"PC makers and several states allege that new Microsoft licensing agreements, arrived at under the proposed antitrust settlement between the software maker and the U.S. Justice Department, impose harsher terms on some manufacturers than agreements currently in place." The details make it sound more like this is a pricing structure change that lowers costs for low-volume OEMs, and raises them for high-volume OEMs. CNET has the story.

This is the third and final article (part one and part two articles) on current 64-bit architectures at ExtremeTech: While IA-64 and Hammer battle for mindshare, existing 64-bit designs are working hard. And not standing still. Here's what AMD and Intel are up against. "Alpha: Not Dead Yet" The upcoming 21364 freshens multiprocessor machines; and some of it lives on in Hammer. "UltraSPARC-III is Still the Classic RISC Chip:" In Sun's tightly coupled world, software can make up for some hardware deficiencies. "Power 4: 680 Million Transistors Can't be Wrong:" IBM's monster looks more like a floor tile than a CPU chip. And it's 500 watts. In the meantime, Compaq benchmarks a four-way 1GHz Alpha server with Tru64 UNIX. It ran Oracle9i Enterprise Edition for Tru64 UNIX and hit 50,117tpmC (transactions per minute), TheRegister reports.

"OpenGL and DirectX represent a schism in the graphics world, one that has hampered development at times, and fostered it at others. There are new developments coming, and the schism appears to be closing somewhat." Read the rest of the report at Tom's Hardware.

"Full-fledged 64-bit versions of Linux will replace lesser software in the most-powerful IBM servers. The change is expected to take place next month." The news story is at ZDNews.

Steve was drawing things out, as he is wont to do. We'd seen demonstrations by Adobe, we got to see the iBook's new larger look, he'd prattled on and on about the virtues of iPhoto, we were getting restless. We wanted to see IT. Whatever Steve Jobs had up the sleeve of that black mock-neck we wanted to see it. In all fairness those of us that are rabid weblog addicts had already seen it. Slashdot had broken the news the night before when 'Time Canada' plastered it all over their website. It was the new iMac, and inside the 'reality distortion field' that Steve Jobs projects at every MacWorld keynote, it was insanely great.

IBM WebSphere Developer Domain just came out with a high level comparison of WSAD and Visual Studio.NET. Instead of debating benchmarks, the article examines the major differences and how each company supports Web services.

"Microsoft, trying to protect its software empire from open-source rivals such as Linux, on Thursday said it is expanding a program to share the underlying code of its Windows operating system. Microsoft's Shared Source Initiative, which it started last year to counter the image that it jealously guards its products, is being expanded to let systems integrators--companies that help other companies manage their computer systems--peek at the Windows blueprints." Read the rest of the report at ZDNews.

"From the "things that could happen if Mono is incorporated into Gnome" department: Intel, having gleefully taken advantage of the MIT licensing on Mono's class libraries, enforces its patents against every entity making use of its modifications, including the Gnome project, effectively shutting it down." Read Tina Gasperson's editorial at NewsForge. In any case, Gnome 2.0 Beta 1 was released for general testing today.

SGI has released a new update to their IRIX operating system, 6.5.15. Several bugfixes as well as new features are contained in this release which can be found here.

"Whether you run a small business or large corporation -- or just have a desktop PC at home -- if you're connected to the Internet for any amount of time, you need a firewall to keep your data safe. People with ill intentions will try everything from stealing your credit card data, to exploiting open mail relays for spam, or even manipulating potential (and unwitting) participants in Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks." Read the interesting Linux firewall roundup article at UnixReview.

Be, Inc. announced today it has filed suit against Microsoft for the destruction of Be's business resulting from the anticompetitive business practices of Microsoft. The lawsuit alleges, among other claims, that Microsoft harmed Be through a series of illegal exclusionary and anticompetitive acts designed to maintain its monopoly in the Intel-compatible PC operating system market and created exclusive dealing arrangements with PC OEMs prohibiting the sale of PCs with multiple preinstalled operating systems. Our Take: This suit should have been initiated 3 years ago. Furthermore, notice the black mourning stripe on the Be logo at the Be web site. Dan Johnston, Be's legal counsel, is the only person left working at Be's new tiny office in Mountain View these days. Update: News.com has more info found in the filing itself and a mini-statement from Microsoft's spokesman.

"Version 7.0 of the Symbian OS is here, with improved support for 3G networks, EMS, MMS, IPv6, MIDP Java as well as a slew of improvements related to security and certificates. The successor to version 6.1 of the Symbian OS, v7.0, has been launched at the GSM World Congress in Cannes, France, bringing with it features that the mobile industry needs and wants. The new version builds on v6.1 and includes new communications, messaging, networking and application development technologies to more easily implement 2.5G and 3G technologies in new phones." Read more at the one place for PDA and cell phone news, InfoSync.

According to ZDNet, the final note in Corel's gradual abandonment of its ambitious Linux initiatives seems to have arrived. Corel was involved in several open source projects including its own Linux distro, WINE, Application Printing Services API, Corel Package Utilities, 10n-i18n Internationalization, and Cprof Performance Profiler. The site will only be up through the end of the month.

"Microsoft on Tuesday announced several new efforts to bring wireless capabilities to devices using its operating systems. Among them is its Phone Edition application, which will help handheld owners access data and make voice calls. The software runs on the Pocket PC 2002 operating system and will be used with Hewlett-Packard's Jornada 928 Wireless Digital Assistant, which the PC maker is also expected to announce Tuesday. Microsoft also revealed plans to work with Intel as well as Texas Instruments to develop reference designs for phones that will run its Windows Powered Smartphone 2002 operating system. A reference design is basically a blueprint for a technical system that lets different manufacturers build essentially the same device. This process will help wireless phone manufacturers get products to market faster." Read the rest of the article at C|Net News.com and check some screenshots of the SmartPhone operating system running on a Texas Instrument mobile phone.