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Microsoft Corp CEO Steve Ballmer vowed to "kill" Internet search leader Google Inc in an obscenity-laced tirade, and Google chased a prized Microsoft executive "like wolves," according to documents filed in an increasingly bitter legal battle between the rivals. The allegations, filed on Friday in a Washington state court, represent the latest salvos in a showdown triggered by Google's July hiring of former Microsoft executive Kai Fu-Lee to oversee a research and development center that Google plans to open in China. Lee started at Google the day after he resigned from Microsoft. The tug-of-war over Lee -- known for his...

INTRODUCTION: linuximgDeveloped by Linus Torvalds in 1991, Linux is a free operating system which “belongs to the world” and today, it has millions of happy users worldwide. Its being free doesn’t mean its being meaner than other operating systems. On the contrary, the industry experts are most impressed by its power and richness and more and more users are embracing Linux. Changing operating systems is definitely a big labor but this one-time labor is nothing if compared to all that one does to tackle those terrible blue screens of death, frozen windows, system crashes, viruses, data loss and spy wares....

10 Days as a Linux User: A GNU Perspective on things Posted by Gsurface on 18 Aug 2005 - 14:18 Introduction I know what you’re saying, and I agree. The idea of spending 10 days in someone else’s shoes certainly isn’t new but do you really think you will ever see Mr. Spurlock record a show depicting a similar situation or setup? You’d fall asleep during the opening credits. Now, it might not be a life or death adventure but at least it’s one that I’ve never heard of or read before and if I could just offer a small...

IBM Woos the World's Geeks - Big Blue will let software developers in Brazil, Russia, India, and China use company products for free. IBM announced an initiative Monday to encourage developers in emerging economies to work on the computing giant’s open standards technology, a computing framework for which hardware and software specifications are publicly available. As part of the initiative, the Armonk, New York-based company said that for the first time, developers in Brazil, Russia, India, China—popularly known as BRIC countries—will get instant access to IBM’s hardware and software portfolio from their desktop at no charge.

This is the "early 2005" version of what is consistently one of our most popular reports. I was recently invited by San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) and WhisperPC to help test a Dual 3.4GHz Xeon system and a 64 bit "3500+" (2.2GHz) Athlon system. They were trying to choose a high end PC to use as their recommended workstation for themselves as well as for those remote scientists wanting to run the custom visualization software produced at SDSC and commercial applications (like Maya). Though the G5 Power Mac wasn't being considered by SDSC, I thought it was a perfect time...

You have to love Apple Computer. Not, however, for its products. Those are over-glossy fashion plates designed for the people who like to overpay for products and then brag about it. No, you have to love Apple for its ability to manipulate the press. Here is a tiny company with 3% market share in the personal computer, and yet Steve Jobs' new product announcements at Macworld earlier this week were treated as if they were auguries of the future of computing from a descending deity. They weren't. Instead it was mostly Apple -- and more specifically, chairman and founder Steve...

About a month ago, I compared the cost for Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) desktop, server and laptop products to their nearest Dell (Nasdaq: DELL) equivalents (see Macs Are More Expensive, Right?) and discovered that Macs generally cost less than comparable PC products. That was a bit of surprise, but the truly astonishing thing that came out of the comparison was that Dell's product line extends marginally below Apple's at the low end, but has nothing to stack up against Apple's 17-inch Powerbook, X-Serve/X-RAID combination, or Cinema displays at the high end. Bottom line: when you upgrade the PCs enough to allow...

Apple Introduces “Bodyless” iMac Computer by Staff Reports The iMac G5 sets a new standard for compact desktops When the original iMac was introduced in 1998, it was praised for it’s compact design and is often credited with saving Apple. There is no doubt that it revolutionized the computer industry, as witnessed by the copycat PCs that came out. It also spurred the USB industry, and influenced many new industries utilizing translucent cases, like the George Forman Grill. In 2002, Apple reinvented the iMac, basing it on an impressive flat panel LCD, lifted over a domed base by an inventive...

Some companies are finding that OS X and Xserve are a viable, sometimes cheaper, alternative to Windows-based networks. That could be a big help Two years ago, Jon Moog, chief information officer for RiskWise, considered giving Apple Computer the boot. Moog's St. Cloud (Minn.) outfit, which screens credit-card applications and does fraud detection for financial institutions and other companies, had used Apple gear as its primary computer system for years. That put RiskWise out of step with most of its peers -- but Moog's main problem was that his Mac hardware and software was just getting old. He put in...