In the News Archive

Once the most aggressive users of IT, financial institutions have learned to make do with less. But few can go on cost-cutting indefinitely. Computer- and telecoms-makers could soon be feasting again. In most cases, IT systems have not been touched for more than a decade - "note the antiquated OS/2 operating system that runs many an IBM computer on tellers' desks", the Economist reports.

A few weeks after Hewlett-Packard disappointed Wall Street for the first time since its $19 billion mega-merger with Compaq, an influential stock analyst has told clients he sees the eventual breakup of the company. Steve Milunovich, who follows big computer companies for Merrill Lynch, said he thinks HP will have to spin off its printer business or separate its consumer business from its corporate business.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology has made the bold step of offering most of its course information available, at no charge, on the internet for free. Anyone who wants to can now have access to an education (if not a degree) from one of the top schools in the world. The project is called OpenCourseWare and there are more details in a Wired article and at the OpenCourseWare web site.

In an attempt to end the monopoly of global software giant Microsoft, major Chinese ministries on Friday started upgrading its domestic software, by using the latest edition of WPS office software made in China.

NeTraverse, today, announced the immediate availability of Win4Lin Terminal Server 2.5, based on the award-winning Win4Lin technology. Win4Lin Terminal Server allows an organization to dramatically lower costs by hosting and managing their Windows desktop sessions on low-cost, reliable and secure Linux servers. Read more for the rest of the press release.

He could have been as rich as Bill Gates, but Ken Sakamura says he's fine earning enough to lead an "ordinary life." In the world of computers, the obscure Japanese engineer stands in the top rank along with Gates, having developed an operating system that is more widely used than even Microsoft Corp's Windows. Sakamura's system, TRON, is used to run items ranging from digital cameras to car engines, just as Windows operates personal computers.

Tao Group announced major enhancements and additions to its intent technology suite, and the launch of the intent 2 SDK. Technology components include: Qi (Brandable Control Center), iSS (intent Sound System), iVE (intent Visual Environment), Java solutions, and gaming.

VMware, whose software lets an Intel server run several operating systems simultaneously, is expanding both its software capabilities and business ambitions.

Quark finally made available for pre-ordering their long-awaited QuarkXPress 6 after 2 years of porting it to Mac OS X. Our Take: The big surprise for me personally was when earlier today I browsed the comments at VersionTracker, the premier OSX software repository. The vast majority of these users seems to have already switched to Adobe InDesign. $200 bucks cheaper too.

"Oracle on Friday announced a surprise $5.1 billion takeover bid for enterprise software maker PeopleSoft, only a few days after PeopleSoft said it was acquiring rival J.D. Edwards for $1.7 billion. Oracle is offering $16 cash per share for each share of PeopleSoft, a roughly 6 percent premium over PeopleSoft's closing price Thursday of $15.11." Read more at ZDNet.

Forget the $1 per year Steve Jobs got during his first year of return at Apple. According to Forbes, Steve Jobs is today the most well paid CEO in US with $116+ million for the previous year.

This week it seems to be the week of anniversaries: Two years of Mac OS X, ten years from the Pentium launch, ten years of Red Hat, three years of OS/2 World.

Safari Beta 0.64 was given to beta testers and it has some nice additions as ThinkSecret reports. Builder.com invited some current and former CNET developers to weigh in on the C# vs. Java debate. Big Blue is hitting back against SCO's charges that it misappropriated Unix trade secrets and used them in Linux. SuSE says it's "greatly disappointed" by SCO's actions. 'Browser Innovation, Gecko and the Mozilla Project' is the article Mitchell Baker of the Mozilla project posted. Blogger installs Lycoris on Dell Latitude CPi D266XT and writes down his experiences. Two new commercial releases for Linux: Moho 4.1 and the TextMaker word processor (works with FreeBSD 4.x when Linux ABI is installed). Update: A SCO editorial, this time from OfB: "Why SCO Needs to Go". Update 2: Mono 0.23 is out.

Opera Software recently released version 6.11TP of its Opera browser for the Solaris operating system. Additionally, Chimera for MacOSX changed its name to Camino and released version 0.7 of the popular Mac Gecko-based browser. Rick Caudill from Syllable uploaded a screenshot showing changes he made for the desktop of 0.4.4 version of Syllable OS. Also, the Mono project just released version 0.22 which incorporates a number of bug fixes, while SkyOS had its share on new features, drivers and fixes. Finally, Microsoft unveils new DirectX 9 enhancements: high-Level Shader Language integrated into DX.