Noted in Passing June 2002

These are things I'm too busy too look into in depth, but caught my interest somewhere recently, and might be of interest to you also. Virtual PC http://www.connectix.com A product apparently similar to VMWARE. Interestingly, they also sell what they call "OS Packs" which are operating systems preconfigured to work with Virtual PC. Holographic Storage www.inphase-technologies.com. Apparently holographic data storage will soon be real. Imagine 100GB on something the size of a CD. Auto Diagnostics www.autotap.com and www.rinda.com are both manufacturers of hardware/software for backyard auto mechanics. I stopped doing that stuff years and years ago but it still interests me. Halloween Documents I'm suprised by how many people have never even heard of the so-called "Halloween Documents": osi.open5ource.net/halloween/. Interesting reading about Microsoft and their fear of Linux. A Common Linux Speaking of Linux: Caldera, Suse, Turbolinux and Connectiva are talking about producing a "united" version. I can't see this helping much without RedHat, but we'll see: www.caldera.com/unitedlinux/pressrelease.html CodeWeaver's Crossover These folks have tackled just (for the moment) Microsoft Office, and have come up with something that lets you run just that under Linux. They also make a "crossover plugin" that lets you use Microsoft browser plugins with Linux Netscape or Mozilla browsers: www.codeweavers.com Ruby Here and there I've been hearing about Ruby: http://www.ruby-lang.org as being a contendor against Perl and Python. I haven't had the time to look into it at all. Distributed Boycott List This is a pretty simple idea. The DBL list is a list of servers that could be used to relay spam: http://dsbl.org Download AudioBooks I drive a LOT. Although National Public Radio is my constant companion, sometimes I'd like more. I haven't tried this yet, but it looks great: http://www.audible.com Ximian Exchange Connector The Ximian exchange connector (http://www.ximian.com/products/connector) works with Ximian Evolution only, but allows Microsoft clients to work with their Linux/Unix email server as though it were Exchange. IIS vs. Apache You may be aware of the constant battle over web server usage. Apache still leads IIS ( 60% vs. 28% at this moment), but the Linux side claims that Microsoft's "penetration" is inflated by unused web servers running on personal PC's that happen to have Internet connectivity- in other words, yeah, that's an IIS web server but it isn't serving any pages! Microsoft's defenders retorted that 50% of all web sites run IIS. The Linux folks smiled a moment and then asked why it takes 50% of the servers to run 28% of the web sites: can you say "unreliable" or "underpowered" ? Real 3-D Real 3d: www.dti3d.com. CrashProof Windows Turns out that you can make a crash-proof Windows: it just takes 4 systems hooked together (rather expensively, of course): www.marathontechnologies.com Open Office Another Linux office suite I wish I had time to look at: openoffice.org Please read this disclaimer Copyright and reprint info A.P. Lawrence provides SCO Unix and Linux consulting services http://www.pcunix.com