. By the end of the year, IBM will be able to manufacture any non-Intel x86 chip, and that will certainly help them gain a noticeable portion of the desktop computer market. What does this mean for Intel? Will it be simply relegated to the high-end? If so, how will it compete with non-x86 offerings from Digital, MIPS, and other vendors? The company will introduce Celeron today, a cache-less version of the Pentium II. The chip has already met with many industry critics, and walked away in shame. Performance of the 266MHz model is expected to be on par with a 233MHz version, and many OEMs have snubbed the chip for an AMD or Cyrix chip. Is Celeron too little too late?

Intel has also announced plans to lay off 3000 employees. This, combined with the Asian financial crisis has lead to long-term growth questions about the company. Will it be able to successfully dominate the low end, or will IBM and its partners sweep the company out of the market from under itself?

Marc Andressen, cofounder of Netscape Communications Corporation, gave the keynote speech at C|Net's Web.Builder conference today. His speech focused on the future success of open source software, specifically Linux, Apache, and Mozilla. Real Audio is available.

Marc Andressen, cofounder of Netscape Communications Corporation, gave the keynote speech at C|Net's Web.Builder conference today. His speech focused on the future success of open source software, specifically Linux, Apache, and Mozilla. Real Audio is available.

Carey Frey sent us this news.com article where you can read a fairly non technical bit of info about various faster alternate backbones. Nothing exceptionally new if you are following this stuff, but it's still a pretty nice article that at the very least confirms that the net will eventually have wider pipes.

Tim Otten wrote in to tell us about the latest news on Adobe's attempt to get PGML to be a standard for vetor net graphics. I personally would like to see a vector format standardized, but as we see with PNG (a format superior in many ways to what we use today) the world is slow to accept change.

The FreeBSD project has announced efforts to port Mozilla to FreeBSD. A CVS repository, a mailing list, as well as other "centralized resources" will be made available.
An article at news.com talks about Troll's recent work on QtScape. Good press for all.

AMD apparently has gained the right to build Slot 1 processors, via its use of IBM as a fab. That means that all of Intel's major competitors now can build Slot 1 processors at their option... which was precisely what Intel tried to prevent with its patents. The big beneficiary is IBM, and the losers are for CPUs Intel (wasted money) and smaller x86 companies, and for chipsets VIA and Acer (assuming that Intel's claims that they violated its patents stand up in court).

Microsoft has a new campaign: Force your clients to use Internet Explorer and you'll get a free copy of Windows NT server. Why would anyone do that if they can get a free copy of Linux server/firewall/workstation/...? Maybe because if it's already free it doesn't seem like an opportunity not to be missed?

Jorgen writes "Netscape stocks are up considerably and Andreesen's statement about Linux as the new server platform is mentioned in this news.com article I find the mentioning of "Stocks up" and "Linux" in the same article quite interesting." I don't know much about finances, but I like to see any company supporting Open Source have rising stock- even I know that this is a Good Thing(tm).

news.com is reporting that the last MIPS chip will be the R14000. This is particularly surprising as MIPS is doing well in the embedded market.

news.com is reporting that the last MIPS chip will be the R14000. This is particularly surprising as MIPS is doing well in the embedded market.

Kevin Stuckless wrote in to give us a link to this news.com article where you can read about the new chips coming out next wed. from Intel. A low end chip, as well as a 350Mhz and 400Mhz P2 line will power zillions of new machines in the coming months

J. Paul Reed sent us this article where you can read that a judge has declared DNS fees to be an illegal tax. There are some minor mistakes in the article (they quote the current price as being $30 for to years, and claim it has been this way since '95) but it's still kinda odd. On one hand, the govt has $23 million for the next generation of the Intenet, on the other hand, it may have been illegal for them to get that money in the first place. Personally I don't care if I get a refund on my domain name, I'd rather that money helped build a new net infrastructure, but I have a few more domains I'd love to register if they were free.

Andy Tai wrote in to give us this link where you can read a news.com article where they talk about the future of Sun. We all know that Sun is in for rough times ahead. I personally want to see them follow Netscape's lead, but maybe they have other tricks up their sleeve.

Marc Andressen has confirmed that Netscape will port its SuiteSpot server to Linux. Andressen, as previously reported, said he thinks the combination will make Linux a top-tier Unix.

Trey Gruel writes "CNet news is running an article about Intel and HP's planned successor to the Merced processor. According to sources "close to HP" the processor, McKinley, which is planned to come out in 2001, will run at 1,000 MHz."

Skinny DuBaud of News.com is running an article that chronicles much of the excitment about the GPLing of Communicator. Good reading for all.

Skinny DuBaud of News.com is running an article that chronicles much of the excitment about the GPLing of Communicator. Good reading for all.

Nickolaus Benjamin writes "A dozen key House Democrats asked Clinton to abandon U.S. export limits on encryption link Also, the Economic Strategy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, issued a report here estimating losses to the U.S. economy due to the encryption export restrictions at roughly $37 billion over the next five years. "

Nickolaus Benjamin writes "A dozen key House Democrats asked Clinton to abandon U.S. export limits on encryption link Also, the Economic Strategy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, issued a report here estimating losses to the U.S. economy due to the encryption export restrictions at roughly $37 billion over the next five years. "

Matt Thompson writes "I think the Open Source/Free Software movement is really getting close to 'critical mass'. We see more and more articles (almost daily) about the phenomenon, the latest of which is here. An excellent, even-handed article that even has links to www.gnu.org, O'Reilly, NCSA, Caldera and FSF!"

Despite initial expectations that set-top boxes and PCs would converge, the trend towards RISC chips such as MIPS continues. An oft cited reason for this is the lower power requirements of RISC solutions, which might give low power x86 manufacturers such as Centaur, Transmeta (?), and Cyrix for their MediaGX chips an advantage. Perhaps however, it is not x86 that is being fled, but domination by Microsoft that is being avoided. After all, set-top boxes are a cost, not a revenue to content-selling cable operators: do they really want to upgrade their infrastructure each time Microsoft comes up with a new version of Windows? A winner in this market will be Cygnus solutions, sellers of GnuPro tools to the embedded market, and thus Free Software Standards.

Despite initial expectations that set-top boxes and PCs would converge, the trend towards RISC chips such as MIPS continues. An oft cited reason for this is the lower power requirements of RISC solutions, which might give low power x86 manufacturers such as Centaur, Transmeta (?), and Cyrix for their MediaGX chips an advantage. Perhaps however, it is not x86 that is being fled, but domination by Microsoft that is being avoided. After all, set-top boxes are a cost, not a revenue to content-selling cable operators: do they really want to upgrade their infrastructure each time Microsoft comes up with a new version of Windows? A winner in this market will be Cygnus solutions, sellers of GnuPro tools to the embedded market, and thus Free Software Standards.

Despite initial expectations that set-top boxes and PCs would converge, the trend towards RISC chips such as MIPS continues. An oft cited reason for this is the lower power requirements of RISC solutions, which might give low power x86 manufacturers such as Centaur, Transmeta (?), and Cyrix for their MediaGX chips an advantage. Perhaps however, it is not x86 that is being fled, but domination by Microsoft that is being avoided. After all, set-top boxes are a cost, not a revenue to content-selling cable operators: do they really want to upgrade their infrastructure each time Microsoft comes up with a new version of Windows? A winner in this market will be Cygnus solutions, sellers of GnuPro tools to the embedded market, and thus Free Software Standards.

Things have been pretty tense lately for microsoft, and they got a nice slap on the wrist today thanks to a federal judge that ordered them to remove Sun's Java logo from all their java products. Is this just the first dominoe in the chain? Read about it at this link, sent in by Andy Tai

Intel had a demo of the latest version of the Pentium II at a convention in Germany. The latest version of the chip speeds along at 700 mhz, an insane number when I think about the old machine I used to have.

Chris Short writes "In a move that creates a rift among a industry coalition against MS, HP has announced that it is releasing it own JAVA Virtual Machine. This VM will be a subset of JAVA and will, along with MS, break JAVA's "write once, run anywhere" promise. HP insists that it still supports Sun's JAVA, but has created this subset for commercial appliances. Among the companies that have already licensed the HP VM is Microsoft for Windows CE. For articles on this look at news.com or the Wall Street Journal."

jon bendtsen wrote in with this news.com story where you can learn about a new 128meg 10ms flash memory card that will eventually cost $2-$3! Digital Cameras, Linux Palmtops, think of the cool possibilities that could suddenly become inexpensive!

Minotaur sent us this link where you can read about the future of InterNic. tjones sent us a related article where we learn that domain name registration at NSI is now 30% cheaper!

Although the battle of the Communications Decency Act was won, already we are embroiled in battles of scions of that particular house, as well as other battles. I truly believe that that preserving the ability to free speech is integral to keeping this new medium alive and well, and that we need to continue to fight for free speech on the Internet.

Is Cyrix dying? IBM has discreetly dropped the 6x86 chip from all their machines. IBM also helps fabricate the chips, along with Cyrix's parent company, National Semiconductor. National Semiconductor is also reporting lower than expected earinings and production problems.

I sure hope they make it. Their new chips will be really cool, if they can make it to market

Is Cyrix dying? IBM has discreetly dropped the 6x86 chip from all their machines. IBM also helps fabricate the chips, along with Cyrix's parent company, National Semiconductor. National Semiconductor is also reporting lower than expected earinings and production problems.

I sure hope they make it. Their new chips will be really cool, if they can make it to market

Yoz was the first of dozens to write in to tell us that Eric Allman, creator of sendmail, has opened Sendmail Inc. to sell commercial versions of Sendmail. The source will obviously still be available to everyone, you just pay for support. I love seeing all these companies being built on Open Source. It's really happening guys! Read more at news.com.