-------------------
          Client Server
               NEWS
        -------------------
        New York and London
2-6 February 2004 Issue 533
Competitive Intelligence & Observations about Servers, Storage and related
Phenomena


HEADLINES
CSN 533-01 Microsoft Loses Another Infringement Suit
CSN 533-02 Intel To Out Shy Yamhill
CSN 533-03 Shock! Horror!! HP To Ship Opteron Servers
CSN 533-04 IBM Puts Servers & Chips Together
CSN 533-05 The Ride is Over for COM & DCOM
CSN 533-06 Embattled Celestica CEO Quits
CSN 533-07 Microsoft Won't Change Windows or IE for Eolas
CSN 533-08 EU Finds Microsoft Guilty, Wants Case Wrapped Up by May
CSN 533-09 Microsoft Adjusts Controversial Protocol Program
CSN 533-10 Investigators Looking for 'Corrupt Conspiracy' at CA
CSN 533-11 Fujitsu Ships 4p Itanium Systems
CSN 533-12 Oracle Moves on Plan To Pack PeopleSoft's Board
CSN 533-13 Siebel & IBM Push Siebel OnDemand Free Trial
CSN 533-14 Oracle Makes Nice to Other People's Software
CSN 533-15 SMBs Fret They Put Too Many Eggs in Microsoft's Basket
CSN 533-16 US Launches Cyber Alert System
CSN 533-17 IBM Debuts New Remote Management Service

Drive Bay
CSN 533-18 McData Fires 9%
CSN 533-19 BlueArc Rolls Out a Titan
CSN 533-20 IBM Debuts New NAS Gateway
CSN 533-21 Adaptec Buys Virtualization Start-up
CSN 533-22 EMC Debuts New Services, Software
CSN 533-23 Sun Extends OEM Deal with Dot Hill
CSN 533-24 Veritas Fails To Please

Linux Watch
CSN 533-25 SCO & Microsoft Post Bounties of $250,000 Each on the
Head of MyDoom Author
CSN 533-26 OSDL Lands First Chinese Member
CSN 533-27 Cadence Goes Linux
CSN 533-28 Red Hat as Citizen Kane

Mail Box
CSN 533-29 SCO Wins Convert to its GPL-is-Invalid Argument

BillyGrams
CSN 533-30 Darl Does Harvard
CSN 533-31 Lindows Outlawed in Holland
CSN 533-32 From Bill Gates' Mouth to God's Ear
CSN 533-33 Sarvega Piques Intel Capital's Interest
CSN 533-34 Directories Bound To Be Free
CSN 533-35 Bill Gates, Knight
CSN 533-36 Megahertz Win
CSN 533-37 Dell Buys Into NextIO
CSN 533-38 Gates on Google
CSN 533-39 IBM Puts Car Guy on Board
CSN 533-40 Another Linux Show
CSN 533-41 Microsoft Solves mikerowsoft.com Problem
CSN 533-42 'You Dirty Rat'
------------------
Client Server NEWS 2000 is published weekly by G2 Computer
Intelligence Inc. http://www.g2news.com  323 Glen Cove Ave.; Sea
Cliff, NY 11579, USA;
Tel.:516 759-7025 Fax: 516 759-7028.
Send press releases to news@g2news.com

Subscription price per year: $595/£395 individual reader. Corporate
Subscription available at quantity discounts.  paperboy@g2news.com

(c) Copyright 2004: While we are flattered that some of our readers
may want to pass along copies of our stories to customers, clients,
associates, friends, family and co-workers, please know that this
practice is illegal, violates our intellectual property rights and
undermines our efforts to bring you the kind of reporting you've
come to expect.

And, so the legalese:
It is illegal to reproduce, copy, photocopy, forward, e-mail,
publish, broadcast, post on an Internet/Intranet site, rewrite,
store in a retrieval system or otherwise distribute this publication
or any portion of this publication or any article in whole or in
part by any means, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise
without the prior written permission of G2 Computer Intelligence.

Comments? Subscription? Permission to post to a web site? Reprint
info?: e-mail: paperboy@g2news.com
--------------------


CSN 533-01 Microsoft Loses Another Infringement Suit

Looks like Microsoft's fabled luck is running thin. It lost a patent
infringement suit to a one-man company that may cost in upwards of
$520 million and now an Arizona judge has gone and issued a partial
summary judgment against it in another patent infringement case
brought by one Research Corporation Technologies (RCT).

The damages could potentially cost Microsoft hundreds of millions of
dollars. The exact amount of the damages is supposed to be sorted
out by a pending jury trial that's also supposed to sort out other
RTC patent charges against Microsoft.

RCT general counsel Timothy John Reckart said the case centered on
RCT's Blue Noise Mask half toning technology that is used in
printing and video displays and that RCT claims Microsoft uses
illegally in Windows and Office.

The technology is supposed to provide superior images at faster
speeds and has application in devices like printers, photocopiers,
scanners, fax machines and digital cameras. Blue Noise refers to an
unstructured pattern with small low-frequency-noise components that
produce a visually appealing arrangement of dots.

In ruling on four counts of infringement involving three patents,
District Court Judge William Browning basically said the RCT case
was a slam dunk and that the company "offered evidence that
addressed each element of the patent claims and compared the claims
to the Microsoft SuperCell and Ordered Stochastic masks."

The ruling said that RCT had shown that Microsoft's masks used the
same method of half-toning images.

Microsoft said it was disappointed by the ruling and disputed the
infringement claims. "We believe that there was no infringement and
the technology in question was developed by Microsoft's own
engineers," a company spokesman said. "We continue to contend that
the RCT patents are not valid and look forward to the opportunity to
present evidence on this matter."

Microsoft also said it may ask the judge to reconsider his decision.
Meanwhile, an appeal can only be lodged after a trial when the
district court enters its final judgment.

RCT's case against Microsoft now moves to a jury trial, where
damages as well as other claims not covered in Monday's ruling will
be considered. In all, six RCT patents involving multiple claims are
at issue.

"It's a big victory. Microsoft has been held to be an infringer,"
Reckart said. "That's no small thing."

Reckart said the amount of the damages RCT will seek was "still
under evaluation."

A trial date has yet to be set. Reckart expects it to start a year
from now.

RCT has been aggressive in defending its Blue Noise Mask patents and
previously brought suit against Hewlett-Packard and Seiko Epson.
Both actions were settled and HP and Epson licensed the technology.
Lexmark is also a licensee.

Tucson, Arizona-based RCT is a technology development company that
works with universities and research institutions to commercialize
their early-stage technologies.


CSN 533-02 Intel To Out Shy Yamhill

By Maureen O'Gara

This is basically the same story we broke yesterday. Chip follower
Nathan Brookwood says we made a stupid mistake about Microsoft's
promised AMD64 adaptations of Windows XP and Server 2003 and that
both are slated for the second half.

Another critic says that Prescott is at least six months, maybe a
year behind schedule because of its power dissipation which, in a
first, is greater than the current generation's. "How in heaven's
name," he says, "are they going to deal with 64-bits when they can
barely get 32 to work?" He also says that what IBM really, really
wants is not so much Yamhill as to see Itanium consigned to the
scrap heap of history.


Since Prescott, the next Intel desktop chip, is coming out on
Tuesday, and since Yamhill has been described as Prescott on 64-bit
steroids, we asked Intel about its alleged skunkworks answer to the
currently styled AMD64 hybrid 32/64-bit architecture.

Instead of weaseling around about whether Yamhill exists or not, as
Intel always has, Bill Kircos, an official, high-ranking Intel
spokesman, conscious of the subtle change in tune, said that Intel
would bring out an x86 chip with 64-bit extensions like AMD's if
"customers demand it and the ecosystem for it develops."

Intel president Paul Otellini said much the same thing in a webcast
on Wednesday.

That ecosystem Bill and Paul are talking about would necessarily be
an AMD-established ecosystem and Yamhill would have to be able to
run the same operating systems as AMD64. So the market wouldn't
bifurcate.

Linux runs on Opteron, but the AMD64 and the Yamhill are more a
Microsoft play and Microsoft reportedly told Intel months ago that
it's not going to build two 64-bit x86 operating systems.

According to the latest schedule Microsoft's OS for Opteron, once
due last year, won't be out now until the second half in the first
service pack for Windows Server 2003.

It's also been common gossip around Intel for ages that, if the
company were to enter the market, it would start with a server
Yamhill, the requirement of 64-bits on the desktop still being a
ways off.

The server version of Prescott is a chip code named Nocona due
shortly after Prescott, say, Q2.

Now, Intel watchers like Insight 64 principal Nathan Brookwood and
Merrill Lynch analyst Joe Osha believe that the 64-bit extensions in
Prescott and Nocona are incompatible with Opteron because when Intel
locked down Prescott and Nocona AMD hadn't published anything about
its 64-bit extensions.

The desktop chip after Nocona is Tejas, and, by their theory,
Intel's first opportunity to bring its 64-bit extensions in line
with AMD's. (Wow, now that would be a turnabout for the record
books.)

Tejas is reportedly due late this year, early next year, a very
quick crossover from Prescott, possibly a noteworthy point.

That suggests that Nocona is still the likely horse to watch since
Intel has lots of friends at Microsoft who could tweak the upcoming
AMD64 operating system to accommodate any architectural differences.
Anyway, how hard is it to bolt 64-bits on to a processor? Adding it
is a fairly straightforward exercise and there aren't too many ways
to do it regardless of operating system support. Or so we've heard.

Which brings us to the next Intel Developer Forum in mid-February
where Intel is going to give a Yamhill technology demonstration,
although it could be jeopardizing the 64-bit Itanium chip that cost
a trillion dollars to get to market, and is only selling modestly.

The event will make AMD's day and validate its hybrid approach.

Intel would neither confirm nor deny reports of the demo, but
informed sources say it's true and of course the timing is
exquisite. Long about then, Intel's hereditary enemy Sun
Microsystems should be announcing its promised Opteron line - which
it's reportedly already delivering - and Itanium co-developer and
primary booster Hewlett-Packard should be confounding people by
adopting Opteron too.

That just leaves Dell for Opteron to scoop up.

IBM already has Opteron boxes, but they're a limited HPC experiment
because what IBM really, really wants are Yamhill boxes that don't
disrupt its glorious Xeon sales - it's currently the biggest Xeon
seller - and force its Xeon base to forklift on to the Itanium and
Itanium's x86-incompatible EPIC architecture simply to go to 64-
bits. If IBM wanted to do this, it's said, it would forklift them on
to its own 64-bit x86-incompatible Power chip, which is probably the
plan anyway.

IBM currently wants to push the Power chip into the Linux/HPC market
big time and it's probably fair to say that IBM has little use for
Itanium because it threatens its core Power business.

Naturally Intel will have to position Yamhill technology for low-end
servers and Itanium for the high end and get people to believe that
it can do two seemingly incompatible things at the same time without
wrecking the delicately poised Itanium.

It would have to identify Yamhill as the future of the great and
mighty Xeon line that has captured 85% of the server market but only
45% of the server revenues, and cast Itanium as the vehicle to
capture the other 55% of the revenues that are still going to RISC
systems.

Illuminata analyst Gordon Haff speculates that the only reason that
HP would adopt Opteron is that it was forced to by strong customer
demand and he equates that demand not with Opteron's 64-bitness but
with the fact that the widget - thanks to its added registers,
integrated memory controller and HyperTransport links - boosts 32-
bit Windows apps.

Haff says, "To be sure, Intel's CPUs have their own performance
technologies, such as Hyperthreading, but it's by no means a given
that Yamhill technology will offer the same sort of performance
boost relative to 32-bit Intel processors that Opteron does relative
to AMD's own 32-bit Athlon CPUs."

Which leads him to think that "Yamhill may not threaten Opteron much
in the near-term unless it combines very strong 32-bit performance
and price/performance as well as extensions to 64-bitness."

An interesting point, but one gathers Intel is pretty confident.


CSN 533-03 Shock! Horror!! HP To Ship Opteron Servers

Hewlett-Packard, the co-developer of the trillion-dollar Itanium
chip, whose participation delayed the 64-bit processor in getting to
market and added considerable complexity to the widget because it
had to be tweaked to accommodate PA-RISC - and naturally the company
that has championed the slow-off-the-mark part more than anybody
else - is slated to put a fox in the hen house and adopt AMD's 64-
bit Opteron chip for servers.

Don't you just love how things work out?

HP's move coupled with Intel's intention to acknowledge its bastard
Yamhill chip must account for the chatter that caused industry
analyst Nathan Brookwood to raise his 64-bit mind share alert status
to orange.

Wouldn't it be something if HP was ticked at Intel for weakening
Itanium with Yamhill and went with Opteron out of pique?

Or maybe it's learned from Sun CEO Scott McNealy and decided it's
best not to be monomaniacal right now.

It's been speculated that HP would pick up the Opteron since it
first expressed interest in the AMD64 for its desktops. It's
reportedly supposed to make its move in late February, early March
and come out with one- and two-way ProLiants that it's unlikely to
position against the Itanium.

It may be crazy, but it's not ready to slit its own throat.

Some people think the HP Opteron boxes could go to four-ways. And
there's talk of blades.

Delivery is anybody's guess.

Intel must be grinding its teeth.

Sun sent around a note congratulating HP "on recognizing the future
of mainstream x86 64-bit horizontal computing."

Illuminata claims Opteron isn't a fundamental strategy shift for HP,
although it may be perceived that way, and painted that way by
rivals.

Which Sun immediately did. Forgetting that it had a little Sparc-
Opteron conflict of its own, it's going around saying the move
"signals that HP is finally giving up on Itanium" and - given Sun's
Unix interests - that "really puts the future of HP-UX into
jeopardy." Sun says it should have a field day with the customers HP
has been forcing to Itanium and that the move will "freeze any
customers that may have considered an HP/Itanium solution."

Heck, Sun went whole hog and called the HP/Compaq merger into
question suggesting internal conflict between the Itanium camp and
the Opteron camp.

Okay, let's see, aside from all the agitprop, with HP on board that
leaves Opteron to conquer Dell. IBM is already selling Opteron boxes
and Sun is supposed to start. (Sun is gratified for the validation.)
HP, however, according to Illuminata, is the real prize because it's
more likely to deliver volumes than the others.


CSN 533-04 IBM Puts Servers & Chips Together

The extent of IBM's ambitions for its Power chip is beginning to
become clear.

The company confirmed a report Thursday that it was combining its
server unit with its insolvent chip operation to align their
objectives.

A memo was circulated internally announcing the creation of a new
Systems and Technology Group under co-captains John Kelly and
William Zeitler, the Technology Group's contribution and IBM's
server chief respectively. Storage was folded back into servers a
while ago.

The combination will give the unit 30,000 people, 13,000 from
servers and 17,000 from ITG.

CNET, which broke the story, said the move was meant to improve
Power, which the company has always maintained would be one of the
two survivors left standing after the smoke finally clears.

The Technology Group lost $34 million last quarter. It is expected
to be profitable this year.

Roughly a third of ITG's revenues come from IBM and the rest from
OEM sales that provide the volume needed to produce proprietary
chips cost-effectively. Thanks to last year's crunch, ITG had a loss
and systems had big profits (which implies, of course, according to
an IBM watcher, that either SG wasn't paying what the parts were
costing and/or ITG lost money on its OEM business or both. Combining
the two groups will supposedly eliminate arguments about transfer
pricing, and duplication. It will also lower the visibility of the
cost of maintaining bleeding-edge technology.

Meanwhile the server unit cut 300 jobs in what it calls a
"rebalancing skills" exercise. The cuts hit the unit's development
and finance people mainly in San Jose, California.

IBM's software unit has been doing the same thing lately and laid
300 people off in January.

IBM of course is planning on relocating jobs offshore where wages
are low.


CSN 533-05 The Ride is Over for COM & DCOM

It's the end of the line for COM and DCOM, Microsoft's Component
Object Model and its mate, the Distributed Component Object Model.

According to a speech given in London by Longhorn's Indigo web
services plumbing architect Don Box, Microsoft's not going to put
any more money into the technologies although parts of Microsoft are
only now implementing the stuff and Microsoft will still support it.

XML rules instead, making a sharper distinction between Java and
where Microsoft is taking .NET.

Snapping his fingers under the nose of Corba and Java's Remote
Method Invocation (RMI) scheme, Box claimed that object-oriented
programming isn't a particularly good way for programs to
communicate with each other and that message-based communications is
way better.

Of course, Microsoft never had much use for Corba and shrank from
RMI altogether.

Microsoft, by the way, has been filing for patents on the XML
widgetry in its latest Office kit, which stores documents as XML
files. The move raised fears Microsoft would make interoperability
hard or more expensive for, oh, StarOffice and its free friend
OpenOffice.


CSN 533-06 Embattled Celestica CEO Quits

Eugene Polistuk, the long-time chairman and CEO of Celestica Inc,
the Toronto contract manufacturer that's running off AMD-designed
Opteron boxes and making both barebones and fixed configurations
available to third-party resellers, up and quit late Wednesday when
the company revealed that it lost $165 million in American money in
Q4.

Polistuk, brushing past the coincidence, claimed business is
reviving and it was a good time to bring in new management. He had
no immediate plans. The company's US chief Stephen Delaney replaced
Polistuk as CEO for the interim.

The $165 million loss, which works out to 80 cents a share, isn't as
bad as the fourth quarter of 2002 when the operation lost $435
million, or $1.90 a share. The lion's share of the current loss
stems from $106 million in restructuring charges. Revenues were flat
year-over-year at $1.9 billion. Margins are reportedly horrendous.


CSN 533-07 Microsoft Won't Change Windows or IE for Eolas

Microsoft has decided, as it previously indicated it might, not to
modify the Windows XP Service Pack 2 or its browser because of the
Eolas legal victory until it absolutely has to. The injunction Eolas
got has been stayed and Microsoft doesn't have to do anything until
the injunction is entered. It's hoping in the meantime that the
Patent and Trademark Office will overturn Eolas' patent. It's also
supposed to appeal to a higher court so any resolution could be
years off. Until then the damages it pays cures infringement.


CSN 533-08 EU Finds Microsoft Guilty, Wants Case Wrapped Up by May

The European Commission has been internally circulating a draft of a
damning final decision against Microsoft that finds the company
guilty of abusing its monopoly by not sharing enough
interoperability data with rivals and restricting competition by
tying its Media Player to the Windows operating system.

Pretty much what everybody expected.

There's a big fine involved but nobody knows how much yet. The
decision supposedly hasn't been made.

As a matter of fact, the Wall Street Journal suspects that the
commission is still trying to figure out what to do about
Microsoft's alleged lawbreaking. The paper says the EC is still
polling OEMs and Microsoft competitors about how effective certain
penalties might be.

Microsoft is resistant to any notions of unbundling its Media Player
and will of course appeal any adverse decision.

The EC's draft decision is evidently meant to pressure Microsoft,
which is still trying to cut a deal with the regulators. Last
weekend Bill Gates said from Davos, Switzerland, "We're doing what
we can to come to some amicable settlement."

The regulators, meanwhile, want the Microsoft case wrapped up by May
1 before the EU expands from 15 to 25 countries and makes the
situation stickier, according to the Financial Times. The EC
reportedly figures commissioners from countries new to the EU might
be more favorable to Microsoft.

The FT also confirmed our suspicions that the EU's resolve has been
braced by the Justice Department's conclusion last week that
Microsoft's settlement-imposed protocol-licensing program hasn't
created competition.


CSN 533-09 Microsoft Adjusts Controversial Protocol Program

Microsoft, as expected, announced changes to its settlement-imposed
communication protocols licensing program (MCPP) that the Justice
Department said was broken because it's not producing competition
like it was supposed to.

Microsoft made the announcement while it was in court with
settlement overseer Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who indicated that
otherwise she doesn't have any problems with Microsoft's compliance
with the consent decree.

"We only have concerns about one provision," she said, meaning the
licensing program, which was meant to prevent Microsoft from
leveraging its desktop monopoly into the server market.

As indicated was happening in the status report on Microsoft's
compliance that Microsoft and the DOJ wrote and submitted to the
court on January 16 (CSN No 534), Microsoft has simplified the 50-
page MPCC license agreement and shortened it by half, made around 20
general network connectivity protocols available for free, put six
others on a fixed fee or fixed fee per unit schedule and says it
will give prospective licensees samples of technical documentation
with no confidentiality restrictions.

Microsoft said it wouldn't seek to audit licensees' end users
anymore and would provide a "clear right to distribute to another
MCPP licensee on a royalty-free basis under a simplified process."

In the status report, however, the DOJ expressed no confidence in
these changes go far enough and looked ahead to other changes
probably to the royalty structure, which has been tinkered with
twice now.

The government is disappointed that the MPCC program was only
attract 11 licensees and that the way the protocols are being used
is narrow and unlikely to create rivals to the Windows operating
system. Microsoft says it's talking to another 20 potential
licensees.

The judge observed that the plaintiffs don't have a handle on why
the program hasn't gotten more industry support and hinted that it
may have something to do with the antitrust proceedings in Europe
and Massachusetts' attempt to get the settlement toughened up.


CSN 533-10 Investigators Looking for 'Corrupt Conspiracy' at CA

Federal prosecutors are usually discrete, if not downright
uncommunicative with the press so it was a surprise when the chief
federal prosecutor for Long Island Roslynn Mauskopf issued a
statement after ex-Computer Associates senior VP of finance Lloyd
Silverstein admitted CA's books were cooked and pleaded guilty to
conspiring to obstruct justice. She said Silverstein's plea was only
"the first step in uncovering a corrupt conspiracy" at the company.

Silverstein copped a plea and is now supposed to help investigators
with their probe.

The New York Times described booking sales on contracts that are not
signed until a few days after a quarter has ended - which is
apparently what's gotten up the government's nose about CA - as "a
relatively common accounting tactic at publicly traded companies."


CSN 533-11 Fujitsu Ships 4p Itanium Systems

Fujitsu Computer Systems Corporation has started shipping a four-way
4U rack-based Itanium server called the Primergy RX1600 in North
America. The box, targeting large databases, business intelligence
and data warehousing and offered with both Linux and Windows, uses
the 1.5GHz Madison processors with the 6MB of L3 cache. The unit can
be configured with up to 32GB of SDRAM and 438GB of storage. It's
fitted with SCSI and RAID controllers and eight hot-plug PCI-X
slots. Pricing starts at $23k.


CSN 533-12 Oracle Moves on Plan To Pack PeopleSoft's Board

Amid the buzz that the Justice Department is going to put the kibosh
on Oracle's hostile bid for PeopleSoft, Oracle, which has been
promising such a move, has sent PeopleSoft a notice that it intends
to continue to pursue its reluctant quarry and nominate five people
to the PeopleSoft board in an attempt to get control of the company.

It said it's going to introduce a stockholder proposal to expand the
PeopleSoft board to nine if PeopleSoft director Michael Maples isn't
put up for election. Maples was never elected by PeopleSoft's
stockholders. PeopleSoft CEO Craig Conway comes up for re-election.

The pundits are predicting a bitter, not to say entertaining, fight
akin to what went on at Hewlett-Packard because of Compaq if the
combatants get that far. What Oracle does about its $19.50-a-share
offer remains to be seen, especially with PeopleSoft stock selling
for $23 these days.

In retort, PeopleSoft issued a statement last Saturday saying, "We
believe that Larry Ellison's attempt to gain control of PeopleSoft's
board of directors is solely to advance Oracle's agenda and is not
in the best interests of PeopleSoft's stockholders. We strongly
believe that Ellison's handpicked, paid nominees are biased and
would have irreconcilable conflicts of interest if elected to
PeopleSoft's board. Each nominee is receiving cash compensation and
has signed an agreement with Oracle. We believe their ability to be
independent is seriously compromised."

Oracle's slate includes UCLA economist Dr Duke Bristow, who chairs
the Annual Corporate Governance Conference, Venture Capital Tech LLC
president Richard Clemmer, former Keycorp chief administrative
officer Roger Noall, Laurel Crown Capital LLC managing principal Dr
Laurence Paul and Kellogg Graduate School of Management Alan E
Peterson Distributed Professor of Finance Dr Artur Raviv.


CSN 533-13 Siebel & IBM Push Siebel OnDemand Free Trial

Siebel and IBM are offering the hosted, Internet-based Siebel CRM
OnDemand software that they're collaborating on for free for 90 days
to entice folks to try it.

They say there are no strings attached and customers can simply opt
out at the end of the free trial, or be locked in for the next nine
months at a fixed price per month.

The free trial includes 24x7 help desk support and best practices.

Siebel CRM OnDemand, which came out last quarter, integrates with
Siebel 7 applications.


CSN 533-14 Oracle Makes Nice to Other People's Software

In an unnatural move on Wednesday Oracle rolled out a Customer Data
Hub, a new packaged product that's supposed to give companies that
use different business applications a real-time overview of customer
information.

Oracle says the stuff will save companies complex custom integration
projects. And it says they don't have to use any of Oracle's E-
Business Suite, not even components.

The Customer Data Hub consolidates data from different sources into
a single customer repository where it can be purged and analyzed.
Oracle explains that the widgetry is not a data warehouse.

The software has three components: the Data Model that underlies its
E-Business Suite but has been extended to support heterogeneous
environments; Customer Online, the window into the client data and
management system; and the Data Librarian that create a backup
database.

The Customer Data Hub conveniently works with Oracle's Application
Server 10g for out-of-the-box connectivity with external systems.

At the same time, Oracle started previewing the next release of its
E-Business Suite, rev 11i.10, which is supposed to make the stuff
more integratible, if there is such a word, with outlanders'
software and automate business processes across the enterprise.

The widgetry, due out mid-year, is also supposed to expose hundreds
of interfaces to web services.

As an open standards convert, Oracle says the stuff now supports 150
standards-based Object Application Group (OAG) business objects.

The 11i.10 rev will support the fashionable radio frequency
identification (RFID) capabilities.


CSN 533-15 SMBs Fret They Put Too Many Eggs in Microsoft's Basket

The Yankee Group says it surveyed SMBs and found them worried about
depending on Microsoft too much.

It said 43% of the companies it interviewed expressed concern and
72% of them are actively seeking other vendors to diversify their
portfolios.

Michael Lauricella, the program manager for the market researcher's
SMB Strategies service, claimed to be surprised at the extent of the
apprehension - which others might regard as merely a normal cost of
doing business. He said, "Whether a five-person pizza shop or a 400-
employee manufacturing facility, SMBs reported similar anxiety about
Microsoft."

Yankee Group senior analyst Helen Chan held it out as an opportunity
for Microsoft's competitors.


CSN 533-16 US Launches Cyber Alert System

In response to the MyDoom havoc, the US Department of Homeland
Security Wednesday launched a national Cyber Alert System that will
send free e-mail alerts to consumers, business and government
agencies about securing their computers.

The alerts are meant to protect Americans and the US IT
infrastructure from viruses and other security plagues.

The system will include:

* Security Tips - Bi-weekly tips on best security practices and how-
to information for non-technical home and corporate users.

* Security Bulletins - Bi-weekly summaries of security issues and
new vulnerabilities and their potential impact, plus patches and
workarounds for technical users.

* Security Alerts - Real-time information about security issues,
vulnerabilities and exploits currently occurring. The alerts will
come in regular format for non-technical users and in an advanced
version for technical folk. Alerts will suggest all users take rapid
action.

The US Computer Emergency Readiness Team, a partnership between the
Homeland Security Department's National Cyber Security Division and
the private sector, will manage the Cyber Alert System.


CSN 533-17 IBM Debuts New Remote Management Service

IBM has rolled out a new service to remotely manage and support
multi-platform data centers.

The service is based on a hybrid IT outsourcing model in which the
customer owns all the IT systems, software and staff.

IBM described the service as a flexible offering based on the
Universal Management Infrastructure framework created by Global
Services. The service includes sense-and-respond server and storage
provisioning that increase or decrease computing capacity in real-
time as demand changes.


Drive Bay


CSN 533-18 McData Fires 9%

Storage networking products vendor McData laid off 92 people, about
9% of its workforce.

The Broomfield, Colorado concern said it made the cuts "to optimize
its operating efficiency and to better align its business model."

After the cuts, its worldwide workforce totals 982 employees.

The company expects to incur unspecified restructuring charges from
the cuts and facilities consolidation in its current fourth quarter
and its next quarter. Details of the charges will be disclosed on
February 26 when McData announces its fourth-quarter results.

McData said the workforce reductions would help keep it non-GAAP
operating expenses even this year with its fiscal fourth quarter,
about $60 million-$62 million a quarter. GAAP operating expenses in
fiscal '04 are projected to range from $69 million-$71 million a
quarter.

When it posted its fiscal Q3 results in December, McData said it
expected revenues this quarter to range from $108 million to $116
million with a GAAP loss of seven cents a share.


CSN 533-19 BlueArc Rolls Out a Titan

Storage start-up BlueArc Corporation has introduced a new network
storage system that's supposed to let enterprise customers scale
performance, storage and user loads via modular upgrades without
replacing the entire system.

Dubbed Titan SiliconServer, the system features a hardware-based
Silicon File System that reportedly supports up to 256TB and
delivers throughput of up to 20 Gbps.

The Silicon File System is said to utilize Virtual Volumes to
logically partition data for users, groups or departments across the
enterprise and let storage administrators dynamically expand and
contract storage allocations to meet changing business requirements.

BlueArc execs claim that Titan's Silicon File System reduces
metadata search speed, delivers low latency and maintains
performance levels as capacity increases, allowing customers' file
sets to grow into the trillions.

The device is supposed to support up to 60,000 concurrent users. Its
native N-way clustering capability is designed to support multiple
Titans connected into a single file system.

An entry-level Titan supports 5 Gbps throughput.

Altera Corporation, Harvard University's Life Sciences Division and
Rhythm & Hues are already supposed to be using Titan.

Titan supports primary, near-line and archival storage in the same
storage system.

Pricing for Titan, which is shipping now, starts at $50,000.


CSN 533-20 IBM Debuts New NAS Gateway

IBM has launched a new storage device called NAS Gateway 500
optimized for NAS file serving.

Based on the Power chips used in Blue's pSeries servers, the NAS
Gateway 500 is a specialized 4U storage server designed to provide
clients and servers on an Ethernet LAN access to storage resources
on a direct attached or SAN-attached Fibre Channel storage.

The gateway is supposed to appear to LAN clients as a standard NAS
device.

IBM executives say the NAS Gateway 500 is suited to mid- to large
companies to help them consolidate storage requirements of separate,
disparate Ethernet LAN-based workstations, computers and servers
onto Fibre Channel storage on a SAN.

The new AIX-based device succeeds IBM's Windows-powered NAS Gateway
300.

Although the new gateway is designed to support IBM's eServers,
Enterprise Storage Server and FAStT Fibre Channel storage products,
the company said that the gateway would also work with other
people's storage servers when used with its SAN Volume Controller
virtualization software.

Taking a shot at the competition, IBM claimed that the NAS Gateway
500 performed 30% better than the fastest EMC and Network Appliance
boxes and at a lower cost.

The device comes standard with a six-port chassis for inserting
optional, hot swappable PCI-X Ethernet and Fibre Channel adapters,
two-processor slots for inserting optional processor books and
redundant hot-swappable power supplies and cooling fans. Each
processor book contains a processor card with two Power 4+
processors and eight memory slots that support 4GB-16GB of memory.

The Gateway 500 can be configured as a single-node or dual-node
clustered server.

The French Atomic Energy Commission was an early beta customer.

Pricing on the thing, which is scheduled to ship on February 6,
starts at $60,000. Both IBM and the channel will sell it.


CSN 533-21 Adaptec Buys Virtualization Start-up

Adaptec is acquiring UK virtualization software house Elipsan.

On a conference call with analysts Monday, Adaptec said that it paid
$20 million-$25 million. Elipsan has 20 employees. The deal should
close in mid-February.

Elipsan's storage virtualization technology is supposed to enable
Adaptec to scale storage and boost performance across multiple RAID
subsystems.

Adaptec executives claim that integrating Elipsan's virtualization
and business continuity capabilities into their RAID subsystems will
eliminate the need for a dedicated server or third-party management
software.

The new capabilities should also enable Adaptec to offer faster data
backup and recovery.

The 10-month-old British concern was spun out of the IP-SAN division
of storage products vendor Eurologic, which Adaptec acquired for $30
million in cash last April.

Since Elipsan only released its Storage Appliance Software and
Shared Storage Manager in October, its revenues are unlikely to be
significant. The Storage Appliance Software offers iSCSI storage
controllers providing storage consolidation, virtualization and RAID
functionality as well as remote mirroring and snapshot capabilities.
Shared Storage Manager automates management by integrating storage
controller management with the management of storage subsystems of
file and application servers.

Meanwhile, Adaptec lost $3 million, or three cents a share, on net
revenues of $115.1 million in its fiscal third quarter ended
December 31. For the corresponding period in 2002, the company lost
$3.5 million, or three cents a share, on revenues of $109 million.

On the conference call, Adaptec said it planned to cut its
headcount, which currently stands at 1,500, as it moves more
engineering jobs to its center in India.


CSN 533-22 EMC Debuts New Services, Software

EMC launched a bunch of storage services and applications as part of
a push into information lifecycle management (ILM), the new buzzword
for managing information from creation through deletion.

Delivered by EMC's Technology Solutions Group, the new services are
supposed to help customers cut operating costs, achieve compliance,
reduce risks and boost availability.

The services include:

* ILM Workshops - Free workshops on customer sites or at EMC to help
clients understand the basics of an infrastructure that manages
information from creation through archiving or disposal.

* ILM Assessment Services - To let customers validate the potential
benefits of ILM. Each assessment is about four-six weeks long and
results in an ILM roadmap. The assessment services include:

i. Application Alignment - to position the value of a customer's
applications and data with supporting technology and service levels.

ii. Recoverability Assessment - to identify risks and exposures to
mission-critical applications.

iii. Operations Assessment - to identify storage management policy,
process and organizational gaps, and define a plan to improve.

iv. Infrastructure Assessment - to identify potential areas for cost
savings through consolidation and a tiered architecture.

v. Storage Managed Services - to provide customers with fixed-term,
service level-driven, on-site storage management to help them
achieve ILM.

EMC said pet food supplier Petco had turned to its storage services
team to implement a tiered storage strategy.

EMC also rolled out a new software suite to monitor database growth
and use, and identify and relocate inactive data to various storage
tiers as its value and service-level requirements change. Relocating
inactive data to more cost-effective storage tiers is supposed to
boost database performance and reduce infrastructure costs.

Dubbed DatabaseXtender, the new suite includes:

* Analyzer - to monitor and analyze the growth patterns and
performance of database apps.

* Optimizer - to identify and relocate inactive data from a
production database and storage system to a secondary database and
storage system.

* Archiver - to archive aged data from the production or secondary
database, and store it on an archival system such as ATA-based
storage, content-addressed storage or tape in an XML file format.

* Subsetter - to generate functional subset copies of the production
database for testing, development, data mining and reporting.

Analyzer, Optimizer and Subsetter are shipping now. The Archiver
module is expected to be available by June.

The modules can be purchased individually or as part of an ILM
package for structured data.

EMC also teamed up with Oracle to jointly offer a product to help
Oracle customers identify and migrate inactive database records to
lower-cost storage systems.

The migration is supposed to cut costs, improve application and
database performance and to meet the compliance regulations for
historical data.

The new DatabaseXtender Accelerator for Oracle E-Business Suite,
combines joint services from EMC and Oracle with the new
DatabaseXtender software. The two companies plan to customize the
DatabaseXtender stuff to archive the data.

DatabaseXtender Accelerator for Oracle E-Business Suite will debut
in North America on February 17 and later this year in other
geographies.


CSN 533-23 Sun Extends OEM Deal with Dot Hill

Storage house Dot Hill said Sun extended their existing three-year
OEM agreement by two years through May 22, 2007.

Dot Hill provides Sun with Fibre Channel and SCSI storage systems
for Sun's StorEdge 3000 series. The widgetry is designed to Sun's
specifications and certified to meet the NEBS Level 3 standard used
by the telecom industry and the MIL-STD-810F standard used by the
Defense Department.

Meanwhile, Dot Hill earned $6.8 million, or 14 cents a share, on
revenues of $57.5 million in Q4. The earnings were two cents higher
than consensus.

In the comparable period in 2002, the company lost $12.4 million, or
49 cents a share, on revenues of $16.3 million.

For the year, Dot Hill reported a 300% increase in revenues to
$187.4 million and income of $12 million, or 31 cents a share,
compared to a loss of $34.8 million, or $1.39 a share, in 2002.

This quarter, the Carlsbad, California concern is projecting
revenues will be flat over Q4 due to normal seasonality and figures
EPS will be up slightly.

This year, it's projecting revenue growth of 40%-50%. "We have never
been more optimistic about Dot Hill's future," CEO James Lambert
said.


CSN 533-24 Veritas Fails To Please

Veritas earned $105.3 million, or 24 cents per share, on revenues of
$513 million in Q4.

The results came in stronger than the company's forecast. When
Veritas released its third-quarter results in October, it projected
Q4 earnings of 21 cents-23 cents on revenues of $480 million-$490
million.

Last year at this time Veritas earned $49.4 million, or 12 cents a
share, on revenues of $406 million.

Although the numbers were higher than its projection, its shares
fell 11.6% Thursday to $32.24. "While the results were OK by
themselves, in the context of a very rich stock they were a
disappointment," a Bear Stearns research note said.

Among other things, revenues were below the whisper number of $530
million and license revenue of $309 million was below the
expectation of $330 million.

Veritas said licensed revenues for its core products, which include
backup and infrastructure software, was up 12% year-over-year to
$254 million.

Revenue from emerging products such as clustering, replication and
enterprise storage resource management was $42 million, up 16%.

Services contributed $212 million, up 44% year-over-year and
representing 40% of revenues. Veritas said service revenues were
stronger-than-expected because of the maintenance component, which
accounts for about 85% of the service revenues. Maintenance revenues
reflect the company's growing installed base and the high levels of
maintenance and support contract renewals.

By platform, Veritas got 48% of its licensed revenues from Unix and
Linux, 41% from Windows and 11% was multi-platform.

For the year, Veritas earned $274.2 million, or 63 cents a share, on
revenues of $1.77 billion. In 2002, Veritas earned $57.4 million, or
14 cents per share, on revenues of $1.51 billion.

The company ended 2003 with $2.5 billion in cash and short-term
investments.

"The climate for IT spending has clearly improved, and seems to be
getting better," Veritas CEO Gary Bloom said on a conference call
with analysts Wednesday. "We view 2004 as a growth year for Veritas
with growth more heavily weighted towards the second half of the
year."

Veritas is eyeing revenues of $2 billion for the year. Its outlook
for the current quarter was cautious. It's projecting revenues of
$455 million-$470 million and EPS in the range of 17 cents-20 cents.

Bloom said the company's overperformance in Q4 and normal seasonal
patterns in the software business prompted the conservative
guidance.

According to Bloom, although the Q1 revenue forecast showed a 12%
sequential decline, it was still 12%-16% higher year-over-year and
in line with the 12% sequential revenue decline of other large
software companies.


Linux Watch


CSN 533-25 SCO & Microsoft Post Bounties of $250,000 Each on the
Head of MyDoom Author

The SCO Group is offering a $250,000 reward for information leading
to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible
for unleashing the MyDoom e-mail virus. Microsoft followed suit and
is offering $250,000 for the capture and conviction of the MyDoom.b
vandal.

SCO CEO Darl McBride's people say it's a check he really wants to
write.

Starting Monday afternoon and quickly turning into a tsunami,
MyDoom, a mass mailer that requires recipients to open a zip file,
has clogged e-mail servers with as many as 1,000 junk e-mails a
minute, bringing systems to their knees and slowing down the
Internet generally. It impacted Windows machines and hopped on the
Kazaa P2P file-sharing network. Three days after it got into the
wild, it had done an estimated $22.6 billion and rising in damage.
It may grow to be more viral than last year's notorious SoBig virus
that is calculated to have done $37 billion worth of damage.

MyDoom, aka Novarg and Shimg, singles out SCO and threatens to
unleash a massive Distributed Denial of Service on SCO's web site
this Sunday, Super Bowl Sunday. Either the SCO attack is MyDoom's
real purpose, or, it's perverse justification.

A copycat MyDoom.b cropped up on Wednesday aimed at taking out
Microsoft's web site on February 3 as well as SCO's. MyDoom.b is a
particularly nasty piece of work. It prevents infected machines from
reaching computer support and anti-virus sites like Network
Associates and Symantec. It also prevents access to Office and
Windows update sites.

Experts believe both viruses may come from the same source. MyDoom.b
reportedly contains the message, "I'm just doing my job, nothing
personal, sorry." There was talk about MyDoom resembling Russian
spam and machines infected with MyDoom tripping off MyDoom.b.

mi2g Ltd in the UK says it may be a new generation of viruses and
may have a bigger target than either SCO or Microsoft like online
transaction fraud or mass identity theft.

SCO has been hit with several DDoS attacks since it sued IBM for
allegedly putting SCO's Unix code in Linux. McBride, however,
labeling MyDoom "criminal," said in a prepared statement that MyDoom
is "different and much more troubling, since it harms not just our
company, but also damages the systems and productivity of a large
number of other companies and organizations around the world."

SCO's initial statement Tuesday stopped short of blaming the Linux
community for MyDoom as SCO has blamed it for the DDoS attacks
before. Instead, SCO said, "We do not know the origins or reasons
for this attack, although we have our suspicions."

But by the time McBride was being interviewed on CNBC Wednesday he
labeled the virus "apparently" the work of a "radical element of the
Linux community." And independent industry watchers started
predicting that open source could easily suffer a backlash because
of the association between viruses and Linux. They speculated that
the government could clamp down on the Internet because of the
geopolitics of such stunts.

SCO is also likely to garner some sympathy from the corporate world
because of MyDoom. It doesn't help the Linux/open source cause that
boobs with open source convictions publicly rejoiced in the virus.

Open source leader Bruce Perens, presuming that SCO has the
necessary skills, claimed either a spammer or SCO itself concocted
MyDoom.

Perens wrote an open letter saying, "SCO...has a reason to defame
us, as part of their stock-kiting scheme. We have assembled ample
evidence that they have lied under oath in court. Such a company
would not balk at attacking their own site in order to paint their
opponents in a bad light. Thus, it is likely that this virus has
been assembled for the purpose of defaming the Linux developers by
spammers, SCO or others."

SCO said it was working with law enforcement including the Secret
Service and FBI and said anyone with information on the identity of
the perpetrator should contact the FBI.


CSN 533-26 OSDL Lands First Chinese Member

The Open Source Development Lab (OSDL) has picked up its very first
Chinese member, Beijing Co-Create Open Source Software Company Ltd,
whose name indicates why it must be joining.

The outfit wants to focus of Linux kernel development and promote
Linux-on-the-desktop in China.

The company was founded by 10 Chinese software vendors in early '01
and supports the first open source community in China, Open
Desktop.net.

Chinese government figures say Linux sales in the country are
growing at 40% a year and should be worth $38.7 million in 2007.

Meanwhile, OSDL has also recruited NEC Soft Ltd, NEC's old Unix
software development and systems integration arm interested in
joining OSDL's Data Center and Carrier Grade Linux initiatives. NEC
Soft set up a Linux Support Center back in 1999.


CSN 533-27 Cadence Goes Linux

Cadence Design Systems says it's porting its Encounter digital IC
design platform, stuff that's used for complex system-on-a-chip
(SoC) designs, to Opteron hardware running Linux citing customer
demand. It figures the move will result in faster design time, more
capacity and increased performance of the SoC chips. Cadence says
the software will be ready this quarter. Its Incisive functional
verification and Virtuoso custom design platforms will transition
sometime this year.


CSN 533-28 Red Hat as Citizen Kane

Red Hat is back in the publishing business, having shelved its first
online news attempt. This time through it's peddling a print
magazine called Wide Open that's evidently supposed to evangelize
open source as well as promote Red Hat's new freebie software, the
Fedora Project. Each issue is supposed to include CDs with the
latest cut of Fedora. The book is supposed to come out six times a
year. A charter subscription costs $35, 40% off the cover price.
It's promising how-to articles, news on certified applications and
hardware and "visionary editorials" on the future of community
projects like Gnome.


Mail Box


CSN 533-29 SCO Wins Convert to its GPL-is-Invalid Argument

To the Editor

Why is the Free Software Foundation given a pass on the issue of
contract enforcement under state law on binding legal agreements
like the GPL? The consequences are dramatic indeed for the
commercial enterprise environment.

When the Free Software Foundation speaks of unilateral permissions
or bare license law enforcing the GPL, they are referring to a long
line of case law concerning patents that was summarized by the
Supreme Court in General Talking Pictures Corp v Western Electric
Co, Inc., 305 US 124,125.

The principle involving a "bare license" or "unilateral permission"
is that a patentee may condition his own reward of exclusive rights
as he chooses. After all, the rights are his alone and he may
condition them as he sees fit. The conditions he places must involve
only his exclusive rights and not the exclusive "of parties involved
and there is no privity requirement. The legality of this principle
has never been questioned (i.d. at 125).

A derivative copyright work by the definition of sec. 103 (b)
contains exclusive rights for two distinct parties, the authorizing
"preexisting material" author retains his rights and the
"contributed material" author gains separate, disjoint and exclusive
rights to the new material he has contributed. There is no analogous
"derivative patent" creation under patent law.

The "pre-existing material" author has the exclusive right to
authorize and prepare derivative works of his "pre-existing" work
but has no copyrights whatsoever in the "contributing" author's
material.

Since the derivative work contains both the "pre-existing material"
and the "contributed material" it is obvious that if both sets of
"material" have exclusive disjoint rights that two separate,
exclusive permissions are required to distribute the derivative work
as a whole - the "pre-existing" author's permission and the
"modifying" author's permission. Both authors must agree to permit
distribution of the derivative work as a whole.

This is where the unilateral permission model fails. A "pre-
existing" work licensor cannot place conditions on "contributing"
authors' exclusive rights. It's utterly outside the scope of
definition of a unilateral permission.

The "pre-existing" author has exclusive rights and no conditions can
be placed on his exclusive rights without his agreement to do so.
The "contributing" author has exclusive rights and no conditions can
be placed on his exclusive rights without his agreement to do so.
They are after all, exclusive rights. Only some form of "binding
agreement" between both parties can supply both permissions required
to distribute a derivative work.

The IBM legal team in their Amended Counterclaims is absolutely
aware of this problem. In their Amended Counterclaims they describe
the GPL as a "public agreement" cast in "a binding legal form." Ask
yourself this question: If IBM describes the GPL as "a binding legal
form" - what is being "bound?" The answer is "copyright
permissions." That's what the GPL is about. Exclusive copyright
permissions.

Unilateral license permissions do not need state enforcement.
Unfortunately "binding legal forms" are enforced under state action
as there is no recognized federal authority in this area.

How then, do you permit a derivative work to be distributed? This is
usually done at the time the "pre-existing" author authorizes the
derivative work by way of a "binding legal agreement" of some form
with the "contributing" author.

When the GPL asserts:

" 2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any
portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy
and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section
1 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:..."

The authorizing "pre-existing" author is attempting to condition the
"contributing" author's exclusive rights on the authorizing "pre-
existing" author's unilateral grant of rights. This is not possible
by definition. Remember "there is no mutual exchange of obligations"
in a unilateral grant of permission. ([FSF attorney] Eben Moglen's
words?) Only a mutual agreement of both parties in a binding form
can secure the exclusive permissions of both parties so as to permit
distribution.

It is the fact that copyright law recognizes two disjoint, mutually
exclusive copyrights in the same derivative work that frustrates
license law as promulgated in General Talking Pictures Corp v
Western Electric Co mentioned above. This type of "derivative"
creation was never anticipated in the evolution of patent licensing
law.

There is an exclusive right for an original author to "prepare a
derivative work," but there is no exclusive right to distribute a
derivative work. The Copyright Act is absolutely silent concerning
the "distribution of derivative works." It's left to contract law to
control the distribution of derivative works.

Now things get worse. Unilateral permissions do not require privity.
"Binding legal forms" do require privity. It is obvious IBM is
attempting to solve the privity problem by describing the GPL as a
"public covenant." "Public trusts" do not require privity.

Even if privity were granted, things get worse yet. The GPL purports
to restrict the exclusive rights of the "pre-existing" owner(s) in a
derivative work from authorizing a new derivative work by
"bargaining for permissions" from new "contributing" authors in a
continuous sequence of new derivative works (ad infinitum). Remember
the phrase "You must cause any work that you distribute...to be
licensed" in the GPL sec 2(b)?

The interpretation of "binding legal forms" is left to state action
for enforcement. So this "binding legal form" is clearly an attempt
to create a "new right against the world" concerning copyrights. The
FSF calls this new right "copyleft." The attempt to create a "new
right against the world" enforced under state action because of the
"binding legal form" triggers preemption by sec. 301. This legal
principle of preemption is clearly described in ProCD Inc v
Zeidenberg, 86 F.3d 1447 (7th Cir.).

When SCO's attorney Mark Heise said copyright law "preempted" the
GPL and only allowed "one copy" he was being somewhat vague. He
wasn't referring to the "number of copies," he was referring to the
"number of successors." SCO is indeed correct that the GPL is
invalid.

Promissory estoppal will keep everyone from suing each other short-
term but Linux cannot be distributed under any kind of "viral
license" for future development. All those enterprise users will be
stuck with the version of Linux they are now running with no way to
repair or upgrade because the license is fatally flawed. "Copyleft
is not possible."

A quick check by a competent attorney with the citations above will
quickly confirm the accuracy of these conclusions.

Sincerely,
Daniel Wallace
Insight Communications


BillyGrams


CSN 533-30 Darl Does Harvard

SCO Group CEO Darl McBride is supposed to lecture on IP at the
Harvard Law School on Monday, February 2 at 6:30 EST. The speech,
part of The Harvard Journal of Law & Technology series, will be
webcast live and available as an archive at
http://jolt.law.harvard.edu. These lectures are open to the public,
but Harvard would rather not entertain a bunch of screaming
protestors.


CSN 533-31 Lindows Outlawed in Holland

A Dutch judge has sided with Microsoft and has forbidden Dutch
resellers to sell or promote Lindows software because Lindows is
riding on Windows' fame. Lindows can't advertise in the country and
the judge told Lindows to block access to its web site to the Dutch.
The decision follows the restraining order a Swedish court slapped
on the upstart Lindows prohibiting from using any of its trademarks
locally and a similar ruling in Finland. Microsoft has complaints
against Lindows pending in France, Belgium and Luxembourg. Lindows'
usually mouthy CEO Michael Robertson has yet to say a word.


CSN 533-32 From Bill Gates' Mouth to God's Ear

Bill Gates predicted that spam would be dead in two years from the
World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland the other day. He said
Microsoft is working on software that would make mass spam mailing
impractical and uneconomical. He thinks Microsoft can do what it's
good at and charge people money if they send unwanted e-mail.


CSN 533-33 Sarvega Piques Intel Capital's Interest

Sarvega Inc, the start-up with the web services infrastructure
widgetry, has gotten money from Intel Capital and Blueprint
Ventures. The outfit's not saying how much the pair put in, but it
means Sarvega has seen $20 million in venture capital so far. The
company sells an appliance and a blade to government and the Global
1000. The stuff is based on Sarvega's so-called XML EventStream
Operating System that's supposed to address all the facets of XML
web services processing from XSL Transformation to XML/web services
security.


CSN 533-34 Directories Bound To Be Free

LDAP directory services are becoming so commoditized that the Meta
Group expects them to be given away as part of framework solutions
that include security and identity management applications by
2005/06. Meta figures that between now and then options besides per-
entry will be offered to slow commoditization. The researcher says
the importance of directories has been overemphasized anyway and
that it's the applications that leverage the thing that's important.


CSN 533-35 Bill Gates, Knight

At some "mutually convenient" date, Bill Gates is going to be made a
Knight Commander of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth for "his
outstanding contribution to enterprise, employment, education and
voluntary sector in the United Kingdom," the Foreign Office said.
IBM CEO Lou Gerstner got a KBE shortly before he was due to retire.
Other Americans like Ronald Regan, Norman Schwartzkopf and Rudi
Giuliani have been similarly honored. London-born Tim Berners-Lee is
the industry's other KBE. Americans reject titles so any
affectations will be limited to Gates putting KBE after his name.


CSN 533-36 Megahertz Win

According to what the Tech Report says, AMD quietly trashed its True
Performance Initiative designed to get us all to stop equating
megahertz with performance. It couldn't get the industry interested.
It persists, however, in a contorted and possibly misleading
numbering scheme for its chips.


CSN 533-37 Dell Buys Into NextIO

NextIO, the year-old Texas start-up that thinks its still-secret
data communications widgetry is going to blow the blade market wide
open, has gotten some funding from Dell. It's not saying how much
but it's supposed to be an extension to the $10 million A round it
took in not long ago. NextIO said it had strategic alliances in play
(CSN No 530) and HP's chief strategy and technology officer Shane
Robison has just taken a seat on the start-up's board. Robison's
charter at HP includes mergers, acquisitions and partnerships.


CSN 533-38 Gates on Google

"They kicked our butts." - Bill Gates on the subject of Google, the
search company he's planning on trouncing. As a matter of fact,
Microsoft has just come up with a new free beta toolbar that
emphasizes search through MSN and dangles MSN content sites in front
of surfers. Yahoo and Google have similar toolbars.


CSN 533-39 IBM Puts Car Guy on Board

IBM has put Nissan Motor president, CEO and co-chairman Carlos Ghosn
on its board. A Brazilian educated in France, Ghosn has been an
executive VP with Renault SA and chairman, president and CEO of
Michelin North America. He is also on the boards of Alcoa and
Renault and Sony.


CSN 533-40 Another Linux Show

The Linux on Wall Street show is returning to the Roosevelt Hotel in
New York on April 28. Sponsors include Oracle, IBM, HP, Reuters and
Sybase.


CSN 533-41 Microsoft Solves mikerowesoft.com Problem

Microsoft solved its PR problems created by bullying the teenager
who set up the mikerowesoft.com web site and got the domain like it
wanted by offering to pay for the kid's new web site and throwing in
an Xbox with some games, a Microsoft certification course and a free
trip to the next Microsoft Research Tech gathering for him and his
family.


CSN 533-42 'You Dirty Rat'

"They're a cornered rat, and quite frankly, I think they have rabies
to boot." - Linux creator Linus Torvalds on SCO in BusinessWeek.
---------
Client Server NEWS 2000 - keeps a careful  eye on Microsoft, Windows
2000/NT and other phenomena like Linux.

We focus on these technologies so the information you receive is to
the point. No time-consuming meandering through a forest of Web
pages.

No information overload from a general purpose-news service that
delivers items you don't want to waste time on.

Just focused, actionable intelligence on what you care about.

And we deliver it every Friday ahead of next Monday's pack.

Available in ASCII text, HTML and Adobe Acrobat formats. Also,
paper.

Client Server NEWS is $595 per year for one reader - as little as
$100 per reader for Group Subscription Rates.

We concentrate on the news. We give you all of it so that you have
the important details to make decisions.

We deliver the latest, the best and the worst in news every week
direct to your desk - mailed or emailed.

Client Server NEWS 2000, a sister publication of The Online Reporter
and LinuxGram, is published weekly by G2 Computer Intelligence, Inc.
www.g2news.com
323 Glen Cove Ave.; Sea Cliff, NY 11579
Fax (516) 759-7028, Telephone (516) 759-7025.
Publisher: Maureen O'Gara ogara@g2news.com Sea Cliff, NY

Associate Editor:
Raga Rao (302) 292-8641 rao@g2news.com Newark, DE

Sales: Charlie Hall charlie@g2news.com
Europe: Simon Thompson simon@g2news.com

(c) Copyright 2004: While we are flattered that some of our readers
may want to pass along copies of our stories to customers, clients,
associates, friends, family and co-workers, please know that this
practice is illegal, violates our intellectual property rights and
undermines our efforts to bring you the kind of reporting you've
come to expect.


And, so the legalese:
It is illegal to reproduce, copy, photocopy, forward, e-mail,
publish, broadcast, post on an Internet/Intranet site, rewrite,
store in a retrieval system or otherwise distribute this publication
or any portion of this publication or any article in whole or in
part by any means, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise
without the prior written permission of G2 Computer Intelligence.

G2 Computer Intelligence also publishes:
THE online REPORTER - for people who need to track e-business,
Security and Internet Post & e-mail matters.
LinuxGram - Linux news that means business.


paperboy@g2news.com
G2 Computer Intelligence www.g2news.com
323 Glen Cove Avenue; Sea Cliff, NY 11579 USA
516-759-7025; FAX 516-759-7028