Thom Holwerda Archive

Microsoft Virtual Server Release 2 has begun shipping to manufacturers and is due for general release in the first week of December with a new pricing model and a number of new features, most notably formal support for Linux. "Technically, Linux already worked on Virtual Server, but with R2 we have formalised support, and we will continue to support Linux in the future," said Bob Muglia, who recently took over as senior vice-president of Microsoft's server and tools division.

"At Supercomputing 2005, AMD and Sun today announced that the Tokyo Institute of Technology is creating Japan's largest supercomputer on a foundation of Sun. The system is based on Sun Fire x64 (x86, 64-bit) servers with 10,480 AMD Opteron processor cores (totaling more than 50 trillion floating point operations per second (teraFLOPS)), Sun and NEC storage technologies and NEC's integration expertise as well as ClearSpeed's Advance accelerator boards."

If a certain US senator and a certain EU commissioner are to be believed, the internet is five days away from total collapse as governments are finally forced into a corner and told to agree on a framework for future Internet governance. Both are wrong, but there is a very real risk that an enormous political argument resulting in lifelong ill-will centred around the internet could developed unchecked at the WSIS Summit. The fact that it hasn’t already is effectively down to one man: Mr Khan. He was chosen as chair of Sub-Committee A during the WSIS process, and his remit includes all the most difficult and contentious elements - not just internet governance but also how the world will deal with issues such as spam and cybercrime.

ZDNet has published the second part (part I) of its special report on the use of open source in governments around the world. This time it's looking at what's driving open source takeup in developing markets, with a particularly close look at projects and the driving forces behind them in China, India and Brazil.

Heise.de reports (English translation) that after talking with its customers, Novell decided that both KDE and GNOME will be equally supported in all its products, even though GNOME will be the default for the enterprise/server line. Opensuse instead will feature KDE (English translation) as the primary desktop. Both will be however developed further in the future.

Three of the world's biggest electronics companies - IBM, Sony and Philips - have joined forces with the two largest Linux software distributors to create a company for sharing Linux patents, royalty-free. The Open Invention Network, as the new firm unveiled Thursday is known, could mark a breakthrough in resolving how to protect vendors and customers from patent royalty disputes resulting from freely shared Linux code.