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Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on Wednesday pegged three key areas of focus for Microsoft this year: competing with Linux in the high-end server market, software as a service (SaaS) and Internet advertising. Speaking at Santa Clara, Calif., event hosted by two Silicon Valley groups, Churchill Club and Commonwealth Club, Ballmer said Microsoft may not be reporting 20 percent growth like the old days but the company has an innovation agenda that "qualifies us as a growth company." "The greatest competitive threat we face is our own ability to either embrace or compete with alternative business models," Ballmer said. In the...

SummaryLinux is found to be much faster than Apple's OS X for statistical computing. And although Linux is 5 to 10 percent faster than Windows XP, both are markedly faster than OS X. For example, in one benchmark both Linux and Windows XP are more than twice as fast as OS X. The results on this page were conducted on a MacBookpro with a 2.16Ghz Intel Core Duo chip and 2GB of RAM. I had previous conducted Linux vs. Mac OS X and Windows XP and Opteron vs. G5 and Pentium benchmarks. Those results were terrible for OS X and...

URL: http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/software/soa/Sun_to_make_Java_more_Linux_friendly/0,2000061733,39255431,00.htm Sun Microsystems plans to alter its licensing to make it easier to bundle Java Runtime Environment with Linux. The company will announce the changes and at least one other open-source move at the JavaOne conference later this month, Sun executives said during a press teleconference on Thursday. Laurie Tolson, a vice president in the Java platform group, said that Sun, which licenses Java to other software companies, has modified the terms to be more favourable to open-source operating systems, specifically Linux and OpenSolaris. She said the changes affect the Java Runtime Environment (JRE), the software that needs to...

2008 will be a critical year for Apple, Microsoft, and the Linux contingent. If Apple can't significantly expand its presence by then in the PC market it is likely going to be finished with this segment. Its likely path in that case will be to focus more aggressively on the consumer electronics market it currently dominates.I mentioned last week that I was planning to attend the Linspire-sponsored Linux Desktop Summit where the discussion would include reasons the folks who build PCs don't want to do Linux. Indeed, some of the commentary at the event related to Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) and...

Linspire Announces 'Freespire' Version of Their Popular Linux Operating System Freespire Community Project to Offer Unique Mix of Both Proprietary and Open Source Options in Free Linux Operating System SAN DIEGO, April 24, 2006 - Linspire, developer of the popular commercial desktop Linux operating system of the same name, today announced plans for a no-cost version of their operating system called Freespire. Kevin Carmony, Linspire's President and CEO, unveiled the Freespire project in his keynote address this morning at the 4th Annual Desktop Linux Summit, running today and tomorrow in San Diego. In his remarks, Carmony explained how Freespire is...

OK, I am a very technical person. I have installed Operating Systems but they were Minaframes (OS/390 and UNIX). I have a old laptop (Compaq Armada 500) that I want to install Linux on (upon which I wish to install Linux?). But I have been out of the OS biz for a while, so can someone get me started? I am concerned about things like coordinating the BIOS with the OS, getting the proper drivers (especially wifi), etc. etc. etc. Any first steps would be greatly appreciated.

Federal Aviation Administration Saves $15 Million by Migrating to Red Hat Enterprise Linux; FAA Achieves 30 Percent More Operational Efficiency for 50 Percent Less Cost Apr 26, 2006 8:00:00 AM Copyright Business Wire 2006 RALEIGH, N.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 26, 2006-- Red Hat (NASDAQ: RHAT), the world's leading provider of open source to the enterprise, today announced that the U.S. Department of Transportation's Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) saved the federal government more than $15 million in datacenter operating and upgrading costs by migrating to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The FAA executed a major systems migration to Red Hat Enterprise Linux in one-third...

I have a fried CD-RW. I don't know how it got that way (died all of a sudden). So, in the meantime, I'm borrowing an external Yamaha and have it hooked up--as I can't afford to replace the CD-drive. Question 1: I'm running Suse 10.0 Eval, first updated KDE to 3.5.1 and then updated the kernel to 2.6.16-default. Since the kernel upgrade, I cannot get any USB devices to start. I've tried editing /etc/fstab as recommended, but the devices won't mount--and if they do, nothing shows up in Konqueror. I did however, and only once, did Question 2: How can...

Imagine the fate of your company rests on your completing your new Linux project on time. You have a crack team of first-class developers, but they're all .Net programmers. What are you going to do? Admit that Windows is better that Linux? Cry? Resign? No, you're going to install Mono and save the world! Mono is an open source project (sponsored by Novell) that allows you to run .Net applications on Linux (as well as Unix, Mac OS X, Solaris and even Windows). To obtain it, go to the Mono download page and find the version you need for your...

In various studies, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) Latest News about Microsoft and some analysts have claimed Linux has a higher total cost of ownership (TCO) than Windows. They attributed the difference mainly to higher system management Latest News about system management costs, and concluded that the higher TCO outweighed the lower license and acquisition costs for Linux. In a new study of more than 200 Linux enterprises conducted for Levanta, however, Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) found that this perception is no longer accurate. Sophisticated management tools now allow Linux management to be fast, effective and inexpensive. With lower acquisition costs, Linux...

Rebooting Your Airbus (After All The Screens Go Dark) April 24, 2006 By Russ Niles, Newswriter, Editor Cures aside, pilots of Airbus A320-series airliners are getting new guidance on what to do if the screens on their electronically biased aircraft go blank. "Checklists will be streamlined so re-booting of power is quicker," an Airbus spokesman told the London Daily Mirror after Britain's Air Accidents Investigation Branch released a report on an incident aboard a British Airways A319 last October. The plane was carrying 76 passengers to Budapest from London when most of the electronic displays went blank. The crew was...

(IDG NEWS SERVICE) - Oracle Corp. customers are intrigued by recent comments by Larry Ellison, the company's CEO, suggesting that Oracle might offer its own Linux distribution (see "Update: Oracle eyes launching its own Linux version"). Users would welcome the tighter integration offered by a complete Oracle software stack of operating system, database, middleware and applications, they said in interviews this week. "An Oracle-hatched version of Linux would undoubtedly be the most optimal when running Oracle [databases]," said Tony Jedlinski, vice president of administration and warehouse operations at Roman Inc., a wholesale giftware distributor in Addison, Ill. "I don't know...

NEW YORK - In a move to make the freely distributed Linux operating system a stronger alternative to Microsoft Corp.'s Windows, a group of major Linux distributors announced Friday they have united on a standard set of components for desktop versions of Linux. The standard created by the Free Standards Group should make it easier for developers to write applications that will work on Linux versions from different distributors. Linux has a firm foothold as an operating system for servers - it's popular for hosting Web sites, for instance - but has only a few percent of the desktop market....

I'll leave a fuller examination of Vista's broken promises for a later date. For now, let's look at the most current builds we do have--build 5308 and 5342--and see where Vista just completely blows it. As with the broken promises, Vista's failures are legion, but I'll just focus on a few examples here and leave the full list for a later time.

The past few weeks have revealed much about the great paradox that is China. It is a nation that wants a capitalist lifestyle with centralised totalitarian rule. The past weeks have also revealed a lot about the Western World's biggest IT companies, Namely, they'll do just about anything to crack the giant fortune cookie market. Some will give away their software, others will allow their search results to be censored and others may even be prepared to help the Chinese Government track down its dissidents. The more principled ones among us may say: "IT companies beware of the Chinese trap."...

For years scientists trying to visualize the concept of gravitational waves churned by the collision of black holes have relied largely on artists' conceptions. Now, at long last, they have Einstein's conception. According to Einstein, when two massive black holes merge, all of space jiggles like a bowl of Jell-O as gravitational waves race out from the collision at light speed. This is a mind-boggling notion, to be sure. NASA scientists have reached a breakthrough in computer modeling that allows them to simulate what gravitational waves from merging black holes look like. The three-dimensional simulations are a manifestation of Einstein's...

Amazing story wasn't it, when that iconic tech company said it would help users run the operating system of its longtime rival as well as its own? No, not the Apple Computer-Windows announcement, but one made at about the same time that got vastly less attention, even though it may be more significant. On April 3, Microsoft surprised everyone when it said that from now on, it will support business customers who also use Linux. Considering how, not long ago, a top Microsoft executive was comparing the free Linux operating system to cancer, it was quite a switch. But two...

Last November I described the Free Software's Surprising Affinity with Catholic Doctrine. Since then, several important things happened, from feedback by Stallman and other Free SW users to the birth, or acceleration, of some projects specifically based on the concept that Christians have even more reasons than others to adopt Free Software.

Oracle is studying whether to launch its own version of the Linux operating system and has looked at buying one of the two companies currently dominating the Linux world, according to Larry Ellison, the software company’s chief executive officer. Such a move would redraw the software landscape and open a new front in Oracle’s long rivalry with US rival Microsoft. In an interview with the Financial Times, Mr Ellison said that Oracle wanted to sell a full “stack” of software that, like Microsoft, included both operating system and applications. “I’d like to have a complete stack,” he said. “We’re missing...

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