News Common PC Linux Mac CUCUG
The February 19 gathering will be one of our joint SIG meetings. The Linux SIG will move into main meeting time so Tom Purl can show all of us Plone, a web development tool for easy, dynamic, web site creation. Also on the bill, Kevin Hisel will show us some of the latest 3-D images from our Mars explorers.
We'd also like to thank renewing members John Baird, Selena Douglass, Kevin Hopkins, Kris Klindworth, Jeff Strong and Michael Habermann.
We welcome any kind of input or feedback from members. Run across an interesting item or tidbit on the net? Just send the link to the editor. Have an article or review you'd like to submit? Send it in. Have a comment? Email any officer you like. Involvement is the driving force of any user group. Welcome to the group.
Here's the list of FREE products some lucky members will WIN at the next meeting, courtesy of Microsoft (please note, you must be a 2004 member of CUCUG to participate in the drawing):
Microsoft Works Suite 2004 (Street Price $94.99)
Works Suite includes six popular Microsoft home products in one, easy-to- use package. Works Suite includes Microsoft Works, Microsoft Word and the latest versions of Microsoft Money Standard, Microsoft Encarta standard, Microsoft Streets & Trips, and Microsoft Picture It! Photo Premium. It's one of the best software values you can find!
- Six popular Microsoft home products in one, easy-to-use package
- Microsoft Works, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Money Standard, Encarta
standard, and more
- Task Launcher brings all six products into an easy-to-use interface
- 500 pre-designed templates for personal, household, school, and
community related tasks
- With Works Suite you can qualify for discounted upgrade pricing for
Microsoft Office 2003
Microsoft Office System T-Shirt (Large)
Have you been downloading the pictures from the two(!) Mars rovers from the JPL site ( http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/index.html )? They have some pretty nice images on the server and quite a good collection of high-res photos. NASA has also posted a number of three-dimensional pictures that require red/blue glasses to view properly.
I was frustrated at not being able to view these graphics on my PC so I searched the Internet and found a supplier for red/blue 3D glasses. I purchased 20 of them and I'll be bringing them to the meeting to hand out (free) to anyone interested (I have 19 left).
On my day off today, Karen and I went to Champaign to bum around. One place that I hunted down was the Obsolete Technology Recycling place I mentioned at the last meeting. If you enter from the 126 W. Main address I gave you, you will find it. You just happen to have to go through a flower shop to get to it. It used to be Benchmark Computers. Anyway, it does exist, and they do take all older computing equipment for recycling. Also, the phone number (if anyone wants to call) is 367-9716, or you can email them at jroyer@compet-edge.com, according to the business card I got when I was there. You might check out monitor recycling there. It is supposed to be free. Finally, if you wait until after Feb. 1, they will have a warehouse which will take the equipment, making it that much easier to get to. You will have to call after 2/1 to get directions to the warehouse.
The next meeting of the PC Users Group will be on Wednesday, February 18, 2004 from 7 to 9 pm in Room 1310 of the Digital Computing Laboratory. (Yes, indeed, after a bit of a wandering sojourn over the course of the last several months, we will once again return to our familiar surroundings in Room 1310 DCL!)
David Harley will discuss how PKZip (from www.pkzip.org) can be used to back up files on your PC. We will also have an Open Discussion on Digital Photos, Digital Editing, and Digital Photo Albums, where members will be encouraged to share whatever tips and expertise they may have gained on these topics. We'll attempt to generate a number of URLs for freeware and inexpensive software on these topics and compare notes on what software packages members of the group have already had the opportunity to sample.
Before the meeting (from 5:45 pm to 6:45 pm), we will have our usual (optional) dinner at Garcia's Pizza on Green Street for anyone who may want to stop by and join us. (See http://www2.uiuc.edu/ro/pcug/pizza.html for more details.)
Apple Computer posted a $63 million profit on just over $2 billion in revenue for its first fiscal quarter of 2004, boosted by strong sales of laptop computers and increasingly obligatory iPod digital music players. Apple's gross margin was 26.7 percent, with international sales accounting for 44 percent of the quarter's revenue (although the strong Euro boosted Apple's sales in Europe). Apple also tucked some money away: the company now has just under $4.8 billion in the bank.
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2004/jan/14results.html
Apple says it shipped 829,000 Macs and 730,000 iPods during the quarter - and could have sold more iPods if it had been able to keep up with demand. More than 200,000 of the Macs sold were iBooks and 195,000 were PowerBook G4 systems. Both figures are substantially higher than totals for a year ago and lend some credence to CEO Steve Jobs's claim that 2003 would be "the year of the laptop." Sales of other lines - eMac/iMac and Power Mac - weren't as strong as in the third quarter, although the introduction of Power Mac G5 systems let the high-end systems show a year-to-year gain, where iMac and eMac sales declined both year-to-year and quarter-to-quarter. [GD]
Apple announced last week that the company's well-respected chief financial officer Fred Anderson will retire 01-Jun-04; he will be replaced by current comptroller and finance VP Peter Oppenheimer, who has been leading many of Apple's financial departments for some time. Apple plans to appoint Anderson to its Board of Directors once he retires; Anderson also serves on the boards of eBay and E.piphany. Anderson came to Apple from ADP in 1996 (bringing Oppenheimer along with him in 1997) and quickly found himself playing a key role in leading Apple's day-to-day operations following the resignation of Apple CEO Gil Amelio in 1997. At that time, current CEO Steve Jobs was merely a "key advisor" who would be helping out with the so-called CEO search committee; he wouldn't be formally crowned CEO until early 2000. Although Steve Jobs' near-legendary vision and re-invention of the Macintosh and Apple's product line has been central to Apple's recovery, Anderson also played a key role in shepherding the company through some of its darkest hours, in part by keeping the company out of significant debt and preventing it from becoming a takeover target. [GD]
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2004/feb/05anderson.html
User groups have long been one of the mainstays of the Macintosh community, which is why we've always encouraged user group newsletters to reprint TidBITS articles for free. Now we want to extend that support to our new Take Control series of electronic books, so we're offering all user group members coupons that are good for 10 percent off all orders. We're also planning to provide a free copy of each book to user groups for raffling off and/or review in the group newsletter. If you're in a user group, ask one of the officers of your group to contact me at (ace@tidbits.com), and I'll put your group on our list to receive the free copies and the discount coupons. [ACE]
http://www.tidbits.com/takecontrol/
By Marsha Walton, CNN
Saturday, January 24, 2004 Posted: 12:42 PM EST (1742 GMT)
URL: http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/ptech/01/23/mac.birthday/index.html
(CNN) -- Its dedicated users are so passionate they're often described as religious about their love for the machine.
Twenty years ago, on January 24, 1984, Apple Computer launched the Macintosh. It contained virtually unknown features, including simple icons, and an odd little attachment called a mouse.
Many newspaper stories at the time had to include a definition. Silicon Valley's newspaper The San Jose (California) Mercury News, for example, described the mouse as "a handheld device that, when slid across a table top, moves the cursor on the Mac's screen."
Apple co-founder Steve Jobs dubbed the Macintosh "the people's computer." Jobs and business partner Steve Wozniak -- a math and computer junkie -- had sold their first computer, the Apple I, in 1976. They had put it together in a garage.
"The Mac's a symbol of a whole revolution, and most of us that participated in it from the beginning and believed in it bought into these new ideals of computers to really help people, and not something that you had to fight, memorize and learn," Wozniak told CNN. "That whole revolution just continues in our hearts to this day."
With such an innovative and intuitive product, then why is Apple's market share just 3 percent to 5 percent, with Microsoft Windows claiming more than 90 percent worldwide?
"What Apple does so well is to focus on research and design to produce the most intuitive device and the most elegant device," communications professor Ted Friedman of Georgia State University said.
"The problem has always been that Apple was first but other companies have been able to come in and undercut them on price, and gradually appropriate all the features that made Apple special," Friedman explained.
Still, Apple computers have come a long way since their introduction, when IBM's machines, not Microsoft, were the standard. Back then, people who operated computers were part of an elite club: either hobbyists who built their own, or folks in lab coats who worked on mainframes.
Friedman said the point-and-click Macintosh was destined to make both technological and cultural history.
"This was the product that inspired people in graphic design, and students, and other creative people. It was the whole idea of computers not just being something you would see in the office," Friedman said.
Techies trace that change in thinking to a TV ad that teased the Mac's debut during the 1984 Super Bowl. Even today that ad is considered one of the best ever produced.
"It was a pivotal moment in the history of computers and the history of advertising," said Friedman, whose book "Electric Dreams," on the cultural history of personal computers, is due out soon.
In the commercial a female athlete dodges storm troopers and throws a hammer to smash a giant authoritarian figure, who's ordering drone workers to conform and obey. Her message of power and autonomy, says Friedman, reflected Apple's belief that computing was more than mindless numbers crunching. It actually could fuel the creative process.
Jobs, Apple's CEO, was perhaps a good forecaster of the ubiquitous laptops, desktops, and personal digital assistants of today, when he predicted two decades ago that Macs would not be just an office tool.
"People are going to bring them home to work on something Sunday morning, they're not going to be able to get their kids away from them, and maybe someday they may even buy a second one to use at home," Jobs said, the day he introduced the simple beige box back in 1984.
But internal dramas at Apple also contributed to its notorious ups and downs. Jobs left the company in a power struggle in the late 80s. The firm floundered in a PC-dominated world.
But Jobs' star continued to rise. He joined the enormously successful animation studio Pixar, makers of hits such as "Toy Story" and "Finding Nemo." Jobs returned to Apple in the '90s as the visionary savior, and the company returned to making products considered ahead of their time: the iPod music player, iTunes song download service, and the iMovie video editing software to name just three.
Known in tech circles as "The Wizard of Woz," Wozniak never formally left Apple, but he's only involved in a few consulting projects at the company these days. The former Hewlett-Packard engineer spends most of his time working for his firm "Wheels of Zeus," which is expected to launch some products later this year.
"It was just a little bit disappointing that Apple kind of got itself into the situation where they didn't so much own what they had really brought to market," he said.
In a legal fight through much of the 90's, Apple accused Microsoft of ripping off Macintosh interfaces in Windows. The case was settled out of court in 1997. But despite his frustrations with the outcome of the case, Wozniak is proud of being part of a revolution that started in a garage.
"Macintosh users tend to be a very independent type, and they tend to be very loyal to their product," Wozniak said. "They've been threatened with [Macs] going out of business and being put out of their schools and out of their companies, and they've got to fight. There's so much passion for it."
The U.S. Justice Department on Friday expressed concern that Microsoft has not completely lived up to its agreement to disclose Windows communications protocols, as required by a 2002 antitrust agreement.
In an 18-page filing with U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, the government said the Microsoft Communications Protocol Program has "fallen short" of fully satisfying the settlement and that "additional work still needs to be done."
In that settlement, designed to end seven years of antitrust litigation, Microsoft agreed to disclose each communication protocol used in Windows 2000 Professional or Windows XP and to make them available for licensing for a fee. Depending on the application, the fees range from $8 to $950 for each copy sold by the third-party developer, less any volume discounts.
The Justice Department has "determined that further improvements need to be made to the licensing program," including simplifying the contracts and developing more straightforward ways to calculate licensing fees, the Friday filing said. The government did acknowledge that "Microsoft has agreed to make additional modifications" to the program to respond to those concerns.
Microsoft said in its own statement, filed jointly with the government's, that it "has made full compliance with its obligations under the final judgments a top priority of the company, and the company continues to devote substantial resources to its compliance work."
Soon, it will release a "much shorter" license agreement and make approximately two dozen protocols available, with a simpler cost structure, Microsoft said.
In 2002, Microsoft entered a consent decree with the Bush administration, which Kollar-Kotelly approved, to settle the long-running antitrust case. It also established a schedule for ongoing antitrust oversight of the company's actions. The next hearing, before Kollar-Kotelly, is scheduled for next week.
Also on Friday, the state of Massachusetts claimed that Microsoft may be unlawfully wielding its desktop dominance to put the squeeze on search engines and on document formats like Adobe Acrobat. Massachusetts is the only government entity still pursuing Microsoft through the U.S. courts, and its attempt to overturn the consent decree is currently before a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C.
VANCOUVER - A student in British Columbia who made news around the world when he took on Microsoft over his domain name now stands to make thousands of dollars on the Internet auction site eBay.
[SR Editor's Note: Actually, a lot of the bids were bogus. The winning bid was for $1,037.00 US from buyandsellyams. The auction ended on 06-Feb-04 01:24:05 EST. http://cgi.ebay.ca/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3382073018&category=2312 ]
Mike Rowe, from the Victoria area of B.C., has put his 25 pages of correspondence with Microsoft's lawyers up for auction on eBay, along with an inch-thick document outlining Microsoft's case to the World Intellectual Property Organization in Geneva.
"I have two copies of these and I will be keeping one for my own personal memoirs," Rowe wrote in the text accompanying the Internet auction item.
By 1 p.m. ET Friday, there were 98 bids for the material. Bidding had soared to over $33,000, with six and a half days to go before the sale closed.
Rowe, 17, found himself at the wrong end of an international copyright complaint a few weeks ago when he refused to give up the address for his web-development Internet site, mikerowesoft.com.
When Microsoft told him he had to remove the site from the web and offered to reimburse him $10 for the cost of registering the domain name, he refused.
"I felt sort of insulted at that time because I'd spent so much time designing my website," Rowe told the CBC. "So I guess in spite, I e-mailed them back asking for $10,000, and that didn't go over too well."
Microsoft lawyers fired back a 25-page letter and an inch-thick document outlining their case to the World Intellectual Property Organization in Geneva.
* FROM JAN. 23, 2004: Microsoft and mikerowesoft.com come to terms
Eventually he and Microsoft settled, after news of the dispute broke and millions of people logged on to mikerowesoft.com to check it out.
The company agreed to pay any expenses the high school student incurred during the process, provide him with Microsoft certification training, and give him an Xbox video game system.
Written by CBC News Online staff
What's new: When Microsoft prolonged support for Windows 98 and other older Windows versions, many customers applauded the move. But some analysts said it wasn't necessarily an act of goodwill.A move by Microsoft to extend support for an older version of Windows underscores a new reality for the software giant: Convincing customers to upgrade is becoming much more difficult.
Earlier this month, Microsoft backtracked from a decision to end support for Windows 98 and other older Windows versions, pledging to continue support until 2006.
While many customers applauded the move, some analysts said that the decision may be more than an act of goodwill. According to recent surveys, about one-quarter of all PCs run Windows 98 or older versions of Windows. "Better to have people stay on Windows 98 than to start investigating things like Linux," said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at Jupiter Research.
Microsoft maintains that it was just looking out for customers--mainly in developing markets--when it extended support for Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition and Windows ME. Of course, the call for Linux on the desktop has been strongest in emerging markets such as China, as some governments, both foreign and domestic, are actively investigating whether to switch from Windows to other operating systems.
Whatever the company's motives, the move highlights a growing area of concern for Microsoft: How can the software maker persuade existing customers--especially consumers who see their current software as "good enough"--to regularly upgrade? Excluding new hardware sales, the company derives 42 percent of its revenue from one-time software licenses and upgrades.
Microsoft has historically used two methods to move its customers to a new release of Windows or Office: Convince them of the merits of upgrading or cut off support, said Gartenberg. The threat of a support cutoff for Windows 98 undoubtedly got some people to upgrade, but as the deadline neared, Microsoft saw that not everyone was going to make the switch.
"A lot of the marketplace said, 'We're not going to be pushed along," Gartenberg said.
Some consumers have machines that just can't be upgraded to run Windows XP. "We have older hardware and are unwilling to invest at the drop of a hat thousands of dollars to refit the hardware," said Mike Flynn, a software consultant based in the Seattle area.
Comments like that underscore the need for Microsoft to do more to convince customers, particularly consumers and small-business owners, of the advantages of moving to a more modern operating system, analysts said. "They haven't done a phenomenal job yet of evangelizing folks to get on to Windows XP," the most current version of Windows on the desktop, Gartenberg said. "Getting folks on Windows XP really should be the priority at this point."
The company has tried to convince customers to upgrade more regularly, particularly through licensing programs in which customers pay an annual fee to get access to all updates for a particular product. However, analysts have expressed concern that the company's take from licenses--known as its unearned revenue balance--has dipped sharply in the last two quarters. Licensing accounts for just over a quarter of Microsoft's revenue.
And if some customers are still clinging to a 6-year-old version of Windows, will they want new, more complex versions now in development? Microsoft is spending billions of dollars to develop Longhorn, the code name for a new version of Windows expected in 2006.
"I think it depends on the use cases; for the moms and pops that use (Windows) for e-mail, no, or enterprises that keep it around because they run some ancient DOS apps, probably not," said Steve O'Grady, an analyst at research firm RedMonk.
Microsoft argues that the issue of whether or not to support Windows 98 is not a major one for large companies, saying much of its support request for the older operating systems is coming from consumers overseas. Most companies, Microsoft says, upgrade their operating systems within the five-year period during which it offers mainstream support.
However, polls show that Microsoft's older operating systems still enjoy widespread use, both worldwide and at large corporations in the United States. AssetMetrix, a firm that advises companies on software upgrades, said in December that 80 percent of the companies it surveyed had at least one PC running Windows 95 or 98. Of those companies that did have one of the older operating systems, Windows 95 and 98 made up nearly 40 percent of all systems.
Given those numbers, it made sense for Microsoft to extend support, said Steve O'Halloran, managing director of AssetMetrix Research Labs. Squeezed by shrinking information technology budgets, many companies didn't upgrade over the past few years, he said. "The customer was needing support, and Microsoft was gracious enough to throw them a lifeline. It's in everybody's best interest.
"Those old Pentiums--sub-500MHz machines--are still in considerable numbers. Until those machines are properly retired, the ability to migrate to an operating system with greater requirements won't happen."
The hidden cost
However, while many hailed the decision to extend Windows 98 support as an unambiguous victory for the consumer, others said there is a definite cost to both businesses and consumers who choose to stay with the older software.
Continued support from Microsoft will likely keep Windows 98 machines around longer, which means other software developers will have to support the OS longer, said Ray Vizzone, chief technology officer of Recommended Test Labs. Vizzone, whose company helps software makers determine which operating systems they need to test their products against, said that schools, in particular, won't upgrade until they have to.
"Education tends to stay with older OSes longer," Vizzone said. "Those developing for the education market would like not to test on so many operating systems."
But with Microsoft prolonging support, Vizzone said, Windows 98 is likely to remain fairly prevalent in schools. "As we go back to our clients, we're advising them that Windows 98 really can't be removed from your testing matrix."
Companies will need to spend money to ensure backward compatibility that otherwise could go into developing new features.
Another cost comes in the danger of crying wolf, argued Michael Cherry, an analyst at research firm Directions on Microsoft. "Some customers have gone to management and in good faith said, 'We need to upgrade because support is going to end,'" he said.
With Microsoft's about-face on Windows 98 support, the next time an end-of-life deadline looms, companies may decide to delay their upgrade to see if Microsoft blinks.
"I fully believe Microsoft has a right to set these end-of-life dates," Cherry said. However, he added, they should be more fixed. "This sort of trial balloon lifecycle is just no good for anybody."
Microsoft, for its part, points out that the end-of-life dates are always minimum support commitments, meaning the company could choose to extend support beyond those dates. The company said it has received only positive responses to the change, though a representative said that in the future, if Microsoft has to change its support plans for a product, it will do so earlier.
"I think if we make a change to a support lifecycle we will make those changes sooner in the support lifecycle," said Andy Erlandson, director of product support services for Microsoft. "That's one thing we learned from this go-around."
Linux waiting in the wings
The coming years may represent the best opportunity yet for Linux to make headway against Windows on the desktop, given customers' ambivalence toward upgrading, combined with Microsoft's extended product delivery schedule. The company is not planning a major upgrade to Windows XP until Longhorn arrives, perhaps around 2006. But when it does arrive, Microsoft promises a major advance that could widen the gap between what Windows has to offer versus competing operating systems. "Longhorn--if they can deliver on the vision--will be a very compelling upgrade, I think," RedMonk's O'Grady said.
"That's why Linux has to get established now," he said. "I think the climate is never going to be better for them and is likely to get significantly more difficult" with Longhorn.
On the server side of its operating system business, Microsoft faces a similar challenge. Windows NT 4 Server--long superceded by both Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003--still accounts for more than a quarter of Windows server installations. Paid support for NT 4 is ending at the end of this year, a fact that Microsoft touts prominently on a special Web site geared toward convincing server customers to upgrade to Windows Server 2003.
The software maker is walking a fine line, as it tries to gently nudge customers away from NT 4.0 without pushing them away from Windows entirely.
Sensing an opportunity, IBM last week launched an effort to try and woo Windows NT users to its Linux-based servers. An executive from Big Blue predicted that the workload from as many as half of the 2 million servers out there could eventually migrate to Linux-based machines.
Microsoft executives acknowledge the looming threat. "Anytime a customer is considering a platform change the field is wide open, not just Linux," said Jim Hebert, a general manager in Microsoft's Windows Server group.
Bottom line: Persuading existing customers to upgrade is becoming more and more difficult. As the threat of Linux looms, the software giant needs to convince consumers and small-business owners in particular of the advantages of moving to a more modern operating system.CNET News.com's Mike Ricciuti contributed to this report.
Related News
* LinuxWorld: Novell's debutante ball - January 20, 2004
http://news.com.com/2100-7344-5142679.html
* Older Windows versions win renewed support - January 12, 2004
http://news.com.com/2100-1016-5139644.html
* Users cling to old Microsoft operating systems - December 12, 2003
http://news.com.com/2100-1016-5121458.html
* Get this story's "Big Picture"
http://news.com.com/2104-1012-5151137.html
Should people have to buy electronic stamps to send e-mail?
Some Internet experts have long suggested that the rising tide of junk e-mail, or spam, would turn into a trickle if senders had to pay even as little as a penny for each message they sent. Such an amount might be minor for legitimate commerce and communications, but it could destroy businesses that send a million offers in hopes that 10 people will respond. The idea has been dismissed both as impractical and against the free spirit of the Internet.
Now, though, the idea of e-mail postage is getting a second look from the owners of the two largest e-mail systems in the world: Microsoft and Yahoo.
Ten days ago, Bill Gates, Microsoft's chairman, told the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that spam would not be a problem in two years, in part because of systems that would require people to pay money to send e-mail. Yahoo, meanwhile, is quietly evaluating an e-mail postage plan being developed by Goodmail, a Silicon Valley start-up company.
"The fundamental problem with spam is there is not enough friction in sending e-mail," said Brad Garlinghouse, Yahoo's manager for communications products.
The company is intrigued by the idea of postage, Garlinghouse said, because it would force mailers to send only those offers a significant number of people might accept. "All of a sudden, spammers can't behave without regard for the Internet providers' or end users' interests," he said.
Neither Yahoo nor Microsoft have made any commitment to charging postage, in part because the idea still faces substantial opposition among Internet users.
"Damn if I will pay postage for my nice list," said David Farber, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, who runs a mailing list on technology and policy with 30,000 recipients. He said electronic postage systems are likely to be too complex and would charge noncommercial users who should be able to send e-mail free.
"I suspect the cost of postage will start out small and it will rapidly escalate," he added.
Restarting talks
In the meantime, the big Internet providers, including Microsoft and Yahoo, in recent weeks have renewed talks that stalled last year about creating technological standards to help identify the senders of legitimate e-mail. That way, spammers would either have to identify themselves or risk that users would discard all anonymous mail.
But for the big Internet service providers, or ISPs, the prospect of e-mail postage creating a new revenue stream that could help offset the cost of their e-mail systems is undeniably attractive.
"Sending large volumes of e-mail involve costs that are paid for by the ISPs and eventually by consumers," said Linda Beck, executive vice president for operations at EarthLink. "Should there be some sort of financial responsibility borne by the originators of these large volume programs? I think there should." E-mail between private individuals, she added, ought to remain free.
Differentiating among classes of e-mail is one of the substantial technical difficulties that e-mail postage proposals face. In wrestling with this matter, academic researchers have proposed complex stamp systems in which each e-mail recipient sets the price for a message to enter his or her in-box. Gates talked at Davos about a system that would allow users to waive charges for friends and relatives.
Goodmail, founded by Daniel T. Dreymann, an Israeli entrepreneur, is developing a system that it hopes will be easier to adopt. It proposes that only high-volume mailers pay postage at first, at a rate of a penny a message, with the money going to the e-mail recipient's Internet access provider. (The company suggests, but does not require, that the Internet providers share the payments with their users, either through rebates or by lowering monthly fees.)
The Goodmail system is designed to work even if not all senders and not all Internet providers participate. A mass e-mailer would sign up with Goodmail, buying a block of stamps--actually an encrypted code number--that it would insert in the header of each e-mail message. If the Internet provider of the recipient participates in the system, it decrypts the stamp and submits it to Goodmail. Only then is the sender's account charged a penny and the receiving ISP paid the penny, minus a service fee by Goodmail for acting as a clearinghouse.
Senders do not pay for stamps that are not used, but they do pay whether an e-mail recipient reads the message or not.
Under this plan, Internet providers would still accept incoming e-mail without stamps. But that mail would be subject to the same sort of spam filters in use now, which can at times divert legitimate mail. The Internet providers would deliver all stamped mail without any filter. Goodmail does not require that stamped mail be requested by the recipient, the so-called opt-in requirement of most other antispam systems.
"The very notion that I have to get permission to send you a marketing message doesn't make sense and is not good public policy," said Richard Gingras, Goodmail's chief executive. Even so, he said that Goodmail would require mailers to verify their identities and to take people off their mailing lists if such a request was made.
This kind of approach would require major policy changes by Internet providers, which all ban unsolicited e-mail even if they have little ability to block it.
In fact, some experts worry that big spammers will indeed pay the postage. Charles Stiles, manager of the postmaster department at America Online, said he was concerned that such a system might restrict the wrong mail, adding, "It is the spammers who are the ones with the big pockets."
AOL is taking a different approach and is testing a system under development by the Internet Research Task Force. The system, called the "Sender Permitted From," or SPF, creates a way for the owner of an Internet domain, like AOL.com, to specify which computers are authorized to send e-mail with AOL.com return addresses. That allows a recipient's e-mail system to determine whether a message being represented as coming from someone at AOL.com really is from that address. Most spam being sent now uses forged return addresses.
Microsoft has been floating a similar proposal, labeled "caller ID," that could be expanded in the future to accommodate more-sophisticated antispam approaches, including Internet postage systems. Discussions are under way among the backers of SPF, Microsoft and others involved in e-mail to reach a compromise sender notification system.
All these proposals can run into problems, because there are legitimate cases when mail sent by one domain claims to be from another. For example, online greeting-card services will send messages with the return address of the person sending the card, even though the message does not go through the sender's e-mail account.
People taking part in the discussion say that companies like greeting-card services may need to change their e-mail software to comply with the new standards.
"Every proposed scheme will break parts of the way e-mail works today," said Hans Peter Brondmo, a senior vice president of Digital Impact who has represented big e-mailers in the spam technology negotiations. The challenge, he said, is to find a system that will require as little retrofitting as possible to e-mail systems.
Related News
* Gates reveals his 'magic solution' to spam - January 26, 2004
http://news.com.com/2100-1028-5147491.html
* AOL tests caller ID for e-mail - January 22, 2004
http://news.com.com/2100-1032-5145065.html
* Commentary: Spammers must pay - December 16, 2003
http://news.com.com/2030-1028-5125275.html
* Bush OKs spam bill--but critics not convinced - December 16, 2003
http://news.com.com/2100-1028-5124724.html
* Antispam methods aim to merge - October 24, 2003
http://news.com.com/2100-1038-5096820.html
* Get this story's "Big Picture"
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CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Put the inventor of the light-emitting diode and the maker of the world's fastest transistor together in a research laboratory and what kinds of bright ideas might surface? One answer is a light-emitting transistor that could revolutionize the electronics industry.
Professors Nick Holonyak Jr. and Milton Feng at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have uncovered a light-emitting transistor that could make the transistor the fundamental element in optoelectronics as well as in electronics. The scientists report their discovery in the Jan. 5 issue of the journal Applied Physics Letters.
"We have demonstrated light emission from the base layer of a heterojunction bipolar transistor, and showed that the light intensity can be controlled by varying the base current," said Holonyak, a John Bardeen Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Physics at Illinois. Holonyak invented the first practical light-emitting diode and the first semiconductor laser to operate in the visible spectrum.
"This work is still in the early stage, so it is not yet possible to say what all the applications will be," Holonyak said. "But a light-emitting transistor opens up a rich domain of integrated circuitry and high-speed signal processing that involves both electrical signals and optical signals."
A transistor usually has two ports: one for input and one for output. "Our new device has three ports: an input, an electrical output and an optical output," said Feng, the Holonyak Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Illinois. "This means that we can interconnect optical and electrical signals for display or communication purposes." Feng is credited with creating the world's fastest bipolar transistor, a device that operates at a frequency of 509 gigahertz.
Graduate student Walid Hafez fabricated the light-emitting transistor in the university's Micro and Nanotechnology Laboratory. Unlike traditional transistors, which are built from silicon and germanium, the light-emitting transistors are made from indium gallium phosphide and gallium arsenide.
"In a bipolar device, there are two kinds of injected carriers: negatively charged electrons and positively charged holes," Holonyak said. "Some of these carriers will recombine rapidly, supported by a base current that is essential for the normal transistor function."
The recombination process in indium gallium phosphide and gallium arsenide materials also creates infrared photons, the "light" in the researchers' light-emitting transistors. "In the past, this base current has been regarded as a waste current that generates unwanted heat," Holonyak said. "We've shown that for a certain type of transistor, the base current creates light that can be modulated at transistor speed."
Although the recombination process is the same as that which occurs in light-emitting diodes, the photons in light-emitting transistors are generated under much higher speed conditions. So far, the researchers have demonstrated the modulation of light emission in phase with a base current in transistors operating at a frequency of 1 megahertz. Much higher speeds are considered certain.
"At such speeds, optical interconnects could replace electrical wiring between electronic components on a circuit board," Feng said. This work could be the beginning of an era in which photons are directed around a chip in much the same fashion as electrons have been maneuvered on conventional chips.
"In retrospect, we could say the groundwork for this was laid more than 56 years ago with John Bardeen and Walter Brattain and their first germanium transistor," said Holonyak, who was Bardeen's first graduate student. "But the direct recombination involving a photon is weak in germanium materials, and John and Walter just wouldn't have seen the light - even if they had looked. If John were alive and we showed him this device, he would have to have a big grin."
News Bureau, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
807 South Wright Street, Suite 520 East, Champaign, Illinois 61820-6219
Telephone 217 333-1085, Fax 217 244-0161
(CNN) --Television's Captain Kangaroo, Bob Keeshan, died Friday morning (1/23/04) in Vermont, a family friend told CNN. He was 76.
He died after a long illness, his family told The Associated Press.
"Captain Kangaroo," a children's show, featured the walrus-mustached, bowl-haircut Keeshan entertaining youngsters with his gentle, whimsical humor. Among the show's other characters were the puppets Bunny Rabbit and Mr. Moose, as well as Dancing Bear and the laconic Mr. Green Jeans (Hugh Brannum).
The show ran on CBS from 1955 to 1985, and then moved to public television for six more years. The show won six Emmys and three Peabody Awards.
The format was simplicity itself: Keeshan would wander through the Treasure House, wearing his distinctive big-pocketed coat, and talk with Brannum and the puppets. He'd meet with guests, tell stories, and generally entertain.
Shows were frequently interrupted with silliness, such as hundreds of ping-pong balls dropping from the ceiling or Mr. Moose's knock-knock jokes.
But the mainstay was the grandfatherly Keeshan.
"I was impressed with the potential positive relationship between grandparents and grandchildren, so I chose an elderly character," Keeshan said, according to the AP.
In a statement issued by his son Michael, Keeshan's family said: "Our father, grandfather and friend was as passionate for his family as he was for America's children. He was largely a private man living an often public life as an advocate for all that our nation's children deserve."
"Captain Kangaroo" aired in the early mornings on CBS until 1985, when the network canceled the show to expand its morning news program.
Keeshan was named Broadcaster of the Year in 1979 by the International Radio and Television Society and was inducted into the National Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame in 1998. He also spent five years as the silent Clarabell the Clown on "The Howdy Doody Show."
Keeshan was closely involved with health and child-care issues, serving on several boards and working to provide child care to the children of large corporations.
When Fred Rogers, the gentle host of "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood," died last year, Keeshan recalled how they often spoke about the state of children's programming, according to the AP.
"I don't think it's any secret that Fred and I were not very happy with the way children's television had gone," Keeshan said.
Born in 1927 in suburban Long Island, the future Captain Kangaroo grew up in Forest Hills, New York, and was an NBC page for his last year of high school during World War II. He joined the Marines after graduation.
He returned to his page job after his discharge from the Marines, and attended Fordham University.
Keeshan is survived by three children and six grandchildren.
By Jeordan Legon
URL: http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/internet/01/27/mydoom.spread/index.html
(CNN) --A sneaky e-mail worm continued to clog Internet traffic Tuesday, spreading faster than previous Web bugs by appearing as an innocuous error message.
The worm -- dubbed "MyDoom," "Novarg" or "WORM_MIMAIL.R" -- was copying itself at a fierce pace, so fast that some companies were having to shut down their mail servers to stop it. And a new clue was emerging as to the source of the infection.
Virus experts suggested MyDoom's author was a fan of the Linux open source community, because the bug, which targets computers running Microsoft Windows, launched a Denial of Service Attack on SCO's site. Utah-based SCO Group, owner of the UNIX operating system, claims some versions of the Linux operating system use its proprietary code.
"The MyDoom worm takes the Linux Wars to a new intensity," said Chris Belthoff, an analyst for anti-virus firm Sophos. "It appears that the author of MyDoom may have taken the war of words from the courtrooms and Internet message boards to a new level by unleashing this worm which attacks SCO's Web site."
Infected messages were intercepted in 142 countries and one in 12 e-mails being protected by Britain-based MessageLabs was carrying the worm, the anti-virus vendor reported. In comparison, the widespread SoBig virus that hit last August -- at its peak -- only attacked 1 out of 17 e-mails handled by the firm. Web-monitoring firm Keynote said MyDoom slowed Internet performance significantly Monday afternoon. And the worm appeared to cause an "uptick in terms of performance" Tuesday morning, said Keynote analyst Roopak Patel.
"We're essentially watching the virus follow the sun as the various time zones come online," MessageLabs Chief Technical Officer Mark Sunner said.
The worm is contained in e-mails with random senders' addresses and subject lines. While the body of the e-mail varies, it usually includes what appears to be an error message, such as: "The message cannot be represented in 7-bit ASCII encoding and has been sent as a binary attachment."
While many computer users are savvy about not opening executable files or other attachments that may contain viruses, the latest worm masks itself as an innocuous text document or a file that your computer appears unable to read.
"This one is almost begging you to click on the attachment," said Sharon Ruckman, the head of anti-virus firm Symantec's security response team.
When loaded, some versions of the worm launch Notepad and show random characters. At the same time it replicates itself, opens a backdoor that could allow hackers to break in and, in some instances, installs a "keystroke" program that records everything being typed, including passwords and credit card numbers.
The worm also was spreading via popular Internet file sharing networks such as Kazaa, where it appeared with names such as "Winamp5" "ICQ2004-final." Nullsoft's Winamp offers an MP3 music-playing tool and ICQ is a popular Web chat program.
Anti-virus experts said MyDoom, which surfaced Monday afternoon, was on track to hit even more machines than Nimda, a 2001 worm that spread widely with an attachment that read "Readme.exe."
This time, besides the "binary attachment" message, MyDoom comes with all different file extensions including .pif, .zip and .csr. It also uses an attachment icon similar to one used for Windows text messages. All of this, security experts warn, was succeeding in tricking people into thinking the e-mail was legitimate.
The best thing to do to stop the spread of the worm, experts said, was to ignore or delete it. And to update anti-virus software.
After a relative lull in the number of viruses distributed during the holidays, anti-virus experts said last week's "Bagle" worm and now "MyDoom" were keeping Internet security gurus on their toes.
"The virus writers [are] ... back from vacation and they've started pushing out their creations," said Vincent Gullotto, who runs Network Associates' McAfee Anti-Virus Emergency Response Team.
-- MyDoom virus spells double trouble - http://news.com.com/2009-7349-5148600.html
(CNN) --E-mail users are being warned about a new identity theft scam that tries to snare victims by accusing them of violating the government's anti-terrorism Patriot Act.
The fraudulent message appears to be from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and asks people to verify their identity by clicking on a bogus Web link.
"In cooperation with the Department of Homeland Security, Federal, State and Local Governments [sic] your account has been denied insurance from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation due to suspected violations of the Patriot Act," the fraudulent e-mail states.
It goes on to claim that the person's deposit insurance will be suspended until certain private information, such as a bank account number, is submitted.
Hundreds of complaints have been registered throughout the United States since Friday, the FDIC said, but there's no way of knowing exactly how many consumers may have fallen victim. The FDIC and the FBI are investigating the source of the fraudulent e-mails and seeking to disrupt them.
An FDIC official said Monday the federal agencies seemed to have effectively shut down the scam over the weekend, but the originators of the e-mail have changed their tactics. The agency said there are now a few versions of the fraudulent e-mail circulating, each steering users to different Web sites.
"Unfortunately, they're still at it," the FDIC representative said. "But it appears that most consumers are calling to ask about it before doing anything."
No one should access the Web link provided within the body of the e-mail in case it spawns a computer virus, the FDIC official added. She said although the fake Web sites look like the FDIC page, there was no computer intrusion at the FDIC offices.
The e-mails initially appeared to come from Pakistan, but now they seem to be coming from computers in Taiwan and China, the FDIC said. However, the stolen data appears to be funneled through an Internet address in Russia.
It's not unusual for Internet scam artists to hijack "innocent" computers in various parts of the world to cover their online tracks.
Spoofing a particular agency or company in an e-mail message is known as "phishing" or "carding."
If someone receives an apparent "phishing" message, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recommends that people contact the firm requesting the data by phone to verify the information. The FTC also suggests reviewing bank and credit card records on a regular basis, and reporting suspicious activity to the agency.
Previous "phishing" scams have targeted customers of companies such eBay, Citibank and PayPal.
[SR Editor's Note: Below is the text of this scam message, provided to us by one of our own members who received it. Beware.]
To whom it may concern;ToCIn cooperation with the Department Of Homeland Security, Federal, State and Local Governments your account has been denied insurance from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation due to suspected violations of the Patriot Act. While we have only a limited amount of evidence gathered on your account at this time it is enough to suspect that currency violations may have occurred in your account and due to this activity we have withdrawn Federal Deposit Insurance on your account until we verify that your account has not been used in a violation of the Patriot Act.
As a result Department Of Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge has advised the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to suspend all deposit insurance on your account until such time as we can verify your identity and your account information. Please verify through our IDVerify below. This information will be checked against a federal government database for identity verification. This only takes up to a minute and when we have verified your identity you will be notified of said verification and all suspensions of insurance on your account will be lifted.
http://www.fdic.gov/idverify/cgi-bin/index.htm
(the actual link goes to another domain)Failure to use IDVerify below will cause all insurance for your account to be terminated and all records of your account history will be sent to the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Washington D.C. for analysis and verification. Failure to provide proper identity may also result in a visit from Local, State or Federal Government or Homeland Security Officials. Thank you for your time and consideration in this matter.
Donald E. Powell
Chairman Emeritus FDICJohn D. Hawke, Jr.
Comptroller of the CurrencyMichael E. Bartell
Chief Information Officer
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;q834489
The desktop PC will begin getting a makeover in the second half of 2004, with the movement creating "tumultuous transformations" in the PC industry, according to a new study.
The changes, said Joe D'Elia of market-research firm iSuppli, will be driven by hardware form factor and interface improvements. "The year 2004 will bring tumultuous transformation to the market that will forever alter the nature and appearance of PCs," said D'Elia. "PC and motherboard makers [will] flood the market with a host of new products in 2004."
D'Elia, iSuppli's PC market director, said the changes will bring smaller, more-robust desktops that offer major benefits to business users, because the result will be a smaller footprint on the desktop. Combined with flat- panel screens, the new PCs will leave desks with more space.
A series of developments are combining to bring about the changes, with most of them centered on the new Balanced Technology Extended interface, said D'Elia. The BTX interface specification provides a flexible standards- based form factor foundation that supports the implementation of new desktop technologies, including PCI Express and Serial ATA.
In addition, a move away from the PCI and AGP buses to the single PCI Express bus will come into play, as PC interfaces among processors, memory, and drives will work more efficiently together. With its 66-MHz speed, the PCI bus performed well when PC processors were in the 100- to 200-MHz range.
"The interfaces have been out of sync for some time," said D'Elia. "The processors have had to wait for the buses to catch up." PCI Express, a serial bus, will bring all the interfaces closer in data-exchange speeds and lead to radically new socket and board layouts. "The acceptance of BTX as the main standard will mean that parts for smaller PCs will be available off the shelf. Thus, smaller PCs ultimately will become the norm, with associated cost reductions making them acceptable in the mainstream market."
The smaller and more power-efficient PCs will find new places in living rooms. D'Elia said they will be small enough to fit on top of a typical audio-components rack. Also, since the BTX spec establishes improved management of the thermal envelope in PCs, the number of fans can be lowered. "If you want to move the PC from the den or home office to the living room," D'Elia said, "you're not going to put up with a half-dozen fans creating a howling gale."
There are major changes coming in disk and memory interfaces, too. Serial ATA will replace the aging ATA drive interface. D'Elia says that in business applications, serial ATA and serial attached SCSI will replace the workhorse SCSI interconnection. As for memory, Double data rate will be phased out by DDR2 memory technology. Virtually all the changes--most enabled by the BTX spec--will bring about smaller PCs with improved power management and wholesale socket and connection changes. As a result, desktops will likely be half the size of today's machines.
D'Elia sees a "good news-bad news" scenario in all this. The bad news is there will be a major disruption in the supply chain, as motherboards and components change dramatically; the good news will come in the form of opportunities for new suppliers and players to enter the field during the period of upheaval.
I normally don't use screen savers--I think they're pretty useless in general. However, I recently downloaded a free screen saver that actually provides interesting info while your PC is not in use.
Sun Clock 5 from Map Maker Ltd provides you with a nice display of world time and other information while you are not using your PC. It's compatible with modern Windows versions (98/ME/NT/2K/XP). It may be used as a screen saver (full screen) or run at any other time in a windowed mode.
Sun Clock 5 displays the globe as a Mercator projection (flattened for your display) and identifies all time zones. You may customize the display to show local time in an unlimited number of locations. The map can also be overlayed with a shadow projection which shows the areas of light and dark across the globe. Moving your cursor around the map shows details about other locations via Windows tooltips.
Your local location can be programmed into the program. I had a little trouble figuring out how to enter the exact longitude/latitude numbers for Champaign so I just estimated them as -88 longitude and 40 latitude. If you choose your local location Sun Clock 5 will display an analog clock, digital clock, Julian date, sunrise/sunset, moonrise/moon set and positions for the sun and moon on the same screen as the globe map. Alternatively you can choose just an analog clock, star map, sun path or calendar display.
As I mentioned before, Sun Clock 5 is free and published by Map Maker Ltd apparently to publicize their other professional software offerings. I could not detect and adware/spyware present in the program.
I love this little program and now run it on most of my PCs.
You may download Sun Clock 5 from: http://www.mapmaker.com/sunclock.htm
1. There's a great new Knoppix-based distribution that allows you to read and write to an NTFS partition using emulation. You can checkout the Slashdot post here:
2. Knoppix is becoming more and more popular as a rescue disk for Linux *and* Windows computers. Here's an article that gives you tons of tips on how to use Knoppix to help you fix any computer:
http://www.distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=review-knoppix
3. Zope 2.7 and Plone 2.0 have have been released! Zope is a free web application server that is written in Python and C that is very easy to use and develop with. Plone is Content Management System (CMS) application that runs on Zope. It is also very easy to use and popular. For more information, please see the following link:
http://www.zopezen.org/Members/pupq/270_264_p2
4. Mozilla Firefox 0.8 has been released. Firefox is a renamed version of Firebird, which has become fairly popular with Windows and Linux users in CUCUG. The new version has tons of new features, including a Windows installer as part of the Windows installation. Check out the press release at the following location:
http://www.mozilla.org/press/mozilla-2004-02-09.html
5. Mozilla Thunderbird 0.5 has been released. Thunderbird is like Firefox, except that it's an e-mail client. It is free, easy-to-use, and compatible with Netscape Mail. Check out the press release at the following location:
http://www.mozilla.org/press/mozilla-2004-02-09.html
6. A new Linux distribution called Mepis is gaining a lot of critical praise. It comes on two cd's and can either be used as a "live cd" like Knoppix or it can be installed on your hard drive with a few mouse clicks. I installed it this weekend and it is very easy to use and install. If you're looking for a great "newbie" Debian-based Linux distribution that's easy to install administer, then check this one out. I (Tom Purl) will have a few copies of it on CD at the February meeting. Here are the pertinent links:
http://www.mepis.org
http://desktops.linux.com/article.pl?sid=04/01/16/1324227&tid=92
The SCO Group Inc. has taken its fight with the Linux community to Capitol Hill. Earlier this month, the company sent the 535 members of Congress a letter that called Linux and open-source software a threat to the security and economy of the U.S., SCO confirmed yesterday.
The letter is dated Jan. 8 and was published on the Internet this week by an open-source lobbying organization called the Open Source and Industry Alliance (OSAIA). It states that the commoditizing influence of open-source software such as the Linux operating system is bad for the U.S. economy and argues that open-source also skirts export controls that govern commercial products.
The letter is available online (download PDF - http://www.osaia.org/letters/sco_hill.pdf).
"A computer expert in North Korea who has a number of personal computers and an Internet connection can download the latest version of Linux, complete with multiprocessing capabilities misappropriated from Unix, and, in short order, build a virtual supercomputer," the letter says.
The letter, which is signed by SCO CEO Darl McBride, was meant to educate U.S. lawmakers on "infringement issues with regard to Linux," said Blake Stowell, a SCO spokesman.
With dozens of countries considering regulating the use of open-source, SCO believes it's "only a matter of time before others in our country would put legislation on the table around open-source software," said Stowell.
Linux creator Linus Torvalds disputed SCO's claim that Linux contains misappropriated code.
SCO is also wrong to suggest that U.S. export controls apply to software, Torvalds said. "Those export controls apply to hardware, not software," he said in an e-mail interview. Either way, he added, a computer's operating system isn't much help when it comes to designing atomic warheads. "You don't do much with a supercomputer if you don't have the software to run on top of it," he said.
SCO sued IBM last March, claiming that the larger company illegally contributed code to Linux that was derived from SCO's version of Unix, called System V Unix. SCO has since claimed that Linux also includes other code that violates its System V copyrights, but the company has been heavily criticized for failing to back up these assertions with proof.
In fact, Linux vendor Novell Inc. now maintains that SCO doesn't even own the copyrights to the System V source code. SCO filed a "slander of title" lawsuit against Novell over this matter earlier this week (http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/os/linux/story/0,10801,89249,00.html).
SCO's attempt to lobby Congress against open-source software shows that it doesn't believe its own claims, said Ed Black, the president and CEO of the OSAIA. If its allegations are true, SCO should be encouraging people to use Linux instead of criticizing it, said Black. "If you had a [legitimate] claim, you'd say, 'The more people who are using it, the more I can collect from.'"
Black said he believes that SCO is operating at the behest of Microsoft Corp., whose Windows operating system is threatened by Linux's popularity. "Most people believe that SCO is ... a foil for our friends in Redmond to create fear, uncertainty and doubt about Linux," he said.
After calling Linux and open-source software "un-American" and "a cancer," Microsoft last July announced that it had switched tactics and would resort to analyst reports and case studies instead of name-calling in its battle against Linux.
SCO, which was paid millions of dollars in software licensing fees by Microsoft last year, has picked up where the software giant left off, said Black. "They've become a PR firm and a litigation firm for Microsoft," he said. "At one time, they actually had a product, but that doesn't exist anymore."
SCO continues to sell its UnixWare and OpenServer software, but increasingly, SCO's activities have focused on the company's Linux battle. SCO has been ramping up its licensing efforts. Last week, the company began making its Intellectual Property License for Linux available to small and medium-size businesses in the U.S. for the first time.
Microsoft had no influence on the Jan. 8 letter, said Stowell. SCO and Microsoft have discussed the Linux intellectual property issues, he said, but Stowell disputed Black's claim that his company was working for Microsoft to attack Linux. "It's not something we have strategy meetings on or anything," he said.
Separately, SCO yesterday revealed that a court hearing on the IBM lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah, scheduled for today, has been postponed until Feb 6. The court had been expected to examine whether SCO had complied with a December court order compelling it to provide meaningful details of how IBM allegedly violated its intellectual property.
"Both sides felt we would be better served if the hearing were postponed," said Stowell.
At the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo in New York this week, Novell was in the spotlight as the new kid on the Linux block. And there's much at stake in the open-source community, as SCO's lawsuits threaten to undercut the operating system's momentum.
Open-source shifts spell an end for UnitedLinux
http://news.com.com/2100-7344-5146194.html?tag=nl
The four-company consortium formed to counterbalance Red Hat's dominance in the Linux market is all but dead, its one-time general manager tells News.com.
Microsoft faces off with open-source fans
http://news.com.com/2100-7346-5145474.html?tag=nl
An executive braves the crowds at LinuxWorld to field questions about how Microsoft conducts business and whether it will consider making Linux versions of applications such as Office and SQL Server.
Sun to IBM: Go Linux with us
http://news.com.com/2100-7346-5145328.html?tag=nl
The company says it's committed to a wholesale move from the Microsoft desktop and is prepared to help IBM do the same.
How Amazon puts Linux to the test
http://news.com.com/2100-7344-5145482.html?tag=nl
An Amazon exec describes in detail how the online retailer is using the open-source operating system in nearly every corner of its business.
Linux--love me, love me not
http://news.com.com/2030-1069-5146336.html?tag=nl
news.commentary - Adoption of the operating system varies widely by industry. Services, technology and telecommunications lead the charge, Forrester says, but others, including financial services, are holding out.
HP opens up to win Sun customers
http://news.com.com/2100-7344-5144917.html?tag=nl
Hewlett-Packard says it garnered $75 million in revenue in 2003 with a program that encourages customers of rival Sun Microsystems to move to HP servers that run Linux.
IBM pushes Linux on Power processors
http://news.com.com/2100-7344-5144897.html?tag=nl
Big Blue puts more weight behind its effort to attract customers to Linux that runs on its own Power processors, an initiative that distinguishes IBM from its competitors in the server market.
Intel mulls Linux Centrino support
http://news.com.com/2100-7344-5145073.html?tag=nl
The chipmaker will likely take a two-phase approach to providing software that Linux needs to take advantage of Centrino chips.
Novell advocates open source
http://news.com.com/2100-7344-5144535.html?tag=nl
The Linux convert proclaims its strong support for open-source programming--but makes the case for a pragmatic approach that blends in its own proprietary applications.
Red Hat plans Linux push in China
http://news.com.com/2100-7344-5145099.html?tag=nl
The leading seller of the Linux operating system plans an expansion into China, potentially including a partnership with China's Red Flag Linux.
SCO sues Novell over copyright claims
http://news.com.com/2100-7344-5143977.html?tag=nl
On the eve of LinuxWorld, the Linux adversary escalates its dispute with Novell over ownership of the Unix operating system.
Linux's 'center of gravity'
http://news.com.com/2008-7344-5144024.html?tag=nl
newsmaker - Linux lab leader Stuart Cohen heads a consortium that finds itself on the front lines in the battle over the future of open-source development.
MySQL and JBoss cozy up
http://news.com.com/2100-7346-5144084.html?tag=nl
The companies form a partnership to jointly sell and market products to large corporate customers interested in expanding their use of open-source software.
Linux penguin waddles to GameCube
http://news.com.com/2100-1043-5144302.html?tag=nl
A group of programmers is working to expand the reach of Linux software to video game consoles and wants Nintendo's GameCube to be next.
Red Hat makes provisions for utility computing
http://news.com.com/2100-7784-5144430.html?tag=nl
The company launches its network service, as expected, so customers can set up or reconfigure Linux servers from afar, a "provisioning" system that marks its entry into utility computing.
Sun plans Linux software push
http://news.com.com/2100-7344-5144074.html?tag=nl
The company plans to expand its Linux software portfolio substantially over the coming year, including a version of its Java server software suite.
SuSE wins Linux a new security badge
http://news.com.com/2100-7344-5144459.html?tag=nl
Novell announces that SuSE Linux, the version of the open-source operating system it acquired earlier this month, has passed a higher level of security certification.
LinuxWorld: Novell's debutante ball
http://news.com.com/2100-7344-5142679.html?tag=nl
New partnerships with server makers Dell and Egenera will be among the displays of Novell's newly bought Linux status at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo beginning Wednesday.
Red Hat offers software warranty
http://news.com.com/2100-7344-5143326.html?tag=nl
In response to SCO Group's legal action against Linux, Red Hat is offering new legal protection that guarantees the company will replace any code found to infringe copyrights.
Qualcomm taps Linux for wireless wares
http://news.com.com/2100-1039-5143381.html?tag=nl
The company plans to expand development and operations of electronic games, e-mail, ring tones and other wireless applications on IBM Linux-based servers and software.
Oracle apps to work with Mozilla
http://news.com.com/2100-1012-5142791.html?tag=nl
The database company is working on a project to let Mozilla's open-source desktop software work better with Oracle's business applications.
Linux brings in $2.5 billion for HP
http://news.com.com/2100-7344-5141324.html?tag=nl
Hewlett-Packard says it garnered $2.5 billion selling Linux-related products and services in 2003.
Previous Coverage
Red Hat raises $600 million with bond -
http://news.com.com/2100-7344-5139640.html?tag=nl
SGI releases midrange Linux server -
http://news.com.com/2100-1010-5138719.html?tag=nl
Intel chips in on anti-SCO defense fund -
http://news.com.com/2100-7344-5138820.html?tag=nl
Torvalds updates Linux kernel -
http://news.com.com/2110-7344-5138566.html?tag=nl
Wind River joins Linux group -
http://news.com.com/2110-7344-5138005.html?tag=nl
IBM turns inward with Linux desktop project -
http://news.com.com/2100-7344-5137815.html?tag=nl
Software makers team on Asian Linux -
http://news.com.com/2100-7344-5137250.html?tag=nl
SuSE, IBM in retail equipment alliance -
http://news.com.com/2100-1016-5137098.html?tag=nl
Ximian software gets SuSE support -
http://news.com.com/2100-7344-5136383.html?tag=nl
Microsoft ad campaign digs at Linux -
http://news.com.com/2100-1012-5136214.html?tag=nl
One of the first things I learned at LinuxWorld upon arriving at the show in New York City's Javits Convention Center is that next year's show is taking place in Boston. Suggesting that some sort of scandal is behind the move, open source maverick Bruce Perens told me over dinner that some journalist needs to do his or her homework. "That sort of story is not in my wheelhouse," I told Bruce.
Scandals aside, I was happy that the show was moving within commuting distance, but I was also a little disappointed. For the first time since moving to Massachusetts, I took the train to New York instead of flying on the shuttle. Aside from having lots of room to spread out, every seat on the Amtrak's high speed Acela has power outlets. No one was telling passengers when they could and couldn't use their electronics devices or cell phones or get out of their seats. On the downside, neither the train stations nor the trains have any sort of Wi-Fi service. Apparently, an RFP has just been completed and a provider has been selected to bring the Wi-Fi service into six Eastern seaboard train stations by early summer: Baltimore, Wilmington , 30th St in Philadelphia, Penn Station (NYC), Providence, and the Rt. 128 station just outside of Boston.
The company has its sights set on the trains as well, but not until after the six stations are up and running. My guess is that the service won't be free. Whether you'll need to pay Amtrak or subscribe to some Wi-Fi provider remains to be seen. Fortunately, I always have plenty of work to do off-line, so lack of connectivity isn't a deal breaker for me. If it were, I'd probably invest in a card to connect to Sprint's CDMA service (see "Why go with WiFi when CDMA can do?").
The trip was pleasurable and relaxing compared to the rushed and stressful airborne alternative. As I got off the train in Penn Station with almost four hours of uninterrupted work (free of battery concerns) in my bag, I predicted I would never fly again to LinuxWorld. Little did I know that LinuxWorld itself would be the one to make that prediction come true.
Wednesday, 8:15 am, The Tic Toc Diner
One of the funny things about LinuxWorld in New York in the dead of winter is the crystalline look on the faces of the folks from California's Silicon Valley when the first stiff wind off the Hudson River hits them. Such were the looks on the faces of Veritas' executives as we tried to hail a cab in the heart of rush hour. To be fair, I'm from Boston and I was cold too. Prior to stepping onto the frozen tundra of New York City, I learned about how VMware's ESX Server was added to the list of other operating systems that are supported by Veritas' Cluster Technology (VCS). The announcement puts a unique twist (one that I explore in more detail in another column) on the sorts of systems that VCS has traditionally supported.
Wednesday, 9:23 am, The Jacob Javits Convention Center
I must be in the wrong place. It seems like everybody in the building, including some guy with an electronic lapel pin streaming words, is wearing a suit and tie. My suits and ties are back in Boston. The guy with the marquis on his lapel turns out to be Bruce Perens. This ain't your Birkenstocked, pony-tailed father's LinuxWorld anymore, is it? I bypass the opportunity to corner Perens since I'm having dinner with him, Codeweavers president Jeremy White, and Linux Terminal Server Project's Erik Tyack later tonight.
Wednesday, 10:00 am, Novell CEO keynote
Fresh from aquisitions of Ximian and SuSE, and a day after SCO announces that it's launching a suit, Novell CEO Jack Messman gives an impassioned keynote about how his company has adopted a new religion: open source. He sets the stage for two themes that for me will drive the focus of LinuxWorld: raising the bar on managing everything from Linux desktops to servers to clusters and the SCO indemnification issue. Novell indemnifies. HP indemnifies. Red Hat announced it will replace any code found to be infringing. But what about IBM, Sun, Dell and others?
Wednesday, 12:30 pm, BEA rountable
At an invite-only, closed-door roundtable, BEA trots out some of its biggest customers, and its own CIO Rhonda Hocker, to talk about how they've all gone mission critical with Linux for their internal systems. Hocker said, "In two year's time, Linux will be the operating system of choice for enterprise computing." My first thought was that this can't be good news for Sun whose systems have traditionally been paired with the majority of BEA's Weblogic installations. Depending on what day it is and how the Sun, the moon and the stars are lined up, and how badly the data being furnished to the research outlets by the vendors has been massaged, BEA's WebLogic is either the top-selling or second most top-selling (behind IBM's WebSphere) Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE)-based application server. To make matters worse for Sun, BEA Systems Java Runtime Group vice president and general manager Bob Griswold spoke in great detail of BEA's partnership with Intel to tune and optimize the company's various Java Runtime Environments (JREs) for use with Intel 32- and 64-bit processors. Intel Software and Solutions group vice president and general manager Will Swope, who was sitting next to Griswold, nodded silently in approval.
The two most interesting characters at the roundtable were Bob Schwarz, Northern Trust's vice president of worldwide technology, and Demetri Mouratis, senior technical Unix architect. The two providing a rare peek into how a Fortune 500 company deals with open source. For example, to keep its nose clean on issues relating to intellectual property, Northern Trust pays close attention to which of the Open Source Initiative-approved (http://www.opensource.org/) open source licenses is paired with a technology that the company is interested in using. Said Schwarz, "So far, we've approved eight of the licenses. The most recent one was for Eclipse, which we've standardized on internally for development."
A Fortune 500 company going with Eclipse is just more bad news for Sun. The open source license that Schwarz was referring to is IBM's Common Public License. I asked Schwarz what his perception was of the fact that IBM so far has not joined the recently formed Java Tools Community to which he responded, "Eclipse is a great tool. IBM is the way to go."
With Novell's CEO Jack Messman having just talked about how he expects other industry vendors to emulate Novell's choice to offer indemnification from the wrath of SCO to customers using Linux, I asked Schwarz and Mouratis if Northern Trust was taking the potential liability seriously. So far, Northern Trust is standardized on Red Hat's distribution of Linux. According to Mouratis, "It is of concern to us legally, and as such we have discussed the matter with our legal department. That said, every technology decision is about managing business risk and this is no different. We've gone way down the path with Red Hat and currently have no plans to change that. But it's a situation that continues to develop and we are keeping an eye on it. We're confident that [sticking with Red Hat] is what's right for Northern."
I also asked Schwarz and Mouratis their opinions when it comes to Windows vs. Linux and security. Unlike BEA, which CIO Rhonda Hocker said is going with Linux on all new internal IT deployments moving forward, Schwarz spoke of how The Northern Trust is a strategically more heterogeneous. "Microsoft is a strategic vendor for us," said Schwarz. "We have Microsoft's .Net Framework deployed. Compared to Linux, the frequency of security and bug fixes on Windows has been a struggle to keep up with, but I can't say that the problem is solved by simply replacing it with Linux." Schwarz did acknowledge that the frequency of the patches can drive the cost of infrastructure management up. "The more servers you have and the more applications that the patches need to be tested against before applying them, the higher the cost, particularly if we discover a problem with one of the patches," Schwarz said. "Fortunately, we haven't discovered problems with any of the patches yet, so the time it takes us to patch is usually within a few hours but never more than a day."
Wednesday, 3:00 pm, LinuxWorld Press Room
One of the big changes at this year's LinuxWorld compared to last year is that Wi-Fi-based connectivity to the Internet is free. Like last year, there are only a couple of hot spots, but this time there's no $10 per day charge. Proving the old axiom that you get what you pay for, the connectivity situation was a mess. Despite signs that provided the details on what Wi-Fi SSID to look for, no one was successfully getting a connection, except for a technician with a walkie-talkie who periodically showed up with his Wi-Fi-enabled iPaq to announce that everything is fine. Meanwhile, everyone in the press room tries to tell him he's mistaken, and he leaves again. The problem never gets solved. This is either a real testimony to the difficulty in bringing up ad hoc Wi-Fi networks, or LinuxWorld has made some terrible choices in equipment and/or technicians. Just another good reason to get that Sprint CDMA card.
Wednesday, 5:05 pm, La Giara Restaurant
I arrive almost an hour early for my dinner with Perens, White, and Tyack. The transportation situation outside LinuxWorld during rush hour in New York is a mess since cab drivers seem to avoid the Javits Center like the plague.I'm told that this is about the time that most cabbies do their shift change, which explains why all the cabs driving by the Javits Center have their off-duty light on.
Fortunately, New York is full of vulture limousine drivers who are hip to the problem. I negotiate a $30 fee to get across town to La Giara, a cozy Italian restaurant on New York's east side, to hook up with Perens, White, Tyack and Jill Ratkevic, a director from public relations firm Neale-Maye.
Over wine and spaghetti and meatballs, the discussion goes all over the map. As expected, I'm given a hard time for taking notes on a notebook running Windows. Tyack explains about how large enterprises are loving the Linux Terminal Server Project's http://www.ltsp.org thin-client technology for Linux because of the way it allows them to take old 233-MHz Pentium II systems and turn them into desktop terminals that are every bit as capable as a modern-day Linux desktop.
We contemplate the future of QuickTime, as I predict that video is in the future of Apple's iPods and that Apple will make some serious dough in the movie download business in the same way it is beginning to succeed with music. Perens points out that the deal that Jobs crafted with Disney could make that a reality sooner than we think.
The SCO indemnification issue comes up, and Perens unequivocally states that SCO has no case and that before I become too enamored with vendors who are offering indemnification, I should read the fine print. "In every case that I'm aware of, people hear they're indemnified and they're more sanguine than they should be because they don't know what the real terms of the indemnification are," Perens said.
My favorite Perens quote of the evening, however, had to do with his off-the-cuff summary of the open source movement: "Imagine what it took for Microsoft to piss off so many people that they're all willing to work night and day without pay just to bring that company down." I half wonder what, if anything, Microsoft would do differently if it could turn back the clocks.
Coming soon: Part 2 of my trip to Penguin Land, including conversations with MySQL CEO Marten Mickos, ZEND President and CEO Doron Gerstel, Computer Associates Senior Vice President Sam Greenblatt, Scalix CEO Julie Farris, and AMD's Director of Worldwide Business Development, Kevin Knox.
You can write to me at david.berlind@cnet.com. If you're looking for my commentaries on other IT topics, check the archives.
In Part 2 of my adventures at LinuxWorld, I talk with MySQL CEO Marten Mickos, ZEND President and CEO Doron Gerstel, Computer Associates Senior Vice President Sam Greenblatt, Scalix CEO Julie Farris, and AMD's Director of Worldwide Business Development, Kevin Knox.
Thursday, 9:10 am, Press Room, LinuxWorld
Thanks to the Morgans Hotel's front desk that refused to call me a cab until I was physically present in the lobby of the hotel, I was ten minutes late to meet with MySQL CEO Marten Mickos and Marketing Vice President Zack Urlocker, and ZEND President and CEO Doron Gerstel. ZEND is "the PHP company" and PHP, according to Gerstel, is now the world's most widely deployed scripting language for Web applications.
I suddenly realized that I was meeting with the "MP" part of "LAMP." LAMP, a.k.a. Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP, is the most commonly deployed open source stack. The primary point of the meeting was for the two CEOs to publicly reaffirm their commitment to each other. Mickos told me, "Everyone has known about LAMP for a long time. MySQL and ZEND have worked together on a practical level for a long time. But now that relationship is formalized and we'll be co-marketing each other's technologies."
"It's been a big year for MySQL" Mickos told me. "Most important is that we added support for stored procedures and in April, we'll be rolling out support for clusters." Between the two features, it will be difficult for anyone to question the enterprise readiness of MySQL. Database providers Microsoft, Oracle, and IBM, all of which have already had their market shares nibbled by MySQL, will now have a tougher time dealing with the open source phenomenon. Worse for Microsoft and IBM (each of which like to sell operating systems with their SQL databases), the increased attraction to LAMP that comes as result of MySQL's support for stored procedures and clusters will work to the detriment of non-Linux operating systems.
Mickos and Urlocker had to leave the meeting early. As they exited, the only question in my mind about MySQL's future is "who will acquire it?" My top three choices are Novell, BEA, and Sun. Novell in particular has been on the open source acquisition trail. After Ximian and SuSE, MySQL would fit into Novell's portfolio like a glove and, furthermore, would make it the only company to have two of the letters (L and M) in the LAMP stack. Such a portfolio would arguably position Novell as the leading enterprise open source player in the world. BEA has a bit of open source fever as well. Though its not open source, BEA's acquisition of JRockit, sent a clear message to the market that the checkbook was out and it's shopping for technologies that it's willing to give away.
BEA is doing quite well in the application server market. But over time, I anticipate that the company will feel an increasing amount of pressure to expand its own portfolio. IBM, Microsoft and Oracle all have more complete technology portfolios (including database servers, application servers, integrated development environments, compilers, and even operating systems in the case of IBM and Microsoft). There's a lot of market consolidation going on, and even though both BEA and Borland maintain Switzerland-like neutrality in their niches, I'm not sure how much longer either can continue without more pieces of the stack. MySQL would make a nice addition to that pair.
And then there is Sun. Whereas the role of open source in the strategies of IBM, HP, and Novell seems relatively clear, I still get the sense that Sun has a few adjustments to make. Although the three companies recently joined hands to form the Java Tools Community, Sun's relationship with BEA and Oracle has become noticeably strained over the last couple of years thanks in part to Linux. The company has an application server, an operating system, a directory server, development tools and a gaggle of other enterprise stack components, but it doesn't have a database. Culturally, MySQL may not be a good fit for Sun, but cash (which Sun has an abundance of) is the sort of brute strength that has overcome cultural misfits before (remember IBM and Lotus?).
Those three companies--Novell, BEA, and Sun--might equally benefit from bringing the Israel-based PHP-provider ZEND into their folds. In hindsight, I wish I had asked the leaders of both companies if they thought an acquisition was in the cards for them. Not that they would have been able to comment, but the look on their faces could have provided me with some information.
In addition to the formalized relationship with MySQL, the big news from ZEND is the forthcoming release of WinEnabler. "A lot of people are building Web applications with Apache and MySQL on top of the [Windows] NT code-base (Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows 2003, etc.)," said Gerstel. With 'N' standing for 'NT,' Gerstel says "Until now, NAMP (as opposed to LAMP) hasn't been possible. Now, it will be."
Although he probably should have called it WAMP (with the 'W' for Windows), this is bad news for Microsoft. As long as PHP was the missing link in WAMP, there were more hurdles in transitioning from WAM to LAMP. The availability of WinEnabler, as long as it works, will clear the path between the two platforms, thus making it one of the enablers (no pun intended) to BEA CIO Hocker's aforementioned prediction: "In two years time, Linux will be the operating system of choice for enterprise computing."
Another feather in Gerstel's cap is a relationship with Sun whereby developers will also be able to use PHP to script J2EE-based servers. Gerstel's other main messages for 2004 had to do with object and XML support in PHP5 and establishing a U.S. presence. Currently, ZEND has no offices in the U.S. but lots of programmers.
Thursday, 10:30 am, Microsoft Booth
Since the show began, the Microsoft booth has been cloaked in a black curtain with instructions to return today at 10:30 am for the big news. Throughout Wednesday and all of this morning, there was plenty of rumor and speculation going around the show as to what Microsoft had up its sleeve. As it turns out, it was little more than a silly publicity stunt. In anticipation of something earth shattering, a small crowd formed around the Microsoft booth just prior to the moment of unveiling. When the clock struck 10:30, the crowd was informed that Martin Taylor, general manager of platform strategies at Microsoft, had decided to brave the climate at LinuxWorld and would answer any question the audience had about Microsoft. After cursing to myself because I ran up two long flights of stairs to make sure I didn't miss the fun, and because I was missing Sun's Chalktalk on the Java Desktop System, which, coincidentally (or maybe not) was scheduled for the same time, I ran back down stairs to catch the Chalktalk.
Thursday, 10:35 am, Sun's Java Desktop System Chalktalk
There wasn't much in the way of earth shattering news here either. It was mostly a reaffirmation of stuff I've already heard, such as Sun's commitment to make it's entire stack, including the Sun Java Studio development tools and SunRay, available on Linux. AMD's Kevin Knox was there to say that the partnership between Sun and AMD was no flash in the pan.
After the meeting, I spoke with Sun officials who encouraged me to see the Looking Glass demo that Computer Associates senior vice president Sam Greenblatt would be giving during his keynote that afternoon (a demo that I missed, but I saw Sun CEO Scott McNealy demonstrate it at Comdex last November). Sun is pitching Looking Glass, which is sort of a 3D-meets-theatre-in-the-round desktop user interface, as the next big thing. Sun officials I was speaking with after the ChalkTalk said that a substantial portion of the work that Sun had so far done on Looking Glass would be contributed as open source for integration into GNOME. Later I learned that Sun won't have much choice since the Looking Glass source code is already full of modules with GNOME headers. You gotta love those open source licenses.
Thursday, 1:00 pm, Meeting with RLX
Nothing earth shattering here either but RLX does have a good story. The biggest news from RLX public relations manager Simon Eastwick is that, in addition to breaking further away from its Transmeta-based heritage (a good move in my estimation), RLX has a blade management product called Control Tower that will manage IBM and HP's blades as well. Though I didn't get a chance to look at the product, Eastwick gave a pitch in which he criticized the competing management platforms, such as HP's combination of the old Compaq Insight Manager and Altiris' provisioning tools and IBM's Director. Eastwick implored me to take a look at the product and said that once I do, I'll be convinced. "Nothing else comes close." I plan to check out his claims, so stay tuned.
Thursday, 2:00 pm, Meeting with CA's Sam Greenblatt
Greenblatt's first question was, "Did you see my keynote?" Unfortunately I missed it, but Greenblatt said he didn't really have anything to announce in his keynote. However, in my meeting with him, Greenblatt and Marcel den Hartog, a strategist in CA's Linux Technologies Group told me that Computer Associates has a message for enterprises looking to make Linux their next big thing. As you might expect from CA, den Hartog said that with each new revolution in computing the stuff needs to be managed, and that CA's world class management tools will be moving in lockstep with enterprise class open source projects to make them more manageable. Open source projects that CA is watching and wants to provide some enterprise-class management for (via Unicenter) are Linux itself and clustering technologies such as Beowulf, Jessica2, and PARIS.
Thursday, 3:30 pm, Meeting with Scalix CEO Julie Farris
After comparing notes with Scalix CEO Julie Farris, I was shocked that we had not met before. Farris is a messaging maven, having cut her original e-mail teeth long ago during the days when cc:Mail (which was eventually acquired by Lotus and absorbed into Notes) went head-to-head against Network Courier (eventually acquired by Microsoft, changed into MS-Mail and then evolved into Outlook/Exchange), and Novell's Message Handling Service (which went poof). Over my 13 years of high-tech journalism, messaging has always been one of my favorite topics, and I grew to know most of the members of the messaging community, but not Farris.
If you're wondering whatever happned to HP's OpenMail technology, give Scalix a call. The company has taken combined the original source code and the scaleability of OpenMail with the economics of Linux and come up with what could be the first real Microsoft Exchange-killer to come along in years.
Farris is staking out a position that's identical to that of Oracle when it comes to mail. Oracle routinely assails the architecture of Microsoft as being limited in terms of scalability and fault tolerance. Sounding very much like Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, Farris says, "The problem with Exchange is that you end up with hundreds of servers all over the place, and the cost of managing that infrastructure is out of control. What we offer is the opportunity to bring those costs down by consolidating all of those servers down to one or a handful of servers. We can run over 5000 users off of one Proliant box."
So what's cool about Scalix? For starters, it natively emulates Microsoft's MAPI protocol, which means that Outlook clients that depend on Exchange Servers for both e-mail and group calendaring won't even know that something has changed. Furthermore, Scalix provides migration tools so that all of the mailboxes on an Exchange Server remain intact after being migrated to Scalix.
"We support any client and any directory service including LDAP and Active Directory" says Farris. "We even have an LDAP directory. One of the reasons Exchange 5.5 users like our solution is that they have use Microsoft's Active Directory in order to upgrade, and a lot of them don't want to do that."
Dating back to her experience working on the Notes team at Lotus, Farris learned a thing or two about replication and reliability. As with Notes, which can store mailbox replicas on multiple physical servers (which means users can just switch to a functioning replica if one disappears due to a server crash), Scalix has the same sort of fault tolerant capabilities. "If a server goes down, Scalix handles the failover to a functioning server much more gracefully than Exchange does" says Farris. Of course, without any testing, I can't vouch for many of Farris' claims. Based on her curriculum vitae, she certainly has the credentials to earn the ear of any IT manager who is already committed or dabbling in open systems and open source. Also, at an entry price of $3,000 and with a cost of about $40 to $50 per user, the product is competitive with other highly scalable and fault tolerant enterprise class e-mail systems.
Well, there you have it. My most excellent adventure in Penguin Land. Finally, perhaps all the suits, ties, and management messages are a sign that Linux not only has a reserved parking spot outside the executive suite (which it has had for a while), but that it's getting the finishing touches on its decade-long grooming for the enterprise. Or, perhaps the suits were just to keep the heat from escaping everyone's clothing. If LinuxWorld were in the summer, the Birkenstocks would be back.
-LinuxWorld complete coverage - http://zdnet.com.com/2251-1110-5144290.html
You can write to me at david.berlind@cnet.com. If you're looking for my commentaries on other IT topics, check the archives.
Twenty years of Macintosh. At this year's Macworld Expo, Steve Jobs played a version of the famous "1984" ad that launched the Mac, and Alan Oppenheimer, who was responsible in large part for AppleTalk, gave a fabulous talk about the history of networking on the Mac. What I found most interesting was that although twenty years have passed, many of the original people from those days are not only still around, they're still producing great work. The history of the Macintosh is not only still being written, some of the same people are still doing the writing.
http://www.opendoor.com/nethistory/
Let me introduce you to another member of the original Macintosh team, Bruce Horn, who was responsible for a number of the key aspects of the Mac and who has continued to write innovative code. At Apple, Bruce was responsible for the design and implementation of the Finder (oh, that!), the type/creator metadata mechanism for files and applications, and the Resource Manager (which handled reading and writing of the resource fork in files; a note in Apple's technical documentation at one point exclaimed, "The Resource Manager is not a database!"). The Dialog Manager and the multi-type aspect of the clipboard also appeared thanks to Bruce's ingenuity.
So, to commemorate this 20th anniversary of the Macintosh, I wanted to talk with Bruce about not just what he did at Apple, but also what he's up to now, since in many ways, his current work is both a return to his roots and a glimpse at what might be possible with the Macintosh in the future.
Bruce: Several different goals drove me to these solutions. Having had most of my programming experience in Xerox's Smalltalk environment, where you could change anything you wanted at runtime (changes made while the program was running), I was looking for a dynamic way to handle objects in the system so data such as localizable strings, menus, images, etc. could be modified by non-programmers without recompiling the source code. At the same time, I was realizing that the kind of data that I needed to manage with the Finder - icons for applications and documents, and bindings to those icons - needed the same sort of mechanism, and I wanted a unified solution. So the Finder's Desktop Database was the driver for much of what the Resource Manager ended up providing.
The file metadata also was driven by Finder needs. Early on I realized that to provide a double-click-to-open mechanism for documents, I'd need a simple way to link a document to a default application that would open it. Similarly, since multiple applications could open multiple file types, I couldn't just have a single mapping from a type to an application that would handle all files of that type. Thus the separation of the type code (the actual format of the file) and the creator code (the default application, which could be easily changed). Independent type and creator codes stored in the filesystem also enabled us to avoid polluting the filename with type information, which I felt was a significant advantage of our approach over others.
The Desktop Database was a cache of the bindings between types and creators and the icons representing them, stored as resources. Since application bundles - groups of resources tied together describing document type and icon information - were stored in application resource forks, installing an application simply involved copying the appropriate resources from the application into the Desktop. The redundant information - type and creator information in the directory, and bundle information in application resource forks - made it possible to rebuild the database at any time without losing anything. It turns out that this was important in the early days.
Resources were, of course, heavily used in factoring out non- program data (like menus and text strings) that could be localized to different languages. With ResEdit, this allowed language experts to quickly create versions of an application without needing access to the source code.
Once I was able to convince Andy Hertzfeld of the utility of the Resource Manager, he rewrote most of the Toolbox to take advantage of it, which saved significant space in the ROM and gave us the ability to easily localize applications in a general way.
Bruce: Yes and no. The original rationalization behind this was that Mac OS X needed to be compatible with Windows filename conventions, and to do so we'd need to force filename extensions to be provided. Because there are so many places that a file might leave the sanctity of the Mac OS and go out into the cruel world where extensions are required, it was deemed impossible to translate names from the Mac convention (with types and creators) to the outside world's convention. As far as compatibility is concerned, this did the trick.
But over time it has become apparent that it is difficult to do this right, and the original mechanism of having redundant type information, and allowing the user to name the files whatever she wants, was more flexible and less prone to error. It turns out that Mac OS X still needed a creator mechanism by which individual documents could be opened by specific applications, so this information is stored in the resource fork of the file (of all places, since Apple is discouraging use of the resource fork), rather than simply in a creator code.
So the filename extension approach has worked, but with a little less elegance than the original.
Bruce: It would have been nice. I had some ideas in mind, but when it came down to fitting it in the 64K ROM, the Resource Manager was all we could fit. It was a real effort on everyone's part to make code as small as possible. The Resource Manager was 3K, and the Finder 46K - amazing considering the size of applications these days!
Bruce: I left Apple in the spring of 1984, after doing a "final" version of the Finder. I guess I was just looking for something new to do: having spent several years working intensively on the Mac, I was ready for a break. Being on the Mac team, working with absolutely tremendous people, was one of the most significant things I've done, and it still gives me wonderful feelings when I think about those times.
Bruce: After Apple I went to Adobe and worked a bit on a variety of small projects, including a LaserWriter spooler. When I was there I met a couple of Carnegie Mellon grad students, and, to make a long story short, they convinced me that I should go to CMU for graduate school (Chuck Geschke, one of the founders of Adobe, was also a CMU Ph.D.) Grad school was a great experience. I spent some time at the University of Oslo, Norway as a research assistant, did some consulting at Apple now and then, and had a chance to work with some intriguing startups while I was a student. My Ph.D. thesis described the design of a constraint- based object-oriented programming language called Siri, which I'd love to re-implement someday.
After graduating I went back to Apple as a consultant in the Advanced Technology Group and worked on a project called LiveDoc with Tom Bonura and Jim Miller, among others. LiveDoc was an experiment in automatically structuring documents so that various recognizers could determine that, for example, 555-1212 was a phone number and 124 Main Street was an address, and provide contextual actions on those items. It was a lot of fun, and I wish I had LiveDoc today in Mac OS X. Simson Garfinkel's SBook provides some of these features as a PIM application.
But none of these projects really addressed the problem I wanted to solve, which was: how can I design an information browser that works with all types of data, from email messages to images to music files to documents, and provide a unified mechanism for organizing, searching, and viewing this information?
I began the iFile project in 1997 to do this, and worked on it for a couple of years before putting it on the back burner to start my other company, Marketocracy, where I've been since the middle of 1999.
Marketocracy is a mutual fund company that I co-founded with my business partner Ken Kam. Our team built a Macintosh-based Web site running WebObjects and a FrontBase database to allow over 50,000 people worldwide to buy and sell stocks in real time (but with fake money) to create a model stock portfolio. We provide a wide variety of tools to help our users to become better portfolio managers, and by watching their performance over time and ranking them, we can find the best people in the world to run our funds. Our Masters 100 Fund, based on the top 100 in our community, has been running for over two years now and has surprised even us with its impressive performance and low risk. It has returned over 39 percent since inception when the market has been essentially flat, and with a beta of 0.47 - half as risky as the market!
Bruce: Recently I've picked up where I left off in 1999 with iFile (just a codename for now). iFile is a unified desktop information browser, like the Finder, but with significant architectural improvements. It is based on an object-oriented database of my own design that provides a general way for linking together and organizing objects of all types. The basic unit of organization is called a "collection," which is distinct from a folder in that an object may exist in many collections but in only a single folder. Collections are like iPhoto albums or iTunes playlists, but they can contain anything: text files, images, email messages, music files, contacts, notes, appointments, and so on. While this sounds a bit like BFS (BeOS Filing System) and the BeOS Tracker combined, it is much more general and can be used on any filesystem with the appropriate drivers.
The obvious first application for the iFile technology was in photo organization, an area in which iPhoto does quite well already. However, iFile provides more capability in organization by image metadata (it currently keeps track of 46 different pieces of metadata for each image), and it should scale much more smoothly for large collections than iPhoto. But iFile is not simply a photo manager: it is a general purpose information browser that can be used in a variety of ways, and can easily integrate different information sources, such as PIM, email, and music, among other data types. I think the version of iFile that I will release publicly will provide much more capability in those domains.
Bruce: Possibly. I think it is much more ambitious than I had originally intended. If I can eventually get it scaled down to a level where new users can understand it quickly, it might be a nice alternative to the Finder.
Bruce: Back in 1999 I showed it first to the Finder group, then to Avie Tevanian, and finally to Steve Jobs. I think that Apple was strongly focused on solving the problems of getting Mac OS X out the door as soon as possible, and looking at an alternative Finder was low on their priority list. I believe they were intrigued but had already committed to a different direction, and couldn't turn the ship in time to take advantage of the iFile technology. Given the history of Mac OS X, I think they made the right decision.
Bruce: The current version of iFile requires the user to specify the folders that the user would like iFile to track; this is done by dragging the folders into the iFile workspace window. Once this is done, iFile tracks any changes to the contents of the folders and automatically updates the database as required. For example, the user can drag in the Pictures folder and be able to browse all the images, create collections, etc., without actually copying any files or moving any data. iFile respects your directory structures and never modifies anything directly, in contrast to iPhoto, which copies images into its own directory hierarchy.
The release version of iFile will not require the user to request that certain folders be scanned. Instead, iFile will initially provide a view on the user's home directory, and will scan the files and folders in the background automatically.
Bruce: Yes, it can. Collections are a way to automatically categorize files by their properties. Because iFile maintains file metadata in the object database, it can search and sort through the metadata very quickly to return the appropriate files. Collections are also "live": specifically, if files appear on the disk that match a collection's specification, they will be automatically added to that collection, regardless of whether the collection is currently being viewed. One can imagine all sorts of interesting AppleScript scripts that could be triggered based on these events.
Collections also collect files based on their content. Rather than searching for individual words as Google does, collections search for key phrases: a word or a sentence. Files that contain any of the key phrases specified in the collection are automatically gathered into that collection.
So, what collections do is provide a new way to slice-and-dice the information you already have in a different way, without requiring you to import your data or commit to a completely new organization.
Bruce: That is a great idea and has been discussed for quite some time. In fact, Apple had worked on a project that was based on this idea. Piles were automatic groupings of files based on their content:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/30360.html
One of the challenges here is to determine an appropriate similarity function: how do you decide what the collections should be a priori, to avoid the problems of hundreds of collections, each with one file, or a small number of collections with thousands of files? That will take some work.
Bruce: Absolutely. A collection is essentially a smart folder, with a query specification. For example, it is easy to create a collection that groups together all the images taken by a particular model camera by specifying "<Model> is '2500' and <Make> is 'Nikon'", since that data is available in the EXIF metadata for the image. Similarly, metadata such as ID3 tags for music; image data such as resolution, width, and height; file data such as filenames, creation and modification dates, and sizes; and so on are all stored in the database for object retrieval and organization.
So collections actually have three mechanisms for grouping: manually via drag-and-drop; automatically via metadata query specification; and automatically via key phrase match.
Bruce: You are right that the devil is in the details. I'm currently working on how to present all this information in an appropriately intuitive fashion, and I think I'm getting closer, but there is still clearly work to do.
iFile begins with the traditional, icon-based file and container organization (containers being either folders or collections), but goes further with a variety of different views and layouts. Many of the layouts provide preview views of the contents of the files, and in the case of text files, iFile automatically creates hyperlinks to related collections from within the text. It's difficult to explain, but once you use iFile you'll find that some of the views do in fact provide you ways to view your data from different perspectives.
The more you provide iFile with information regarding how you want to see your data, via defining collections, the more it can help you by cross-indexing and showing relationships where they were not clear before.
Bruce: I agree that iFile can be somewhat intimidating to new users: there are a lot of different things that iFile can do, and there needs to be more immediate gratification when using it. Creating collections automatically is a good approach, and by creating useful collections based on not only images but documents and email, I think that the power of the technology will become more apparent. I'm planning on implementing some of this in the next few months, so stay tuned! For anyone interested in this technology who would like to be contacted when there is a public version available, sign up at the site below, and I'll keep you up to date. I'd be happy to go into detail about the release version in a future issue of TidBITS.
http://www.ingenuitysoftware.com/
You can purchase a refurbished piece of Macintosh history; MacMall is selling some quantity of the Power Mac G5 computers that comprised Virginia Tech's top-ranked supercomputer. If you recall the story, the university purchased 1,100 dual-processor 2 GHz Power Mac G5s from the initial run of Apple's 64-bit desktop computer. A few months later, the massive cluster system ranked as the number three supercomputer in the world, and at a fraction of the cost per teraflop (trillion floating point operations per second) as numbers one and two.
http://computing.vt.edu/research_computing/terascale/
http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=07489
After Steve Jobs announced G5-based rack-mounted Xserves, which use 40 percent less power and occupy one-third as much space as the G5 towers, Virginia Tech committed to a quick upgrade. Speculation abounds, too, that Apple will supply Virginia Tech with dual 2.5 GHz G5 processors, which are possible with the smaller and lower-powered newer G5 chip.
Of course, the university's announcement in late January led many to ask what would become of the Power Mac G5s being rotated out of service. Would they be given or sold to Virginia Tech students? Slashdot devoted a long thread to amusing comments.
http://biz.yahoo.com/rc/040126/tech_virginiatech_apple_1.html
http://apple.slashdot.org/apple/04/01/27/1257256.shtml?tid=107&tid=187
MacMall has the answer: they're selling off the machines as Apple- warrantied refurbished units for $2,800 each. A comparable new computer (which includes no modem and 1 GB of RAM instead of the 512 MB of a stock dual G5) costs $3,220 purchased directly from the Apple Store.
http://www.macmall.com/macmall/promotions/custom.asp?p=supercomputer
If you were to buy one of these machines, you might wonder if, late at night, it might reach out over the Internet to its former rack mates and exchange some long polynomials just for old time's sake.
The iPod mini, which Apple announced last month at Macworld Expo San Francisco 2004, is starting to trickle into consumer's hands. A $250 version of Apple's popular iPod music player, the iPod mini sports a tiny 4 GB hard drive in an enclosure that weighs only 3.6 ounces (102 grams) and comes in 5 anodized aluminum colors. What makes the iPod mini appealing to me, though, is the way Apple's designers incorporated the control buttons into the solid-state scroll wheel, a much better implementation than the four separate buttons on current iPods that are difficult to navigate with one hand and too often get pressed accidentally. Apple retail stores are supposed to receive shipments of the iPod mini on 20-Feb-04; people who ordered one shortly after Macworld Expo are receiving shipping notices now. [JLC]
http://www.apple.com/ipodmini/
http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=07494
Apple has a nearly inscrutable minor update to its music-creation application GarageBand, saying it "clarifies specific alert dialogs regarding system performance." We can only imagine that Apple rolled a few unspecified bug fixes into the update, which weighs in as a hefty 21.5 MB download! [JLC]
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=120320
http://www.apple.com/ilife/garageband/
Apple has released a trio of minor updates for AppleWorks, its integrated productivity software that includes word processor, spreadsheet, page layout, graphics, database, and presentation capabilities, as well as compatibility with Microsoft Office file formats. Three updates are available, depending on your operating system and version. AppleWorks 6.2.9 for Mac OS X adds support for mice with scroll wheels, improves printing, and enhances the reliability of the presentation environment. AppleWorks 6.2.8 for Mac OS 8.1 through 9.x and the Mac OS X update resolve issues with Web-based templates and clip art on networks using proxy servers. AppleWorks 6.2.1 for Windows, as well as both of the Macintosh updates, improve the spreadsheet module.
All three updates, available for free to users of AppleWorks 6.0 or later for Macintosh or 6.1 or later for Windows, are available online. The Macintosh downloads are 16 MB, and the Windows download is 6 MB. [MHA]
http://www.apple.com/appleworks/update/
Apple today updated iCal, its calendar and personal organizer application, to version 1.5.2. The Info drawer is now optionally detachable, you can assign alarms or add notes to To-Do items, and alarms now include an option to display a message 15 minutes before the alarm goes off. Also new is the capability to publish and subscribe to calendars on servers located behind firewalls, as well as more keyboard shortcuts. iCal supports events in multiple time zones, and has received other stability and performance improvements. iCal 1.5.2 is available now via Software Update, or as a 6.3 MB download. [JLC]
Apple today updated Safari to version 1.2, rolling in a few new features and improving performance. Safari 1.2 now boasts improved compatibility with Web sites and Web applications, the capability to resume interrupted downloads, and support for personal certificate authentication. The browser also offers full keyboard access, meaning you can now navigate Web pages without using the mouse, and supports LiveConnect, a technology some sites use for communicating between JavaScript and Java applets. The LiveConnect feature requires Java 1.4.2, also announced today. Safari 1.2 is a 7.7 MB download via Software Update or as a 7 MB separate download, and requires Mac OS X 10.3 Panther. Java 1.4.2, which additionally offers performance and stability improvements, requires Mac OS X 10.3.1 or later and is a 29.4 MB download via Software Update. [JLC]
http://www.apple.com/safari/
http://www.apple.com/java/
Bare Bones Software has released BBEdit 7.1.2, an update to its professional-level text, HTML, and programming editor. As usual, the product release notes detail new features and copious adjustments and fixes; of special note are the ability to press Command-period to interrupt long-running grep searches (handy when you mess up an expression used to cull through a 60 MB log file!) and the option to specify alternate ports for SFTP connections. BBEdit's built-in FTP client no longer sends NOOP commands to remote FTP servers every 30 seconds; BBEdit used to do this to try to keep the FTP session open, but if there was a problem or network congestion, BBEdit could stall. BBEdit 7.1.2 is free to registered users of BBEdit 7, and it is available as a 12.9 MB disk image for either Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X 10.2 or later. [GD]
http://www.barebones.com/support/bbedit/updates.shtml
http://www.barebones.com/support/bbedit/current_notes.shtml
Apple has released Security Update 2004-01-26 for Mac OS X 10.1.5, Mac OS X 10.2.8 Jaguar, and Mac OS X 10.3.2 Panther (both normal and server versions). The update addresses a slew of potential security issues, including problems with the AppleShare server, Apache 1.3 and 2, Classic, Mail, Safari, Windows File Sharing, and more. It's easiest to get the update through Software Update, though individual updates are available from Apple's download site. The size of the download ranges from 2.2 MB to 7.8 MB, depending on the version you need, but as always with security updates, they're worth getting. [ACE]
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=61798
http://www.info.apple.com/support/downloads.html
Apple has announced an iBook Logic Board Repair Extension Program for some iBook models made between May 2002 and April 2003 which suffer from specific problems with the built-in and/or external display including a blank screen at startup, lines on the screen, scrambled video, or intermittent video. Once Apple determines a specific iBook is affected by the display problem, it will repair or replace the iBook's logic board at no charge. Apple says customers who have already been charged for repair of this problem will be contacted and reimbursed.
http://www.apple.com/support/ibook/faq/
The specific iBook models affected have serial numbers ranging from UV220XXXXXX to UV318XXXXXX and are sometimes called by the following model names:
* iBook (14.1 LCD 32 VRAM)
* iBook (32 VRAM)
* iBook (Opaque 16 VRAM)
* iBook (14.1 LCD 16 VRAM)
* iBook (16 VRAM)
To participate in the program, customers need to contact an Apple support representative or an Authorized Apple Service Provider; in the U.S., customers can call 800/275-2273 to locate a service provider. The repair program will be available for three years after the first retail sale of an affected iBook, although Apple says it may provide further repair extensions if necessary.
At the PalmSource Developer Conference last week, PalmSource, the company that develops and licenses the Palm OS, revealed details about its forthcoming handheld operating system and also dropped some disappointing news: the company will stop supporting the Macintosh. Fortunately, a Mac developer is stepping in to pick up the pieces - and hopefully improve the Palm experience for Mac users.
Cobalt and Garnet
Palm OS Cobalt, formerly known as Palm OS 6, is a near-complete rewrite of the Palm OS that incorporates advanced features such as multitasking and multithreading, memory protection, improved security, and support for larger screens and more memory (up to 256 MB). Cobalt also boosts the graphics and multimedia capabilities of the Palm OS, thanks to contributions from engineers acquired in Palm, Inc.'s 2001 purchase of Be, Inc. (see "Palm Gets Be in Its Bonnet" in TidBITS-593_).
http://www.palmsource.com/press/2004/021004_cobalt.html
http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06523
Palm OS Cobalt is expected to be available on new handheld devices later this year, though no specific timeline was mentioned; the software has been delivered to PalmSource licensees, so the time frame depends on when new devices will be ready.
PalmSource also announced that the next revision of Palm OS 5 (the latest version shipping with current handhelds) will be renamed Palm OS Garnet and will be geared toward use in hybrid "smartphones" such as PalmOne's popular Treo 600, which currently runs Palm OS 5.2.1.
(This is a good opportunity to recap the Palm players, since the names seem to change every time I write about them for TidBITS. In 2002, Palm, Inc. spun off its operating system division into a subsidiary called PalmSource. In 2003, after Palm's board of directors gave the final go-ahead on PalmSource becoming an independent company, Palm, Inc. also bought its chief rival Handspring, and renamed the combined company PalmOne. These moves have led to all sorts of overlap. For example, the PalmOne Tungsten T3 runs on the standard Palm OS 5, licensed from PalmSource, but includes improvements to the built-in applications such as Calendar and Contacts - themselves previously known as Date Book and Address Book. Other Palm OS licensees, such as Sony, make their own changes to the Palm OS as they see fit. Explaining it always makes me dive for the aspirin bottle.)
http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=07215
http://www.palmone.com/
http://www.clieplaza.com/
Goodbye, Mac
Another feature of Palm OS Cobalt is that it "improves compatibility with Microsoft Windows," according to PalmSource, specifically Microsoft Outlook. More to the point, due to a change in how HotSync synchronization works in Cobalt, plus changes in the architecture of the built-in applications, synchronization with Macs won't be supported in Cobalt.
http://www.palminfocenter.com/view_story.asp?ID=6547
To be honest, this isn't a huge surprise, given that Palm's current support for the Mac seems to have evaporated, and at least some Macintosh engineers have been laid off. When Apple released Mac OS X 10.3 Panther, compatibility problems arose that have yet to be fixed. (The problem appears to be related to permissions for HotSync components; some people report that reinstalling Palm Desktop and HotSync Manager under Panther work fine, while others have seen success by reinstalling the software while logged in as the root user.) Although Palm has occasionally taken interest in the Mac - such as buying Claris Organizer and turning it into Palm Desktop for Macintosh - the company's overall history of Mac support has seemed more like the kid brother your parents insisted you take to the movies with your date; he can get into the show, but has to sit somewhere else and can't have any popcorn.
http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=04915
PalmSource's statement about the situation hints at possible ongoing work between the company and Apple, but the emphasis is clearly on third-party solutions. Michael Mace, PalmSource's chief competitive officer (who used to be an Apple executive), issued the following statement to selected media outlets saying, "PalmSource is fortunate to have a great Palm OS developer community who provide solutions for Macintosh compatibility today. Palm OS provides an open and flexible architecture and allows its licensees to decide whether to ship a Mac compatibility solution with their Palm Powered device. (One such solution is provided by Mark/Space.) We are continuing our efforts with Apple to provide compatibility between Palm OS and Macintosh."
The Missing Sync
Fortunately, Mac support isn't completely drying up. Mark/Space, which already ships Missing Sync for Palm OS and Missing Sync for Sony Clie, announced that the next major version of their utility would not only continue Mac synchronization support, but improve upon it.
http://www.markspace.com/cobalt.html
In its current incarnation, Missing Sync for Palm OS 2.0.1 isn't a synchronization tool in the same vein as HotSync Manager. If your Palm handheld has an SD (Secure Digital) card inserted when you run the software, the card appears on your Mac desktop as if it were a removable disk. Missing Sync also includes plug-ins for iPhoto and iTunes, enabling you to send photos and MP3 files to the handheld's SD card for viewing and listening using third- party software (SplashPhoto and AeroPlayer). Lastly, Missing Sync features Internet Sharing, where the Palm connects directly to the Internet via your Mac, letting you surf the Web, check email, and, for those who have missed it, use AvantGo (which was never updated to support Mac OS X).
http://www.markspace.com/palmos.html
http://www.markspace.com/missingsyncinternet.html
http://www.avantgo.com/
The Cobalt version of Missing Sync, however, will be a complete replacement for the Palm HotSync architecture, enabling data synchronization between the Palm and Apple's iApps (iCal, Address Book, and iMovie along with iTunes and iPhoto), or between the Palm and Microsoft Entourage. The interface will be more in line with Mac OS X, and will also offer improved Bluetooth synchronization and synchronization over Wi-Fi networks. The new architecture will also support current HotSync conduits, so if you use other personal information managers such as Now Up-to-Date & Contact or Chronos Personal Organizer, the current conduits will work. This includes Apple's own iSync conduit, which currently works with HotSync Manager; however, my experiences synchronizing Palms with iSync have been disappointing. (Developers can also choose to support the new Missing Sync architecture.)
http://www.nowsoftware.com/tour/index.html
http://www.chronosnet.com/&/products/po_index.html
Missing Sync for Cobalt will support handhelds running Palm OS 4 and later, and Mac OS X 10.2 and later. Mark/Space has published a technical white paper (a 72K PDF) and a marketing white paper (a 264K PDF) with more information.
http://www.markspace.com/pdf/technical_whitepaper.pdf
http://www.markspace.com/pdf/marketing_whitepaper.pdf
Mark/Space expects the cost of the new Missing Sync to be about $40, though it's still up in the air whether PalmOne or other hardware companies will choose to bundle it with their devices. It would be a shame if Mac users were forced to pay a premium for synchronization capabilities, though it wouldn't be without precedent: the early PalmPilots required Mac users to buy the Palm MacPac, which included a serial adapter that plugged into the Mac's serial port.
Still, even if I have to pay for synchronization capabilities, it's worth the cost. I still use my Palm handheld every day, because it's better suited as an organizer than the iPod's calendar and contacts features. I'm also optimistic that a company like Mark/Space, which has been developing Mac software for years, can focus its efforts on making a worthwhile Palm data synchronization tool for the Mac.
Even non-techies know about file sharing, mostly due to music that's illegally uploaded and downloaded through peer-to-peer systems like Gnutella and Kazaa. Other types of file sharing exist, but they don't tend to make the covers of mainstream magazines. This article is about those other types - the routine file sharing that takes place in homes and offices for tasks such as managing project files shared by individuals in a group and creating a central archive of important files.
File sharing usually engenders frustration: we only think about sharing files when it doesn't work, or when a system we think we know acts unexpectedly. I'm fascinated by the topic, so I wrote "Take Control of Sharing Files in Panther" with the hope of taking the sting out of file sharing frustration and introducing you to time-saving techniques that will improve security, increase flexibility, and simplify file transfer. To give you an idea of what's in the ebook and provide some useful help, here are three of my best stand-alone tips from the book.
IP over FireWire for Small Ad Hoc Groups
Mac OS X 10.3 Panther can use FireWire cabling as a networking method, just like Ethernet or AirPort. Because even FireWire 400 is a few times faster than 100 Mbps Ethernet, IP over FireWire can be a great way to hook up small networks on the fly.
You may already know about FireWire Target Disk Mode, in which you connect a laptop, for instance, to another Mac, and then power up the laptop while pressing the T key on the keyboard. When the laptop finishes booting, it shows a FireWire symbol on its screen (and nothing else) and on the other machine, the laptop's drive appears in the Finder just like any other mounted hard disk.
IP over FireWire extends and simplifies the Target Disk Mode notion and eliminates the need to put one Mac into a special state. You can daisy chain from 2 to 63 Macs together using standard FireWire cables, or link the computers via FireWire hubs.
You enable IP over FireWire just like any other network connection:
1. Open System Preferences. 2. Click the Network preference pane. 3. Choose Network Port Configurations from the Show menu. 4. Click New. 5. Choose Built-in FireWire from the Port pop-up menu. You might name the service "IP over FireWire". 6. Click OK and then click Apply Now.
Now, when you plug Macs together with FireWire cables, each computer assigns itself its own address, and the Rendezvous auto- discovery services enable each computer to see resources on other machines. You can even use Internet sharing (in the Sharing preference pane's Internet tab) to share an Internet connection over FireWire.
Turn Off Guest Access in Personal File Sharing
There's a fundamental problem with Panther's built-in AppleShare server: when you enable it, a guest user - one without a user name and password - can connect and view or copy files from any user's Public folder. This is a security hazard, and one I think Apple should offer an easy way to disable through a checkbox.
Until they do, however, you can follow this procedure for turning off default AppleShare guest access:
1. Open the /Library/Preferences folder.
2. Find the file named com.apple.AppleFileServer.plist and copy
it to the Desktop or another folder by pressing the Option
key while dragging. (You may be able to edit it in place by
authenticating when saving, but it's best to have a backup
copy anyway.)
3. Open the file in TextEdit or any text editor, such as BBEdit.
4. Find the lines in the file that read:
guestAccess
Restore Jaguar-like Server Browsing Panther 10.3 through 10.3.2 creates a split in the way that you mount shared file servers compared to earlier versions of Mac OS X. Under Jaguar and previous releases of Mac OS X, all file servers were "hard mounted." A hard-mounted file server appears as an icon on the Desktop (assuming you have that option turned on in the Panther Finder's Preferences window), and is for most purposes exactly like a local hard disk. But with hard-mounted servers, if the server becomes unavailable - your network connection goes down, the server crashes - your Finder can lock up for quite some time, even under Panther, until it decides to release the missing server.
You can still hard mount servers under Panther by choosing Connect to Server (Command-K) from the Finder's Go menu and entering the server's details manually, but Panther also offers an interesting, but flakey, new option for mounting servers on a local network, long available in Unix: "soft mounting." A soft-mounted server is more like a folder. Instead of it showing on the Desktop, you browse to it using the Network browser (the Network icon in the Finder's sidebar). If the server or your network becomes unavailable, Panther doesn't complain or pause even when you try to access the unavailable server, of course - it's just not there any more. When the server becomes reachable once again, you can browse that folder and find the server's contents in it.
Originally, I thought that soft mounting was an excellent alternative to servers on the Desktop because soft-mounted servers are always available without any login process. But in practical use, I continually find strange behavior: having to re-enter a password, not finding servers that I think were soft mounted, mounting servers as both hard and soft at the same time. It's too much to manage compared with the relative ease and few disadvantages to hard mounting servers.
To avoid soft mounting entirely and to skip entering machine numbers or names in the hard-mounting dialog, you can mostly restore the Jaguar-style Connect to Server browsing dialog. My colleague Dan Frakes gave us this one-line AppleScript script which triggers a version of the old software interface.
1. From the /Applications/AppleScript folder, launch
Script Editor.
2. Enter the following in the default Untitled window
that opens:
open location (choose URL) with error reporting
3. Save the file in /Library/Scripts/Finder Scripts/ as
"Old Hard Mount" or whatever you choose.
4. Turn on the Finder Script menubar menu by running Install
Script Menu from the /Applications/AppleScript folder.
5. While in the Finder, select the script from the Finder Scripts
submenu of the Script menu, and there's the beautiful old Jaguar
network browser. This version, however, makes you select which
type of server you want to browse for through a pop-up menu.
"Take Control of Sharing Files in Panther" In addition to the tips above, the 96-page ebook covers all the built-in methods of sharing files using the Web, AppleShare, Samba, and FTP (it even gives a few pointers on NFS and several lesser-known options), while guiding you through changing configuration files and using third-party software to avoid pitfalls and problems. For example, I give steps for changing Apple's configuration files to enable WebDAV file sharing using Panther's Apache Web server and to use Apache to share folders other than the defaults (a useful option that I also demystify for AppleShare and Samba).
For Panther users who find themselves in mixed Mac and Windows networks, the ebook covers both how to connect _to_ a Panther system running the built-in Windows-style Samba file server, and how to connect _from_ a Panther machine to a Samba file server running on a Windows computer (or another Mac or Unix system, even).
In researching the ebook, I found that Panther changed the equation for many aspects of file sharing, from browsing on a local network for servers to turning servers on with the right amount of security. I addressed these problems with specific, step-by-step instructions, plus I wrote a long section detailing how to connect to Panther servers from major platforms, including Panther, Jaguar, Mac OS 9, and Windows XP. The book also covers sharing music and photos with iPhoto and iTunes, both in ways that Apple recommends and in alternative, more flexible ways. I hope you find the book helpful!
http://www.tidbits.com/takecontrol/panther/sharing.html
[Editor's Note: If you've been following our Take Control ebook series, you've noticed that previous books have carried a $5 price. This one costs $10, but the increase is not simple price inflation of the sort Consumer Reports loves to document ("Smaller size, bigger taste, same great price!"). At 96 pages, Glenn's ebook is nearly twice as long as the others, was considerably more work for all of us, and will probably grow even larger when we release free updates. -Tonya]
January 15, 2004 - The meeting began with the traditional introduction of officers. This was followed by some general discussion on the LTSP demonstration that had just taken place in the Linux SIG.
George Krumins spoke about his Aver Media Studio video capture card. He reported that the software that came with it was very shoddy and uninstalling the software was a nightmare. George said he had to hand edit registry to get rid of it. This lead to a general discussion of TV cards. Richard Rollins talked about the Hauppauge (Hop Hog) TV card.
Norris Hansell brought up the subject of the U of I moving to Express Email. He wants to be able to interface with the newer system with his older PowerPC 604e/OS8.6 machine which will not run Express Email. He wants to use Eudora 5.2.2b which has Secure POP. Eudora 6.0 only runs on OSX, so the older version of the software is the one he will have to use. Someone suggested going to http://www.ph.utexas.edu/~help/e-mail/configure-eudora-mac.html for help on the subject. He was told it had "tweeks for older stuff" to which Norris responded "That's the nature of my life." It was suggested he also do a Google search using "eudora mac ssl" as his search criteria. Another suggestion was http://oldversion.com but it's a PC site.
Jerry Feltner about Windows XP and how to move a program above the divider bar. He was told he could "Drag and Drop" the program in question or right click and "Pin to Start menu" so that it does drop them off after no or little use.
Bill Zwicky asked, "Can you recondition a lithium ion battery?" The consensus was that you couldn't, but Emil recommended BTI (Battery Technology Inc.) for a new one.
Tom Purl talked Mac's Recycling to get rid of old equipment. Craig Kummerow recommended a new place, Obsolete Technology Recycling, at 126 W. Main in Urbana, as a place that will not charge you to recycle monitors. The owner is Jeff Kretschmar.
Tom Purl said there has just been a NTFS driver released fo Knoppix Linux that allows you to read and write to Windows drives. While Knoppix wouldn't write to it before, it could read. Tom said to look on Slashdot for the story in the last couple of days.
Tom Purl mentioned IBM's contract with China to promote Linux.
Kevin Hisel reported on Isreal's "Office" deal/ploy with Microsoft. He said it showed Microsoft could be forced to deal on its pricing.
In Mac news, a newer version of the iPod has been released. Also, HP has licensed the iPod for manufacture and they will be putting iTunes on all their machines.
U.S. News reported that Apple had a profitable first quarter.
In PC News, the January Critical Updates has been released. 64-bit software slowly growing. Kevin Hisel reported that Microsoft has buckled to public pressure and will be extending support to ME, 95, 98, etc.
As the break neared, Kevin Hisel brought out the prizes to give away. Kevin Hopkins was coerced into drawing the names.
Emil Cobb won Flight Simulator 2004. Tom Purl won the Office System book. Jeff Strong won an Office 2003 T-shirt.
As a lst news item Kevin Hopkins reported about the "FBI - file sharing" virus. Here are the texts of the virus appearing locally.
--------------
Subject: You use illegal File Sharing ... Ladies and Gentlemen, Downloading of Movies, MP3s and Software is illegal and punishable by law. We hereby inform you that your computer was scanned under the IP 62.223.115.57 . The contents of your computer were confiscated as an evidence, and you will be indicated. You get the charge in writing, in the next days. In the Reference code: #16086, are all files, that we found on your computer. The sender address of this mail was masked, to protect us against mail bombs. - You get more detailed information by the Federal Bureau of Investigation -FBI- - Department for "Illegal Internet Downloads", Room 7350 - 935 Pennsylvania Avenue - Washington, DC 20535, USA - (202) 324-3000 Content-Type: application/octet-stream; name=refcode16086.txt.pif Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="refcode16086.txt.pif" Attachment converted: Mail:refcode16086.txt.pif (????/----) (0000572E)-------------
Subject: Sorry, that's your mail I've got your mail, but its came on my mail address??? i've read this mail ,,, sorry about that cya Content-Type: application/octet-stream; name=yourmail.doc.scr Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="yourmail.doc.scr" Attachment converted: Mail:yourmail.doc.scr (????/----) (0000572F)-------------
Here's are some informational sites about the above virus and its many variants.
http://www.viruslist.com/eng/viruslist.html?id=603668
http://www.viruslibrary.com/virusinfo/I-Worm.Sober.c.htm
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We then took a break.
Once we resumed, Steve Gast talked about Windows Commander, a file manager, which is like SID or DirOpus were for the Amiga. The most recent version is clled Total Commander 6.01 - http://www.ghisler.com
Kevin Hisel showed how to make a new toolbar. Mark Zinzow offered another alternative. Anthony Philipp offered yet another.
Richard Rollins showed AirSnare from Digital Matrix, written by Jay L. DeBoer. He also showed WinPcap 3.0 - http://winpcap.polito.it/ - and WinPatrol - http://www.winpatrol.com/.
Someone mentioned that Commodore is producing an MP3 player - Skymedia.
Kevin Hisel then gave us a tour of Starship CUCUG II, the club's web based discussion forums. He showed how to create, edit and format a message. He said, "We'd love to see more members to use it."
Anthony Philipp brought up that he'd had trouble logging in before. It was discovered that he needed to be reactivated.
In closing discussions, a few web sites wer mentioned. They are
http://snipurl.com
http://tinyurl.com/
LTSP stands for Linux Terminal Server Project, and it's a great and inexpensive way to set up a network of computer systems. During my presentation last month, I showed an example of an LTSP server (my Linux compter) and an LTSP client (a crappy mid-90's Compaq with 32MB of RAM and a K6 processor). I demonstrated how the old computer could be made into a great LTSP client and how you can build a very cheap computer lab using fairly old computers. Along with this demonstration, I gave a slide presentation. It can be found at the following address:
http://tompurl.com/Members/tom_purl/demonstrations/ltsp_preso.pdf
The January meeting of the CUCUG executive board took place on Tuesday, January 20, 2004, at 7PM, at Kevin Hisel's house. (For anyone wishing to attend - which is encouraged, by the way - the address and phone number are both in the book). Present at the meeting were: Emil Cobb, Tom Purl, Kevin Hopkins, and Kevin Hisel.
Emil Cobb: Emil had nothing to report.
Kevin Hisel: Kevin noted that his employer, Tower Hobbies, had been favorably rated by bizrate.com for the fourth year in a row.
Kevin Hisel reported for President Richard Rollins in absentia. He stated that he had no program for the PC SIG this month. He recommended asking people to bring in programs to show - please.
Emil Cobb said the same thing for the Mac SIG.
Kevin Hisel asked if someone could demo a NASA rover program available for download from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He also talked a "sunclock" Java program called Mars24 available at http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/mars24/ . He talked about the associated MER Spirit/Opportunity Clock applet too. Kevin said he'd be willing to show some of the 3-D Mars images he's collected.
Kevin Hopkins: Kevin reported that we had three renewals of memberships at the last meeting.
Tom Purl: Tom said he would be willing to assume the Linux SIG Chairmanship. Tom is an IT worker at State Farm Insurance. He asked about what sorts of this the Linux SIG Chairman job entailed. He asked about what sorts of things would be required as far as items for the newsletter. There was a discussion about demonstration topics. Kevin Hisel said he'd like to see about Linux doing daily tasks: word processing, burning CDs, surfing the web. Tom mentioned some ideas he had on showing FreeVO, MythTV, and the "Linux Toys" book. He said he might show Zope next month. Kevin Hisel mentioned Hauppauge.
After extended discussion, it was decided to move the Linux SIG into main meeting this month for a demo of Plone, a web development tool for easy, dynamic, web site creation.
Meetings are held the third Thursday of each month at 7:00 p.m. at the First Baptist Church of Champaign in Savoy. The FBC-CS is located at 1602 N. Prospect Avenue in Savoy, on the NE corner of Burwash and Prospect. To get to the the First Baptist Church from Champaign or Urbana, take Prospect Avenue south. Setting the trip meter in your car to zero at the corner of Kirby/Florida and Prospect in Champaign (Marathon station on the SW corner), you only go 1.6 miles south. Windsor will be at the one mile mark. The Savoy village sign (on the right) will be at the 1.4 mile mark. Burwash is at the 1.6 mile mark. The Windsor of Savoy retirement community is just to the south; Burwash Park is to the east. Turn east (left) on Burwash. The FBC-CS parking lot entrance is on the north (left) side of Burwash. Enter by the double doors at the eastern end of the building's south side. A map can be found on the CUCUG website at http://www.cucug.org/meeting.html. The First Baptist Church of Champaign is also on the web at http://www.fbc-cs.org .
Membership dues for individuals are $20 annually; prorated to $10 at mid year.
Our monthly newsletter, the Status Register, is delivered by email. All recent editions are available on our WWW site. To initiate a user group exchange, just send us your newsletter or contact our editor via email. As a matter of CUCUG policy, an exchange partner will be dropped after three months of no contact.
For further information, please attend the next meeting as our guest, or contact one of our officers (all at area code 217):
President/WinSIG: Richard Rollins 469-2616 Vice-Pres/MacSIG: Emil Cobb 398-0149 e-cobb@uiuc.edu Secretary/Editor: Kevin Hopkins 356-5026 kh2@uiuc.edu Treasurer: Richard Hall 344-8687 rjhall1@uiuc.edu Corp.Agent/Web: Kevin Hisel 406-948-1999 Linux SIG: Tom Purl 390-6078 tompurl2000@yahoo.com
Visit our web site at http://www.cucug.org/, or join in our online forums at http://www.cucug.org/starship/index.php .