Linux

Oracle Drops the Bomb on Red Hat

2007-04-04T12:10:00.001-07:00

Oracle is offering its Unbreakable Linux program for substantially less than Red Hat currently charges for its best support.?We believe that better support and lower support prices will speed the adoption of Linux, and we are working closely with our partners to make that happen,? said Oracle CEO Larry Ellison.?Intel is a development partner. To get Oracle support for Red Hat Linux all you have to do is point your Red Hat server to the Oracle network.

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The Winner At This Year's DEMO: MySpace

2007-04-04T12:10:00.000-07:00

Once again, there were a number of cool mobile related companies (DartDevices, for example, has tremendous potential not as a "write once/run anywhere" system as its positioning seems to imply, but turning any device into a terminal for any other device, allowing you to run any application that makes use of features on any device on a network, and access it from any other device).

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1.2 Million Libyan Kids With Laptops

2006-10-13T14:44:00.000-07:00

(via David Weinberger) Libya has become the fourth country to make a sizeable order of the $100 laptop to the tune of $250 million. Interesting vision here: It is possible that Libya will be the first nation in the world to connect all of its children to the Web via computers provided by schools, Negroponte said, according to the Times. Second, I would ask what does it say about our commitment to our children in this country if we are not the first to connect all of its children to the Internet?

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Virtualization Gets Even Hotter

2006-08-30T16:21:00.000-07:00

On July 17, Microsoft threw more of its weight behind the virtualization bandwagon by (surprise!) announcing it will work with XenSource to promote interoperability between the next version of the Windows server operating system and Xen open source virtualization software. Linux servers are so popular with big banks etc. that Microsoft wants to be able to have its virtualization products swim in the same ocean with Linux and Xen.

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A Ray of Hope for Desktop Linux

2006-07-10T16:53:00.000-07:00

I don't see anything on the horizon that seems likely to change that, but, for Linux fans, here's a ray of hope: IBM, one of the penguin's biggest backers, is releasing a version of its Notes communications and collaboration software designed to run on Linux. Under its "Migrate to the Penguin" program, Big Blue pays business partners and software resellers incentives of $20 per user, up to $20,000, for migrating customers from Microsoft Outlook/Exchange to Lotus Notes on Linux.

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Not Your Dad's Mainframe: Little Iron

2006-07-06T15:49:00.000-07:00

Now, though, the mainframe is heading towards a much larger potential market.In IBM's latest effort to keep Big Iron relevant in a fast-changing computing world, it's retooling the technology for small- and medium-size businesses. They met up with some IBM technical wizards and talked over their dreams and were stunned to hear that the mainframe might be the best computing choice for a small company with a massive project like they had in mind.

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Predatory Pricing: Any Price That's Better Than Mine

2006-07-01T11:59:00.000-07:00

Amidst the endless discussion about Google Checkout, some are trotting out predatory pricing accusations because the company is willing to take a loss on each transaction in order to drive advertising sales. But does this qualify as predatory, or is this the standard definition of a loss leader? What people are concerned about is the hypothetical case in which a company drives the competition out of business, and then raises prices dramatically.

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Flock redux

2006-06-28T20:12:00.001-07:00

The Flock beta was supposed to come out a couple of weeks later. When a youngster is on somebody else's page on Myspace and he or she clicks on a photo imported from Photobucket (or Flickr), a "photo stream" opens up in the browser underneath the toolbar showing postage-stamp-size versions of all of the photos that person has posted on the photo-sharing site. When you see a photo stream you like, you just click on a gold star icon on othe browser to add the person to your friends list.

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The Penguin's New BFF

2006-06-28T20:12:00.000-07:00

And, don't get jealous IBM, but it looks like Tux's new best pal may be Motorola. "We're putting in place both internally and through partnerships all the pieces we need to execute (our strategy to have Linux on the bulk of our devices). Although Besio says the push towards Linux has nothing to do with the bad reviews Microsoft's operating system has gotten on the new Q phone, to me, it underscores the need for better mobile software.

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DoCoMo, Vodafone, Handset Vendors To Work On Mobile Linux

2006-06-16T16:15:00.000-07:00

NTT DoCoMo, Vodafone, Motorola, Samsung, NEC and Panasonic say they'll work together on mobile Linux, building it into a consistent platform that can be adopted by multiple vendors. Despite a fair bit of fanfare, neither of those groups has appeared to produce much of anything. The involvement of two major operators -- with their implicit interest in getting Linux devices to their customers -- should give this group a bit more impetus to move quickly and actually do something.

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Larry Ellison's Linux Distraction

2006-05-10T16:18:00.000-07:00

Oracle has been working hard in the last few months to buy up various open source companies. Even as they failed to acquire JBoss, losing it to Red Hat, Larry Ellison is now talking about how much he thinks Oracle should be offering its own Linux distribution in order to better compete with Microsoft up and down the "stack." Still, this seems more about Ellison competing with Bill Gates, rather than Oracle competing with Microsoft.

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Patch for 'cross-platform' virus

2006-04-19T13:41:00.000-07:00

The main man behind Linux has fixed for a bug that was stopping a "computer virus" from working. It just alters files on both Linux and Windows, a trick that has been demonstrated previously. And careful analysis of the "concept code" revealed a bug in the Linux kernel, which Linus promptly fixed. In theory, the code could enable someone to create a cross-platform computer virus - one that infects both Linux and Windows.

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Software Piracy, A Win-Win For China And Microsoft

2006-04-18T10:13:00.000-07:00

Not only does software piracy probably not hurt their economy, it doesn't necessarily hurt the software companies, like Microsoft. Companies using Windows, legitimately or not, are more likely to buy the software in the future, buy other Microsoft products, and help hold competitors at bay. While Microsoft has talked a tough game, taking a hardline anti-piracy stance, they've actually been pretty good about not being too aggressive, knowing that they could drive users to rival platforms.

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