Diamond Age Solutions News for the IT Industry

Sat Nov 4 08:36:24 NZDT 2006

Today Index

Microsoft starts to join the Open Source party, exploring the possibility of sales support with SuSE. But is it legal?:
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB116249026689311557-helTbrheLKgbaJ5iO5z40ZFCiOs_20061109.html?mod=blogs
http://news.com.com/2061-10795_3-6132156.html

But possibly no MS for China. Microsoft considers withdrawing from non-democratic countries, depending on what democracy is:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6102180.stm

Sun intends to Java SE and ME freely available in "the November time frame" according to VP of software marketing Peder Ulander:
http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/news/D806B931F892FE01CC25721A000B6F91

While the anticipated anti-US bickering has failed to materialise at the United Nations summit on the Internet, so has their 'net connection...:
http://news.com.com/2061-10796_3-6130991.html?part=rss&tag=6130991&subj=news

Electronic voting systems are being a given a bad name by the current experiences in America. Too many faults to list here:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061101-8131.html

"Extremely critical" vulnerability in Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 found, with potential risk of remote code execution attacks:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2050513,00.asp

Another flaw found in Firefox 2.0, though it only results in a crash. So does closing a tab that has a Flash 9 movie playing:
http://news.com.com/2100-1002_3-6131624.html?part=rss&tag=6131624&subj=news

The mass production of the OLPC "$100 laptop" is brought forward to Q1 2007, according to the Taiwanese manufacturers Quanta Computer:
http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/news/B6DDFDFFD219DDAACC2572190037B132

100 tapes of the '69 lunar landing, marked "NASA Manned Space Center", turn up in the basement of the Curtin University of Technology in Perth:
http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/818

Samsung puts 16 NAND Flash chips in one 16Gbyte package, bringing Flash drive capacities to levels suitable for use as laptop main storage:
http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=193500880

Belousov-Zhabotinsky (BZ) gels, which pulse like a heart, are computer-modelled opening their modification and use in micro-engines:
http://www.newscientisttech.com/article/dn10434-pulsing-gels-could-power-tiny-devices.html

And finally. The lawyer who released the details of Geroge Bush's drunk- driving conviction gets arrested for dressing up as Osama Bin Laden:
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=domesticnews&storyID=2006-10-31T225906Z_01_N31229982_RTRUKOC_0_US-MAINE-BINLADEN.xml&WTmodLoc=IntNewsHome_R1_domesticnews-

News collated from various sources by Vik Olliver for Diamond Age Solutions Ltd. The views presented in this document are the personal opinion of the collator, and should not be taken as any more than that.