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Now that the Justice Department and Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly are content with the wrist-slapping meted out to Microsoft, few expect any abatement in the company's abuse of its monopoly power. Although many argue that, eventually, the markets themselves will bring about more balanced competition, the markets that Microsoft dominates operate on different economic principles than most others. The last twenty years brought such dramatic technological change that it'll be much harder for competitors to dislodge Microsoft from its perch atop the industry than it was for Microsoft to dethrone IBM a generation ago.

I had been trying to find a means to write a new Operating System since 1997 and back then an Mphil/Dphil at the Universities seemed realistic. I had assessed a variety of institutions and made applications were relevant but nothing was doing. It was then that I realised that I had to do it myself so my plan was to quickly develop a standard Kernel to start the business and allow me to focus on innovation.

"Intel introduced six new chips for notebooks on Tuesday, not long after cutting prices on its mobile processors. The chipmaker, which slashed prices on its mobile Pentium 4 and Celeron chips on Sunday, launched a new flagship 2.4GHz Pentium 4-M chip for notebooks. The chipmaker also boosted the clock speed of its mobile Celeron processor, issuing a new 2GHz mobile Celeron." Read more at ZDNet. On other CPU news, Transmeta is embedding security in its new chips.

Amiga Inc has revealed more details on the new Amiga Operating System: "Amiga is pleased to publish this first version of the feature set of the up and coming AmigaOS4.0. The document will undergo revision in subsequent issues but because of the massive demand for information made by the public, we have decided to release it in its current state." The official launch of the PPC based AmigaOne platform together with AmigaOS4.0 is sheduled for March at the upcoming CeBit tradeshow in Germany.

Is the modern operating system a tool of facilitation that should provide just the basic necessities of a system and no more, staying out of the way of the user? Or should the modern OS assist the user in their everyday tasks, sorting and displaying relevant information, providing a filter between the ever increasing amount of information and the task at hand.

Cosmoe 0.6 has been released. The have added new Be APIs and the APIs are more similar to the Be APIs. The built-in FreeType library has been removed, and new fonts have been added. 0.6 does not include the DirectFB-based rewrite of the appserver, that is expected to be added in release 0.7. Visit the Cosmoe website for more details.

Chicobaud writes: "The two big companies anounced a combination of efforts in developing new high performance CPU fabrication aiming 65 and 45 nm (nanometers) in order to lower power comsuption and improving performance." Read the press release at the AMD website.

"One of Linux's supposed barriers in high performance computing is the 'eight processor limit.' SGI says their new Altix 3000 line, running a patched 2.4.19 kernel, handily breaks this barrier -- it can run up to 64 Intel Itanium 2 microprocessers -- and that "superclusters" built with SGI's Linux-based products can outperform generic Linux clusters in some applications by a large enough margin to justify their additional cost." Read the full article at NewsForge.

Nintendo has announced that a new Gameboy version will be introduced in March. This version will include a front-lit screen, a rechargeable lithium-Ion battery and opens and closes like a mini-laptop. Since the Gameboy introduction in 1989, there have been over 120 million units sold. Of the most recent version, the Game Boy Advance, almost 12 million units have been sold since its June 2001 debut. Update: Gamespot.com has revealed that they have learned that a blue-colored and black-colored version will be available upon release in Japan on the 14th of February.

"Microsoft announced Tuesday its first-ever licensing fees for use of its media delivery software on non-Windows technology, a move designed to expand its reach in the market for digital media players." Read more at ZDnet.

After a few short months since the release of Redhat 8.0, the boys in Raleigh are at it again. Redhat 8.0.92, codenamed "Phoebe", has been around for a couple of weeks. I have been using for about two days and figured it was time someone posted an initial reaction, so here goes.

For the last 20 years or so, Microsoft has been playing the same old game. Sure, they morph and adapt along with the times, and they expand into new markets. But basically they are in the software business and one of the main ingredients in their recipe has been always this: "Keep the data format proprietary and take advantage of it."

"Newly formed hard disk drive company Hitachi Global Storage Technologies on Monday unveiled plans for a tiny drive that will be used in consumer electronic devices and said it will turn a profit in 2004. Hitachi Global Storage said it plans to sell next fall a 1-inch microdrive that has 4 gigabytes, or 4 billion bytes, of storage space. That compares to the current top of the line microdrive with 1 gigabyte of storage that IBM had made." Read the article at ZDNews.

"We preview nVidia’s latest 3D wunderkind and handicap the inevitable battle with ATI. World exclusive benchmarks! Brought to you by Maximum PC." Read the article at Maximum PC.