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According to this story, IBM will announce next week (probably at Linux world) WebSphere Application Server for Linux. Thanks, IBM..

Industrial Disease writes "ZDNN has a brief article on the Security and Freedom through Encryption Act. If passed, this bill would ease export restrictions, eliminate key escrow requirements, and make using cryptography a crime only if used to commit a secondary crime. A similar bill never reached a full House vote last year, but this one seems to have a broader base of support. " This bill was also known as SAFE - the problem it had last time was a huge arguement over encryption in e-commerce, but this time the sponsers think it has a much better chance of passing.

ibis writes "In ZDNN's article about Virginia's new anti-spam law, it is stated that the American Civil Liberties Union intends to challenge the new law on constitutional grounds. We should all let the ACLU know what we think about this on the ACLU Freedom Network Feedback form. " A little background: Virgina, where AOL is based, has made it so that they will be the first state to be able to *criminally prosecute* "malicious spammers". Not just like the Washington law, which has a fine, this will allow jail times and other such fineries. Bring it on, I say.

An anonymous reader wrote in to hook us up with a link to a ZD article about HP and Linux. Its a good follow up to the announcement that they are releasing their own custom version of GDB. The article talks about HP not wanting to be outdone by IBM, and more interestingly, that they plan to embrace Open Source Development and not just the Linux Operating System.

Cris writes "Looks like NSI is closing access to all it's top level domain servers, except for people that "need access." This is allegedly a way to eliminate spamming, but they've denied access to many companies which depend on these servers for their businesses. "

PDG writes "The german engineering firm Siemans has produced the rate 1.2 tbs (YES, tera bits per second) over a SINGLE strand of fiber, thus proving the limitless power of fiber. " One step closer to the ultimate goal for humanity: infinite bandwidth. Or maybe thats just my ultimate goal. Nevermind.

Derek Cornish writes "Here is a news article about how Gassee, CEO of Be Inc., has challenged OEMs of the world to bundle Linux and BeOS for free on their computers. Unwillingness to do so would help show Microsoft's stranglehold on the computer market does, in fact, exist. " I'd like to take this time to thank Mr. Gassee....

jgalun writes "ZDNN is reporting that SCO UnixWare 7 will run Linux software. Yet another victory for Linux. " There is some interesting quotes from SCO folk in there regarding Linux at the Enterprise level. SCOs been a sinking ship for a while though.

shaldannon writes "This morning on National Public Radio there was a story about the ongoing Justice department case against Microsoft. Yesterday Justice Department attorney David Boies challenged Microsoft's Windows licensing policies, particulary the "verbal contracts" not to include Netscape on the desktop. He questioned a Mr. Rose of Compaq on this subject. Mr. Rose tried to distance himself from Microsoft by claiming that he'd never had close dealings with the company or Mr. Gates. Attorney Boies produced an email in which Bill Gates specifically thanks Mr. Rose for his assistance to Microsoft on the DoJ case. Boies then dropped a bombshell announcement: Compaq had been having secret negotiations with BeOS to do some development for them. At the same time, Compaq sent representatives to Microsoft for their blessing on the arrangement. Microsoft killed the deal. Compaq's attorney jumped to his feet, emotionally denying the charge and accusing David Boies of 'cheap courtroom tactics.' Attorney Boies then produced evidence from BeOS substantiating his announcement." ZD-net and PC-Week both also carry the story. Thanks to Rick Irvine (a Furious Be User) and BitMan. In related news,Matthew Tebbens tells us that CNN is reporting that Windows 2000 will need apps to be rebuilt or even rewritten to be compliant (whatever that means). Update: 02/19 06:02 by S : And to top the cake, Microsoft has been charged with monopoly pricing in a California Class Action suit. Thanks Dwight Johnson. Update: 02/20 12:57 by S : More on the Be Story: Alledgedly, Be is making an embedded OS that would have better media capabilities than WinCE for information appliances.

shaldannon writes "This morning on National Public Radio there was a story about the ongoing Justice department case against Microsoft. Yesterday Justice Department attorney David Boies challenged Microsoft's Windows licensing policies, particulary the "verbal contracts" not to include Netscape on the desktop. He questioned a Mr. Rose of Compaq on this subject. Mr. Rose tried to distance himself from Microsoft by claiming that he'd never had close dealings with the company or Mr. Gates. Attorney Boies produced an email in which Bill Gates specifically thanks Mr. Rose for his assistance to Microsoft on the DoJ case. Boies then dropped a bombshell announcement: Compaq had been having secret negotiations with BeOS to do some development for them. At the same time, Compaq sent representatives to Microsoft for their blessing on the arrangement. Microsoft killed the deal. Compaq's attorney jumped to his feet, emotionally denying the charge and accusing David Boies of 'cheap courtroom tactics.' Attorney Boies then produced evidence from BeOS substantiating his announcement." ZD-net and PC-Week both also carry the story. Thanks to Rick Irvine (a Furious Be User) and BitMan. In related news,Matthew Tebbens tells us that CNN is reporting that Windows 2000 will need apps to be rebuilt or even rewritten to be compliant (whatever that means). Update: 02/19 06:02 by S : And to top the cake, Microsoft has been charged with monopoly pricing in a California Class Action suit. Thanks Dwight Johnson. Update: 02/20 12:57 by S : More on the Be Story: Alledgedly, Be is making an embedded OS that would have better media capabilities than WinCE for information appliances.

shaldannon writes "This morning on National Public Radio there was a story about the ongoing Justice department case against Microsoft. Yesterday Justice Department attorney David Boies challenged Microsoft's Windows licensing policies, particulary the "verbal contracts" not to include Netscape on the desktop. He questioned a Mr. Rose of Compaq on this subject. Mr. Rose tried to distance himself from Microsoft by claiming that he'd never had close dealings with the company or Mr. Gates. Attorney Boies produced an email in which Bill Gates specifically thanks Mr. Rose for his assistance to Microsoft on the DoJ case. Boies then dropped a bombshell announcement: Compaq had been having secret negotiations with BeOS to do some development for them. At the same time, Compaq sent representatives to Microsoft for their blessing on the arrangement. Microsoft killed the deal. Compaq's attorney jumped to his feet, emotionally denying the charge and accusing David Boies of 'cheap courtroom tactics.' Attorney Boies then produced evidence from BeOS substantiating his announcement." ZD-net and PC-Week both also carry the story. Thanks to Rick Irvine (a Furious Be User) and BitMan. In related news,Matthew Tebbens tells us that CNN is reporting that Windows 2000 will need apps to be rebuilt or even rewritten to be compliant (whatever that means). Update: 02/19 06:02 by S : And to top the cake, Microsoft has been charged with monopoly pricing in a California Class Action suit. Thanks Dwight Johnson. Update: 02/20 12:57 by S : More on the Be Story: Alledgedly, Be is making an embedded OS that would have better media capabilities than WinCE for information appliances.

Master Switch writes "Microsoft won a six month repreive from Caldera's case against them. They initially asked for 3 months, but due to scheduling conflicts, the judge gave them six. Estimated potential damages are 1.6million if Caldera should win the case " Update: 02/19 03:19 by S : That should say 1.6 billion.

There are lots of stories about Windows Refund Day. As I predicted, nobody got refunds, as referenced in this ZDNet Story. Chris is quoted near the end. Here's a Nando Times story, a wired story, an MSNBC Story, a San Jose Mercury Story, and a Washington Post story. (All sent in by anonymous readers). Macerick sent us A front Pager from the NY times. And finally, Marc Merlin sent us his own report which features the Story and Pictures.

An anonymous reader sent us a link to a PCWeek Article where you can read about IBM and Linux. They supposedly are going to announce Linux based Netfinity boxes at LinuxWorld. Says they'll support Red Hat, Caldera, SuSE, and might even be releasing their own version for the high end mega boxes.

Pointer writes "It seems that John Spooner, of PC Magazine, thinks that the Pentium III isn't going to cut it with the IT pros--here's why. " Give ya a hint- its green.

Drizzt sent us a link to a little blurb over at ZDNet that talks about Adobe Trying to Take over Corel. Interesting little bits there basically saying that Corel is trying to stall things. What would Adobe do with Corel? Would they continue to support Corel Apps on Linux? What of the Netwinder? Is Adobe afraid of The Gimp?

Steve Furlong writes "David Brin, science fiction and science author, has a different take on invasions of privacy. Read article for more info. " Brin's got an interesting take alright-nutshell is rather then try and fight the cameras that are going to go no matter what, make them so ubiqutous that everyone can know-but also reinstate the courtesy inherent in living in a collective sense, like the village of yore. The article is definietly worth a read.

Josh H. writes "VMware will said they will debut a product at Demo99 that lets the user run multiple OS's here. If this thing really works like they says it does, this could means no more reboots to change OS's for those of us running dual-boots."

An anonymous reader wrote in with this gem: "Microsoft was trying to show that a PC loaded with Windows 3.1 took longer to access the Internet than a PC loaded with Windows 98 using Internet Explorer. It turns out that the Windows 98 PC was connected to a faster modem than the Windows 3.1 PC. " I'll refrain from (further) comment on this one. Plenty of meat here. Update: 02/10 09:25 by J : Oops. More like "from the egg on my face dept." - it seems I made an honest yet huge mistake: the article says "configuring". Sorry I couldn't update when I realized this. There were some DB troubles, which seem to now have been fixed. Sincerest apologies to all.

IronMonkey writes "For those whose bandwidth cravings can never be satisfied, Internet2 is finally going live for testing to network 50 universities at 2.4G-bps! All over SONET, of course. The group who is putting together the Internet2 is planning on final network speeds of 10G-bps. " Can someone make my bedroom a node on that thing please?

Asdren writes "Dvorak supposedly sheds some light on what Linus and Transmeta are up to. Check out his opinion column here" Low power x86 chips. Never heard that before *grin*.

Linux Today has a translated transcription of a Danish Radio Interview with Bill Gates. How many of you think that Bill's "Oh - I - you know - my job is to fear everything." shows he caught himself before saying "No"? In the meantime Jean-Louis Gassee is dismissing Microsoft's new bedtime story that BeOS integrates the Browser into the OS. Here's a little more detail from Patrick Hajek. Finally, in related news, Bill had the opportunity to visit a German School which accepted a local company's offer to install Linux its PCs for the occasion

SEWilco writes "This CNN story on VA Research mentions that Intuit is looking to port Quicken to Linux. They'll really clean up with that. (Pointed out in LWN Daily , and is a PC Week story, but the link which IDG.net came up with was too messy to submit here) " Update: 02/06 12:33 by S : Intuit's disputing this claim. Link from LT.

ZDNET is confirming that an NT-based consumer Windows is still 3 years down the road. Given that Windows 98 was widely expected to be the last release not based on NT, this is somewhat of a surprise, and raises the question: is Microsoft retargetting Win 2000 purely at the enterprise market in an effort to maintain market share? Thanks to znu for the link.

wardk wrote in to send us linkage to a PCWeek artcile that Linux 2.2. It starts off by saying that Linux is Enterprise Ready. Talks about corporate support and improvements in SMP. Check it out.

Matt Lee sent us a story about Lycos hopping on the mp3 bandwagon and creating a search engine to find the controversial music format. The funniest part is that 'mp3' is the second most search-for word on Lycos. After 'sex'. Anyway I'm glad to see it.

David E. Smith writes "The five millionth ZDNet publication, Sm@rtReseller, has a neat Linux article. Basically, given the same hardware, they ran three different Linux distributions and Windows NT and benchmarked them. Guess who won. "

Charles Bronson sent us a link to a ZDNet story with an Update to the story we posted yesterday about Sighsound.com claiming a patent on the sale of downloadable music, and demanding a 1% royalty from mp3.com. Apparently Goodnoise is actually complying!

Black Art writes "There is an interview with Linus Torvalds on PC Week's web site. "

phorce phed writes " According to this ZDNNet burst Sony is seeking a temporary injunction against sale of the Virtual Game Station (Connectix's soon-to-be-released PlayStation emulator)." We mentioned this when it was more of a rumor, but now its apparently for real.

ensor sent us a link to a ZD article about Microsoft's Response to all the recent Windows Refund Hoopla. It's not taking is seriously. They consider it a PR stunt. Update: 01/22 02:14 by S : Apparently Microsoft has removed the refund clause from the EULA for Windows 98... which sounds like I can't use Win98 if I don't agree to its EULA, but I must still pay for it if I want a particular notebook? Anybody know what the new EULA is? LWN is claiming the clause removal in Win98 is untrue, any Australian readers care to comment? Update: 01/22 06:42 by S : Dell will not pay a refund because their systems are only quality assured with Windows. Seems like the perfect loop-hole: it is not Microsoft that is requiring Windows on the computer, but the hardware manufacturers... but the tactic could back-fire, since it casts doubts on the PC-compatability of their hardware.

DaBuzz wrote in to send us one for the conspiracy nuts out there. Apparently Intel is gonna be embedding IDs in future processors so that we they can be tracked. This probably gives the paranoid something a bit more worrisome to be concerned about.

In an update on the windows refund story, BiGGO writes "Someone was quick enough to open a site about the EULA-refund trick. They are encouraging people who were forced to pay for Windows but never used it to ask for a refund on a special refund day, Feb 15th" 136 people have already joined them in the 24 hours since the site went live. Update: 01/20 07:09 by S : David Cornette contributed this Wired story on it, and elflord forwarded this ZD-Net Story.

Steven M. wrote a followup to a recent article about the Girl who discovered a new faster encryption alogorithm. It was in all the press recently. There is a new article with a few more details about it. It's not "Better" just "Different". Apparently it's a memory hog for starters. But the article talks about if the algorithm will be publicly released. And it looks like it. It talks about Encryption needing public review. Sorta like source code.

App writes "Comic book fans may want to check out this article from ZD Net. Seems Stan Lee hasn't given up on new ideas. " This is amusing. There will be 6-7 new heros, and they will get their powers from the net. Run in terror. Methinks that Stan is passed his prime. Funny in Mallrats tho.

emptybody was the first of you to write in with this PC Week story that Compaq is about to ship RedHat 5.2 bundled on some of its servers, and provide 24-by-7 support for them. This apparently will save time for them, since they currently pre-load Linux by hand. If this is becoming a problem, it suggests demand for Linux Servers is increasing. Gateway also expects to deliver such servers by the end of the year. Kim Brown, an analyst at Dataquest Inc, says this means Compaq is walking away from SCO, and that Linux is starting to be acknowledged as the low-end Unix alternative.

The Netscape/AOL/Sun deal will not come to fruition until late March because Microsoft's trial has resulted in a lengthier federal regulator review process. Moreover, the net result of the deal in 3 years time may be that Sun walks away with Netscape's software while AOL takes its portal.

Anonymous Coward writes "Microsoft unveiled plans for networking people's homes . It says they'll use "internet protocols." Hopefully these will be actual generic internet protocols, lest our toasters start crashing with the required NT boxen. "

vab writes "Perhaps looking to further weaken the U.S. Gov't anti-trust case with another MegaMerger/Deal Microsoft is in talks with AT&T to sell AT&T MSN and other Microsoft media properties, possibly in exchange for cash and Windows NT promotion. If the deal goes though it would make AT&T's WorldNet the second largest ISP, second only to AOL, and allow Microsoft to dump some yet-to-be-profitable projects. " Apparently, the deal is not going through. Funny thing-AT&T considers the talks to be done, while MS considers the talks to be "on-going".

Charles Bronson writes "Toshiba Corp. in Japan announced today that they've developed the world smallest DRAM chip, with help from Big Blue. '[Toshiba] had achieved a chip-zide reduction of 40 percent with 0.175 micron technology.' Mass production won't start until late '99. This actually sounds promising, because the article reports that the smaller DRAM chips will help to lower costs. The bottom half explains that Toshiba and Fujitsu have teamed up to make even smaller DRAM chips (0.13 micron) availed by March 2002. 'Sound like a lofty goal to me."

Charles Bronson writes "This ZDNet article reports that Intel will be unveiling the new Pentium III chip, previously code-named "Katmai," on Monday. 'The Pentium III will begin 450MHz and 500MHz...' No mention of price, of course.. " My guess is you'll need to mortgage your home.

pavewrld sent in a couple of links. The first is over at MacWorld Online and announces the new PowerMac G3's, which look similar to the iMac. The second announces the new iMac's, which now come in a variety of colors. Also in Apple news, NikT wrote in to say that Mac OS X server was announced, and it will include Apache and BSD 4.4. Finally, Ethan Butterfield wrote in to let us know of Steve Jobs' keynote address at MacWorld Expo. Apparently Apple has licensed OpenGL from SGI, and John Carmack demoed Quake 3 Arena on one of the new G3's. You can read more at Macintouch. Phew! With MacWorld Expo going on, the Apple news is nonstop.

Several folks wrote in to say that Hayes is dead. Remember the 'Hayes AT Command Set' that somehow became the standard? My first modem was a gigantic silver and black Hayes. It's strange that once again, a protocol they started has been extended, and outlived them. Update: 01/05 06:27 by CT : several folks wrote in with this story where the Hayes big shots deny the comments in the above News.com story.

Sean Garagan writes "Well, it looks like MS is going to start using Linux to try and save itself. According to an article at PCWeek, MS will use Linux as an example of why it doesn't have a monopoly when it questions the gov'ts last witness, an MIT Economics prof. " If this is true, then I think it's a nice nail in their coffin- the only real threat to their monopoly is tens of thousands of programmers working for free? Great defense. We're not a monopoly, really.

bobalu writes "There's a bit in PCWEEK's Spencer Katt column about a handheld unit from Compaq that runs Linux and is designed as a platform for developing new speech and other interfaces." Yeah we've mentioned itsy before, but someone submits that darn thing about every 3 days, so it's probably worth reposting it now just because not all of the readers who have joined us in the last 6 months are gonna read the 4 thousand or so back stories *grin*.

An anonymous reader wrote in to send us a link to your basic ZD article that asks Is the Linux Desktop DOA? It's basically some bits about Corel and Red Hat where they talk about Linux's dominance in the server realm and its struggles on the desktop. My favorite part is the line that says that in 1998, Linux captures only 2.5% of the market. Up from like what, .0001? Grin. 1999 is gonna be sweet.

KodaK writes " Jesse Berst has *gasp* listed Linux as one of the top stories in 1998." Just wait for 99...

Ped Xing writes "This week's Spencer F. Katt Rumor Central cartoon in PC Week features a rather amusing commentary on the proposed Linux Hike in Germany. Check it out here. "

Prospero writes "PC Week just published an article on "Linux's Enterprise Evolution." The article can be found It discusses the potential for Linux as a standard enterprise operating system. It speaks specifically about a new filesystem, Coda, and the stability of Linux. Makes nice, though subtle, comparisons to NT. Very informed article. "

Two stories have cropped up this week about IBM and patent-issues. The first is from Greg Aharonian of the Internet Patent News Service who discusses the implications of using a Open Source product which includes IBM patents given IBM's history of vigorously defending its patents even when they are included in open protocols. The second is from ZD Net which claims IBM would like to see the Linux license changed to take more patent issues into account, so that it feels legally protected if it provides 24x7 support and tweaks the code. The article concludes by listing potential new Linux ports. The GPL does discuss patents (see the GPL preamble for explanation). somebody else and Linux Weekly News contributed links. update The Kernel mailing list has some debate on this, ranging from people who would like to work something out with IBM (so that the free software community can use arithmetic compression, and other IBM patents for free), to people who argue that if IBM does not want to play by our rules (freedom), it should go make its money somewhere else. A list of patents currently restricting us as well as a prediction of the demise of the patent system were posted.