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Novell announced an NDS product at Comdex called eDirectory that is OS independent and will run on Linux. And it sells for $2/user.

Here is the link: http://www.techwe b.com/wire/story/1199comdex/TWB19991116S0012

Isn't that also an anti-trust, anti-competitive and innovation squelching issue?

See Slashdot 11/05/99 and Techweb 11/04

this has been linked from Redhat's news page since September.

Curious to know where the number 60 Mbps was found. The only information I see in the referenced article says the following:

VDSL data-access rates vary depending on the
length and condition of a line, from 26 Mbit/s
symmetrical over about 1,000 feet, down to 6.5
Mbits/s symmetrical at approximately 5,000 feet.

Not that I'd complain about 6.5 Mbps.

Because I care:

GUID

Win98 profiling

Professor Spokesman

Astroturf

Ads as news

Video

Any thoughts about the truthfulness of those stories?

Any thoughts about the truthfulness of those stories?

I.e., sometimes a desktop machine with a big screen is the right answer, and sometimes a handheld device is the right answer?

Hmm. I seem to remember seeing a Slashdot thread referring to an article in which some expat Finn said, among other things

I believe in purpose-built devices. If you look, for instance, at the Nokia 9000 [Communicator], it is a cute thing, which I like, but it is not a good mobile phone and it is not a good PDA.

Perhaps he had a point? He didn't address "desktop vs. mobile", but I think that's another case where it's not necessarily the case that "convergence" is an unalloyed good - you don't necessarily want a single box that Does It All (I've read Slashdot with a Nokia 9000 whilst riding in a car - it works, but I'd rather read it on a nice big screen; I might, however, want to read some stuff "on the move", or order pizza, or whatever, on a mobile phone, or a Palm, or...).

See also the "IBM Unveiling New Transcoder Technology" Slashdot article; some folks have commented that they don't necessarily want Full Frontal Slashdot on their mobile phone or PDA.

There is an article at EE Times about this.

Bungee-Ware: Free Software with elasticated strings attached.

Try http://www.techweb. com/printableArticle?doc_id=REU19990923S0001

So on one hand Linus has a vision, where his focus was on designing Linux for appliances smaller than laptops rather than putting it on desktops, and on the other we have Amiga's Internet appliance plans, not to mention their support for Linux.

Thoughts?

Perhaps you'd like to check this link
and then reconsider your comment that
"And am I the only one who believes that if India and Pakistan put their
computer resources together they would have the equivelent of a rural American elementary school computer
lab?"

This is just one random URL I picked up. I'd be happy to educate you more on India's computing resources if you want.

Microsoft Devlopers claim not to know who this third key belongs to. Check pout the article at http://www.techweb.com/wire/stor y/TWB19990903S0014

'Fernandez reported his re-discovery of the two CAPI keys, and their secret meaning, to the "Advances in Cryptology, Crypto'99" conference held in Santa Barbara. According to those present at the conference, Windows developers attending the conference did not deny the "NSA" key was built into their software. But they refused to talk about what the key did, or why it had been put there without users' knowledge.

But according to two witnesses attending the conference, even Microsoft's top crypto programmers were stunned to learn that the version of ADVAPI.DLL shipping with Windows 2000 contains not two, but three keys. Brian LaMachia, head of CAPI development at Microsoft was "stunned" to learn of these discoveries, by outsiders. This discovery, by van Someren, was based on advance search methods which test and report on the "entropy" of programming code.'

Kythe
(Remove "x"'s from

MCI WorldCom is experiencing some major network difficulties.

There are more articles (that don't require annoying registrations) at The Register, News.com and Techweb.

Solaris Central will also be covering additional news and updates to the processor. It should be interesting to see what unfolds...

This one relates to easing export controls on "supercomputing" hardware. (Like your new Playstation ;-)

I've been picking up movies on Laser Disk(LD) for $5-7 a piece.

A couple comments on LD and DVD

• The picture quality jump from VHS to LD (75% better) greatly exceeds the picture quality jump from LD to DVD(only 14% better)*
• LD quality exceeded broadcast quality for it's day(NTSC), DVD does not(HDTV)
• DVD's replacements, HD-DVD and UD-DVD (ultra-definition 4000x2000!), are already in the works. This implies that DVD will have a much shorter lifespan than LD.

* Resolution comparision based on NTSC. For NTSC, all images have 525 lines of vertical resolution. Horizontal resultion varies with the source material: VHS=240, Broadcast=330, LD = 420, DVD = 480. Resolution information from Secrets of Home Theater.

Following a thread of thought from this piece, have a look at how animal behaviour is being used in, among other things, satellite attitude control systems.

(Aside: I met Mark Tilden back in first year at a talk he gave about his analog approach to robot design. He talks klicks-a-minute, but it's worth every second.)

Single-chip TCP/IP stacks aren't far off, and I was at a workshop not too long ago showing some of the R&D going into millimeter-wave (GHz frequency range) antennas integrated into a single chip.

Half the battle lies with the tools. Getting the electrical (digital/analog/RF) talking to the mechanical, to the thermal design tools and data is a major challenge. Holistic design is what it's called.

Very neat stuff; I'm glad I'm in the industry. :-)

This little gem neatly refutes all your false claims about how NT has lower TCO than Linux. The truth is that low priced admins can indeed do both hard stuff and "monkey work" with Linux-based solutions, with ease.

From what I can gather, Burlington Coat Factory is retaining its DOS POS application. Jay Jacobs, on the other hand, is going Linux at POS.


This is especially interesting for me, as we are designing a new POS system at my employer right now, and the OSes being considered are NT Embedded and CE 3.0. All because our Pentium-equivalent, 48Mb RAM registers won't handle NT5.0! At least Linux exists!


I'll keep fighting. I had a great opportunity this morning when someone was warning of the dangers of M$ switching tracks on us and leaving us with unsupported technology. I pointed out that if we had the source code to the OS that that couldn't happen. Linux again? they groaned. Oh well, at least they know what I'm talking about, even if they don't agree.

Here is a link to some people who are trying it out: 3D LCds

Randy Maas
randym@acm.org

Just cuz the computer press denounces it(perhaps for fear of losing micro$oft ad money?) doesn't mean it's not a viable alternative to windows. After all, if it wasn't useable, you wouldn't see things like:

January 28, 1999 - SOUTHTRUST BANK Standardizes on OS/2 Warp 4
March 22, 1999 - IBM Managers Increase In Desktops As Financial-Services Company Expands

A quick look at the Large OS/2 Customers List shows a lot of banks. Banks can't afford for their systems to be down as customers tend to get rather irate if they cannot access their money.

As far as updates, IBM is still releasing free fixpacks for Warp 4.0 as well as 3.0(released in 94). If you'd rather not download the fixpacks, OS/2 Super Site offers them burned on a CD for about $15. Current device drivers can be found at IBM's online Device Driver Pack. In the past 30 days 2 new drivers have been added and 264 drivers have been updated.

For typical office needs, Staroffice can handle current MS office documents and is available for OS/2, Linux, and even Windows.

OS/2 even provides for a Y2K compliant Windows 3 environment.

What other everyday needs do you have? Perhaps people can send you suggested replacements. For a ready made list of comparable applications for OS/2, check The OS/2 Alternative site.

You're part of the problem if you just let micro$oft keep screwing you over.

An investment bank in New York claims NSI misled investors into believing that their contract would be extended or that it can not be entirely terminated.

Check it out here

http://www.techweb.com/news/stor y/TWB19990225S0011


[ Aaron Shaver ] [ ultravoid@usa.net ]

Sounds crazy? Didn't they add a module that checked if DRDOS was in use and issue a "warning".

But the truth is that it is just slow. From another article:

In a climax worthy of Perry Mason, Boies then asked: "So, this video you brought in here and vouched for, it's just wrong. [Degradation is] not due to the Felton program, it's just how Windows 98 works?"

How good could Firewire be if it allows hooking a crappy IDE drive to it?

If it works--great! SCSI drives are too expensive. My 2.1Gig UW still costs about the same now as when I bought it two years ago. It's better if everyone buys what I buy. No need to be that rebelious.

But what I don't understand is why SCSI is being bypassed (yet again). It's going to be a while before Firewire get up to SCSI speeds. Why not just concentrate on SCSI?

Do you have any Linux plans?

Linux is increasingly important. I can't go on a customer visit without somebody asking about Linux. Basically, people want the robustness of Unix, but they want a more vendor approach to it. We will look at it, and I believe we will have some announcements about that in the future.

From this techweb article