Slashdot Mirror

vivin writes "Oracle has announced the release of Java SE 7. This is the first release of Java under the stewardship of Oracle."

drspliff writes "Oracle today announced it's completed the acquisition of K-Splice, dropping support for Redhat, CentOS, and SUSE, and closing doors to new customers. Unless of course you want to become an Oracle Linux Premier Support subscriber — then it comes as standard."

GPLHost-Thomas writes "The very last components that were needed to run Xen as a dom0 have finally reached kernel.org. The Xen block backend was one major feature missing from 2.6.39 dom0 support, and it's now included. Posts on the Xen blog, at Oracle and at Citrix celebrate this achievement."

darthcamaro writes "Two years after Sun released MySQL 5.1, Oracle has picked up the ball with the official release of MySQL 5.5. New features include semi-synchronous replication, InnoDB by default and new SIGNAL/RESIGNAL support for exception handling. Above all, Oracle stressed that they are committed to further MySQL open source development and that they see it as a complementary technology to their proprietary Oracle database."

CWmike writes "Oracle has asked the Apache Software Foundation to reconsider its decision to quit the Java SE/EE Executive Committee, and is also acknowledging the ASF's importance to Java's future. In a message released late Thursday, an Oracle executive made conciliatory gestures to Apache. At least for now, the ASF doesn't seem eager to rejoin the committee. 'Give us a reason why the ASF should reconsider other than "please,"' ASF president Jim Jagielski said in a Twitter post on Thursday. The Java Community Process is 'dead,' Jagielski said in a blog post, also on Thursday. 'All that remains is a zombie, walking the streets of the Java ecosystem, looking for brains.'"

Kymermosst writes "Today marks the last day that SunSolve will be available. Oracle sent the final pre-deployment details today for the retirement of SunSolve and the transition to its replacement, My Oracle Support Release 5.2, which begins tomorrow. People who work with Sun's hardware and software have long used SunSolve as a central location for specifications, patches, and documentation."

Zmee writes "I am looking to build a 2D application for personal use and I will need to use a canvas to paint custom objects. I am trying to determine what foundation to use and have not located a good side-by-side comparison of the various flavors. For reference, I need the final application to work in Windows; Linux is preferred, but not required. I have looked at WPF, Qt, OpenGL, Tcl/Tk, Java's AWT, and others. I have little preference as to the language itself, but each of the tutorials appear to require significant time investment. As such, I am looking to see what the community uses and what seems to work for people prior to making that investment."

comay writes "Today Oracle released Solaris 11 Express 2010.11. It includes a large number of new features (PDF) not found in either Oracle Solaris 10 or previous OpenSolaris releases, including ZFS encryption and deduplication, network-based packaging and provisioning systems, network virtualization, optimized I/O for NUMA platforms and optimized platform support including support for Intel's latest Nehalem and SPARC T3. In addition, Oracle Solaris 10 support is available from within a container/zone so migration of existing systems is greatly simplified." Reader gtirloni adds, "Oracle also announced that this is not a beta or preview, but a full, supported release aimed at everybody developing, testing, prototyping or demonstrating applications running on the latest Solaris release (not allowed to be used in production)."

comay writes "Today Oracle released Solaris 11 Express 2010.11. It includes a large number of new features (PDF) not found in either Oracle Solaris 10 or previous OpenSolaris releases, including ZFS encryption and deduplication, network-based packaging and provisioning systems, network virtualization, optimized I/O for NUMA platforms and optimized platform support including support for Intel's latest Nehalem and SPARC T3. In addition, Oracle Solaris 10 support is available from within a container/zone so migration of existing systems is greatly simplified." Reader gtirloni adds, "Oracle also announced that this is not a beta or preview, but a full, supported release aimed at everybody developing, testing, prototyping or demonstrating applications running on the latest Solaris release (not allowed to be used in production)."

comay writes "Today Oracle released Solaris 11 Express 2010.11. It includes a large number of new features (PDF) not found in either Oracle Solaris 10 or previous OpenSolaris releases, including ZFS encryption and deduplication, network-based packaging and provisioning systems, network virtualization, optimized I/O for NUMA platforms and optimized platform support including support for Intel's latest Nehalem and SPARC T3. In addition, Oracle Solaris 10 support is available from within a container/zone so migration of existing systems is greatly simplified." Reader gtirloni adds, "Oracle also announced that this is not a beta or preview, but a full, supported release aimed at everybody developing, testing, prototyping or demonstrating applications running on the latest Solaris release (not allowed to be used in production)."

snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister writes about what could be the end of the Java Community Process as we know it. With the Apache Software Foundation declaring war on Oracle over Java, the next likely step would be a vote of no confidence in the JCP, which, if the ASF can convince enough members to follow suit, 'could effectively unravel the Java community as a whole,' McAllister writes, with educators, academics, and researchers having little incentive to remain loyal to an Oracle-controlled platform. 'Independent developers could face the toughest decisions of all. Even if the JCP dissolves, many developers will be left with few alternatives,' with .Net offering little advantage, and Perl, Python, and Ruby unable to match Java's performance. The dark horse? Google Go — a language Google might just fast-track in light of its patent suit with Oracle over Android." Reader Revorm adds related news that Oracle and Apple have announced the OpenJDK project for OS X.

tsu doh nimh writes "Microsoft warned today that it is witnessing a huge spike in the exploitation of Java vulnerabilities on the Windows platform, and that attacks on Java security holes now far outpace the exploitation of Adobe PDF bugs. The Microsoft announcement cites research by blogger Brian Krebs, who has been warning for several months that Java vulnerabilities are showing up as the top moneymakers for those peddling commercial crimeware exploitation kits, such as Eleonore, Crimepack and SEO Sploit Pack." Several days ago, Oracle released a patch that fixed 29 Java security flaws.

aesoteric writes "Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison has used the keynote of Oracle OpenWorld to launch the 'Exalogic Elastic Compute Cloud' — an appliance combining server and storage hardware with a pre-tuned web server, hypervisor and other middleware. Introducing the product as 'a honking big cloud in a box,' Ellison shifted from his previous criticism of the terms 'cloud computing' and 'private cloud' by using the exact same terms to sell a physical appliance." Oracle also took the wraps off Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel for Oracle Linux, which is based on the 2.6.32 Linux kernel.

quench writes "Hello! I have been away from Windows and Linux application software for 5 years or so, doing mainly C-like embedded C++ programming. Now, I am about to start a project emulating embedded hardware on Windows. Been there, doing #ifdef WIN32 and #ifdef LINUX stuff, don't really want to go there any more. What I actually need is a platform independent lib covering Windows and Linux variants to handle sockets, IPC and threads abstractions. And a rock solid but simple embedded database to emulate flash memory. My reflex said, go for ACE and Berkeley-DB. Tell me, am I out of time? Am I missing something new and trendy, easier to use and better? Did time stand still?"

Moon Workstation writes "In an special meeting held at Santa Clara, CA, 62% of Sun's stockholders voted for the acquisition by Oracle. As a result of this Sun's stock will be taken from the stock market as of Friday. The acquisition is still waiting for approval by the US Department of Justice and anti-trust offices in other countries. The planned acquisition is source for rumors and speculation about the future of different Sun products, like OpenSolaris, CPUs and others." (MySQL among them.)

fm6 writes "When the Oracle acquisition of Sun Microsystems was announced, it was widely assumed that Oracle was interested only in Sun's software technology, and would sell or discontinue all its hardware businesses. Larry Ellison, in an interview just posted on the Oracle web site, says that's not what's going to happen. In particular, SPARC isn't going anywhere (PDF): 'Once we own Sun we're going to increase the investment in SPARC. We think designing our own chips is very, very important. Even Apple is designing its own chips these days.'"

bruunb writes "Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ: ORCL) and Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ: JAVA) announced today they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Oracle will acquire Sun common stock for $9.50 per share in cash. The transaction is valued at approximately $7.4 billion, or $5.6 billion net of Sun's cash and debt. 'We expect this acquisition to be accretive to Oracle's earnings by at least 15 cents on a non-GAAP basis in the first full year after closing. We estimate that the acquired business will contribute over $1.5 billion to Oracle's non-GAAP operating profit in the first year, increasing to over $2 billion in the second year. This would make the Sun acquisition more profitable in per share contribution in the first year than we had planned for the acquisitions of BEA, PeopleSoft and Siebel combined,' said Oracle President Safra Catz."

bruunb writes "Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ: ORCL) and Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ: JAVA) announced today they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Oracle will acquire Sun common stock for $9.50 per share in cash. The transaction is valued at approximately $7.4 billion, or $5.6 billion net of Sun's cash and debt. 'We expect this acquisition to be accretive to Oracle's earnings by at least 15 cents on a non-GAAP basis in the first full year after closing. We estimate that the acquired business will contribute over $1.5 billion to Oracle's non-GAAP operating profit in the first year, increasing to over $2 billion in the second year. This would make the Sun acquisition more profitable in per share contribution in the first year than we had planned for the acquisitions of BEA, PeopleSoft and Siebel combined,' said Oracle President Safra Catz."

An anonymous reader writes "From the MySQL User's Conference, Sun has announced, and former CEO Marten Mickos has confirmed, that Sun will be close sourcing sections of the MySQL code base. Sun will begin with close sourcing the backup solutions to MySQL, and will continue with more advanced features. With Oracle owning Innodb, and it being GPL, does this mean that MySQL will be removing it to introduce these features? Sun has had a very poor history of actually open sourcing anything."

Jaden writes "Oracle expanded the list of hardware compatible with its Linux distribution and added support for Novell's YAST administration tool. They have now certified six hardware configurations able to run Oracle Enterprise Linux. Certified products include those made by Compellent Technologies, Dell, Egenera, EMC, Hewlett-Packard, Pillar Data Systems and Unisys. Oracle also said it is releasing an open-source version of the YAST Linux installation and configuration tool for Oracle Enterprise Linux and Red Hat Enterprise Linux under the General Public License."

SlashRating^© 11.9 slashdottit! ^tm krow writes "One of the unique qualities of the MySQL server is its ability to have multiple storage engine operate concurrently. Companies like Oracle and Solid have contributed their own storage engines to the open source project. With 5.1 MySQL has added the ability to now do this in a loadable fashion, allowing dynamic engines in the same manner as Apache with its modules. Now PostgreSQL can add its self to the list of databases who have contributed a storage engine to MySQL. I'm releasing today a plugin so that you can now plugin the Postgres database engine into MySQL and have it work natively along side other engines."

TodoInSATX writes "Oracle has filed a lawsuit against SAP. Among the claims made against SAP are violations of the Federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and California Computer Data Access and Fraud Act, Unfair Competition, Intentional and Negligent Interference with Prospective Economic Advantage and Civil Conspiracy. From the actual complaint: 'SAP has stolen thousands of proprietary, copyrighted software products and other confidential materials that Oracle developed to service its own support customers. SAP gained repeated and unauthorized access, in many cases by use of pretextual customer log-in credentials, to Oracle's proprietary, password-protected customer support website.'"

Eric^2 writes "Oracle announced on Tuesday that TopLink will now be open source and a full-fledged Eclipse project. TopLink is an object-persistence layer for Java that maps Java objects to a relational database."

A reader wrote to us with Matt Asay's Infoworld piece digging into the legal background of Oracle's indemnification offerings for Linux. Turns out, things are not quite so rosy as PR would make it seem. I know, I know...suprise all around. You can read Oracle's FAQ about it, but some of the tastier bits are that the indemnification covers *just* the kernel, and that whole thing about damage limits? Read what Matt has to say:'The indemnification is not in any way limited to the amount of money a customer has paid Oracle. Apparently, Oracle's legal department missed the memo on this one. If you read Section J of the agreement (Limitation of Liability), you'll note that while Oracle offers unlimited indemnification for consequential damages related to an infringement claim (and that only for the one package, the Linux kernel), it caps all other damages at the amount you pay to Oracle.'

Aditi.Tuteja writes "Oracle has released a 'critical patch update' that plugs 122 security vulnerabilities across the company's databases, enterprise applications, developer tools and middleware. Oracle has also started providing additional information indicating whether a flaw can be exploited by remote attackers without any authentication credentials. But, Oracle has failed to deliver its patches on all platforms. Patches for Oracle databases 9.2.0.6 and 10.1.0.5 will not be available until the end of this month. Users running Oracle 10.2.0.1 on Linux on Power servers will also have to wait until the end of October, as will users running Oracle 10.2.0.2 on Windows."

Dukhat asks: "I am really interested in firsthand experiences with these kinds of products and in unbiased reviews, since Google primarily gives me marketing information and vague overviews of how BPM is good for business. I have already looked at an earlier article on work-flow patterns, which gave me a few products to look at. I am trying to compile a short list of work-flow and BPM software to evaluate, but I am having a hard time determining which products are even worth evaluating. The situation is worsened by the fact that work-flow tools are often bundled with CRM or Business Intelligence packages. I am not dead set on using a big package, but I need to know more about their real world pros and cons before I can decide whether to build it myself instead. I am looking at both BPM and work-flow software, since some BPM software can also do work-flow, but it may be more worthwhile to just use a rules engine for automated processes and use a specialized work-flow tool." Dukhat has a fairly long list of software choices that he needs to whittle down. What packages would you recommend and why? "Here are some of the goals we have that we are trying to solve with work-flow/ BPM software:

• To be able to understand the path of a process without perusing in and out of a lot of functions.
• To be able to report on how long each step in each process takes.
• To be able to see exactly where in the process software errors occur and be able to skip over failed steps so that we can come back and fix them later.
• To be able to integrate with our issue tracking system, billing system, and CRM software. We definitely will have to write some webservices here.
• To be able to give process managers in different departments the ability to tweak certain processes without giving them full access to all processes.

We started off looking at rules engines, but it looks like a rules engine would only be useful for choosing actions at each step in the process, but we would have to glue together each step in the process ourselves. A lot of BPM software includes business rules software or is designed to integrate easily with specific packages.

Here is a list of packages that I have assembled so far:

• JBoss jBPM & Rules
• ILOG JViews & JRules
• webMethods & Blaze Advisor
• Oracle BPEL Process Manager
• COSA
• FLOWer
• Microsoft BizTalk
• Lotus Workflow
• Global360 BPM
• Bizflow
• WebSphere MQ Workflow
• Tibco BPM
• Fujitsu Interstage
• FileNet BPM
• Savvion
• Pegasystems
• BEA AquaLogic with Fuego

Please help me narrow these down. Thanks!"

Deven writes "Computerworld is reporting that Oracle has just acquired Sleepycat Software (makers of the open-source Berkeley DB embedded database) for an undisclosed sum. Having previously acquired Innobase, Oracle is certainly taking a look at diversity."

g8orade writes "In his bestselling book, The World is Flat, Thomas Friedman lists workflow management software in the top 5 Flatteners. During my work for a shipping startup, I have analyzed our software's many UI weaknesses, particularly related to workflow management, and am currently searching for the best online examples of various UI application patterns / widgets that address managing transaction flows. What are the best examples you know of that are commonly viewable on the web?" "Our software UI is Oracle (9i) Forms compiled to run with Java, through the web. We're using RT for our internal ticket tracking and it has many of the features listed. Also, we're evaluating several commercial document management systems as bolt-ons or companions to our in-house application. Here are some patterns we'd like to improve:

• Queue with count beside it. Example: 'Unshipped orders (5)'
• Screen for UI building of a search and ability to save the search as a queue
• List of queues showing all transaction counts and their various states
• Transaction list / table screen (should have an many possible features as a standard spreadsheet: pick your columns, column order, sort order, clickable column headings, export to various formats, print view, etc.)
• Detail view screen (one transaction, may include too many fields to display at once, requiring tabs, scrolling up and down, left to right, etc., should have a good printable view)
• Contact database built-in or connection to one from another system
• Auto messaging of various statuses to contacts and lists of contacts, above
• Full web accessibility and security model to allow our suppliers and clients access to their own queues for 'pull queries', in addition to what we email them.
• Ability to create a list of values for a field, then incorporate that into the query for a queue.
• Journal of a transaction
• Screen showing progression of a transaction
• Screen showing Parent / child parts of a transaction"

Dave Rosenberg, Principal Analyst, Open Source Development Labs, contributed this commentary piece: Despite all the open source software and services companies funded in 2005, the associated business models are still considered experimental and unproven. The new crop need only to look to the past avoid missteps. At the Open Source Business Conference in November, VCs and open source software company executives wondered aloud if what we’re seeing today is a “bubble” of open source start-ups being funded. One journalist’s recap of the event cited $144 million in open source start-ups receiving VC funding in 2005, double the venture capital flow for open source start-ups in 2004. Bubble or not, there is a company that every would-be open source start-up investor should learn a lesson from: LinuxCare.

LinuxCare was born in 1999 -- venture-backed by top tier VC firms like Kleiner Perkins, with total funding in the ballpark of $70 million.

Those were the frontier days for Linux. There was a ton of industry interest and activity despite the fact that the jury was still out with respect to end user adoption. Nobody really knew exactly how Linux was going to be used – would it be for the desktop, servers, etc.? The company used the vast venture coffers to promote the brand and staff star-power (even Linus Torvalds consulted for them briefly)– and LinuxCare quickly became the recognized name for Linux services and support, doing work for big systems vendors like Dell and IBM in addition to developing device drivers and offering education services.

Red Hat had the Linux OS and software, VA Linux had the hardware – and LinuxCare had the services. It was a theoretically perfect enterprise Linux ecosystem triumvirate.

But it wasn't meant to be.

The demise of LinuxCare can be attributed to many factors. The first was that enterprises were slow to adopt Linux – in the early ‘00s, IT spending came to a grinding halt with the dot-com and stock market crash. But the key factor to LinuxCare’s spectacular death spiral was the fact that they were going up against Red Hat, the very company they were basing their business on. Red Hat not only developed their own distribution of Linux, but also started offering support for it. Red Hat offered a one-stop shop for Linux software and services regardless of hardware. Enterprise customers decided it was easier to buy from one vendor. This same sentiment is what drives sales of Microsoft software in enterprises today.

LinuxCare suffered a painful public death over months of executive departures and layoffs, VA Linux abandoned hardware for software, and RedHat, with the cash to weather the tech spending downturn, expanded its revenue streams and became the de-facto enterprise Linux distribution.

It's easy to dismiss LinuxCare as "ahead of their time", which is definitely true. But the fundamental and fatal flaw was that they based their products on someone else's IP, with no IP of their own. When the market tanked abruptly, LinuxCare didn't have the money to weather the storm and didn't have consistent alternative revenue streams to combat the lack of services income.

Some of the executives from LinuxCare went on to start a new company called Levanta, which focuses on Linux systems management. They have since developed IP in software and hardware that can sustain the business beyond the services revenue.Their LinuxCare experience taught them how to build a sustainable technology business model on top of open source software. No longer do they rely on IP that walks out the door every night in their employees' heads.

In the end, it all comes down to IP. Building a business on top of something you don't own is extremely risky. Companies need to develop their own IP to be innovative and have competitive differentiation. And if they don't develop it themselves, they need to acquire or license the relevant code to protect themselves and ensure they aren't caught without alternatives.

An Open Source Danger Zone?

In my eyes, the bubble associated with open source is less related to the millions of VC dollars and more related to the reliance on software and components that are not part of a company's internal IP. When Oracle acquired InnoDB, it had a less than positive effect on MySQL, but MySQL is a smart enough company to not bet the farm on something it doesn't own. It owns enough IP to sustain its products-and it's business from the risk associated with relying on someone else's code.

IT Groundwork has built a business on top of an open source network monitoring project called Nagios. They don't own the copyrights and they don't employ the creator. Kleiner-backed SpikeSource offers "certified stacks" of open source software components, but they don't actually create the open source components themselves.

And in SpikeSource's case, Red Hat announced that they too would offer "certified stacks." Who do think is going to win that battle? Red Hat, the one-stop shop that offers the OS and the apps, or the company that offers merely a portion of the total package. Does SpikeSource have the IP or alternative revenue sources to withstand Red Hat? Let's wish them luckand hope they know the LinuxCare tale.

If there is a bubble, it will burst when the open source projects these new company's products and services depend on go private, fork, or get acquired. The market for open source is so new we haven't seen much of this yet. Only time will tell if the recently funded open source companies can build sustainable businesses, or if this grand experiment will result in a few 800 pound gorillas and many tiny monkeys.

Have something important to say to the Slashdot community? Email roblimo at slashdot period org with the complete article or an article proposal.

An anonymous reader writes "ZDNet News reports that Oracle is likely to announce a free version of its Oracle 10g Database. Oracle Database 10g Express Edition will be free for development and production use, and could even be distributed with other products. What does this mean for the future of MySQL and PostgreSQL?" From the article: "By introducing a free entry-level product, Oracle intends to get more developers and students familiar with its namesake database, Mendelsohn said. Those customers, Oracle hopes, will eventually upgrade to a higher-end version."

sendai-X writes "With the recently announced purchase of Innobase, Oracle has shown it's intention to further support open source. This is key as open source enters the mainstream in business and in light of the success IBM has had with the Eclipse project, and Sun recently looking at purchasing PostgresSQL. What do Slashdot users think about this merger? Is it beneficial to the market and database users by having the largest database vendor openly support MySQL and provide an upgrade path to Oracle? Or is it just another cog in the Oracle machine in their attempt to dominate the enterprise IT market? Will this change the database market landscape? Will it help or hurt IBM and Microsoft?"

A short time ago, Oracle announced its acquisition of Innobase, the Finnish company that makes the GPL'd InnoDB table storage engine. Among MySQL users, the separately-written InnoDB is almost as popular as the native MyISAM engine, and is considered to be more advanced for most purposes. Slashdot has, except for search, run entirely on InnoDB for the past year or two so we're as concerned about this as anybody. Brian Aker, former Slashdot coder and current Director of Architecture for MySQL AB, comments: "InnoDB is GPL, so once again the beauty of the open source market is at play: there is no lock in, and we can continue to develop Innodb as we see fit. The code is out there and we plan on continuing to support it. The largest database vendor in the world just confirmed that the market for open source databases exists."

yggy writes "It's been a hectic day on the security patching front. Microsoft's bulletins for July include patches for three critical vulnerabilities on the same day that Mozilla releases new security updates for Firefox and Thunderbird. Not to be left behind, Apple fixed two Tiger flaws while Oracle issued a critical database server update." (See these separate stories on today's release of Firefox 1.0.5 and the 10.4.2 update from Apple, too.)

ARSDeveloperGuy writes "Fourth generation languages are cool, but there seems to be little to no effort being spent to standardize them. The current state is commercialized pseudo-languages are created to allow vertical apps to be expanded. (ARS Remedy, Siebel, Oracle JDeveloper) The concepts of a form, field, and workflow can be standardized, and when you look at many of these languages they aren't terribly different. Why don't we create a standard and start writing "workflow converters" for these powerful languages? That would allow conversions to happen more readily, maybe even to an open source offering like OpenSourceCRM."

Brainsur writes "Oracle on Monday debuted a release of its customer relationship management software that offers sales reps tools for developing proposals and quotes, improving channel management, and aligning a company's sales and marketing staff. The 11i.10 applications also provide built-in analysis capabilities that sales reps use to analyze sales opportunities and report sales-pipeline status."

Dozix007 writes "Uberhacker.Com reports : Zend Technologies quietly announced last week the final release of the open source PHP version 5. An interesting article reports the different strengths and weaknesses of ASP vs. PHP, and it becomes quite clear that with the release of PHP5, Zend has taken a shot at ASP's heart. The differences from PHP4 to 5 has created a clear advantage for the new preprocessor over Microsoft's proprietery ASP."

stoborrobots writes "Reuters is reporting that the big O is planning to open new R&D centres in china. Initially aiming at the domestic Chinese market, there is potential to resell the technologies developed beyond the borders... Is this the next wave of outsourcing?"

An anonymous reader writes "The new RealPlayer 10 beta was released for Mac OS X. It's got a built-in web browser built off Apple's WebKit. This, along with all the Mac-specific UI tweaks, makes for a pretty solid release overall, imho." lucadex writes "Open Office 1.1.2 has been officially released on Mac OS X. This is the first official O.O. upgrade since version 1.0.3." Tom Davies writes "Oracle has released an early adopter's release of 10g for Mac OS X." adamhauner writes "Mozilla.org released final version of Camino 0.8, a Gecko-based browser optimized for Mac OS X with a Cocoa user interface. This version, besides having other new features, also upgrades the Gecko HTML rendering engine from Mozilla 1.0 to Mozilla 1.7."

SuperDuG send a link to this Reuters report on the Oracle's takeover bid for PeopleSoft, specifically questioning Oracle's committment to PeopleSoft. SuperDuG writes: "A letter from CEO Craig Conway states 'Five days following our announcement we learned of a hostile bid by Oracle Corperation to acquire PeopleSoft. Incredibly, Oracle made it clear their intention was to discontinue all PeopleSoft products, ultimately forcing customers to convert to Oracle's application and database.' Seems the dirt is being slung by both sides and the SEC is about to takeover and decide if this is even legal under anti-trust laws."

rkuris writes "Oracle has launched a 5.1 billion dollar cash hostle takeover bid against Peoplesoft. PeopleSoft's CEO Craig Conway (a former top executive for Oracle) called Oracle's offer 'atrociously bad behavior from a company with a history of atrociously bad behavior.' 'Obviously it is a transparent attempt to disrupt the [1.7 billion dollar friendly] acquisition of J.D. Edwards by PeopleSoft announced earlier this week.' The week's events have reopened old wounds between the companies, which have a history of hostility and name calling."

Slashback tonight with a round of corrections and updates to recent (and not recent) Slashdot postings. Read on to find out more on the fate of Larry Ellison's thin-client Linux machine, OpenTV vs. GNU, getting satisfaction instead of defective hard drives, and more. Enjoy!

Was it ahead of its time or vice versa? BreadMan writes "After limping along for years, the New Internet Computer (NIC) company finally went under. Founded by Larry Ellison, NIC sold a diskless workstation running Linux targeted at home users that wanted internet access. From the spec sheet it looks like this would be fun as a hacking platform if you can get one on the cheap."

Way to GNU! xarium writes "Seems that in response to pressure from the FSF OpenTV has released the source code to all of its compilers. You can download the full package here (~18meg)."

Because a hard drive should not be a rhythm section. Dynamoo writes "As previously noted in Slashdot, Fujitsu MPG3xx series hard drives have been failing in huge numbers. The U.S. law firm, Shepherd Finkelman Miller & Shah is currently conducting a class action against Fujitsu and HP for knowingly distributing faulty drives. According the this article in The Register, Gateway has now been lined up as a defendant.

The fault appears to impact MPG3102AT, MPG3204AT, MPG3307AT and MPG3409AT units manufactured in early 2001. If you have one of these, then it has probably failed already, if not you should replace it asap. If you're a customer of HP/Compaq you can visit the HP Hard Disk Drive Replacement Program site.
We had about 40 of these things fitted to Compaq DeskPro EXDs, and I can assure you the failure rate is pushing 100%."

In the public domain, no one knows you're a dog. smiff writes "United Press International reports on Dastar v. Twentieth Century Fox. Reversing lower court rulings, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Dastar did not violate the origin-of-work provision of the Lanham act. Dastar had taken public domain video, made some modifications, and sold it as its own product. Twentieth Century Fox sued claiming they should have been given credit for the video. According to Antonin Scalia, Dastar would have violated the Lanham Act if it had simply repacked the material and sold it as its own. But since Dastar made some minor changes, the Lanham Act doesn't apply.

While Dastar has been cleared under the Lanham Act, the Supreme Court sent the case back for a rehearing. The Fox video entered the public domain in 1977, but the book it was based on is still protected by copyright."

... or get off the pot. Brazilian Joe writes "The LinuxTag folks, as you may know, are responsible for a restraining order against SCO's claims in Germany. As a result, SCO has shut down its Germany web site. Story here."

Saqib Ali asks: "Later this year, I will be starting a project, that will involve storing XML data in a database. I understand why a Relational DB is not a good choice. I also understand why a pure OODB like Objectivity is not a good option either. So I started doing some research into various XML DBs like Apache Xindice, exist-db, Oracle 9i, and others, but I am unable to decide which XML DB to use. What criteria should one use when evaluating whether an XML DB will be a good option for a particular application? I would prefer using an Open Source solution. Initially my application wil involve storing reports in an XML repository, for retrieval via XPath, but the reports will get larger with time. Any suggestions on how to decide which database to use?"

Mark writes "As this news.com article states, 'Red Hat and Oracle plan to announce on Thursday that the companies have teamed to get Linux evaluated under the Common Criteria, a certification that could open doors for the broader use of open-source software by government agencies.' It looks like this will be an important step in getting Linux to be more widely adopted in governments around the world."

Smoking writes "It seems that Oracle just released libraries to allow low cost Linux clustering solutions using firewire... Aside from the coolness factor (imagine a beowulf cluster of DV cameras...) it's quite new for Oracle to release GPL software. They also seem to include really useful tools for NIC failover, Wizard building framework and integration of the cluster into Gnome (via a gnomevfs plugin)."

mcockerill writes "Oracle just posted a development version of their latest RDBMS (Oracle 9i release 2) for Mac OS X (300+megs of it). It requires Jaguar to run. No fancy installation wizards or GUI config apps as yet; the whole thing is command line only for now. But still, this is a major development as far as serious use of Mac OS X in a server environment is concerned. It's long been rumored to be on the way -- after all, Ellison is on Apple's Board -- but frankly I never thought I'd see the day."

micromoog writes "Oracle announced today that all new candidates for the Oracle Certified Professional certification must now pass an instructor-led course in addition to passing the four exams previously required. They claim demand from the industry for hands-on experience; however, this move will bring Oracle an extra $2000/class for physical classes, or $1500/class for online classes. Previously, someone with knowledge of Oracle could get certified for nothing more than the cost of the four exams ($500 total). There was no warning or grace period. This seems to me like a simple cash grab on a captive audience."

HPAVC writes: "Jabber today announced that Oracle has selected the Jabber as one of the primary interfaces for Oracle9i Application Server, enabling Jabber to deliver an industry-leading wireless Instant Messaging/IM system for Oracle App Server. The drivers will be downloadable via the Oracle Technology Network. Seems like its coming around well like previously mentioned here."

HPAVC writes: "Jabber today announced that Oracle has selected the Jabber as one of the primary interfaces for Oracle9i Application Server, enabling Jabber to deliver an industry-leading wireless Instant Messaging/IM system for Oracle App Server. The drivers will be downloadable via the Oracle Technology Network. Seems like its coming around well like previously mentioned here."

Billy writes "Unless you've been living in a cave, you've seen Oracle's Unbreakable campaign (Can't break it. Can't break in.), which was kicked-off by Larry Ellison personally at Comdex last November. Now U.K. security researcher David Litchfield says you can break in, thanks to at least seven different security holes in Oracle 9i, according to this SecurityFocus story. Oracle's top security manager is quoted as saying that "unbreakable" doesn't really mean unbreakable, or something."

XorNand writes: "Time is reporting that the Dept of Transportation, acting on instructions from Congress, is in the process of linking together states' drivers' license databases. They figure that it'll be cheaper and easier to slip under the radar of civil libertarians and privacy watchdogs. Wonder if Larry is a bit peeved that he's not getting his cut?"