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Week Ending April 6, 2002

PC Mag - Nanodrive Uses Insect Parts
By  John C. Dvorak

Yes, the following is an April Fool Gag:

If you thought that the Microdrive from IBM was cool, you'll be more impressed if IBM can get its new Nanodrive out of the lab. Developed at IBM's Almaden Research facility, and announced today, the new drive relies on what is termed a natural bio-actuator—in this case, an insect antenna—to actually contrInsect-actuated Nanodrive prototypeol the head position of a nanoscale hard drive.

...IBM's TJ Watson Research center working with insects, trying to find one that could be used for simple logic and genetically bred to make a biological computer. In the course of his investigations, he stumbled on what IBM calls the Esnesnon Effect—the movement by a precise distance of a specific insect antenna when a square wave impulse is sent into the insect's body.

IBM has since developed a prototype nanoGMR head using ruthenium that is literally glued to the end of the antenna. The data itself will transmit across the outer layer of the antenna which is coated with gold plate approximately one atom thick. The pulse-code-modulated square wave that makes the antenna move is fed into a leg to deliver the data to the GMR head. The small hard disk itself can hold only 1KB of data, but IBM expects that eventually to evolve to 100 megabytes, then a gigabyte....

Computer World - Microsoft Office For Linux?  Trial shifts to enterprise concerns
By Patrick Thibodeau

Corporate IT concerns are getting top billing in the Microsoft Corp. antitrust trial as the federal judge overseeing the case considers proposed remedies intended to improve server integration and desktop competition by porting Office to Linux.

Carl Ledbetter, chief technology officer at Novell Inc., told the court last week that Microsoft hasn't disclosed several application programming interfaces (API) "sorely needed to improve the interoperability" of Windows and NetWare, his company's network operating system.

The remedy proposed by the nine nonsettling states and the District of Columbia would give Novell and other firms access to Microsoft's source code. A proposed settlement agreed to by Microsoft and the Bush administration requires Microsoft to disclose APIs, the doorways between programs, but it doesn't give competitors direct source-code access.

The states would also require Microsoft to auction Office licenses to rival developers so they can port the software to port it to other operating systems. One company likely to bid on such a license is Linux vendor Red Hat Inc.

Michael Tiemann, chief technology officer at the Raleigh, N.C.-based firm, told the court last week that support for Office is "the first question" asked by enterprise users. And with it available on Linux, the open-source operating system would improve on its current 2 percent market share.

IT managers agreed. "If Office were available for a Linux desktop, there would be a number of CIOs who would push their desktop teams to Linux," said Brian Kilcourse, CIO at Longs Drug Stores Corp., a Walnut Creek, Calif.-based retail chain with about 5,000 end users. One reason Kilcourse said he would consider switching to Linux is because Microsoft is making it "increasingly difficult to choose enterprise tools" such as Java "that aren't Microsoft-based on the server side."...

NewsFactor - Could the Mac Be the Premiere Linux Platform?
Ben Wilson, www.NewsFactor.com

Call it the "other" industrial-strength OS for Macs. Since the introduction of the PowerPC processor, developers have been actively striving to create a flavor of Linux (news - web sites) that runs efficiently on Apple hardware while retaining the Mac's trademark ease of use.

Terra Soft Solutions' Yellow Dog Linux 2.2 delivers support for newer Apple hardware, including improved nVidia and Radeon support for digital LCD screens. More importantly, it includes the Gnome 1.4 interface, which company officials claim is an "aesthetic rival to Mac OS X."

Yellow Dog Linux is a complete port of Red Hat's Linux operating system.

As Pentium clock speeds continue to leap higher, performance has become a question for Mac users running Linux on their PowerPC-based systems.  Terra Soft co-founder and CEO Kai Staats told NewsFactor that in real-world applications, Motorola's processors are better equipped for Linux than their Intel counterparts.

"When considering the price/performance/power consumption/footprint ratio, PowerPC wins nearly every time," Staats said.   ..."A NASA JPL lab was forced to spend US$15,000 on new electrical circuits and air conditioning due to a small, 32-node Pentium cluster. That would not be required if the system had been PowerPC, and that money could have been spent on more nodes," Staats noted.

..."In my opinion, Linux falls short in the desktop publishing space due almost entirely to one company -- Adobe. They remain highly focused on Windows and Mac OS. If they would port Photoshop, Illustrator, PageMaker and After Effects to Linux, I believe a major barrier would immediately dissolve," Staats told NewsFactor....

Amiga.com - AmigaOne: New Modern Amiga Hardware & Software on the Way
Bill McEwen

Contrary to the nonsense that is being spread about by a few very noisy people, the AmigaOS is more than alive and well and we have very exciting plans for the future with more hardware designs and exciting new features. We have very long term life and long term goals for this amazing product.

We look to the AmigaOS as the desktop solution and Amiga Anywhere as the embedded solution for Cell Phones, PDA's, Set Top Boxes, Internet Appliances and some other new products. When AmigaOS 5.0 hits the road then you will see these code bases merging and the two worlds will allow the content to co-mingle and proliferate.

Another way to view this is that AmigaOS is for the Amiga Community whereas Amiga Anywhere introduces Amiga to the rest of the world. It is then that they can join us and be part of the Amiga community. It is all about market share and the opportunity to further expand and grow the Amiga market and user base.

...The hardware contract was awarded to Eyetech Limited, of Stokesley, England, and the software contract was awarded to Hyperion Entertainment, of Belgium. Both companies have an impressive reputation for quality products and a deep commitment to the Amiga, having played a major part in keeping the platform going through the last five years.

These two contracts underlie the first new combined Amiga hardware and software product in over 8 years; the AmigaOne, a product whose features and functions were set after looking at the thousands of mails, articles and comments generated by the community. A PowerPC (PPC) CPU was asked for and it was selected. The ability to take advantage of the latest video and audio technology was demanded and it was successively built in. USB support was talked about and we obliged. A better filesystem, integrated TCP/IP and 3D, an enhanced Workbench; all have been designed into AmigaOS4.

The excitement is growing. The AmigaOne is already running PPC Linux, AmigaOS4 is progressing rapidly on 68K Amigas equipped with PPC accelerators and integration is currently underway. Orders for developer boards are already being taken and many developers are working closely with the AmigaOS4 team to ensure that their applications are optimized for the future.

...The AmigaOne will be built around a revision 1.5 motherboard. This board will be completely independent of the AA chipset and will not need a connected A1200 in order to run AmigaOS4. There will be no motherboard with an integrated A1200 connector. Instead, Eyetech are planning on developing a PCI to A1200 product for those who wish to run older Amiga software that requires direct access to the AA chipset. In effect, the A1200 will be like just another graphics card plugged into the PCI bus of the AmigaOne.

...The current hardware specification for the AmigaOne is as follows;

NewsFactor - Palm Slaps Microsoft
 Robyn Weisman, www.NewsFactor.com

...Palm (Nasdaq: PALM - news) testified that the settlement as structured would not prevent Microsoft from committing anticompetitive acts in the future.

...At issue on Thursday was a software developer tool known as VSIP (Visual Studio Integration Program), which allows developers to convert Windows-based applications to Palm's own operating system.

According to Michael Mace, Palm's chief competitive officer, Microsoft initially would not give Palm the right to use VSIP. Palm spent two years trying to gain access to the technology, and the company said it believes its participation in the antitrust case caused the software giant to alter its stance on the issue...

..."Microsoft sent us the contract [to use VSIP] after we had documented clearly that Microsoft had been using VSIP entry to get leverage over us and after it was becoming clear that Palm was participating in the current court proceedings," Mace noted...