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A kindly reader sent in this editorial at ZDNet about why more big corporations aren't adopting Linux. One of the interesting observations is that part of the reasons lie in accountability-if Linux screws up, there is no one to sue. This only reinforces the idea of corporate ideas existing in an entirely different world-we sure would hate to be responsible for ourselves, wouldn't we?

Simon_Jester sent us a link to the latest Spencer Katt Column where you can read rumours that Caldera and Red Hat could be merging. Now that would be a significant event.

Upgrading to Windows 98 is not for the fainthearted, as it does not appear to be 100% compatible. In particular be aware that Windows 98 introduces a new driver model, WDM, which requires different drivers. The older VxD type may or may not work. I've heard this affects Philips CD-ROM drives using Adaptec drivers. W'98 also tries to emulate a Soundblaster card, which is rather difficult so it may not work with all games. Apparently there are also problems with older revisions of BIOS. Microsoft is also being swamped by customer service calls effectively requiring users to rely on each other and the media... If any of you do have to use Windows (My wife does for the student version of Maple V -- not available under Linux), then you have been advised. Of course you'll get the obligatory first viri but it won't be quite this bad I wonder how Windows 98 will score in ZD-NET's customer satisfaction survey. Thanks to BOredAtWork, and Sad for the references.

Upgrading to Windows 98 is not for the fainthearted, as it does not appear to be 100% compatible. In particular be aware that Windows 98 introduces a new driver model, WDM, which requires different drivers. The older VxD type may or may not work. I've heard this affects Philips CD-ROM drives using Adaptec drivers. W'98 also tries to emulate a Soundblaster card, which is rather difficult so it may not work with all games. Apparently there are also problems with older revisions of BIOS. Microsoft is also being swamped by customer service calls effectively requiring users to rely on each other and the media... If any of you do have to use Windows (My wife does for the student version of Maple V -- not available under Linux), then you have been advised. Of course you'll get the obligatory first viri but it won't be quite this bad I wonder how Windows 98 will score in ZD-NET's customer satisfaction survey. Thanks to BOredAtWork, and Sad for the references.

Upgrading to Windows 98 is not for the fainthearted, as it does not appear to be 100% compatible. In particular be aware that Windows 98 introduces a new driver model, WDM, which requires different drivers. The older VxD type may or may not work. I've heard this affects Philips CD-ROM drives using Adaptec drivers. W'98 also tries to emulate a Soundblaster card, which is rather difficult so it may not work with all games. Apparently there are also problems with older revisions of BIOS. Microsoft is also being swamped by customer service calls effectively requiring users to rely on each other and the media... If any of you do have to use Windows (My wife does for the student version of Maple V -- not available under Linux), then you have been advised. Of course you'll get the obligatory first viri but it won't be quite this bad I wonder how Windows 98 will score in ZD-NET's customer satisfaction survey. Thanks to BOredAtWork, and Sad for the references.

Upgrading to Windows 98 is not for the fainthearted, as it does not appear to be 100% compatible. In particular be aware that Windows 98 introduces a new driver model, WDM, which requires different drivers. The older VxD type may or may not work. I've heard this affects Philips CD-ROM drives using Adaptec drivers. W'98 also tries to emulate a Soundblaster card, which is rather difficult so it may not work with all games. Apparently there are also problems with older revisions of BIOS. Microsoft is also being swamped by customer service calls effectively requiring users to rely on each other and the media... If any of you do have to use Windows (My wife does for the student version of Maple V -- not available under Linux), then you have been advised. Of course you'll get the obligatory first viri but it won't be quite this bad I wonder how Windows 98 will score in ZD-NET's customer satisfaction survey. Thanks to BOredAtWork, and Sad for the references.

Upgrading to Windows 98 is not for the fainthearted, as it does not appear to be 100% compatible. In particular be aware that Windows 98 introduces a new driver model, WDM, which requires different drivers. The older VxD type may or may not work. I've heard this affects Philips CD-ROM drives using Adaptec drivers. W'98 also tries to emulate a Soundblaster card, which is rather difficult so it may not work with all games. Apparently there are also problems with older revisions of BIOS. Microsoft is also being swamped by customer service calls effectively requiring users to rely on each other and the media... If any of you do have to use Windows (My wife does for the student version of Maple V -- not available under Linux), then you have been advised. Of course you'll get the obligatory first viri but it won't be quite this bad I wonder how Windows 98 will score in ZD-NET's customer satisfaction survey. Thanks to BOredAtWork, and Sad for the references.

Thornton Prime writes "The Synet trustees accepted a $5M settlement from Microsoft. I wonder if the settlement sells the Internet Explorer name to Microsoft, of if Microsoft is simply free to use the name now? "

Steven Weller sent us a link to a screenshot at Mac OS Rumors showing a screenshot of a user running a plethora of emulators inside emulators. Really cool. fredric pointed us to a PC Magazine article about the Cobalt Qube winning an Editors' Choice award. Finally, Mike Miller sent us a link to a cool story on open source software, written by a Microsoft employee.

P.J. Hinton wrote in to tell us that John Dodge has collapsed under the tidal wave of email from Linux Users in response to his column from few weeks ago. He's decided to throw Linux on an older box and try it out so he can speak more fairly in future columns. I for one am glad to hear it.

Gabe Jones sent us this article from ZDNet where you can read Bill Gates take on Win98. He expects huge number of sales, and since the linux market is "Small" (at 5 to 10 million Linux users, Gates must think an OS is large only if it is the monopoly).

J. Paul Reed writes "Posted to BugTraq this morning, this bill would make it illegal to reverse engineer software to find security holes; corporations and consulting firms would be barred from conducting real world tests of security software. This is what we like to call a "bad thing" (tm). "

Garrick West writes "The EPOC OS (developed on an ARM reference platfrom using GNU tools, no less) is to become the standard OS for Cell phones and communicator devices developed by Nokia, Ericsson, and Motorola despite attempts by Microsoft to pursuade them otherwise. An Ericsson offical agreed that "proprietary operating systems alarmed the telecom industry". Well, at least a couple of companies are paying attention. Check out the story here. "

Zach Fine writes "Looks like AT&T is not happy simply running "the world's largest, most powerful long-distance network in North America" and wants to delve further into the cable television and local phone service markets. So they're merging with media giant Tele-Communications Inc. (TCI)"

Due to a bug in the 450NX chipset, Intel's release of Xeon will be pushed back until later this summer. The 450NX chipset was the chip's counterpart, and allows for 8GB of RAM, and other supposed "enhancements" for servers. I sure hope that if they're going to launch it later, they bring the price down accordingly - US$3690 when Alphas are out there?

Nate wrote in to send us This ZD Article where you can read Jesse Berst's little spiel on Linux. Nothing that any reader here doesn't know, but it might be worth a gander.

Intel will soon begin making price cuts more frequently. The chip giant will begin to expand its grasp in the low-end and high-end markets, and, as a result, will need to phase out chips. Examples of the expansion include the 450MHz Xeon that, next month, will cost US$3690, in quantities of 1000, and the mobile Pentium II 266 will drop to US$160 in September. Hmm, maybe I *can* hold off on that laptop a little while longer...

Scott Mellott wrote in to tell us that PC Week's Spencer F. Katt Rumor page this week has a comment that Sun is possibly going to announce a source code release of x86 Solaris for free. Why? Take a guess... perhaps because Solaris x86 has laughable hardware support compared to the free alternatives?

Seth Vidal writes "A new consortium has formed that claims they can cram 1mbps over a standard phone line with simultaneous voice and fax. It was on zdnet today. Here's the story"

Nate wrote in to tell us that PC Magazine has put up their quarterly top 100 links online, and Slashdot is officially on the list. I've sorta stopped mentioning Slashdot's awards here, but I figured that this one was worth the time.

Richard Ryder writes " AT&T is suing Microsoft for breaking a contract regarding NT source code licensing." The most interesting tidbit I caught was the fact that as many as 50 companies may have NT Source Code licenses.

Falrick writes "Yesterday, MCI reportedly faced several severed fiberoptic lines running along on the East Coast of the US. Evidentaly the fibers were located somewhere in the Bronx, and, as posted in the ZDNet Article, were able to reroute packet trafic around the area by splicing in fresh lines. Some ISP's were reporting over 88% packet loss. "

Spencer reported today that nine of Digital's key portables engineers have decided to join Cyrix. This is particularly interesting given National/Cyrix's interest in the portables and Information Appliance markets.

Gary Nichols writes "Ralph Nader asks IBM to release the source to OS/2!" You can read about this over at ZDNet. This definately falls in the truth is stranger than fiction catagory. It's a crazy idea, but it has merit. Netscape had a crazy idea too (and they also have shallower pockets)

We've got a couple of YALS (Yet Another Linux Story) from PCWeek to report. First off, John Dodge's column at this week is about Linux. Also, they have a Review of Extreme Linux online if you're curious.

We've got a couple of YALS (Yet Another Linux Story) from PCWeek to report. First off, John Dodge's column at this week is about Linux. Also, they have a Review of Extreme Linux online if you're curious.

Intel has made more processor price cuts, and has introduced the 300MHz Celeron, ahead of schedule. The new Celeron is priced at US$159 in quantites of 1000. Intel chopped a lot off these processors (more than US$100 on the P2-350, for example)- a result of increased competition, if you ask me...

Clayton Wheeler writes "According to This MacWeek article, Apple is declaring Rhapsody 1.0 a dead end. Because of the Mac community's lack of interest in porting everything to Yellow Box, Apple is instead emphasizing MacOS X and the Carbon APIs. Yellow Box is relegated to being a long-term idea and "part of [Apple's] larger Java strategy." Development of Yellow Box for Windows will continue, but no Intel ports of MacOS or Carbon are planned. "

Dave Finton sent us this link where you can hop over to ZDNet/Yahoo's Internet Life Yippee/Yahoo thing. Then click on "Join the Propellerheads" If you post comments, you gotta read what they have to say about us. Although what is this 'propeller head' thing? This is like the 4th time I've read a review of Slashdot using that term. And they linked through The Cursed WWW^TM *grin*. (which shall hereafter be referred to as TCWWW^TM) I think this should be the official way to see if people really read Slashdot, or just skim.In anycase, cool to get recognition, Its pretty much how I like to look at Slashdot, although they did forget that 50% of our content is open source related. That's kinda important.

Steve Philp writes "Reuters is reporting that FTC officials are getting closer to a decision as to whether to go ahead with an anti-trust suit against the other half of the Wintel platform."

zCat sent us a link to this ZD Net Link. It's a pretty fair piece on some ways; it discusses why Linux caught on when it did, but it also says Linux's 15 minutes are up, due to lack of clear direction. I disagree- Linux's direction is only up. Netscape & Caldera have thrown muscle behind it, the newbie UI issues are being ironed out as KDE and Gnome become more practical. Things are looking peachy.

Robert Jones sent us this zdnet article where you can read that MS has requested a 7 month delay to prepare for the case. Personally, I think that they must have been preparing for this for the last year; how good anyone over there not be expecting that this would happen sooner or later. Updated Sean McDermott wrote in with this story where you can read that their delay request was denied. Trial will start September 8

ensor sent us a link to an article about BlueTooth, a new wireless networking technology that will allow 721kbps without line of site.

Spawk sent us This PC Mag Article on MITs Wearable computing stuff. All the stuff that makes the geek in me scream with pleasure.

James Ratliff writes "The Senate has passed a bill that will make it more difficult for legitimate spammers to spam. The bill requires that spammers include valid header info as well as a phone number and a means to be removed from mailing lists. I'm not holding my breath :) " Any spammer found guilty of illegitimate headers should be sentanced to death. No questions asked. Ok, maybe that's a bit harsh... I hate spam, but if a valid header is included, I don't get too annoyed. But as you all know, I hate losers who hide behind anonymity. If you aren't willing to put your name next to something, it's probably not something you should do.

Lot's of people have been submitting this link where you can read a whole bunch of comments about what the world would be like if the Wintel Monopoly disappeared. The article is decent, and projects a reasonable view of the future, including a prediction of Linux on 27 million PC's by 2002.

maskatron writes "There's a new Scott Hacker article on BeOS & how they are positioning it as a niche OS for media related stuff. " I really dig Be. And I dig that its targetted towards the artsy folks, but that it still has quality under the hood for the more hardcore user. The OS of the future needs to have power for the hardcore, as well as appeal for the less-than-hardcore. That's why NeXT was cool. That's why Gnome or KDE could make Linux Cooler.

Jason Boyles writes "see this link Now that the PC is sloughing off its register-poor CPU and other crippling platform limitations, the major Unix players are almost universally moving their Unices to Intel. Except IBM, that is. Will Open Source's resistance to the pre-release Merced NDA leave free Unix a straggler in this important step in PC (r)evolution? Feel free to publish my name/email. "

Chris Fischer sent us a link to This ZDNet Article. (Apparently someone reads Slashdot over at ZD- I am kinda surprised that they didn't link us back, even though it really sounds like they are talking about Slashdot in this article) Anyway, we all know that Corel's "Big Announcement" is probably about VNC. Nobody is expecting Corel to release their suite- it would be cool, but Open Source needs big names to back it up, and Corel is a darn good one. I'm glad they're willing to contribute anything all things considered. In any case, we'll have to wait a few days to find out anything for sure. And I guess I'll have to put more emoticons in my articles so people can tell when I'm being a bit less than completely serious. :) *grin* (smile).

Chris Howle sent us a link to an article where Microsoft has warned Wall Street about the effects of a win98 delay. Lets be honest, if GM decided to make the 2000 cars exactly the same as the 1999 models, would it have a huge effect on the auto industry? Some people might care, but people still would buy cars. Likewise, people will still buy computers. Win98 is really just a service patch+USB+IE4 anyway.

Steve Rojem sent us a Sm@rt Reseller article where you can read about Netscape and Linux. The main point of the article is that other companies haven't joined in. Well, Corel seems to be making a step with their VNC, but Oracle and Informix are holding back. The negative comments are typical: Accountability (unfair because RedHat and Caldera will support Linux systems) Demand (Considering there are as many as 10 million Linux Boxes, I question this) and Lack of Central Marketing Push (a valid pointy haired reason, but certainly not a real reason). Mike Saranga, Informix's senior VP, says they do 16 ports right now, but won't do another unless it makes sense. Considering Linux is the fastest growing Unix, and soon will be the largest *nix, I wonder if it will "Make Sense" in time to give Informix a chance against Mysql, mSQL and PostgreSQL. Is it to late for the normal Commercial Databases on Linux? I know you guys use databases... what do you think?

Michael Plump writes "Hank has 10x the votes of his nearest competitor in the annual people magazine most beautiful people poll After claiming the ballots were being stuffed by robots on the message boards, the administrator finally decided to add his name to the list of contenders (you can now vote for him just by picking his name from the list). Also, he made it on ZDNews They claim that the ballots are being won by Stern fans, but I think it is just people like us, voting against People's attitude."

Simon Janes writes "His latest commentary yells "Don't pay for Windows98!"." Dvorak continues to talk about Win98 being basically Win95 bug fixes and IE4, the former should be free, and the latter is free. So should Win98 really be a free upgrade?

Lee Maguire writes "ZDnet is running this story about one of Apple's billboards being defaced. It's good to see that when Mac users vandalise, at least they use a little creativity".

An anonymous reader scored this one. Read this story about another round of bad PR for MS. This time, Caldera CEO Bryan Sparks claims that MS is preventing box makers from shipping other OSs. Dell spokesman says that there is a lack of demand for Linux. I have a Dell, and I will demand Linux next time I buy a machine. If Dell won't do it, I can think of several companies that will.

Jehu Jackson writes "Apparently Lloyds of London, the people who will insure you for just about anything, have now decided to sell insurance against "hackers, viruses and computer sabotage". Check it out. I wish they used the right term- ZDNet should learn the difference between hacker and cracker. Think about the new forms of insurance fraud too.

Garrick West wrote in with a cool idea. ZDNet is has something called 'Stump Jeff' where you can ask questions, and he'll try to answer them. Stump him, and you get a T-shirt! Garrick suggested that the 6 million Linux users should ask him their questions as well. Take this seriously, ask good questions: either our questions will be answered alongside the windows questions (earning positive exposure for Linux in the mainstream press, as well as heping out fellow users with the same questions) or we'll Stump Jeff and maybe win T-Shirts. Sound cool?

John sent us this link where you can read about a G3/300 overpowering the Compaq box with a P2/400. The tests were just Photoshop, so that biases things somewhat, but its still pretty cool. Can't wait to try Linux out on one of those buggers. We should perform some of the same tests in the Gimp just for comparisons sake.

Andrew Taylor wrote in to send us a link to the latest Spencer F. Katt column @infoworld, and says "Amongst other things, this article dicusses a new color PalmPilot, due out in 1998! "

Fedor Kouranov wrote in with this article where Computer Shopper columnist Paul Bonner rips Netscape apart for their source code decision. I don't disagree that IE4 is extendable- all MS projects are great at this, but he blows of Netscape and just accepts that Microsoft owns the industry. Personally I prefer thinking of a future that's open instead of held inside the walls of some mega corporation is a little better than one where Microsoft over powers each new industry as it appears, but hey, I'm an optimist.