Linux Gram articles from November 2001

Linux Gram archives from November 2001

***** This Just In. ***** MICROSOFT & THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT HAVE SETTLED.(Brief Article)
November 5, 2001... The DOJ issued a press release around 8 o'clock this morning. A press conference follows at 10. The states are on their own. Aside from what we already know about the settlement, the government said that Microsoft will be required to...

Microsoft, Feds Reported Close to Settlement.
November 5, 2001... This story is pretty much the one flashed on Thursday morning. Microsoft and the Justice Department have reportedly hammered out the broad outlines of an antitrust settlement practically four years to the day since the whole mess started,...

Let's Make a Deal.
November 5, 2001... According to the current schedule Microsoft and the Justice Department lawyers are supposed to turn up in district court in Washington this morning at 9 o'clock for a status hearing to brief Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly on the breakthrough in...

New Dense Server Recipe: Mix Sparc & Intel Blades with NAS.
November 5, 2001... So there used to be this company called TruSolutions that did 1Us, an early example, they say, of a dense server. As a matter of fact TruSolutions was a thought of as one of the first practitioners of the dense server art, which is probably why...

Blades & More Blades.
November 5, 2001... We may be the last to find this out but there's an IBM blade spin- off by the name of OmniCluster Technologies, a Florida operation out of IBM's big Boca Raton operation. Well, it's not your classic blade house although like Hewlett-...

SuSe Debuts Linux Connectivity Server.(Product Announcement)
November 5, 2001... SuSe Linux has introduced a Linux Connectivity Server for small and medium enterprises (SMEs). SuSe described the server as a pre-configured Linux network product adapted to the requirements of SMEs and suitable for file and print services...

Rebel's Last Yell.
November 5, 2001... The scavengers have picked up the tastier bits of Rebel.com, the old Hardware Computing Canada that bought Corel's failed Linux hardware business and tried to run with it. Rebel gave a yell and ran, but quickly tripped and splattered,...

Ooh Look, a Profitable Linux Compay.(Dialtone Internet)(Brief Article)
November 5, 2001... Well, it's nice to know that someone's earning a living off of Linux. Dialtone Internet, a hosted service provider, is about to open a data center in London and is laying plans to start hosting offerings on a Linux-toting mainframe. ...

Red Hat Debuts Embedded Linux Developer Suite.(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
November 5, 2001... Red Hat has released its Embedded Linux Developer Suite for building embedded applications and devices. The suite is supposed to accelerate the development cycle and product quality by using the shiny new Red Hat Linux 7.2 as the common...

IBM & Microsoft Unveil Another XML Spec.
November 5, 2001... Microsoft and IBM, who despite a prickly relationship, seem to pretty buddy-buddy when it comes to defining web services, unveiled another of their jointly developed XML specifications Thursday. This time the two have comes up with an...

Linux PDA Kit Open Sourced.(Century Embedded Technologies releases source code for Pixil Operating Environment)(Brief Article)
November 5, 2001... Century Embedded Technologies has released the source code to its Pixil Operating Environment, a Linux-based kit to build flat panel devices like PDAs and Internet appliances. Century touts Pixil OE 1.0 as a "Linux standard for embedded...

IBM Sets Up eLiza Partner Program.(Brief Article)
November 5, 2001... IBM has set up a partner program for its vaunted and pricey eLiza project to build self-healing computers, inviting both vendors and end users to help shape eLiza's "strategic direction." The technical details are IBM's problem. Blue...

SGI-NEC Deal: More Flesh on Bone.(Brief Article)
November 5, 2001... SGI and NEC have explained a bit more about their proposed deal in Japan. They've reached a definitive agreement for NEC and NEC Soft to own 40% and 20% respectively of SGI's Japanese subsidiary. SGI will keep the other 40%. NEC is kicking in...

Open Letter from HP on Patents & the W3C Brouhaha.
November 5, 2001... For the last month or so, ever since the free lunch crowd was incited to dump on the proposed IP policy that the World Wide Web Consortium articulated in August, there has been a hubbub - one can hardly call it a debate; it's become a matter of...

Let's Keep W3 Standards Free.
November 5, 2001... To many people it is self-evident that the ability to use without charge the standards defining the World Wide Web has been an essential ingredient in the Web's unparalleled success. But other people disagree. Right now the fiercest battle...

Uncle Intel Pours Tea, Pats Hands, Says Everything's Gonna Be Alright.(Intel Pentium 4/845 chipset)(Product Announcement)
November 5, 2001... Intel is supposed to start compensating for its irrational exuberance over Rambus in December when it quietly starts shipping its promised 845 DDR chipset for the Pentium 4, aka Brookdale, followed by the 2.2GHz Prestonia chips (the Foster DP...

Fujitsu Shows Off First Infiniband-on-Linux Cluster.(Brief Article)
November 5, 2001... Fujitsu on Monday claimed honors as the first company to figure out how to hook up a Linux cluster using Infiniband. The widgetry emerged from the Fujitsu lab in time for a public showing at a high-performance computing seminar in Kobe on...

Banderacom Unveils InfiniBand System-on-a-Chip.(IBandit chipset from Banderacom)(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
November 5, 2001... Fabless Infiniband chip house Banderacom has begun turning out an InfiniBand system-on-a-chip called the IBandit target channel adaptor (TCA). Banderacom brags that it's the first fully integrated InfiniBand system-on-a-chip, though it's...

Jikes RVM Goes Open Source.
November 5, 2001... IBM Research has open sourced the Jikes Research Virtual Machine 2.0 and put it out under the IBM-originated Common Public License to spur the development of next-generation VM technologies. Jikes RVM, the outcome of a four-year effort by a...

AOL Upgrades ICQ but the Thing Still Won't Interoperate.
November 5, 2001... AOL Tuesday released a beta of an ICQ messaging service upgrade that adds little bells and whistles like emoticons, file sharing and multilingual support but leaves out the most important controversial thing - the ability to message folks using...

Mozilla To Huddle.(Mozilla Web browser)
November 5, 2001... On barely two weeks notice, Mozilla folks have put together a developer day to be held November 9 on the Netscape campus in Mountain View, California. Mozilla chief lizard wrangler Mitchell Baker says there's no super urgent need for the...

Caldera To Bolster Focus on Retail Companies.
November 5, 2001... Caldera plans to strengthen its focus on the retail sector, hoping to capitalize on a segment where it's made some inroads. Caldera's VP of marketing and corporate development Benoy Tamang claims the company already has a "tremendous amount...

Fright Flight: Microsoft Loses 131,417 Web Sites to Virus Fears.(Microsoft's Internet Information Server loses customers)
November 5, 2001... An estimated 131,417 web sites have moved from Microsoft's Internet Information Server (IIS) to other web servers over the past month because of fears created by Code Red, Nimda and other attacks on IIS, according to the latest Netcraft survey....

Linux Saves Amazon.com Millions.(Red Hat's Linux software)(Brief Article)
November 5, 2001... Linux may have come as a breather for struggling e-tailer Amazon.com, which said Tuesday that it had saved millions of dollars by migrating a large part of its technology infrastructure to the open source OS. Amazon's technology and...

BladeWare Approaches.(Tualatin PIII mobile chip from Intel)(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
November 5, 2001... Intel is about to repackage its 0.13-micron low-power Tualatin PIII mobile chip for the server. In other words, for the nascent blade industry. To wit, guys like Dell, Compaq, IBM, Amphus, Intel subsidiary Ziatech and, if it's allowed to live,...

IBM Seeks Eclipse.(Brief Article)
November 5, 2001... IBM is reportedly within moments of open sourcing a thing currently called the Eclipse Project, an IDE it'd love to see become the standard although such as Microsoft and its Visual Age may think differently. It handles both Windows and Linux....

Oooo, Fired, Huh.(RLX Technologies fires executives)(Brief Article)
November 5, 2001... According to a document circulating in the name of the RLX Technologies board over the signature of one of its own, VC John Cracken, the industry icons they had running the joint were fired. Former CEO and still chairman Gary Stimac and ex-COO...

Peeking Under the Archway.(Digital Archway Inc)(Brief Article)
November 5, 2001... We've been unable to ferret out much more yet about the reportedly well-endowed stealth blade start-up Digital Archway Inc, whose existence was revealed here last week, except for the fact that it's being run by ex-Compaq senior VP of worldwide...

Microsoft, Intel & Linux.(Brief Article)
November 5, 2001... We can't swear this is absolutely true but it is a little bit yummy and isn't so farfetched that it couldn't be true but we heard that Microsoft is pressuring Intel to stop doing anything - at least in public - on Linux. We don't know if it's...

Sun's Poison Pen Pans Passport.(Microsoft's Passport authentication service criticized)(Brief Article)
November 5, 2001... Whitfield Diffie, widely credited with co-inventing public key cryptography, has blasted Microsoft's Passport authentication service. Diffie and Susan Landau, co-author of the rant, say Passport is insecure and "a particularly ripe target for...

IBM Expands NetVista Line.(IBM NetVista N2200 and NetVista N70)(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
November 5, 2001... IBM is introducing new NetVista thin clients that leverage the Linux operating system. The widgets include two new thin clients, an upgrade to IBM's Thin Client Manager software and additional consulting and implementation services. ...

Linux NetworX To Debut Ice Box.(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
November 5, 2001... Linux NetworX is formally launching its ICE Box 1500 cluster management appliance at the SC2001 trade show in Denver later this month. ICE Box features include node health and environmental monitoring, power control, node reset...

Compaq Stalls its One Itanium Server, Blames Intel Chip.
November 12, 2001... Sometime in the last few weeks Compaq quietly put its sole Itanium server, the ProLiant DL590/64 that it announced in July and intended to deliver this half, on indefinite hold, refusing to go into production. It must be the only vendor to have...

So Who Ratted Out Carly?(Carly Fiorina and planned merger)
November 12, 2001... Anybody wanna bet that HP scions Walter Hewlett and David Packard didn't come to the sudden epiphany that the HPQ merger scheme is wrongheaded in glorious isolation? Well, here's the skinny on that little number. HP insiders say that a...

HP Heirs Refuse To Drink the HPQ Kool-Aid.
November 12, 2001... The prospective Hewlett-Packard-Compaq (HPQ) merger, the one that Wall Street never liked from the beginning, started sliding over the edge of the cliff Tuesday afternoon when the family of HP co-founder Bill Hewlett said it would vote against...

Lineo CEO Steps Down.(Bryan Sparks replaced by Matt Harris)
November 12, 2001... Lineo, the embedded Linux pioneer, has named its COO Matt Harris CEO to replace co-founder Bryan Sparks. Lineo has had a rocky time this year under Sparks' stewardship. Since March, the company has had three layoffs trying to get expenses...

FIC Ditches Linux-on-Transmeta in Favor of WinCE.(Brief Article)
November 12, 2001... Giant Taiwanese contract manufacturing house First International Computer (FIC) has taken out a license to WinCE 4.0 and Microsoft's PocketPC and Tablet PC kits. The license is being widely interpreted as a major defeat for Linux. ...

FileMaker Database Does Apache on Linux.(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
November 12, 2001... Apple's database subsidiary FileMaker has released a new version of its flagship FileMaker Pro 5.5 that lets an unlimited number of browsers access FileMaker databases published to the web. The new version, called FileMaker Pro 5.5...

So Much for Real Men.(AMD considers outsourcing)
November 12, 2001... "Real men have fabs" - AMD CEO Jerry Sanders III, denigrating outsourced semi manufacturing, sometime in the late '80s. "We're really good at using other people's money" - AMD CEO Jerry Sanders III, announcing that AMD's going to...

RLX Shrinks Dense Server.(3U machine now System 1U)(Product Announcement)
November 12, 2001... Blade pioneer RLX Technologies, saying that its initial product was too big for most people, has cut its 3U 24-blade dense server down to a 1U that houses only six blades. It figures the new second-generation product, called simply the RLX...

Acunia Open Sources Wonka JVM.(Brief Article)
November 12, 2001... Belgian IT firm Acunia has open sourced its Wonka clean-room JVM for resource-constrained embedded systems. Wonka doesn't require a separate host operating system since it comes with its own RTOS called Oswald. Wonka is supposed to...

Burton's Back: Novell Co-founder Joins Irish Start-up.
November 12, 2001... Novell co-founder Craig Burton, one of the folks who created the world's first networking company, has taken a job with a software company for the first time since leaving Novell in 1989. Burton, who's been a consultant ever since, has...

IBM Seeks To Eclipse Other Tools.
November 12, 2001... Told ya so. Told ya IBM was going to open source its Java-based Eclipse mojah. It's not exactly acting the shy, retiring benefactor here; it's put a price tag on the stuff and says it's worth $40 million. The code's all been purpose-built...

From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave Us the Browser.
November 12, 2001... We poached a lot of this story from last week's issue of our sister publication, Online Reporter. If you'll remember a month or so ago we said this was in train. Jim Clark, the guy who started Silicon Graphics and brought us graphical...

FSMLabs Signs New Distribution Deals.(Brief Article)
November 12, 2001... Finite State Machine Labs has inked two distribution deals for its RTLinux/Pro hard real-time operating system. In the first deal, Turbolinux Systems Korea, a joint venture between Turbolinux USA and Samsung SDS, plans to market and support...

VMWare's "Virtual Computer" Gets XP Support.(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
November 12, 2001... VMWare has released a new Windows XP-compatible cut of its flagship virtualization software that lets users run multiple copies of an operating system, or even different operating systems, on the same workstation. VMWare is the stuff that...

Half the States Settle, Half Don't.
November 12, 2001... This story is pretty much unchanged since it was flashed on Tuesday. Nine of the 18 states that sued Microsoft alongside the Justice Department have signed off on a slightly amended version of the consent decree forged last week between...

Reactions.
November 12, 2001... "I think everybody who isn't a Microsoft vassal understands, and has been saying, this is the most bizarre, pointless, ridiculous antitrust settlement that anyone could have possibly imagined. It doesn't even pass the red face test." - Michael...

Inside the Antitrust Settlement.
November 12, 2001... The devil, as they say, is in the details, and the proposed Microsoft consent decree should be read closely to understand what Microsoft's really agreed to. Equally important is what's missing, as Microsoft's enemies and the states that...

Stocks & Bonds Defined in XML.(Software & Information Industry Association's Financial Information Services Division releases Market Data Definition Language 1.0)(Brief Article)
November 12, 2001... The world has gotten an XML-based message format standard to describe financial instruments and market-related indicators courtesy of the Software & Information Industry Association's (SIIA) Financial Information Services Division (FISD). ...

Oracle Readies Free Java IDE for 9i.(Oracle 9i JDeveloper)(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
November 12, 2001... Oracle said Monday that it will release a pure Java set of free development tools for its 9i application server next month, a release that it says "will complete delivery of its Oracle9i generation of technology." Oracle hopes that the new...

UK Consulting House Sees Life for Linux on the Desktop.(Skygate Technology)
November 12, 2001... Well, well. There's somebody out there - other than Linux companies and devotees - that believes that Linux on the desktop has a future. UK Internet/e-Commerce security consulting house Skygate Technology says that it thinks that Linux "is...

MontaVista Lands Varco Deal.(Brief Article)
November 12, 2001... Varco International plans to standardize its full line of oil-rig floor equipment controllers on MontaVista's HardHat embedded Linux OS. The value of the deal was not disclosed. Varco produces equipment and automation systems for the oil...

Enterprise SourceForge Rolls.(VA Linux Systems' application development software)(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
November 12, 2001... VA Linux Systems, which wants to change its name to VA Software now, having failed abysmally as a Linux hardware house, has wheeled out that enterprise version of SourceForge that it talked about this summer, the software that's supposed to...

MontaVista Gets New Sales Chief.(Trent Winegar)(Brief Article)
November 12, 2001... MontaVista has named Trent Winegar its new VP of worldwide sales. Prior to joining MontaVista, Winegar was a consultant to Fortune 500 companies and before that VP of business development at defense contractor Martin Marietta.

Prodigy Denies Plans To Offer Linux Appliance.(Brief Article)
November 12, 2001... Internet access provider Prodigy Communications denied reports that it was planning to peddle a Linux-based web surfing appliance from Larry Ellison's New Internet Computer Company but left open the possibility that some of its partners may...

Tricord Fields Linux "Application Appliance".(Tricord Lunar Flare AA1100 and 1200)(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
November 12, 2001... Tricord, the failed Windows NT house that was converted into a Linux advocate by Compaq co-founder Rod Canion, has come to market with a new version of its Lunar Flare appliance designed to run Linux apps. The initial Lunar Flare went on...

Tarantella Delivers the Horrid Quarter It Promised.(2001)
November 12, 2001... Tarantella, as it warned it would a month ago, turned in a dismal fourth quarter in which the only good news was that the company said that it's "on track" in its expense reduction plan. CEO Doug Michels said that, as planned, the cost...

Paralogic Teams with Sistina.(Brief Article)
November 12, 2001... Linux clustering solutions provider Paralogic has gone to Sistina Software to provide its customers with powerful data management and storage systems using Sistina's Global File System. The Sistina GFS is a clustered file system for Linux...

Sun Offers Forte for Java IDE with Red Hat 7.2.(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
November 12, 2001... Sun is offering its Forte for Java IDE free of charge with Red Hat Linux 7.2 to enable developers to build database-aware web applications and services. The IDE comes with an integrated set of tools including a browser, web server and a...

Off the Graph at GraphOn: Sales Plunge 63%.(2001)
November 12, 2001... GraphOn, not spoiling its record of swimming in the red since the day in 1999 when it IPO'd, reported its worst quarter since 2Q99 with only a dismal $1 million in sales, down sequentially from $1.9 million and barely a third of the $2.7...

Mail Box.(Letter to the Editor)
November 12, 2001... To the Editor: I must first say that I am supportive of an antitrust settlement if the remedies provide adequate resolutions. The perception is that the current remedies do not address ownership of essential facilities. Some in the...

Okay, Now What? Reflections on a Post-HP Compaq.
November 12, 2001... So suppose the HP-Compaq deal goes up in smoke as punters say is increasingly likely. What's Compaq, which is supposed to be worse off than HP if it's left standing at the altar, gonna do? Bear Stearns thinks that if the deal is canceled, the...

Dear, Dear.(raise suspension and ex-employee lawsuit)(Brief Article)
November 12, 2001... HP, after delaying raises for three months in December, has suspended them until business recovers. Meanwhile, it's suing an ex- employee Hock-Beng Lim claiming he sabotaged benchmarks on its high- end Unix-based Superdome server. It said the...

Tatung Joins Dense Server Fray on Back of Amphus.
November 19, 2001... Tatung and its US subsidiary Tatung Science and Technology Inc have become dense server players, compliments of Transmeta renegade Amphus Inc, the start-up that bolted to Intel before commercializing its Transmeta design reportedly at Intel's...

Lineo Builds New Bridges.(Product Announcement)
November 19, 2001... On the grounds that Linux alone cannot meet all the requirements of embedded developers, Lineo is gearing up to introduce a new family of products called Embedix BridgeWorks. Lineo describes the new offering as a set of technical "bridges"...

Lineo Thought Overhauling Top Management.(Brief Article)
November 19, 2001... Lineo seems to be quietly overhauling its top management. First, it named COO Matt Harris as its new CEO replacing co-founder Bryan Sparks, without explanation. It now appears that he has added the chairman's chevrons as well. What...

Free Software Foundation Hassles VA.
November 19, 2001... VA Linux Systems is under attack by the Free Software Foundation's European representative Lo?c Dachary for its decision to commercialize a version of SourceForge, the software environment the company provides - for free - for open source...

Proxy Fight over HPQ Deal Threatened.
November 19, 2001... Walter Hewlett, son of HP founder Bill Hewlett and an HP board member, looks like he may be getting ready to challenge the controversial Compaq acquisition that he said last week he and his family would oppose. He's hired a proxy...

Love the Devious Thinking.(HP/Compaq merger)(Brief Article)
November 19, 2001... Siliconvalley.com suggests that any statements the HP board makes be weighed against its need to wiggle out from under the provision in the Compaq merger agreement that requires it to pay Compaq a $675 million breakup fee if it pulls out. The...

IBM Suffers Linux Cluster Amnesia.
November 19, 2001... IBM needs some help figuring out whether it's been selling pre- packaged Linux clusters since August of last year or not. This past Tuesday, exactly 15 months after it supposedly launched a packaged Linux cluster, IBM announced again it had...

DOJ Tells Judge: Antitrust Deal Only Alternative to Years of More Legal Fighting.(Company Business and Marketing)
November 19, 2001... The legal battle in the Microsoft antitrust case will drag on for at least two more years unless the proposed settlement is approved, the Justice Department told US District Court Judge Colleen Kollar- Kotelly on Thursday. That assessment...

Hammer Hits Creeping Ice.
November 19, 2001... AMD has hit an icy patch and its 64-bit Hammer effort, which is simply supposed to be an extension of the existing 32-bit architecture, is slip sliding again. For the fourth time this year, the company has reset expectations. Now the...

Covalent First To Market with Apache 2.0.(Product Announcement)
November 19, 2001... Secure Apache specialist Covalent has come to market with the first commercial version of Apache 2.0, offering what appears to be the first non-beta of the long-awaited upgrade to the Internet's most popular web server. Apache 2.0 went to...

Oracle To Come Up Short.(in profits)(Brief Article)
November 19, 2001... In a sidebar with journalists after his Comdex speech, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said the company was unlikely to meet Wall Street expectations this quarter and would probably come in a penny or two shy of the 11-cent consensus. In other...

Blodget Takes Parachute & Jumps.(Henry Boldget leaves Merrill Lynch)(Company Operations)
November 19, 2001... Young Mr Henry Blodget, the 35-year-old hotshot who gave us the Amazon-at-400-bucks phenomenon and is as liable as anyone for the Internet bubble disaster, is leaving Merrill Lynch to go write a book for Random House about the Street's recent...

Intel Fields Bladeware.(Brief Article)(Product Announcement)
November 19, 2001... Intel Tuesday released its ultra-low voltage Pentium III for blade servers, as we predicted it would (CSN No 424). The chip is a variation on what Intel's been offering for mobile computers, but the chipset that comes with it is new. That...

Opera Releases "Killer" Browser Beta.(Opera 6.0 beta)(Product Announcement)
November 19, 2001... Opera Software went to beta Tuesday with a new version of its browser that it fancies has "killer features and killer looks." What the Norwegian browser house hopes to kill, or at least wound a little, is obvious. It fancies that the...

Third Party Behind New RLX Box.(Brief Article)
November 19, 2001... Fancy that. Design house Stratos Product Development LLC is taking credit for RLX Technologies' new six-blade 1U, the shrunken version of its pioneering dense server. The effort got started five months ago just when RLX started moving its...

3Dlabs Wins Slot in Hitachi Itanium Workstations.(Brief Article)
November 19, 2001... Hitachi is going to OEM 3Dlabs' Wildcat II 5110 graphics accelerator for its Flora-ex 480 Itanium-based workstation, scheduled to hit market in December. The Flora, which will sport a pair of Itania and ship with the 64- bit version of...

Movaris Finds New CEO & $7m in Funding.(Kurt Garbe)
November 19, 2001... Enterprise business process management house Movaris has picked up $7 million in first-round funding and found itself a new CEO. Movaris makes software to automate business processes that are traditionally done on paper, stuff like expense...

Dell Defies Downturn.(Statistical Data Included)
November 19, 2001... Dell defiantly reported a third quarter that put the rest of the PC industry to shame, with unit volumes up a healthy 20% in combined shipments of servers, storage products and workstations. Just about everybody else has been struggling to...

Ah, The Games Linux People Play.(DreamBall)
November 19, 2001... Aha. Now we know what Linux on the mainframe is really for. Games. Hey, that's where the money is. Three-year-old Korean gaming house DreamBall Company is building an interactive soccer game, powered by an IBM eServer z900...

Trend Micro Launches ServerProtect for Linux.(Product Announcement)
November 19, 2001... Trend Micro has put out a Linux version of its ServerProtect anti- virus software for file servers running Red Hat Linux 6.2 or 7.1. ServerProtect for Linux is meant to detect and clean viruses, Trojans and worms in files in Linux servers...