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Microsoft today lobbed three massive bombs into the server virtualization market. First off, it will now support - wait for it - Linux, when the OS is running on top of its Virtual Server product. Secondly, Microsoft has made Virtual Server free. And, in a move few thought possible, Microsoft has teamed with the developers of the open source Xen product to gang up on server slicing leader VMware.

Microsoft will support customers who chose to run Linux with Microsoft's Virtual Server 2005 R2, software for running multiple operating systems on one machine. In addition, the company on Monday said that it has now made Virtual Server 2005 R2--which the company had charged either $99 for up to four physical processors or $199 for an unlimited number of processors--a free download. The announcements were made in conjunction with the LinuxWorld conference in Boston this week. Virtualization, an emerging technology which is garnering growing interest from corporate customers, allows a server to run multiple instances of an operating system....

Over the next five years, Oracle is predicting annual growth of 12 percent for the open source OS Linux adoptions are to grow in the next three to five years at nearly triple the rate of Windows, according to Oracle. In an interview at the LinuxWorld conference in Sydney, the database company suggested Linux deployments had grown beyond an adoption phase, and were now becoming ubiquitous in small and large businesses alike. Monica Kumar, director of Oracle's Linux programme office, pointed to the open source operating system becoming mainstream as "businesses are looking to Linux as a way to save...

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Dell will be partnering with Novell in April to provide server customers with a single console to manage hardware and software on Linux servers.

Here's the Order [PDF] by Magistrate Judge Brooke Wells from the hearing on December 20, 2005 on IBM's motion to compel a recalcitrant SCO to hand over what SCO claimed were privileged materials and on SCO's New Renewed Motion to Compel Discovery. We know the outcome, because Judge Wells announced her decisions on both motions at the hearing from the bench. But now we have it in writing. IBM won its motion, and the order includes the following priceless gem: 1. In the Novell to Santa Cruz transaction, Novell did not transfer to Santa Cruz the entirety of Novell's business;...

In May 2005, a trojan called PGPcoder was discovered in the wild by Websense Security Labs. The trojan's purpose was to encrypt a user's files, then demand a ransom for their decryption. Although this scheme seemed novel, it is actually predated by over 15 years, by a similar scam in 1989. LURHQ's Threat Intelligence Group has now discovered a third such scheme involving ransomware which we are calling Cryzip. Unlike PGPcoder, which used a custom encryption scheme (which was subsequently reverse-engineered by LURHQ), Cryzip uses a commercial zip library in order to store files inside a password-protected zip. Although the...

Bill Gates was recently named one of Time's people of the year for the incredible amounts of money he has given to fight poverty and disease around the world. But just because Bill cares about poor people doesn't mean that he wants to see them use Linux. Gates demonstrated the new Ultra-Mobile PC (UMPC) at the Microsoft Government Leaders Forum this week, and later began trash talking the US$100 PC currently under development at MIT. It's hard to see how a philanthropist could not love a device designed to put basic computing power in the hands of every child on...

  New Search Engine "Gulag.com" Coming To USA By Red Square3/14/2006, 6:43 pm A powerful search tool, originally designed to the rigorous specifications of the Chinese government, is now available in the USA . The latest innovations in search technology allow Gulag.com to provide you with search results without even having to type! Just click one button - your search will be returned immediately. Coming soon is the "advanced" mode, where you can actually type in your request! Immediately, your search is refined before even being submitted! No more faulty searches where you have to retype your query! No more...

Google has now begun censoring web results in the USA. Previously they have admitted censoring sites in China. Like the Chinese censorship the sites being cut from the search results are anti-communist. The following letter is from the web site "The Peoples Cube Worldwide" which is a parody-of-Marxism site. Google Purges The People's Cube Worldwide By Red Square 3/10/2006, 10:13 pm Open letter #2 to Google from the People's Cube (posted on Google.com Help Center at 8:30pm on March 10, 2006 Dear comrades at Google: At some point, quite recently, our popular site "The People's Cube" (ThePeoplesCube.com) was purged from...

I often find myself comparing the strife and pathos of the information technology industry to Greek and Shakespearean tragedies. Yet, the current debate on GPL 3.0 has me thinking back to my high school European history class. In the late 15th century, the Renaissance was at its height and Florence was at its center. Under the patronage of the Medici family, "humanist" scholars were fueling an explosion in new works of art, science and philosophy. Though it was also a time of increased vice (drinking, gambling and lipstick), most of these humanists were dedicated Christians who were merely reconciling their...

IBM switching to Linux destops in Germany according to a Linux Forum 2006 presentation by their head of open source and Linux sales in Germany. Interesting news from LinuxForum 2006During a presentation on IBM's involvement with Open Source, Andreas Pleschek from IBM in Stuttgart, Germany, who heads open source and Linux technical sales across North East Europe for IBM made a very interesting statement... "Andreas Pleschek also told that IBM has cancelled their contract with Microsoft as of October this year. That means that IBM will not use Windows Vista for their desktops. Beginning from July, IBM employees will begin using IBM...

Michael Dell, chairman of Dell Inc. believes in offering Linux on the desktop, server, and workstation. What he doesn't believe in, for now, is giving Linux full support on the desktop. In an exclusive interview, Dell explained his company's Linux desktop strategy to DesktopLinux.com's Steven J. Vaughan Nichols. "People are always asking us to support Linux on the desktop, but the question is: 'Which Linux are you talking about?'," Dell asked.

From our "Linux is for Total Newbies" series, courteousy of Robert Milner for reallylinux.com. Still hesitant to try Linux? I'd like to share a revelation with you. See, for me, Linux adoption always seemed a bit of a battle to get out there on the desktop. No, I'm not talking about getting it installed. The major flavor providers have made stellar strides in set-up, making it a breeze. Take a look for yourself at the powerful and useful features in Debian, Fedora, Mandriva, and SuSe. There are easy to learn graphical interfaces like Gnome, KDE, or XFCE to name a...

Hewlett-Packard has announced that it will certify Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 4 as the preferred operating system for its new AdvancedTCA Blade Server, which the company debuted last week at the 3GSM World Congress. The new blade server is HP's most recent addition to its Advanced Open Telecom Platform (AOTP) blueprint, a line based on the Advanced Telecom Computing Architecture (ATCA) industry standard created by the PCI Industrial Manufacturer's Group (PICMG). The AOTP is HP's suite of hardware, carrier-grade Linux, and software that supports the ATCA standard. HP's bh5700 server is a shelf-management subsystem with a 14-slot backplane made...

Apple's newly acquired OS, NeXTstep was built on the Mach 3.0 kernel, the same microkernel used by GNU/Hurd. Though by then the Mach kernel was largely abandoned, another kernel, Linux, was gaining support and seeing rapid development. The project at Carnegie Mellon to develop Mach had ended in 1994, two years before Apple acquired NeXT. As early as 1991 papers were published documenting performance issues with the Mach kernel. At the time there was much debate over kernel design, 1992 marked the now famous flame war between Linus Torvalds and Andy Tanenbaum over monolithic vs. microkernel design. Even though Apple...

Is Dell is on its way to becoming the first tier-one PC vendor to offer a mainstream business Linux desktop to US customers? It's starting to look that way. In the recent past, Dell has toyed with shipping a Linux-powered PC to the US market. But, when push came to shove, the results -- a Dimension E510n PC shipped with an empty hard drive, a copy of the obscure, open-source FreeDOS operating system and no support if you did install Linux -- were less then impressive. It's a different story for so-called workstations priced nearly as cheaply as desktops. Dell...

The SCO Group Inc. had a couple motions denied Friday in its ongoing case against International Business Machines Corp.       U.S. Magistrate Judge Brooke Wells ruled that Lindon-based SCO should not get more time for depositions of people at Intel, Oracle and The Open Group and denied a different motion to force IBM to provide more documentation in the case. She did give SCO 30 days to file a renewed motion but said it must "narrowly" define areas that have not been covered in documents IBM already has provided to SCO.       SCO has filed a...

Hold on to your hats! IBM has subpoenaed Microsoft! And Sun! At last, we're getting to the core of the matter. We're going to get to find out the whole story. I'd pay for this. No kidding. Feast your eyes on these and don't skip the topics for deposition: * Plaintiff IBM's Notice of Service of Subpoenas Duces Tecum - yes, plaintiff for the countercharge...oops, I meant counterclaims * Exhibit A - HP's (deposition set for March 15, 9 AM) * Exhibit B - Baystar's (deposition set for March 16, 9 AM) * Exhibit C - Microsoft's (deposition set for...

SCO WAS taken out behind the woodshed by Intel a few days ago in one of the more unfriendly court filings in a long and extremely unfriendly case. The 64K question is not what happened, that is more than adequately documented on Groklaw, the real question is why SCO, or its attorneys got so stupid. The short story for those not reading along with PJ, Darl and the gang is this, SCO faced a discovery cutoff in late January, and by all accounts had little or no evidence as the curtains were being drawn. It was desperate for an extension...