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Microsoft's server division expects to release a beta version of Windows Server 2003 tailor-made for the high performance computing (HPC) market by year's end, Microsoft said, but failed to clarify whether either Intel or AMD's top-end 64-bit processors would be supported. It spearheads an attack on a market where Unix and Linux are firmly entrenched.

Business rules software vendor Ilog has introduced a new business rules studio for the Eclipse open source integrated development environment (IDE). Based on its business rules management product Ilog JRules, Business Rule Studio Developer Edition is available as a free download. It is built on the Eclipse IDE for easier management, optimisation and visualisation of the rules that govern business processes in Java-based software.

A group of Iraqi computer enthusiasts are advocating the use of the operating system Linux to rebuild their country.

Oracle and Red Hat hope to make Singapore the regional 'port of call' for all things Linux. The two firms today announced they will invest $11.6m in a new Linux applications centre on the island-state to ramp up Linux certification among independent software vendors (ISVs) in the ASEAN region.

In my review of Sun Java Desktop System release 2 I criticized Sun Microsystems for imposing such restrictive licensing terms on their customers. A discussion on Groklaw followed, and Sun contacted me to discuss the license and how it might modify it in the future. I had several suggestions, and overall they were happy to have the feedback and eager to make their future license agreements more user friendly. But proprietary thinking dies hard. Will Sun really reduce the restrictions in its licenses?

A group of Iraqi computer enthusiasts are promoting the use of the operating system Linux to rebuild their country. Ashraf Hasson is one of the founders of the Iraqi Linux User Group and he is also leading Linux seminars at a couple of Iraq's larger universities.

THE NSW Government has made official its push into open source, launching a $1.5 million deployment of what may be the state's largest-ever rollout of open source software on the desktop.

Red Hat, a leading provider of open source solutions, has the signed systems integrator MAX-SI as a Red Hat business partner. MAX-SI will be formalising its Linux capability into a fully serviced Red Hat Practice which reflects the growth potential for Red Hat in the Queensland IT market.

Sun Microsystems President Jonathan Schwartz sounds off on why open source figures into his company’s new strategy. Remember, Bill Joy is the author of the quote: ‘innovation happens elsewhere.’ We're taking that to heart—and given what we see going on in the landscape, we know there's opportunity in that shift.

The stage is set for some fireworks on the last day of the JavaOne show next week, where Sun Microsystems has assembled a panel to debate the thorny issue of whether it should release its Java technology under an open source license.

The first Slackware release of 2004, Slackware Linux 10.0 continues the more than ten-year Slackware tradition of simplicity, stability, and security.

Using funding provided by the National Science Foundation and as a result of an open bidding process, the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) has purchased a large-scale, Linux-based computing system. The new Linux system will allow the National Center for Atmospheric Research's major community climate and weather codes to be built, tested, and evaluated in a full-scale Linux environment for the first time. The 1.1 TeraFLOP system, manufactured by IBM Corporation, will add significant computing capacity and capability to NCAR's computing arsenal.

Belgian electronic payment specialist Banksys is shipping new payment terminals powered by open source operating systems. The C-ZAM/XENT terminals run Linux and eCos operating systems, and could result in one of the largest deployments yet of embedded Linux in Belgium.

I've been using Fedora Core 1 (FC1) for a few months now and have been quite happy with it. It is a good distribution with a minimal number of bugs (if any) that have caused me problems. Of course, it took some tweaking to get it just right, but I can accept that for the price.

Microsoft will sell a version of Windows for high-performance computing--a niche in which rival Linux is blossoming--with a first version planned for the second half of 2005.

Though there may be several Linux software technologies that rival those found on Windows, there are still some that might best be regarded as a "work-around" thus causing some Microsoft-tought IT IT personal to flinch... though not necesserally because it's a work-around but because its a work-around that is not for Windows. Shaun Cronin submitted the following editorial to osOpinion/osViews which addresses this problem and gives tips on how to properly integrate Linux in a Microsoft-doominated corporate network.

About a year and a half ago the tiny independent game developer eGenesis decided to create a Linux port of its massively multiplayer online game, A Tale In The Desert. The game was designed to appeal to creative people looking for an alternative to games that focused on destruction. The company's initial thinking was that it might get a few incremental sales and garner goodwill with the community by supporting Linux. What eGenesis discovered was that, per user, Linux gamers were and continue to be their best customers. Each account, on average, has generated twice as much revenue as those of Windows gamers.

HP has announced a breakthrough file sharing product that uses new Linux clustering technology to deliver up to 100 times more bandwidth than typical clusters ( i.e. Network File System). The new product, HP StorageWorks Scalable File Share (HP SFS), is a self-contained file server that enables bandwidth to be shared by distributing files in parallel across clusters of industry-standard server and storage components.