Monthly Archive:: October 2003

Microsoft Corp. on Wednesday will announce that it is giving its Most Valued Professionals access to the more than 100 million aggregate lines of Windows source code, which includes all versions, service packs and betas of the Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 products.

It looks like the G3's days are over, as Apple announced today new iBooks and eMacs with a range of enhancements, including G4 processors. The new machines also sport Airport Extreme, Bluetooth, USB 2.0, and slot-loading combo drives. All models ship with Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther). The 12" iBook gets a 800Mhz G4 while the 14" models get a choice of 933Mhz or 1Ghz. The eMac is 1 Ghz.

The New York Times has an update on the progress of the Mac G5-based supercomputer at Virginia Tech University. The cluster, made up of 1,100 G5s with 2,200 processors has been successfuly tested in recent days, but final performance numbers will not be released until next month at a supercomputer industry event. Update: Even more news about it.

Wired has an interesting story on a PCI card from ClearSpeed technologies which contains "a processor capable of performing 25 billion floating-point operations per second, or 25 gigaflops. ordinary desktop PC outfitted with six PCI cards, each containing four of the chips, would perform at about 600 gigaflops (or more than half a teraflop)." Such a PC would qualify as one of the 500 most powerful supercomputers in the world, but only cost about $25,000.

The new OS, still a couple of years away, will change the way developers write business applications.

"Utilities like urpmi, up2date, apt4rpm and OpenPKG may be a step in the right direction, especially if they become widely adopted. Until we have a universal tool for resolving application dependencies, we can't expect casual users to be able to install their own applications." Read the article at NewsForge.

Today, Microsoft Corp. launched Exchange Server 2003, the next edition of its messaging and collaboration server, as part of the Microsoft Office System. Novell also issued a press release stating that Novell's Ximian Connector for Microsoft Exchange enables users of Ximian Evolution groupware suite on Linux and UNIX desktops to function as full Microsoft Exchange 2000/2003 clients.

MandrakeSoft has recently released the latest version of their desktop operating system. Mandrake Linux 9.2 Download Edition is available on their web site across three ISO files for the Club members. The first disk is about 650megs and the following two are ~700.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on Tuesday defended his company's efforts to secure its software and fend off open-source rivals.

The InfoWorld Test Center evaluates the performance of Microsoft's new 64-bit platform, assesses its usefulness for IT today, and reveals what's in store for tomorrow.

Fedora Test 3, is, most certainly, as the name says, a test. In my experience there are a few problems and a few bugs that would keep me from recommending it as an everyday desktop replacement, but nonetheless, Fedora is an Operating System (distro) worth watching out.

In the new OpenBeOS newsletter Michael Phipps is giving a good status report, explaining the status of each kit. However, what we don't learn yet is how far we are from an alpha public release. In the meantime, the Beunited Java team announced that they now have a complete coomand line version (1.4.2.) running, while 3Sat TV channel will present Yellowtab Zeta on TV today. Additionally, the people at BeOS Max said that the last version of their distribution will be 3.1, because they don't want to be an obstacle on Zeta's commercial success.

They are stronger than steel and as flexible as plastic, conduct energy better than almost any material ever discovered and can be made from unexotic raw materials such as methane gas. Read the story.

"There's a significant shift afoot in storage fundamentals, and it's not storage area networks (SAN) or network attached storage (NAS)-- although both will have critical roles in these new fundamentals. The shift involves the facilitating role that metadata will play in abstracting the specifics about data and where it's stored from the applications, end users, and operating systems requiring access to it." Read the article at ZDNews.