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Book publisher In Pictures announced this week that it has added new how-to books on desktop Linux (Linspire Five-O), and the four OpenOffice.org programs (Base, Calc, Impress, Writer) to its catalog. The books are all designed for new and relatively new users.

While Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer touted the US arrival of his company's Google AdWords killer, potential customers who use the Firefox browser found their attempts to join AdCenter were being killed by a lack of cross-browser compatibility.

Some companies buy back stock. Sun has taken to buying back executives.

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., May 5 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Informatica Corporation (Nasdaq: INFA), a leading provider of data integration software, today announced the general availability of Informatica PowerCenter 8. The result of extensive input from Informatica customers and partners, PowerCenter 8 has set the standard for enterprise data integration with enhancements in four key areas: advanced data quality, enterprise data access, enterprise- wide deployment and developer productivity.

With the Microsoft and Linux camps starting to get their acts together on server virtualization, we decided to check in with VMware, the company that popularized the concept, to see what gains it is making in the interim.

A quiet week out here in the Land of Enterprise Unix. As the dust settles from the pseudo-departure of Scott McNealy as CEO of Sun Microsystems, the rest of the enterprise Unix community is rather dormant, as if stunned by the news and exhausted from three months of trade shows and conferences all around the planet.

Atmel Corporation has chosen LinuxLink by TimeSys as the primary Linux distribution mechanism for its ARM-based processors.

When browsing through the offerings of various web hosting companies you are sure to notice that some offer UNIX hosting and others offer Windows.

Mepis LLC on May 4 announced the Beta 2 release of SimplyMepis 6.0, the second of two planned betas before the final version is to launch around June 1, according to Mepis founder and chief maintainer Warren Woodford.

Old boys: 'Watch your step, mister'

Patent attorneys rarely let their sang-froid slip. But this week the British Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys (CIPA) did just that when it warned the Treasury-commissioned Gowers Review of Intellectual Property to watch its step.

Trustix Secure Linux has been your choice for a Stable and Secure Linux. Trustix has been going through a rough period with its loss of Talented and skillful developers, but its time for us as a community to move forward and develop this great distribution. Sincere thanks to Erlend Midttun, Christian Haugan Toldness and Oyestein who have given their best to making a Successful, Stable and Secure (SSS) Distro.

Viper is the code name for the upcoming release of DB2. Viper is a leading edge hybrid data server capable of supporting both relational and pure XML storage and provides all the necessary services to support both data structures.

A couple of years ago, we set up a Linux box running Postfix, SpamAssassin and Amavisd to try and reduce the amount of spam we were getting on our mail server. We used the latest versions of each product. It has done pretty well but we have noticed in the past few weeks that more spam is getting through. Writing new rules doesn't seem to make much of a difference. What can we look at to start reducing the level of incoming spam?

Last week, the Massachusetts Information Technology Division (ITD) issued a Request for Information (RFI) on any plugins that might be under development to assist it in migrating from a MS Office environment to one based upon software that supports ODF. Perhaps Microsoft may be willing to lend a hand.

It will not have escaped your attention that Microsoft is labouring to finish the next version of its Windows operating system, Vista. A version aimed at the corporate market is supposed to be ready for Christmas, with the consumer edition following some time later (missing the Christmas market, which has irritated computer manufacturers and retailers more than somewhat). Last week, Gartner, a leading IT consultancy, predicted that Microsoft would miss those shipping dates.

A new paper discusses the relationship between high assurance software (for security or safety) and free-libre / open source software (FLOSS). High assurance software must NEVER fail. Many tools for developing high assurance software are FLOSS, it turns out...

Open source philosophy under threat Independent software vendors (ISVs) could soon become a thing of the past as major software vendors continue to adopt open source software.

You tell us

Reg Reader Studies There are those who proclaim Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) as the future of information technology; others say it's all just hype created by the industry to drive the next wave of spending.

t's amazing in an age where relational databases reign supreme when it comes to managing data that so much information still exists outside RDBMS engines in the form of flat files and other such constructs. In most enterprises, data is passed back and forth between disparate systems in a fashion and speed that would rival the busiest expressways in the world, with much of this data existing in common, delimited files. Target systems intercept these source files and then typically proceed to load them via ETL (extract, transform, load) processes into databases that then utilize the information for business intelligence, transactional functions, or other standard operations. ETL tasks and data movement jobs can consume quite a bit of time and resources, especially if large volumes of data are present that require loading into a database. This being the case, many DBAs welcome alternative means of accessing and managing data that exists in file format.

The Geek Freedom League says its winter Linux certification drive will probably be the last time geeks will be able to get Linux Professional Institute certification on the cheap.