Slashdot Mirror

Bored@Home sent us a link to a news.com article that talks about PlayMedia suing NullSoft for $20 million. PlayMedia alleges that NullSoft is violating a copyright and uses code illegally.

HP is contributing Java technology to Mauve, an alternative to Sun's Java Compatability Kit. This is good news for alternative Java implementations such as Kaffe, since the JCK is only available for a fee.

BladeRunner writes sent us a link to a news.com article with a bit more news on the empeg. For those of you who live in a shell, the empeg is the StrongArm/Linux based car MP3 player that is making me want to break several of the 10 commandments.

FolkWolf sent us a link to CNET which as an article on Red Hat Backlash speculated on by the The Gartner Group. Basically revolves around the recent investment announcements. They talk about RH walking a line between boasting their successes, and alienating themselves from the community.

Gerg sent us a quick blurb from news.com which says ``In an attempt to jump-start XSL development, Sun Microsystems and Adobe are putting up $90,000 in bounties for independent developers who come up with specific XSL implementations'' Interesting implications. Is this the future of software development? This actually is one of the more common questions that people ask me about. Would a bounty system for software really work? Would it make the suits and the hackers happy? I don't have an answer.

Luca Lizzeri writes "The WSJ reports that IBM, Novell and Compaq are taking equity stakes in Red Hat (subscription required). An excerpt: "Red Hat Software Inc. [snip] said it obtained equity investments from three more computer companies: International Business Machines Corp., Compaq Computer Corp. and Novell Inc." Pretty please will someone find a link we can read and post it? And guys, don't just post the article contents in the comments- if you guys keep doing that I'm gonna get sued for copyright violation. Update: 03/09 09:33 by CT : Joy! stick sent us a free version of the story.

cswiii sent us a link to a quick little news.com article which announces that MP3.com is going public some time this year. Wouldn't mind a piece of that pie.

marks sent us a link to a little C|Net article about Microsoft, LinuxWorld, Linux, and more. Its an interesting little article, and it shows once again that microsoft is interested and watching carefully.

Chris M. Costello sent us a link to a news.com article about the Bidding War for Linux.com which includes the exceptionally interesting tidbit that among the bidders was one Microsoft corporation. Other bidders were Red Hat (duh) Compaq (that makes some sense) and HP (huh?)

C|Net Radio is at Linuxworld Expo, and they have now the keynotes in Real Audio. First is Dr. Michael Cowpland, President & CEO, Corel Corporation, who talks about Wine and Quattro, Word Perfect, and the Second is Mark Jarvis, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, Oracle, who speaks about Oracle 8i and Linux. The third Real Audio clip will be Linus speaking about Linux on past, present and future and it will be at 6:30 PM (clip will be posted a bit later, and information can be found here. I hope ZDNet will have clips with higher sound quality (and maybe Video), but currently they don't have anything yet (you can check it here for updates). Enjoy. Update: 03/03 12:08 by CT : Linus also broke the keynote attendance record- it was Steve Jobs with 6,000. Linus had 7,000.

C|Net Radio is at Linuxworld Expo, and they have now the keynotes in Real Audio. First is Dr. Michael Cowpland, President & CEO, Corel Corporation, who talks about Wine and Quattro, Word Perfect, and the Second is Mark Jarvis, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, Oracle, who speaks about Oracle 8i and Linux. The third Real Audio clip will be Linus speaking about Linux on past, present and future and it will be at 6:30 PM (clip will be posted a bit later, and information can be found here. I hope ZDNet will have clips with higher sound quality (and maybe Video), but currently they don't have anything yet (you can check it here for updates). Enjoy. Update: 03/03 12:08 by CT : Linus also broke the keynote attendance record- it was Steve Jobs with 6,000. Linus had 7,000.

C|Net Radio is at Linuxworld Expo, and they have now the keynotes in Real Audio. First is Dr. Michael Cowpland, President & CEO, Corel Corporation, who talks about Wine and Quattro, Word Perfect, and the Second is Mark Jarvis, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, Oracle, who speaks about Oracle 8i and Linux. The third Real Audio clip will be Linus speaking about Linux on past, present and future and it will be at 6:30 PM (clip will be posted a bit later, and information can be found here. I hope ZDNet will have clips with higher sound quality (and maybe Video), but currently they don't have anything yet (you can check it here for updates). Enjoy. Update: 03/03 12:08 by CT : Linus also broke the keynote attendance record- it was Steve Jobs with 6,000. Linus had 7,000.

It's official: Corel will be making a Linux distribution. The distro will have a "simpler" install process, and the distribution will run on the IA-32 architechture initially, then the StrongARM. They have not said whether they will use GNOME or KDE, or their own desktop. The news comes from Mike Cowpland's speech at LWCE.

ChrisMul writes "We just heard the announcement over the company wide speaker system. Hewlett-Packard IS splitting into two companies. One will be a "Testing and Measurements" company who's name has yet to be chosen, and the other will be the computing division, which will keep the "HP" name. This is going to happen as they company also chooses a new CEO...time to find a new job... "

bjb writes "The Wall Street Journal reported this morning that Sun plans to announce later today that they are going to distribute designs of their microprocessors to outside developers for free. Similar to the Java license that recently came out, you can modify it, but if you sell you have to pay. The schedule appears that they will release the PicoJava first, the 32-bit SPARC technology by the summer, and the 64-bit UltraSPARC technology by the end of the year." This article requires a paid login to read- what a crock. Anyway, someone please submit a free link. Update: 03/02 12:09 by S : News.com is now carrying the story. It's interesting to see how this move fits into Forbes' analysis Sun's strategy of getting attention with buzz around Java, Jini, and now Sparc Processors, in order to attack the very high-end more effectively. In the world of Starfire and Serengeti (supercomputers), Sun is probably telling the truth when they say that Linux does not compete with them (long term).

Another big product coming to Linux. According to a report from News.com, SAP will port R/3 to Linux. We're getting close to World Domination :)

Mithrandir sent us a link to a new.com article which hits on the Intel investment, but also reveals that VA Research has acquired the Linux.com domain.

Matt wrote to us, talking about this story. This is some interesting, summary coverage of major announcements expected to be made at LinuxWorldExpo-we've seen a fair amount of these before, but this article also hints at a VA Research and SGI relationship in the making-as well as talking about how Sun has decided to change its' new conference to one-on-one talks. It also mentions that Microsoft won't be attending-I guess Rob and I won't be going then *g*.

levanti writes "Looks like Dell will outsource support of their Linux servers to LinuxCare. Article can be found here. "

Thorbjorn Jemander wrote in (as an update on a previous story) to tell us that Jean-Louis Gassée, CEO of Be Inc is offering BeOS at zero-cost to any OEM that will install BeOS completely on its PCs: BeOS must be a boot option or launchable from the other OS, something that Microsoft apparently prohibits. He does not expect OEMs will take up the offer because they will not want to lose Microsoft's Windows Rebate. His argument also applies to Linux: Despite the slew of announcements that Tier-1 manufacturers were going to sell computers pre-installed with Linux, it's revealing to see that the computers discussed were either servers, or in the case of IBM, PCs on which Linux is installed by the reseller (not IBM). News.com also reported on this Thomas wonders if this offer will provide the DOJ with unrefutable proof of Microsoft's monopoly.

There is a story over at News.com that says that Platinum Technologies has signed a letter of intent with the Web3d Consortium to turn over the source code for some of the Cosmo tools for some type of open source developement project. This could be a big development for 3D on the web. What do you think of the Cosmo line or tools and programs? I tried them on an SGI (if it's the same code) a while ago and they were pretty sweet. Here is the press release from Platinum..

cswiii writes "In case you've not heard, Apple's been putting legal pressure on two teens who registered "appleimac.com". This latest story mentions Apple's most recent action to date -- registering a copycat domain, that is actually an old domain that one of the kids used to own. " Who knew that apple was less mature than a couple of 16 year olds? Thats just to funny. Update: 02/25 05:58 by CT : as with most of the best jokes, this was a hoax. Funniest thing I've seen all day.

Gihadrah writes "Pacific Hi-Tech will next week preview a new version of its Linux distribution that lets system operators tie together as many Linux machines as they want in order to achieve faster and more reliable Web servers. "

This Monday, AMD will unveil the K6-3 at 400 and 450 MHz. The chip will have an on-chip 256k L2 cache, and will go in existing Super 7 motherboard. The chip will probably top out at 500 MHz shortly, but the chip should be produced into Y2K. The chip reputedly performs like Pentium *3* of equivalent clock, or even outperforms it with enough cache. People like me have a decision to make - I have a K6-2 333 with 1MB of L2 cache, and need to decide whether or not I should save up for a K7 (hopefully SMP...) or just go for it and buy a K6-3. Thank William Rhodes for the heads up

Christopher Bibbs writes "News.com is carrying the story of the Open Source split between Raymond and Perens. Basically their infighting is now open to the whole world. Its embarassing really. " It's not flattering, but it's interesting to see that this whole movement is made up of people (RMS/ESR/Bruce/Linus/+ zillions of others who often deserve even more credit but don't get it simply because a few people are all the world can handle). It's always been much more open than corporate software. Anyone can be on most of the lists. That human factor can be scary, but its often possibly our greatest asset. I mean- if Balmer and Bill fought, would we know? Everyone knows when Linus and Alan argue (hell, someone submits it here as a story every time they disagree over anything) But what about if it mattered?

dillon_rinker writes " In a nutshell, the SEC says that if web sites require a name and personal information in exchange for otherwise free stock, they are actually selling the stock. IAKAL, but this strikes me as a Good Thing in terms of privacy protection. There is little in US law that protects invasion of privacy by corporations. If the govt says personal information is valuable, I would think it would be easier to protect it, given the materialistic orientation of US law. " So, essentially you can't "give" the stock away-the SEC says you are selling it-it's just personal information that's the monetary unit. It's an interesting idea-by making your personal information into something with an intrinsic value, you can "creatively" use other portions of the law to defend personal privacy.

A slew of industry giants, IBM, Sony, Hitachi, NEC, and Pioneer have signed off on a plan to "watermark" digital content on DVDs. They have all agreed to a standard, which will be presented to the Copyright Protection Technical Working Group. The big boys, of course, want to "protect" their data-the thought is that this technology maybe used in digital broadcasts as well.

Charles Bronson writes "A Mass. clothing company who's producing a new line of footware called 'Earth Shoes,' has filed suit against hobbyist Tony Saunders, who owns operates earth.com. Despite the fact that he does not conduct commerce and he has been using earth.com since 1994, some years prior to the existance of Earth Shoes, the company claims that he is infringing upon their trademark. What trademark? Well, in 1984, the company alledgly trademarked 'Earth' and 'Earth Shoe.'"

Mike McCune writes "News.com is reporting that a committee advising the Department of Justice is considering forcing Microsoft to license the source code to it's operating systems." Another alternative is to block Microsoft from adding features to the OS. In related news, Frédéric writes "Maybe you know Microsoft is trying to use Be to prove it does not have a monopoly on OS's. The SJ Mercury news speculates that Be's CEO Jean-Louis Gassée may join the antitrust suit against Microsoft Corp.". This transcript of this interview with JLG gives his position."

Mike McCune writes "News.com is reporting that a committee advising the Department of Justice is considering forcing Microsoft to license the source code to it's operating systems." Another alternative is to block Microsoft from adding features to the OS. In related news, Frédéric writes "Maybe you know Microsoft is trying to use Be to prove it does not have a monopoly on OS's. The SJ Mercury news speculates that Be's CEO Jean-Louis Gassée may join the antitrust suit against Microsoft Corp.". This transcript of this interview with JLG gives his position."

Kragen Sitaker has written a brutal reply to the story Sengan posted yesterday on the The Open Source Acid Test. It goes down and point by point shows the factual errors and fud in the story. It pleases me greatly to post this feature. Check it out. The following was written by Slashdot Reader Kragen Sitaker

I read Ted Lewis's article, _The Open Source Acid Test_, on your web pages.

I was appalled that an organ of a prestigious international society like the IEEE would publish such error-riddled, poorly-researched, deliberately deceptive nonsense. It's as if the _New England Journal of Medicine_ had published a case study of a zombie animated by voodoo!

The author did not cite sources for any of his dubious statistics, and they are therefore hard to disprove. Given the remarkable lack of factual accuracy in the article, I doubt that they have any basis in fact.

To begin with the most obvious errors:

1. Linus Torvalds's name is not Linus Torvold.
2. Applix, Tower Technology, and NewMonics do not sell open-source software.
3. There is no such company as "Walnut Creek Stackware". www.cdrom.com belongs to Walnut Creek CDROM. There is no such company as "Tower Tech JVM". www.twr.com belongs to Tower Technology, which sells a (non-open-source) JVM. There is no such web site as www.debian.com.
4. www.python.org is operated by the Python Software Association, not CNRI, although it is currently hosted on CNRI's network.
5. Several of the "commercial enterprises" listed in Table 1 are not commercial enterprises at all. www.hungry.com, www.python.org, and www.debian.org are all operated by nonprofit organizations. The Corporation for National Research Initiatives, which was incorrectly listed as operating www.python.org, is actually a not-for-profit research organization.
6. It is absurd to say that Unix was the foundation for Hewlett-Packard and IBM, as Lewis does in his introductory paragraph. Both companies had been established for more than thirty years when the first line of Unix was written.
7. On page 126, Lewis claims that the open-source community admits that its organizational structure is weak. The evidence he adduces is a quote from a document published on www.opensource.org. What he doesn't tell you is that the document is *a leaked internal Microsoft memo*. Unless Lewis missed the 115 references to Microsoft in this document and also failed to read the introductory paragraphs, the only reasonable conclusion is that he is being deliberately deceptive.
8. On page 125, Lewis claims that "Currently, Linux's installed base numbers 7.5 million". As usual, he cites no source. However, the most widely-cited source for such figures is Robert Young's paper, Sizing the Linux Market eight different data sources to obtain an estimate of between five and ten million Linux users. However, this paper has a date of March 1998. If Linux's growth had continued to double yearly in 1998, as it did from roughly 1993 to 1998, the number of Linux users would be between ten and twenty million.
9. On page 128, Lewis says, "Windows NT market share smothers all Unix dialects combined". According to International Data Corporation's Server Operating Environment report, Unix and Linux together had 34.6% of the server market in 1998, while Windows NT had 36%. See more information. The actual number of server Linux shipments IDC tallied in 1998 was only three-quarters of a million; that suggests that if you include people installing multiple servers from the same CD and installing from Internet downloads, you would find that Linux's server market share is much greater than Windows NT's.
10. Lewis remarks, "With few exceptions, open source software has never crossed the chasm into the mainstream without first becoming a commercial product sold by a commercial enterprise." Does he think that Linux is not a commercial product sold by commercial enterprises? If not, there are literally dozens of "exceptions" to this statement -- Perl, Apache, sendmail, BIND, Linux, Tcl/Tk, Berkeley DB, Samba, the X Window system, FORTH, GNU Emacs, and trn, for example. Many of these became popular before they were commercially sold at all.
11. Lewis misstates the business case for Linux and "its open source software cousins". According to Eric Raymond -- whom Lewis quotes extensively elsewhere in this article -- a much more compelling business case is founded on the better quality of the software, choice of suppliers, choice of support and maintenance, freedom from legal exposure and license tracking. More details are available at opensource.org/for-buyers.html.

These minor factual errors, so far, merely indicate that the author knows very little about the topic he writes about and is deliberately trying to mislead his readers; they do not directly undermine his conclusions. However, as I shall show, each of his supporting arguments consist of incorrect facts and lead to faulty conclusions.

One of the author's major contentions is that as Open Source software adds more features and becomes more comparable to proprietary software, it will lose many of its advantages. He cites as examples Linux's supposed lack of video card support, wireless LAN support, and "a good selection of productivity software."; he claims that Unix contains 10 million lines of code, while Linux contains only 1.5 million. On page 126, he says, "Maintenance and support grow more complex, and costs increase due to a scarcity of talented programmers. Success leads to features, and feature creep leads to bloated software."

With regard to video card support, it is true that the Linux kernel does not have video card support in it. That facility is provided by video drivers in other software; nearly all graphical software available for Linux uses X11 for access to those video drivers. Open-source X11 drivers for most video cards are available from www.xfree86.org; the list of supported cards there currently lists 555 different kinds of video cards, many of which include numerous individual models.

For those few cards for which XFree86 support is not available, proprietary X11 drivers are available from Xi Graphics and Metro-Link.

With XFree86, Linux's video card support is better than either Windows 98 or Windows NT, and considerably more extensive than any Unix that does not use XFree86.

To claim that Linux lacks video card support is merely laughable.

With regard to wireless LAN support, it is true that many of the recent wireless LAN products do not currently have support in Linux. However, Linux has had support for packet-radio wireless networking and several kinds of LANs for years, and has supported several wireless LAN products since at least late 1997, including most of the most popular ones:

Lucent Wavelan
DEC RoamAbout DS
Lucent Wavelan IEEE
Netwave Airsurfer
Xircom Netwave
Proxim RangeLan2
Proxim Symphony
DEC RoamAbout FH
Aironet ARLAN
Raytheon Raylink
BreezeCom BreezeNet

This information is readily available on the Web in the Linux Wireless LAN Howto.

With regard to productivity software, there are several office suites available for Linux, and there have been for several years. ApplixWare and StarOffice are the two most common.

With regard to the size of Linux: first, among the utilities tested in the failure-rate study (the latest report on which is entitled "Fuzz Revisited: A Re-examination of the Reliability of Unix Utilities and Services". the quote used on page 125 appears to be from the original paper, which I cannot find on the Web) are the standard set of Unix utilities, awk, grep, wc, and so forth. These utilities have a standard set of functionality common across all Unix systems, except that the GNU utilities tend to have a great deal of extra functionality included. If the GNU utilities really are only one-sixth the size of the corresponding utilities on a Unix system, yet provide much more functionality, and still have one-third to one-sixth of the failure rate, that is not an indictment of the defect rate of free software, but rather a vindication of it -- which is why this study is linked to from the Free Software Foundation's Web pages. The study is unfairly biased in favor of less-featureful proprietary software, and that software still came out way behind.

(From my own experience, I know that frequently, the best workaround for a bug in a Unix utility is to install the GNU version.)

Lewis's claim that this represents "a single-point estimate of defect rate" is incorrect. The paper includes detailed results of the tests on 82 different utilities, along with aggregate statistics by operating system. 63 of these utilities were available either from GNU or from Linux, and were tested in this study.

With regard to the lines-of-code figure: it is not easy to measure the number of lines of code that constitute "Linux", because it is not easy to define what constitutes "Linux" -- or, for that matter, "Unix" either.

If we mean just the kernel, this site has some figures for the sizes of several OS kernels in 1994. SunOS 5.2's kernel is listed as containing 680,000 lines of code, while SunOS 5.0's kernel is listed as containing 560,000 lines of code. If the rate of increase per version remained constant (doubtful, because 5.0 and 5.1 weren't really finished products) then the latest SunOS (the one that's the kernel of just-released Solaris 7) would contain 1,280,000 lines of code.

By comparison, the source code of the 2.2.1 Linux kernel totals 1,676,155 lines of code, including comments and blank lines, counting only .c, .h, and .S (assembly) files.

The Linux project's source code has already reached a level where we would "expect Linux defect densities to get worse". They haven't.

On page 125, Lewis cites Apache as an example of support diminishing when "the hype wears off", saying "it is currently supported by fewer than 20 core members" -- implying that the "cast of thousands" is a thing of the past. The truth is that the core Apache team has never been larger than 20 people, and they *still* receive contributions from many people outside the group. He also says that "Apache is losing the performance battle against Microsoft's IIS." But Apache has never been intended to be the fastest HTTP server around -- it's already more than fast enough to saturate a T1 when running on a puny machine, so its developers have been concentrating on things like adding more features and making it more reliable.

On page 128, Lewis says, "The concept of free software is a frequently practiced strategy of the weak". While free-as-in-price giveaways are common -- Microsoft's Internet Explorer strategy is a perfect example -- they are not related to open-source software, and their patterns of success and failure have little relevance for us here.

takshaka writes "Playboy Enterprises has joined the mass of trademark litigants, alleging that Excite and Netscape are violating its trademark by serving banner ads for other adult sites whenever visitors search for the magazine's home page. This seems to be yet another case of actively defending a trademark to avoid name dilution. But, really, how many people who type "playboy" as a search term are actually looking for playboy.com? " I just search for the articles.

One of the big stories of 1998 was the impact of ultracheap computers. The marketshare of computers which had stayed firmly stuck around 40% of US-households increased to 50%. Similarly Intel's market share collapsed in the mail-order and retail PC market: 75% of overall unit sales in the 1997 fourth quarter to about 49.5% in the most recent period. The cheapest computers reveal a trend of making money off services rather than hardware, with an associated lack of choice (don't expect to run Linux on these things): $300 PCs are shipping in France but you must use a specific ISP, zero-cost PCs are available if you agree to being bombarded by adverts even if you are not online (remember 1984: the TV things were always on), and finally zero-cost iMacs are available if you pledge to spend 3600 dollars over 3 years at some online mall. Moreover, the cost has already hit the industry: AMD is hurting while system development of Tier 1 manufacturers is leaving the US, being done instead by contract manufacturers in countries where electronics labour costs are less than a buck an hour. More people on the internet may be good, but at what cost?

One of the big stories of 1998 was the impact of ultracheap computers. The marketshare of computers which had stayed firmly stuck around 40% of US-households increased to 50%. Similarly Intel's market share collapsed in the mail-order and retail PC market: 75% of overall unit sales in the 1997 fourth quarter to about 49.5% in the most recent period. The cheapest computers reveal a trend of making money off services rather than hardware, with an associated lack of choice (don't expect to run Linux on these things): $300 PCs are shipping in France but you must use a specific ISP, zero-cost PCs are available if you agree to being bombarded by adverts even if you are not online (remember 1984: the TV things were always on), and finally zero-cost iMacs are available if you pledge to spend 3600 dollars over 3 years at some online mall. Moreover, the cost has already hit the industry: AMD is hurting while system development of Tier 1 manufacturers is leaving the US, being done instead by contract manufacturers in countries where electronics labour costs are less than a buck an hour. More people on the internet may be good, but at what cost?

One of the big stories of 1998 was the impact of ultracheap computers. The marketshare of computers which had stayed firmly stuck around 40% of US-households increased to 50%. Similarly Intel's market share collapsed in the mail-order and retail PC market: 75% of overall unit sales in the 1997 fourth quarter to about 49.5% in the most recent period. The cheapest computers reveal a trend of making money off services rather than hardware, with an associated lack of choice (don't expect to run Linux on these things): $300 PCs are shipping in France but you must use a specific ISP, zero-cost PCs are available if you agree to being bombarded by adverts even if you are not online (remember 1984: the TV things were always on), and finally zero-cost iMacs are available if you pledge to spend 3600 dollars over 3 years at some online mall. Moreover, the cost has already hit the industry: AMD is hurting while system development of Tier 1 manufacturers is leaving the US, being done instead by contract manufacturers in countries where electronics labour costs are less than a buck an hour. More people on the internet may be good, but at what cost?

PsycoDoc writes "A while back Slashdot mentioned a lone man's plight trying to get DSL service for his Macintosh with Bell Atlantic. Well Bell Atlantic finally cracked and will now support Macs with system 7.52 or higher, in part because of hundreds of complaints due to the mentioning of Steve Godun's diary on Slashdot."

NutBat writes "News.com has an article about Toys "R" Us threatening legal action against a guy named Gus Lopez who runs a site with the domain toysrgus.com for his Star Wars toy collection. It seems that he will be backing down." It appears that Gus' website did not sell anything despite the .com suffix, although I have not been able to confirm this. The letter sent to Gus is on his website, and is worth reading. Ajax.org and veronica.org were resolved due to public pressure. Perhaps this one will be too? Toys R US has a customer service page

Andrew Dvorak writes "This article on News.com states that five companies (both in the US and outside the US) will be designated to manage internet domains along with InterNIC. This will apparently end the InterNIC's oligopoly."

turnerjh writes "Another hardware manufacturer has joined the ranks of Hewlett-Packard, SGI, VA Research, and Compaq. Dell Computers has announced they will begin bundling Linux soon. Is Microsoft finally losing their strangle hold on the hardware industry? This is a step up from Dell just passively installing Linux on demand. It seems they will be actively pursuing our favorite OSS OS." Be careful with this one-Dell hasn't actually said they will be shipping with it-just expetected to announce it. But, this is a step-up (if true), and it sounds like it won't just be on servers, but work-stations as well. Additionally, Tom Jenkins wrote to tell us that Hewlett-Packard has announced they will be selling some of their server line with Linux pre-install/bundle as well. Let's keep making inroads, folks-this Dell thing has been in the air for a while, but a commitment is always a good thing to see.

Panix writes "Good news today from HP and SGI. Both have announced that they plan to offer Linux as one of their "core" operating systems. HP even stated that it would develop a special version of Linux for Merced!" It's crazy- 2 companies once known for their OSs have chosen another.

Ryan Radecki writes "News.com reports that Arizona lawmakers are planning to introduce a bill that would ban the Pentium III due to its usage of a serial number for PC tracking and identification. The bill would ban chips with serial numbers, computers with chips with serial numbers, prohibit state and government agencies from buying computers with said chips inside, and prohibit the manufacture of said chips in the state, which would be an intriguing situation for the two Intel fabrication plants located in Arizona. "

PsycoDoc writes "Sales growth for Intel-based servers slowed down in 1998, although sales of operating systems for these machines grew faster because of the growing popularity of Linux."

Lotus CEO Jeff Papows announced to an exuberant crowd at Lotusphere99 that the Lotus Notes server will be ported to Linux, albeit not as open source. It should be available later this year. This is a U-turn for Papows. made clear it was the server.

James Green sent in the URL to a news.com story that talks about how NSI is Backlogged handling orders of domain names. Big shock. Someday this might be decentralized. Someday we might have new TLDs. Someday this whole DNS growing pain thing will stop. Really. Bah who am I kidding. This is the DMV of the 90s.

Several folks have written in to comment that the Feb issue of Wired (7.02) has the "Slashdot Effect" listed in the jargon watch section. An anonymous reader noted that news.com has an article about domain disputes that mentions Slashdot and the whole ajax.org mess from ages back. And finally, Time Digital has an article that refers to " Slashdot Longhairs" (along with rapid apple partisan and java futurist) to describe how biased MSs recent DOJ witness sounds. I don't have long hair. Do you? Thanks to Matthew Rose for that one.

Edmond Howser wrote in with this story about Archie Comics writing to the owner of the veronica.org website, asking him to "cease all use of the Internet domain "Veronica.org," all use of the Veronica trademark," and hand over the domain to Archie Comics. Turns out the website is about Veronica, a toddler... The story also mentions your contribution in helping Ajax.org. Perhaps we can help Veronica by expressing our disappointment to Archie Comics' Feedback Page.

David Jao writes "According to this news.com story, Apple computer has begun charging a $1 license fee for every FireWire port that is manufactured. This means an extra $1 is charged for every port in the back of a computer, every port on a device, and every link in a device chain." This article talks about how this is probably not such a hot idea on Apple's part. Royalties on a technology that still isn't really accepted yet?

An anonymous reader wrote in to tell us that Sequoia Capital has invested 11 Million dollars into MP3.com. The same company that help Apple, Cisco, Yahoo and Oracle get there starts. What does this mean for the MP3 Industry? More respect?" Very interesting. Does Sequoia Capital want to invest in any (cough) Geek 'zines while they're at it? Anyway this is pretty sweet- I've been frequenting MP3.com for awhile. Sites like that are really alpha testing the future of the music industry. If they succeed, I'll never need to leave my chair again. Well, maybe for food.

bob writes "CNET is reporting that Iomega bought out the assets of Syquest. This ends a litigation suit between the two companies, but it's unknown is Iomega will continue with the Syquest product line. Check out the story. "

wald0 writes "This article highlights Sun's efforts at porting Solaris 7 to the Merced on a simulated prototype known as a "pre-silicon software development environment." An interesting piece on how Intel is opening the doors to other OS developers to create code for their chips. "