From an OSOpinion column: “In the real world, reliable and flexible platforms like OS/2 Warp and
Linux are seen by many mediocre programmers and highly-paid but
overrated consultants as threats to their carefully arranged
hegemony of mediocrity. There’s nothing like being able to tell the
client, ‘Sorry we had to come by today and charge you $800 to
restore your data on your PC, but that’s Windows. There’s nothing
we can do about it. Oh, well, too bad.’ There’s nothing like having a
steady stream of ‘maintenance’ income from systems that collapse
like a house of cards when you push them at all. There’s nothing like
the handy treadmill of ever-more-expensive “upgrades” in software,
that coincidentally also require ‘upgrades’ to the hardware.”

From an eWeek story: “Has Dell Computer Corp. painted itself into a corner with its insistence on being judged by its growth rate relative to the PC industry? The point was brought up after Dell said late Wednesday that its sales for the third quarter would come up some 3 percent short of expectations at about $8.2 billion. ‘You seem to be setting a trap for yourself,’ said one analyst.”

The Standard is reporting that two major ISPs are negotiating to buy Napster, which may bring an end to the music-swapping service’s legal problems.

Heavy users of Freeserve are staying online
for an average of 16 hours a day, and even, weirdly, as much as
30 hours in a 24 hour period — accomplished by logging on
several PCs through a single dialup line or linking two lines
together. They’re about to be barred from the service, reports ZDCOUK.com.

Mindful of the city’s history as a place where elections have been bought, Chicago officials are trying to shut
down a Web site that offers votes to the highest bidder. From CNET.com.

The Register reports that

Microsoft is being sued by a black, female former employee who claims
race and sex discrimination. Monique Donaldson, who left the company
in May, alleges that the company’s appraisal system operates according
to the biases of its largely white male managers, rather than on merit.

Wired.com reports: With Microsoft asking for a five-month period to prepare papers for its appeal in the federal case, antitrust watchers now turn their attention to the lesser-known class-action battle in California.

Legal experts said the battle over whether techies can take apart freely distributed hardware and write separate software
applications raises interesting questions in the Digital Age, many of which are still being hashed out across the country. In some
jurisdictions, the right to reverse engineer hardware for certain purposes has been well-protected. And attempts by a company
to assert that simply using its hardware triggers a license agreement raises questions about enforceability, according to a report at SiliconValley.com.

“Every new advance leaves behind another generation
of Macs. It has been that way since the dawn of computing. Apple would go
broke if it tried to configure its new technology for every Mac built since 1984.
Even Bill Gates knows that.” From BusinessWeek.

OSOpinion: “With the announcement this week of Corel and Microsoft completing a $135 million dollar deal, it brings into question the seriousness of the commitment Corel has to Linux. The Microsoft deal is for implementation of Corel products with Visual Studio 7 (or as MS wants to call it Visual Studio.net). This is in clear conflict with the initiative started last year to market WordPerfect Office on Linux and issue a Linux Debian package under the Corel logo. This monster deal entitles Microsoft to a very large stake in Corel, 24 million non-voting shares (a whopping 24 percent of the shares), which to some may border on conspiratorial.” –Kelly McNeill