"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.

"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.

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.

"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.

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.

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.