David Adams Archive

CNN is running a review of the latest Solaris Release, calling it "stylishly cryptic" -- as fitting a description of the leading commercial UNIX OS as I've ever heard. Oh, wait a second . . . Steven Soderbergh? Oops, never mind.

The Economist is running a cover article on the next great battle of the computing age, and one that may be even more far-reaching than the PC war: the truly personal computer, the so-called smart phone.

A company called Stratus Technologies, that makes expensive, multiply redundant server hardware, guarantees that its high end four processor machine running Windows 2000 Advanced Server (cost: $150,000) will not have a hardware or OS-related failure or they will pay you $100,000. Stratus works on the device drivers to further ensure that they will not bring the OS down. See a Stratus Press Release for more information.

Samsung has licensed Symbian OS for a new line of PDA-enabled mobile phones. Now all five of the major mobile phone manufacturers have licensed the OS, though only Nokia has released a major handset running Symbian. Samsung will release a phone that uses Nokia's Series 60 user interface. Some handset manufacturers have licensed more than one OS. Samsung has licensed OSes from all three major makers: Symbian, Palm, and Microsoft. A ZDNet article and and PC World article have more. Update: A PC World article reports that the first Microsoft powered smart phone has been launched by European carrier Orange SA. AT&T will be the first US-based company offering a Microsoft-powered phone, in mid 2003.

The information that I could find on the web about Sprint’s new '3G' high-speed data service was a little short on solid information, so I spoke with Kevin Packingham, Senior Manager of Business Marketing for SprintPCS’ new Vision service. I sought him out because Ubiquitous, affordable high speed wireless data services are something of a holy grail for tech-savvy road warriors like myself, so I received each morsel of information about Sprint’s new service with great interest. Mr. Packingham spoke over the phone and he clarified many of the questions that I had about the new service.

Hewlett Packard has begun to sell Intel Itanium 2-based workstations running Red Hat Linux Advanced Workstation. Advanced Workstation is the desktop companion to Red Hat's Enterprise-oriented Advanced Server. HP also sells versions of these workstations running HP-UX, and will probably sell Windows versions eventually, following a future OS release my Microsoft. This is yet more evidence that Red Hat sees some opportunity for Linux on the corporate desktop, at least in the engineering workstation area, where high-priced Unix workstations have traditionally ruled but have been pushed out by NT/2000-on-Intel in recent years. Read more about it at Silicon.com.

An eWeek article notes that Apple Computer is reorganizing the OS 9 engineering effort, presumably re-assigning engineers to work on OSX-related projects. Also, a former head of OS Engineering at Apple will be moving to Apple's Powerschool division.

A builder.com article discusses the increasing use of Java as a tool for developing embedded systems. Primarily because of the portability benefits that java brings, it has become a very popular option in the past year or so. The article covers the upsides and downsides of Java in embedded systems.

The court decided yesterday, at a trial where an internet cafe's owner was charged of letting his customers play Counter Strike, that the law that prohibited playing games is unconstitutional. This paves the way for the law to be struck down. There's some additional information at ZDNet UK.

Today is a solemn day of introspection and rememberance here in the United States, and we here at OSNews would like to send our condolances to those who lost loved ones in the attacks on the Pentagon and Twin Towers. Though most of the people of the world did not experience the attacks first hand, there are very few people in the world who were not affected by them in some way. I know it's a bit off-topic, but I'd like to open up a discussion thread today for people to air their feelings about the events of a year ago, and where they think things stand today. And if you read on, I'll get things started by talking a bit about what happened to me on that day and since.

Tim O'Reilly made an informal survey of some members of the Geek Elite and confirmed that Mac OS X has generated significant enthusiasm. He also found that Linux and Unix users are even more likely than sold school Mac users to make the switch to OS X. Read more at O'Reilly's Mac Dev Center.

A thought-provoking New York Times article examines the evidence that Apple may secretly be working on a PDA/Phone device. It cites some cryptic statements by Steve Jobs about how PDAs are going to be replaced by phones, and some not-so-cryptic ones about the sorry state of the handheld offerings today. The article's main evidence, though, is the interesting proliferation of features in Max OS X.2 that have more immediately applicable benefit in a handheld, like handwriting recognition and the "internet distilled" functionality of Sherlock (also seen in the shareware app Watson). Apple already has a license to use the iPod software in a second device.

The media's ability to turn a cute idea into a raging hype feedback loop has crossed with the post Sept 11th paranoia factor yet again as an FBI field office in Pittsburgh warns businesses of the pernicious new pastime of "Warchalking." See this Computerworld story. Warchalking is the latest non-trend to sweep the internet, and it involves scrawling information about close-by wireless networks on the streets in chalk. Despite the fact that nobody is actually doing it, just about every media outlet in the world has reported on it.

A PC World article reports (thinly) on the Sergey Brin speech at LinuxWorld. Google certainly stands as one of the most high profile and impressive implementations of Linux on a massive scale. The Google co-founder attributes some of Google's success at building a cost-effective platform to the Linux OS.