IBM Popular Posts

The end of SCO's fruitless attacks on Linux is finally in sight.

There's this delusion out there even now that Linux is some kind of amateur-hour production that only hard-core geeks can use. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Well, it was bound to happen: Linux vendors Red Hat and Novell have been sued for patent infringement. Groklaw is reporting that on Tuesday, the two companies were sued by IP Innovation LLC and Technology Licensing Corp. for violating three patents having to do with windowing user interfaces.

The lawsuit represents the first test of what happens when open source collides with patents, and it's interesting for a couple reasons. First, notice that all the other Linux vendors are missing from the defendants list, most notably IBM. That could be because IBM has already licensed the patents in a different context. (In June, Apple settled a patent infringement lawsuit with the same plaintiffs over at least one of the patents involved here.)

The news of this fairly slow week for Apple watchers came in the form of a lawsuit from Apple's PowerPC partner, IBM, who are apparently trying to protect some chip design IP. What is Apple going to do with Mr. Papermaster?

When you can buy a Linux desktop with a complete IBM/Lotus business software suite for less?

Boss hands sysadmin pilot fish a network monitoring package that's been sitting on the shelf for a year and tells him to try it out. "I decided to load it on my desktop," says fish. "As instructed in the manual, I started with a process to determine the bandwidth available on the network and the size of the network. Within two minutes, my boss ran into the wire closet and frantically started unplugging every network line while screaming, 'We're under attack! We're under attack!'

Rumors are swirling that the long dead IBM operating system might be coming back. Could it happen?

Remember when the mainframe was dead? That was before IBM adopted Linux. Today, IBM continues forward with Linux on the mainframe and beyond.

You don't build a company from the ground-up into the dominant software firm of its era without making a lot of smart moves. Here are my top five.

Microsoft announces that Google will now run on Windows Server 2004 and that Windows Longhorn will be out real soon now.

When you title your first book The Road Ahead, as retiring Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates did, then it’s clear you fancy yourself a bit of a futurist. And why shouldn't he? Over his 33 years at Microsoft, Gates has had more influence on the IT industry (read: monopolist) than any other person. Being in a position to shape the future of technology should automatically give you a leg up over the Philip K. Dicks and William Gibsons of the world, right? Wrong.

Day trading is so passe. Today's sharp traders make their cash by trading milliseconds ahead of the other guy. To do that you need really fast stock exchanges, which is where Linux comes in.

It's the early 1980s, and this part-time systems programmer has a clear understanding of the value of communicating with users.

No, not all of them, but, too many free software fans make Linux look bad with their public vendettas against one Linux faction or another.

Pilot fish is doing a follow-up visit at a small mortgage outfit where his company has recently delivered 10 new desktop PCs -- and the owner has some bad news. ...