Wednesday, October 25, 2006
10/26 SNR
- A new SL Trib article about Judge Kimball's refusal to stay SCO v. Novell. This is the only coverage I've seen about that so far, and I'm actually kind of surprised it got even the one article. An amusing tidbit from the end of the piece:
SCO spokesman Blake Stowell would not discuss the developments other than to say the company was pleased with its arguments against Wells' decision and looked forward to an eventual trial.
I'd have to go back and check on this, but the article states Novell's asking for a dismissal, and I'm not sure that's true. I was under the impression they were asking for a PSJ in their favor, rather than just having the case dismissed. - A thread on c.u.s.m. about HipCheck, the latest Me, Inc. service. It starts out as a "look at our new cool doodad" announcement, and degenerates into an irritable back-and-forth about whether it's really a good idea for the product to be shipping root passwords and other around in plaintext form. Seems there's an option to do an https connection, but plain old http is the default, and SCO's position is that this is 100% perfectly fine, dammit, and people should just shut up and stop asking impertinent questions.
- Also, a post about the probable demise of comp.unix.unixware.moderated. Seems there haven't actually been any posts there since June 1996. So either there's just no demand for the group, or it's got a moderator who's either incredibly strict or incredibly lazy.
- A couple bits about Oracle's foray into Linux tech support. They aren't doing their own distro after all, and instead they're going to sell cut-rate support for RHEL, competing with Red Hat in supporting RHAT's own product. I'm still trying to make up my mind whether this is a positive or negative thing. I do think it's probably motivated by spite rather than rational business reasons. Red Hat bought JBoss and incurred the Wrath of Larry, and at Oracle Larry's every whim is law. Maybe, coincidentally, this is a good business move for Oracle. Perhaps, coincidentally, the Linux community at large will benefit. But right now it's way too soon to say. Call me crazy, but I have a funny feeling MySQL won't be welcome on Oracle-supported boxes.
- On the other hand, one of Oracle's big bullet point items is that they're indemnifying their users against IP suits, and they mention SCO by name. You could argue, cynically, that beating up on SCO is an easy and painless way to win hearts and minds in the OSS community. But hey, whenever someone beats up on SCO, I'll always be happy to cheer them on, regardless of what their underlying motives might be. PJ's take on the Oracle thing, and the talk about SCO and indemnification, is here.
- Say hi to SLERT, a new niche distro from Novell with real-time SMP support. Seems they're using technology originally developed by a company called Concurrent. Concurrent makes specialized hardware and had to roll a bunch of their own Linux kernel features to support their hardware. It just might be that this stuff is somehow derived from older code they developed in house to run Unix on their previous generation of hardware, something SCO insists is a mega-humongous no-no. SCO hasn't sued them, or made any threatening noises about it, so I guess they're ok with it. Or, just maybe, the notion of suing IBM for basically the same thing was a sham from the beginning, nothing but an attempt to extract a huge settlement or buyout. I know, I know, earthshaking theory and all that.
- An article about Xen. Right now XenSource isn't too worried about M$. It's always nice to see that kind of confidence, although it also sounds like a good candidate for "famous last words".
- In other virtualization news, a bit about Sun's BrandZ, which lets you host non-Solaris OSes (primarily Linux) inside Solaris 10 zones.
- In other Sun-related news, here's their Project Blackbox, a portable $500k datacenter built into a shipping container. If your significant other tires of you filling up all corners of the house with gadgets and gear, you can just park one of these babies in the driveway instead.
- Like Oracle, Cisco is another big co. losing some ground to open source alternatives.
- A bit about the reorg at Xandros, brought to my attention by DDT on the Yahoo board, oddly enough. You have heard of Xandros, right?
- Also, oddly, via DDT, a couple of pieces ranting about the state of video drivers on Linux. I'm no kernel guru, but the guy does make some compelling arguments. At the very least, it's clear the current state of affairs is more than just a little ugly.
- A post about contracts with silly "no open source" clauses.
- OT: Another fun use for google maps: Detecting when monstrous insects are attacking your city. Sadly, Lindon is not the city under siege, at least not yet.
- I think this was on slashdot a few days ago, so maybe I'm behind the times a little, but PCWorld has rounded up a bunch of old computer commercials from the 80's. It's too bad SCO's never done TV advertising (that I've ever heard of, anyway). That would be a real hoot.
- PC-BSD got a commercial backer a while back, and already one pundit's claiming it just may be the "next Linux". I'm going to have to take a wait-n-see attitude on that, as much as I like BSD and all that.
- A pundit at the Inquirer has a cow because adding real-time antivirus scanning to Linux requires techie skillz. Ok. When the great plague of Linux viruses hits, I guess he can say he told us so, but I'm not losing a lot of sleep over it. If you're interested, the Dazuko project he mentions lives here.
- A BSD user is forced to use windows for a week, and reports on his experiences.
- From the message boards, an article about a toad-licking dog. It would take far too long to explain why this isn't totally OT, so either you know, or you don't, but it's a funny story either way.
By brx0 @ 5:02 PM 
