Coop's Scoop: Week ahead, week that was
Linux Expo next week in San Jose will be chockablock with Penguins jamming the overbooked convention center and environs. It's gonna be a real who's who: Eric Raymond, Linus Torvalds, Jon "Maddog" Hall, and more ... AMD is one of the co-sponsors of the event, so expect some of the Linux OS vendors to profess undying love and commitment to Sledgehammer.
And if you still have lingering doubts that Linux has arrived, consider that Hewlett-Packard is going to plant a big wet smooch on the Penguins, announcing that Linux will be one of its three "strategic operating systems."
Microsoft will release its first public beta of its BizTalk Server product. This product is the linchpin of the company's XML strategy, and yes, it is a very big deal.
Republican honchos, proving yet again they are as congenitally clueless as their counterparts among the Democrats, registered the sites AlandJoe.com and AlandJoe.org in advance of Joseph Lieberman being named as Al Gore's running mate. Tit-for-tat. Earlier, the Democratic National Committee paid for Bush-Cheney.net. My favorite is the BureaucratsForGore.com address that the Republicans registered. Don't bother logging on: it's not functional.
Compaq will lift the curtains on its newest Net appliance next week. I find it interesting that Compaq, which has tried so hard in the last several years to remodel itself as a supplier of high-end, enterprise products and services, is making a concerted bid to extend its focus to non-PC, Web-based appliances.
Geeks on a mission. Ten teams of geeks, that is, who will traipse around the Puget Sound area this weekend searching for clues in the 15th annual playing of "The Game." It costs $25,000 per team to participate; monies will be donated to World Vision's programs in the Northwest. Maybe they should Ask Jeeves, which, sources tell me, is about to roll out new features.
Good news out there for Moore's Law, the old axiom of the computing industry that the power of a chip doubles every 18 months. That assumption recently came into question. But now, IBM is talking up a new transistor design that it says will extend the lifetime of Moore's Law for at least another decade and a half.
Informix, once a high flyer in the database market, is cutting 10 percent of its staff, packing up and leaving Silicon Valley for the great commonwealth of Massachusetts. As much as the sundry e-tailers who came to market with goofy business models, Informix is also a victim of the Internet revolution. In this case, here was a company that was too slow to evolve with the times. Now it wants to remake itself as a Web infrastructure supplier. Good luck.
The biggest Napster news of the week was that Intel was throwing its weight behind the peer-to-peer technology that made Napster possible. But in this instance, the idea will be to allow family members to share spare system resources. So if you have an extra couple of gigabytes on your computer, you'll be able to help out your brother-in-law in Pasadena when he's in dire need of spare storage.
News report: Microsoft was facing action by India's Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Commission over restrictive trade practices. Microsoft then announced plans to set up operations in Hyderabad in the south, and Pune in the west. India subsequently dropped the investigation. All innocent coincidence, to be sure.
A small Swedish outfit says it has a way to more than double the speed of Apple's Power Mac. The company, called Extreme Inc., claims to have discovered a way to juice the speed of Apple's flagship from 500 Mhz to a whopping 1,200Mhz. One cautionary note: Company execs still won't reveal details, saying the project is not yet complete. Still, this would be pretty incredible if the performance lives up to the hype.
Cyberspace is no longer an exclusive geek-guy hangout. Women now constitute an Internet majority, a very welcome development in this reporter's opinion. Women are far less likely to fire off clueless nuclear flame mail because somebody spoke ill of their favorite operating system. I guess the headline for this story should be: I am woman, hear me click.
AMD offered reporters a sneak peek at its new 64-bit processor. The new chip puts AMD on the map with its own high-powered chip to match one under development by rival Intel. Still, more hard work remains. AMD has had less luck than Intel attracting operating system partners to support its 64-bit project.
Sony tapped Transmeta and AMD to supply chips to power new versions of the company's Vaio computer. That's especially good news for Transmeta, which hasn't received much more than lip service from IBM, which is supposed to release a notebook based on Transmeta's Crusoe chip later in the year. That's also when the Crusoe-based Internet appliance under development by Gateway and America Online is slated to reach the market.
The sad saga of Patrick Naughton came to a close this week as the former Infoseek exec was sentenced to five years of probation, including nine months of home detention. He also must register as a sex offender. Let's hope he gets the right kind of help that allows him to put his life back together.
Sun is out pitching PC makers on its Star Office suite of desktop applications. This may be a part of the software business dominated by Microsoft, but Sun is slowly picking up support. And for the first time, some computer makers are willing to publicly buck Bill Gates. Interesting turn of events. Do you think they would have been so bold prior to the antitrust lawsuit? Just a thought.
A Japanese Web site called Gaijin a Go Go Café had been running a digitized version of a TV ad that features Arnold Schwarzenegger. But Arnold's lawyers politely pointed out that this violated his intellectual property rights, so the ad was "Terminated" by the Web site.
Quote of the week comes courtesy of a wire story on HP, quoting a certain Jim Bell, listed as general manager of open source and Linux operations at the company. "This was really driven by consumer need. Linux is a tsunami that is over-running the marketplace. It has spread like wildfire and we anticipate this is going to accelerate."
Sony taps Transmeta, AMD for chips
IBM taking Moore's Law by the horns
Intel to extend life of Pentium III
Sneak peek at AMD's new super chip
Steve Jobs bio hits snag
iBook speed bump on the horizon
CEO pay: Ellison gets no respect
HP to expand Linux commitment
Judge seeks advice in Yahoo case
Who wants to be a database vendor?
Naughton walks free
Value America files for bankruptcy