Articles by Jay Lyman

Sun Microsystems is touting the growth of its one-year-old open source project OpenSolaris, indicating the open code effort for its formerly closed Solaris operating system has drawn thousands of developers, hundreds of contributions, and millions in revenue Celebrating the OpenSolaris anniversary this week, Sun released the latest version of Solar...

Researchers from IBM and Georgia Institute of Technology have demonstrated a silicon-germanium (SiGe) processor that, when cryogenically frozen, can operate at frequencies higher than 500 gigahertz (GHz), some 250 times faster than the chips of today's mobile phones The phenomenal jump in chip clock speed may be limited to extreme cold environment...

Wikipedia's wild popularity has been matched recently by the amount of controversy surrounding the site, a Web-based encyclopedia that is open to anyone who wants to contribute and add to any of the information That is, almost anyone, and almost any of Wikipedia's information. The site has come under fire for accuracy after fallacies were left to s...

Japanese Linux vendor Turbolinux last week announced a couple of big deals in China, as the company looks to take advantage of China's pro-open source government backing and the replacement of SCO-Unix servers in a Turbolinux bid for market expansion Turbolinux said Qinzang Railway, part of China's Western Development strategy, would begin using a ...

The fight for DVD viewer hearts and minds is officially getting under way as Samsung readies the first high-definition Blu-ray DVD player, the BD-P1000, to go on sale in the U.S. next week The other high-definition DVD format, HD DVD, is available from Toshiba in the recently-released HD-A1 player....

Computing heavyweight Hewlett-Packard is touting new blade server technology that it hopes will serve to ease management of more modular blades, which are also more energy-efficient and cooler thanks to new technology HP said the BladeSystem c-Class took three years to develop, and centers on the three key areas of virtualization, power and cooling...

Microsoft made the most of this month's regular Patch Tuesday, putting out a dozen patches highlighted by a fix for the serious, zero-day Word vulnerability that has been the basis for targeted attacks since it was uncovered last month Microsoft also patched seven other "critical" vulnerabilities, three less-severe "important" vulnerabilities, and ...

Novell this week unveiled an open source identity management project called "Bandit," aimed at interoperability among disparate identity systems and consistency in securing and managing identities, which can number in the thousands for enterprises There have been numerous attempts at a uniform identity management platform, but the new open source e...

AOL bolstered its Open AIM initiative by adding new features and functionality to the instant message (IM) technology, and supporting new platforms Mac OS X, Linux, Pocket PC and Java The Dulles, Va.-based company, which launched the Open AIM initiative last spring to spur development and use, said there are some 45,000 software developers working ...

Intel this week signaled research advancements for its tri-gate transistor technology, indicating that along with other emerging methods and manufacturing, it has a technology trifecta lined up for tomorrow's energy efficient chips Intel researchers said the technologies -- tri-gate insulation, high-k gate dielecrics and metal gate electrodes, and ...

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reported on Friday that a settlement has been reached with the companies behind the popular video game "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas," Take-Two Interactive (NYSE: TTWO) and subsidiary Rockstar Games, which were sued for deceptive practices over hidden sexual content in the game The companies originally denied inc...

A new device called the Pepper Pad 3 is aimed at the convergence of digital media and the Internet, offering Web browsing, media playing, photo and other capabilities in a two-pound device that runs on an AMD Geode processor and Linux operating system The device, created by Pepper Computer and Hanbit Electronics, features a seven-inch screen, 20 GB...

Internet search giant Google revealed this week its progress and plans for 802.11 WiFi wireless service in its home town of Mountain View, Calif., as well as San Francisco, where the company won a contract to provide city-wide wireless service with EarthLink earlier this year Google will reportedly serve as an Internet service provider in Mountain ...

The best software developers in the world know you can't create code without bugs -- it's just not possible. However, new open source software being put to use by open source projects including Evolution, Gaim, theGimp, Gnome, Rhythmbox and others can more quickly find the worst bugs, including those that are causing hangups for most users. In turn, users can automatically report back on software quality with a program known as the Cooperative Bug Isolation Project...

A big new wave of Microsoft security products began rolling in this week as the software giant announced the Antigen security line for e-mail and messaging servers Aimed primarily at Exchange Server and other Windows Server customers, the new software suite is stirring controversy in the security software industry, where the major antivirus vendors...

Graphics silicon giant Nvidia doubled up on graphics processors for its latest high-end graphics processing card, touting the new GeForce 7950 GX2 as the "world's fastest." The new GeForce 7 series cards draw on two graphics processing units (GPUs), dramatically increasing single video card performance and ushering two-card, four-GPU "extreme" hig...

Given recent maneuvers by proprietarydatabase vendors, it is apparent thatopen source is having an impact on the database software market Two recent reports from major IT analysis firmsIDC andGartner -- which actually adjusted its market measurement in part because of open source -- highlight the significance of that impact....

Enterprise server software heavy VMware unveiled its latest virtualization software this week, promising wider infrastructure capabilities in its third-generation VMware Infrastructure 3 software suite The VMware release -- featuring four new virtualization tools for distributed files, scheduling, availability and consolidated backup -- marks the e...

Up-and-coming European security software player BitDefender has updated both its Linux-based perimeter protection security suite and its Linux Edition solution for antivirus scanning on Linux and FreeBSD platforms The company's new products highlight the latest filtering protection for Windows and Unix systems, mail and file servers and also the gr...

Red Hat is reaching beyond Linux geeks and system administrators with its latest effort to provide open source tools and community networks not around enterprise computing, but centered on digital media including music and television Dubbed "Mugshot," the new Red Hat initiative consists of a Web site with MySpace-styled social networking services: ...