Microsoft travel subsidies for UN group under fire, Feb 23, 2004

Bill Gates, the chairman of Microsoft, won praise in January when he trumpeted a company agreement to give $1 billion in software and cash to the United Nations as part of a job-training program for the developing world.

But Microsoft did not seek any attention for a much smaller contribution earlier that paid some travel expenses for a UN business-standards group. That payment, critics say, had a more opportunistic motive than the donation.

The company will install a second Blue Gene supercomputer at a radio telescope project in the Netherlands

IBM will install a second Blue Gene/L supercomputer as part of a radio telescope project in the Netherlands, the company plans to announce on Monday.

Zack Urlocker likes to compare his employer's database software to a budget airline.

It's cheap, devoid of luxurious trappings and doesn't expend much effort catering to customers' whims. But if the point is to reach one's destination quickly and easily, it'll do the job.

We don't try to be the database that has all the features," said Urlocker, vice president of marketing for MySQL AB, the Swedish maker of an open-source database platform. "If someone needs the advanced grid capabilities, they should buy that from Oracle."

If, on the other hand, they don't want to spend the money, he advises they take a look at open source.

Wind River, a major force in software embedded in devices such as cell phones or factory robots, has signed a deal with leading Linux seller Red Hat to jointly develop a version of the open-source software, the companies plan to announce Monday.

Under the deal, both companies' engineers will create Red Hat Embedded Linux, a variant of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Wind River will be the "premier" sales channel for the software and will support it in its development tools, according to the companies.

Terms such as revenue sharing, product availability, partnership exclusivity or deal duration weren't revealed, but "both parties expect this to be a long a prosperous partnership," Wind River said in a statement.

Beginning this year, city and provincial governments nationwide will adopt Linux operating system for digitalization projects, accelerating adoption of the government open-source software policy, while boosting demand for Linux programs. The Korea IT Industry Promotion Agency said on January 21 that it would begin switching to Linux system through some 1,000 information system projects set for local autonomous governments this year.

A move by US IP telephony vendor Pingtel could be a boon to enterprises interested in deploying VoIP systems based on open source software and server platforms, like Linux.

That's because Pingtel has released its entire software stack to the open source community. Pingtel will license its IP PBX call control platform, which runs on Linux, as well as its APIs, softphone applications, and IP handset firmware code under the Library General Public License, or LGPL. (The LGPL allows software code to run on proprietary systems, while the GPL allows code to be used only with systems written for the GPL.)

John Patrick spent 35 years at IBM and was one of the original Internet and Linux enthusiasts. During that time, he was part of the team that started the company's leasing business, launched IBM's ThinkPad brand and was credited with introducing IBM to a new communications technology called the Internet. He was also a founding member of the World Wide Web Consortium at MIT in 1994 and a senior member of standards body the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).

Knoppix has a clear advantage over Windows: it operates directly from a CD, with no need to install it on the computer's hard disk. After a brief minute’s wait, you will discover a new and amazing world – an operating system very similar to Windows with a hoard of available programs that include Open Office (a word processor, a spreadsheet, a presentation program, and more), a graphics and multimedia program, an e-mail program, and an Internet browser. The operating system even identifies Web connections and allows you to surf Hebrew sites quickly and with no need for definitions. Knoppix contains everything home users need, saving them installation work as well as hundreds of shekels, since the program can be downloaded free of charge. That is what will make Knoppix a hit, as well as a threat to Microsoft’s total control of the market for home computer operating systems. The impact on this market is likely to be significant. Despite our request, Microsoft Israel declined to comment.

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