Linux vs. Apple: An Uncomfortable Battle

  Submitted by Claudio Editorial 88 Comments
"Linux represents a threat and an opportunity for every software and hardware company. Apple is once again at the crossroads. While it will take a couple of years before we know whether the company will make the right choice, one thing is clear: Apple's path is about to become vastly more interesting" says Rob Enderle for TechNewsWorld.
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Mergers, More Mergers and Splits

In the News 6 Comments
A feisty Oracle comes out swinging at the government's insistence that its proposed acquisition of PeopleSoft would be detrimental to the business software market. Elsewhere, a trial preperation shows Microsoft, SAP mulled merger: The companies initiated merger discussions late last year, but eventually broke off talks for reasons of complexity, according to information uncovered during discovery in the Oracle case. However, Apple's top executive said Monday that the company does not plan any mergers, though it has $5 billion cash in the bank. On the opposite side, longtime Wall Street analyst Steven Milunovich is urging HP's top management to split the company into two separate businesses.
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‘Open-source’ Solaris Draws Lukewarm Response

Solaris 29 Comments
Sun's announcement this week that it plans to make Solaris an "open-source" operating system has been met with mixed reactions from users and scepticism from open-source advocates. "I'm totally nonplussed by the announcement," said Dale Pickford, chief infrastructure officer at Ocwen Technology. Ocwen last year consolidated around 140 servers into several high-end Sun servers running Solaris - one with more than 100 processors. For smaller servers with four or fewer CPUs, Linux on Intel is suitable, Pickford said. But for systems larger than that, "the Sparc and Solaris environment really comes into its own," he said. "And once you start playing at that level anyway, you don't want to be messing with the OS." LinuxWorld has an article as well on the open sourcing of Java and Solaris.
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Apple Patches ‘Critical’ OS X Flaw; AirPort Express, AirTunes

  Submitted by Claudio macOS 15 Comments
Apple released a security patch that fixes what the company called the first "critical" Mac OS X flaw. Apple today also introduced AirPort Express, "the world's first 802.11g mobile base station that can be plugged directly into the wall for wireless Internet connections and USB printing, or thrown into a laptop bag to bring wireless freedom to hotel rooms with broadband connections." More here and here.
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Zeta to Get New Media Player and Native Codecs

  Submitted by jeanmarc Zeta 33 Comments
yellowTAB is currently revamping the media services in Zeta by adding new native CODECs to the Media Kit, and developing a brand new native media player application, code named Champion. This will add native support for common media formats that cannot be currently played in the BeOS platform, as well as high-performance video streaming capabilities to Zeta. Also, TuneTracker will include Zeta in its CD from now on. Elsewhere, a USB mass storage driver for BeOS 5 was released.
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Linux certificate puts kernel developers in impossible position

  Submitted by Matt Legal 14 Comments
A patent expert has attacked the Open Source Community's latest initiative to document the provenance of code contributed to the Linux kernel so that proving its origins will be quicker and easier in the face of litigation. The Developer's Certificate of Origin 1.0 asserts that the developer submitting the code which it covers has either written or modified that code according to their rights to do so, or it is being submitted, unchanged, on behalf of someone else who asserts these rights.
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