Slashdot Mirror

David Gadelha writes "StarOffice 5.0 Prefinal Release will be avaiable for linux by 08.17.1998, and the Final release should be avaiable for download by 09.30.1998. StarOffice will remais free for non-comercial and personal use. The site also points StarOffice for linux has achieved 400.000 registrations. "

InterBase Software Corporation, a subsidiary of Inprise Corporation (FKA Borland), has announced it will release the next Linux version of its database, Interbase 5, on August 14, 1998. According to Jim Weil, president of Interbase, there has been a tremendous demand for their recent freeware offering of Interbase 4.2. InterBase 5 features InterClient, an all-Java JDBC driver that allows applications created with Java to access data stored in InterBase databases. For further details, check out the press release.

Cory Lueninghoener sent us a link to another press release, this one announcing that Caldera has released version 1.0 of Netware for Linux.

Chris Mikkelson writes "Walnut Creek's FTP server (ftp.cdrom.com), powered by FreeBSD, set the record for the most bytes transferred in a single day, at 417 Gig! Note that this is a single 200MHz PPro (overclocked to 233, last I heard). The previous record of 350Gig in a day was set by Microsoft during the Win95 release. They used 40 servers to get this!" You can read the press release if you desire. Very very cool.

Brian King writes "a thirteen year old jamaican has become the youngest government advisor ever, keeping the government up to date on technology. We should try to get his email address and send him the full scoop on linux, which would be the perfect network basis for a country with little money. what do you guys think?? Here is the story. "

The new Digital Alpha, featuring dual 64 Kb L1 instruction and data caches has been presented at Siggraph 98. It can dispatch up to 4 integer and 2 floating point instructions per cycle out of order, uses 4 different branch prediction algorithms and chooses the best results on the fly for each code snippet, and integrates new MVI instructions (MMX-like but better). Yahoo has an article on it. Many more details are available in the print edition of C'T.

Today Oracle officially announced it will be porting Oracle 8 to Linux. The software will be made available for a 90 day free trial via the Web by the end of this year. For further details, check out the press release.
In a similar press release Netscape announced that Netscape Messaging Server and Netscape Directory Server will be available for Linux by Q1 1999.

Today Oracle officially announced it will be porting Oracle 8 to Linux. The software will be made available for a 90 day free trial via the Web by the end of this year. For further details, check out the press release.
In a similar press release Netscape announced that Netscape Messaging Server and Netscape Directory Server will be available for Linux by Q1 1999.

Cobalt Networks Inc., manufacturers of the famous Cobalt Qube (TM), today announced their latest Linux based server product: the Cobalt Raq (TM). It's a sub-$1000, rack mountable Internet server solution, specifically targeted at ISP's. According to the press release up to 40 Cobalt RaQ microservers fit onto one side of a standaard 19" rack and consume less power than two traditional servers.

talon writes "An Argument in an online chat room exploded into violence when a group of men allegedly went to the home of a chat room participant and beat him with a baseball bat, police said Tuesday." Guess this means I should be a bit more careful on IRC. Scary world we live in.

talon writes "An Argument in an online chat room exploded into violence when a group of men allegedly went to the home of a chat room participant and beat him with a baseball bat, police said Tuesday." Guess this means I should be a bit more careful on IRC. Scary world we live in.

Eric Harlow writes "Looks like I'll be writing a book for the next few months on gnu development using Linux. I've convinced a publisher that it's necessary and that there's a market for it - and they're going to take a chance on it. I want to gear the book towards the growing number of ex-windows programmers as well as up and coming list of Linux application developers. The book is going to focus on database and gui development with Postgresql and GTK+. I was wondering if there were other topics that people wanted covering or thought it would be a good idea to cover. I also was going to talk about PHP, CGI, CORBA, and maybe threading - but I don't want to write a low-level book. I think that Linux needs application developers and I want to write this as a starting point to help people write some serious applications for Linux, primarily GUI and internet. Suggestions on topics appreciated since I have to give the publisher a finalized table of contents soon when I hand in my first chapter. -Eric "

Paul Russo sent us a link from ZD where you can read that if a law passes, it may Ban Crypto Research. *knock knock knock*. Open up in there! Hands away from the keyboard mister!

Andrew Leonard wrote in to tell us that Lycos has Patented the Web Spider. I'm wondering if they actually were the first to do this? For that matter, if only Lycos can have a spider, then I guess only Lycos can have a search engine. /me smells trouble. The article says Lycos plans a "vigorous defense of its rights" that is most definately going to shake things up. In any case, it seems to me that this isn't the "Save As" dialog box, but its pretty close. Update Here is the actual Patent. Apparently it isn't as broad as the article above describes.

Michael Hasenstein writes "parts don't need to get assembled to form a more complex part, instead that complex part can now be created out of one piece of metal directly, even moving parts" Read more here.

Patrick writes "Yahoo has reported that Xybernaut has just announced a rather cool new wearable computer. For $5k one can achieve true geekdom with a voice activated, headset micromonitor, 4gig hd and a P2 233 piece of headgear. Runs linux or any of the other x86 os's."

At the UniForum Association's 1998 Spring Conference in Ocean City The Open group unveiled it's UNIX 98 specification to an audience that included some well known Open Source advocates like Eric Raymond. The two groups spontaneously started talking about what it would take to bring the UNIX 98 spec to Linux. Both parties concluded the dialogue should continue and there should be found a way to brand Linux. You will find more details on this discussion in the press release. Another speaker at the conference was Ralph Nader, a well known consumer activist. He lauded the Open Source movement and cited TCP/IP and Linux as examples of what a free and interoperable computing marketplace can do. Read more...

At the UniForum Association's 1998 Spring Conference in Ocean City The Open group unveiled it's UNIX 98 specification to an audience that included some well known Open Source advocates like Eric Raymond. The two groups spontaneously started talking about what it would take to bring the UNIX 98 spec to Linux. Both parties concluded the dialogue should continue and there should be found a way to brand Linux. You will find more details on this discussion in the press release. Another speaker at the conference was Ralph Nader, a well known consumer activist. He lauded the Open Source movement and cited TCP/IP and Linux as examples of what a free and interoperable computing marketplace can do. Read more...

A bit old, but the Taiwanese computer maker Umax has officially declared that it will be quitting the Macintosh clone market, after losing somewhere in the range of 1.1$TW billion (~40$US million). This announcement of the losses came 22/5, and the depature from the market has already come. It's too bad that in some ways Apple waited so long to do clones that it didn't make any real difference.

Check out SNES 9x. There is a new version just released (but only for PPC Mac!). The good news is that the source will soon also be released. Way cool. Open source emulators mean that the 'scene' can stop bickering amongst itself and just write cool code *grin*. Thanks to Garrett LeSage for sending this one in.

This isn't exactly new, but Yahoo reported it today so I figured I'd share this with those of you who haven't heard about the Counterfeit Pentiums that have their clocks tampered with. Apparently its a bigger problem than most of us thought... thanks to Niall Kavanagh for sending us a link.

Yesterday Red Hat Software announced the $29.95 parallel supercomputer. This CD-ROM is the result of the a collaboration between NASA, Red Hat and a number of research centers. Extreme Linux (some of you will know it as "The Beowulf Project") is all the software you need (with source code, of course) to cluster several computers and create your own giant parallel processing unit. For more information on this, zap to the press release.

Eugenio Sanchez has written an editorial on what he thinks about Corel's recent announcements relating to Linux. Specifically, He talks about how the NetWinder is the first "Linux Computer" and why this is important. Interesting reading. The following is an editorial from Slashdot reader Eugenio Sanchez

Corel and Linux Computers

Corel has just released a network computer that happens to run Linux. They're trying to position it as a "network appliance" that would require little or no maintenance, have low power requirements, and fully supports Linux and all devices that work with it. This last features sheds new light on wider implications of Corel's Linux machines.

Just think about it for a second. Which computer do you use for Linux? More than likely, you run Linux on an Intel-based PC that came with Windows and/or DOS pre- installed and configured. It is not uncommon, though, that a sizable number of peripherals are not designed to work with Linux (altough this problem is seen less often every day). Proprietary interfaces, such as I2O, or hidden CPU features, like the Pentium's 4 Mb pages, constantly threat Linux to make it a pariah on the most common PC architecture.

The same problem happens on almost every other platform that Linux has been ported to: we have Linux for Alpha, but Digital designed it to run Digital Unix, VMS or Windows NT; the Power Macintosh feels right at home with the MacOS, and although there are so many MacLinux users out there that a specialized consulting company has been formed to provide support to such a wider user base, Linux is still a stranger in the Mac world. This same thought can be applied with almost any other platform that can utilize Linux: SPARC, MC68K, MIPS, etc.

But then, Corel Computer decides to release a RISC- based computer designed from the ground up to run Linux, and most likely, only Linux. What's the deep implication of this announcement? At last, we have a complete Linux-supported system. For years, it has been known that you couldn't take a diskette or CDROM and say, "This is 'Linux'", because there are so many distributions to choose from. However, we can rightfully say, "Look, that's a 'Linux computer'" because that's basically what Corel Computer has produced. Linux is no longer a very well adapted alien in the hardware world, but a first-class member for its own merits. It would make a lot of sense if Corel starts positioning their systems as *the* "Linux computers", taking advantage of the growing momentum that Linux has been gaining. Obviously, many Linux shops, like ISPs, would be immediately attracted to deploy these machines in their businesses.

Right now, we're seeing many big software vendors offering versions of their products for Linux, mainly for Intel platforms. It makes a lot of sense that Corel would offer ports of their products for the NetWinder. If this happens, and the NetWinder price/ performance ratio is good, then we could be witnessing the appereance of the Linux platform of choice for many users (and businesses alike).

Eugenio Sanchez has written an editorial on what he thinks about Corel's recent announcements relating to Linux. Specifically, He talks about how the NetWinder is the first "Linux Computer" and why this is important. Interesting reading. The following is an editorial from Slashdot reader Eugenio Sanchez

Corel and Linux Computers

Corel has just released a network computer that happens to run Linux. They're trying to position it as a "network appliance" that would require little or no maintenance, have low power requirements, and fully supports Linux and all devices that work with it. This last features sheds new light on wider implications of Corel's Linux machines.

Just think about it for a second. Which computer do you use for Linux? More than likely, you run Linux on an Intel-based PC that came with Windows and/or DOS pre- installed and configured. It is not uncommon, though, that a sizable number of peripherals are not designed to work with Linux (altough this problem is seen less often every day). Proprietary interfaces, such as I2O, or hidden CPU features, like the Pentium's 4 Mb pages, constantly threat Linux to make it a pariah on the most common PC architecture.

The same problem happens on almost every other platform that Linux has been ported to: we have Linux for Alpha, but Digital designed it to run Digital Unix, VMS or Windows NT; the Power Macintosh feels right at home with the MacOS, and although there are so many MacLinux users out there that a specialized consulting company has been formed to provide support to such a wider user base, Linux is still a stranger in the Mac world. This same thought can be applied with almost any other platform that can utilize Linux: SPARC, MC68K, MIPS, etc.

But then, Corel Computer decides to release a RISC- based computer designed from the ground up to run Linux, and most likely, only Linux. What's the deep implication of this announcement? At last, we have a complete Linux-supported system. For years, it has been known that you couldn't take a diskette or CDROM and say, "This is 'Linux'", because there are so many distributions to choose from. However, we can rightfully say, "Look, that's a 'Linux computer'" because that's basically what Corel Computer has produced. Linux is no longer a very well adapted alien in the hardware world, but a first-class member for its own merits. It would make a lot of sense if Corel starts positioning their systems as *the* "Linux computers", taking advantage of the growing momentum that Linux has been gaining. Obviously, many Linux shops, like ISPs, would be immediately attracted to deploy these machines in their businesses.

Right now, we're seeing many big software vendors offering versions of their products for Linux, mainly for Intel platforms. It makes a lot of sense that Corel would offer ports of their products for the NetWinder. If this happens, and the NetWinder price/ performance ratio is good, then we could be witnessing the appereance of the Linux platform of choice for many users (and businesses alike).

Chris Tyler writes "The Portland Group has announced plans to develop parallelizing compilers for Linux on IA-64 (i.e., the next generation of Linux Beowolf clusters using Merced processors). Corel thin clients on the low end, the next generation of supercomputers on the other... looks Linux has got the whole spectrum covered! "

Ichabod writes "O'Reily made a book about the PalmPilot. Suppossedly it contains all sorts of cool tricks and undocumented tips. This URL is pretty much just an ad for it. " Next semester I'm taking a course in programming small machines where we're gonna take on the Pilot as part of the class. Might just have to snag a copy and warm up for it :)

P Brewer sent us A yahoo article where you can read that Paramount is sueing a writer who wrote a book about how to have a 'Romantic Relationship' with a Trek fan. Ya know, considering who trek fans are, it surprises me that Paramount keeps pulling this PR blunders. Protecting your assets is one thing, but between rejecting NS users on the Trek web sites awhile back, and now this, it seems that Paramount's new goal with Trek is to completely alienate it from its fans. Great business sense.

beleriand wrote in to tell us that something a bit crazy seems to be coming up in a few hours on Apple.com... Updated Well the big hype was a trippy, extremely cheap ($1300) mac. 233Mhz G3, 32 Megs RAM, 4gig HD- looks like a decent Linux box to me.

So it's thursday night, my last exam is neatly folded up and sitting next to my back pack. I've got my pipe, a beer and my laptop, and my email box is flooded. So now I play catchup on a week of sluffing off. Hit the link below to read a list of cool stuff that I really want to mention... First, James Morris sent me Top 0x10 Signs You're an Internet Nerd. It's pretty funny.

Alexei V. Novikov wrote in to tell us about a Linux index ala Yahoo that he's been working on. You can see it here. He's looking for people to help make it grow.

Patrick Berry sent us a link to a Cartoon about a geek. I kinda dig it.

Todd Martin wrote in to tell us that LCDProc has been updated Here. It looks like I will be getting at least one of these, so look forward to a Slashdot Headline client for it *grin*.

Lastly we have a Stupid JavaScript Trick that you can check out Here. It's actually a nearly playable side scroller Mario-esque game, written entirely in JavaScript. Thanks to Garrett LeSage for hooking us up with it.

Now I bid you farewell. One of my roommates has ordered a shot of whiskey to all of the living room inhabitants. The laptops are all shoved aside as Rob grab's his Cartman Shot Glass and a bottle of Jim Beam.

Bjørn Karger wrote in to give us this Wired article about a wierd science convention in Phoenix. It's a pretty interesting read. Especially for someone procrastinating on doing anything related to school.

Josh Plautz writes "Don 'Onethumb' MacAskill from Ritual Entertainmenthas updated his .plan file with the news that Ritual might just be looking for someone in the Dallas area who is willing to work on porting/maintaining SIN (Ritual's upcoming FPS) on Linux/BeOS. Read his comments at Planet Quake". I also got an email from Thad Parker of M8bius World Studios who talked about Millennium Diner, a sci fi edutainment game that they would like to try to port to Linux. If you would be interesting in helping that venture, go to the games's site, fill out the 'help us' form, and mention Linux. We all know Linux needs more games, perhaps a few brave souls can lend a hand filling that gap. Some (ahem) other companies could learn a lesson from these guys.

vlax writes "Sun has anounced a reorganisation, including eliminating its operating companies. This means the end of JavaSoft as well as the main organisational reason to promote Solaris x86. This URL should go to the press release."

vlax writes "Sun has anounced a reorganisation, including eliminating its operating companies. This means the end of JavaSoft as well as the main organisational reason to promote Solaris x86. This URL should go to the press release."

An anonymous tipster wrote in to tell us about Yahoo's Survey this week is favorite OS. They included Nintendo 64 as an OS (!) and only included the generic 'Unix' option. Oh well. The MacOS is winning (surprising:I find MacOS to be less stable than Windows) but its humorous to note the minimal share Windows has attained.

Liam J. Furniss wrote in with this link over to Be. For those of you who haven't heard about this, there has been rumblings that BeOS x86 contains some of the LILO code, and might be violating a copyright somewhere. The link above has a statement from Jean-Louis Gassee (Be CEO) and he mentions this in an article about Netscape.

"On a closely related issue, eagle-eyed developers have questioned our adherence to the Open Software pact in relevant parts of our recent release such as the bootloader. Specifically, if we use or modify public domain code, are we putting that source code back into the public domain as we are obligated to do? We're investigating this as I write this and will take whatever corrective action is necessary."

I've heard arguements from a dozen folks about this, but I'm glad to see a firm statement that things will be set straight.

Matthew Burry wrote in with ZD Net Link where you can read the opinion of the columnist that everyone loves to hate. Yes it's Dvorak's take on the recent microsoft PR blitz. As you may imagine, John isn't to keen on the situation.

Eric Smith writes "Famous (overexposed?) WWW indexer Yahoo is doing better than expected. They've announced a US$4 300 000 first-quarter profit and report 95 million "page views" per day -- that works out to over a thousand hits per second." So they get 1,185 times as many hits per day as me... big deal *grin*.

Eric Smith writes "Famous (overexposed?) WWW indexer Yahoo is doing better than expected. They've announced a US$4 300 000 first-quarter profit and report 95 million "page views" per day -- that works out to over a thousand hits per second." So they get 1,185 times as many hits per day as me... big deal *grin*.

Richard Hestilow wrote in to give us the skinny on the latest silly FCC regulation attempt. This time they are trying to apply standard long distance fees on the various Internet Long Distance companies that are competing with the standard phone companies. Check it out at yahoo.

mrjabba sent in what has to be the wierdest article of the day. This link talks about Apple's port of its' quicktime video code to Java. They score points for creativity, but ouch that needs to hurt Mr. CPU.

mrjabba sent in what has to be the wierdest article of the day. This link talks about Apple's port of its' quicktime video code to Java. They score points for creativity, but ouch that needs to hurt Mr. CPU.

morbid writes "Eugene Kashpureff has pleaded guilty in Brooklyn federal court to one count of computer fraud. Twice in july he redirected traffic meant for the InterNIC to his own registry, the AlterNIC. Read more here". I respect what AlterNIC wants to accomplish, but their actions border on net terrorism. We need an improved NS, but it needs to win on its own merit, not by screwing over the existing system.

Brian Justice wrote in send us this link about Id Software using Open GL instead of Direct3d. This story tells us that Dynamix will also not be using Direct3D on StarSiege. With all of Carmacks negative comments about D3D, I guess it was only a matter of time before other companies followed in Id's footsteps away from Direct3D.

Brian Justice wrote in send us this link about Id Software using Open GL instead of Direct3d. This story tells us that Dynamix will also not be using Direct3D on StarSiege. With all of Carmacks negative comments about D3D, I guess it was only a matter of time before other companies followed in Id's footsteps away from Direct3D.

We've mentioned the death of Newton before but Frank Wojcik sent us not one, not two, but three articles about the little PDA that couldn't. But Eric Harlow wrote in with a cool idea: why not have apple release all the specs and code. GPL it. Open it totally up. Geeks would scoop up the leftover newtons and maybe code cool stuff for it. Apple can't afford to maintain newton- why not let the world take a stab at it- there was a ton of cool technology in those little boxes, it would be nice to take advantage of it.

Corel is Cutting Costs on software these days. Garrett sent us this note. Ready for a crazy idea? Corel is the best company to try GPLing (or NPLing) their office suite. Think about it: WP already has a unix port, so it has appeal to typical FSF junkies. The primary issue here is how Corel can make money- Netscape has revenue from Servers, but WordPerfect is a major cash cow. Hit the link below to read about the latest concept in my damn foolish idealistic crusade.

The way I see it, Corel is losing market share fast, and they need a boost. GPLing their suite aligns them with the same audience that made Linux. This audience is growing into positions of purchasing power in many corporations. They need to release their suite- source code and all, but with a plug-in API and missing features (Thesaurus, Statistics Module, WordArt?) so that it was similiar in power to MS Works. The commercial version would essentially sell these modules to provide the remaining (less needed, but still important to business) features.

Maybe instead of a plug-in API Corelcould only charges businesses. There has got to be a reasonable way to make a profit at this. Free or heavily discounted software for home and educational use should be a cornerstone of any company anyway. Autodesk did this with Autocad, Apple did it with the Mac, even MS does it. This gets your foot in the door with the students and computer geeks who go to work and buy software.

I know there are other suites for Linux, but none of them are free, have available source, and have the ease of use and power that allows Corel a position similiar in the eyes of business to Microsoft Office. This would provide new users a good reason to use Linux, as well as promoting Corel. They would move tons of software- both on Unix (which needs a good word processor I need beer) and Windows (A GPLd office suite is perfect for all those companies riding the anti microsoft wave that has recently become so publicized).

So what do you guys think? I've seen plenty of Corel machines in my logs so somebody out there must have a connection.

This Yahoo Story talks about Interplay's new game "Of Light and Darkness: The Prophecy" which has hit a speedbump:The cover (designed by the famous artist Gil Bruvel, who also designed the game) which features a picture of a nude angel has been censored from major chains. Not surprising- album covers and movie posters have some fairly strict guidelines, but still depressing to see that our world can't see the difference between art and smut. Check out the web site- it's very beautiful. Thanks to talon for letting us know about this one.

Sun has made a move that certainly can't hurt: They've cut costs on Solaris x86 by 70% for anyone using competing OSs (including SCO and NT, but not Linux). You can Read this link sent to us by m.n. if you want to read more.

Netscape has opened up Mozzila.org for dealing with the soon to be available source code to their browser. It's about time Mozilla (this link will only work under netscape) resurfaced- he's been missed for a long time. Thanks to Mike T for sending us This link where you can read about the site, and the dedicated Team that Netscape has on the job. Netscape is doing a great job so far and deserve congratulations. There will be growing pains for everyone in the next few months, but it'll be so worth it in another year!

mike t sent us this link and the following quote from it: "WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Citing the case of a woman who claims she got pregnant from e-mail, an Ohio Democrat called Wednesday for a "chastity chip" for the Internet." People elected this man. What a world.