January 11, 2008
by sjvn01
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Lenovo finally delivers SUSE Linux-based ThinkPads

PC vendor Lenovo has promised ThinkPads with pre-installed Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 for some time now. Lenovo will deliver the goods the week of Jan. 14.

Lenovo will release pre-installed SLED 10 on its Intel Centrino processor-powered ThinkPad T61 and R61 14-inch-wide notebooks. In February, Lenovo’s pre-integrated Novell Linux offering will expand to include some Penryn-based ThinkPads.

The ThinkPad T61 with SLED 10 Service Pack 1 will come with the Intel Core 2 Duo T7250. The T61 laptop is powered by a 2.0GHz processor with an 800MHz FSB (front-side bus) and a 2MB Level 2 internal cache. For memory it comes with 1GB of DDR2 SDRAM (double data rate 2 synchronous dynamic RAM).

For graphics, the T61 will use an Intel GMA X3100 GM965 on the motherboard. This, in turn, displays images on a 14.1-inch WXGA (Wide XGA) screen. This widescreen has a maximum resolution of 1366 by 768 pixels.

On the storage side, the T61 uses an 80GB hard drive that speeds along at 5400 rpm. The PC also includes a combo CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive. For network connectivity, the system will use a built-in ThinkPad 11a/b/g Wi-Fi wireless minicard.

The starting price for this system will be $949, $20 less than the same laptop with Vista Home Premium.

The R61 with pre-installed SLED has almost identical equipment. However, it’s been designed to be quieter and use less power than its T61 brother. Its price will also be about $950.

With both systems, Lenovo will provide direct support for the hardware and operating system. Novell will provide maintenance updates for SLED directly to ThinkPad notebook customers.

Lenovo has offered SLED-equipped laptops before. In 2006, it started offering its high-end ThinkPad T60p mobile workstation. Company officials also promised in August that Lenovo would finally deliver pre-installed desktop Linux in its consumer and small business lines. A quarter later than expected, Lenovo is finally following through.

When asked about this development, Michael Applebaum, senior manager of desktop Linux marketing at Novell, said, “We’re very pleased to see our work with Lenovo reach the market and begin bearing fruit for customers around the world. The Lenovo ThinkPads with SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop pre-loaded allow customers to reap the security, usability and flexibility advantages of Linux with the comfort of knowing it is pre-installed and fully supported by their hardware provider.”

Applebaum continued, “It’s never been easier to buy a Linux PC, deploy it into an existing environment and have it work seamlessly with current technologies. Going forward, you will see Novell and Lenovo continue to collaborate as we provide the market with additional models and capabilities to meet a range of customer needs.”

Lenovo is finally joining Dell as one of the first top-tier PC vendors to offer pre-installed Linux desktops to its customers. In the meantime, other lesser-known vendors, such as Asustek Computer and Everex, are also delivering inexpensive computers with pre-installed Linux. Pre-installed Linux desktop systems are still far from being as easy to find as Windows-equipped systems, but they are out there now and are relatively easy to find and buy.

A version of this story first appeared in Desktop Linux.

January 11, 2008
by sjvn01
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ICANN to Probe Network Solutions` Domain Registration Policies

ICANN will investigate Network Solutions’ domain registering policy in the wake of reports that the company was automatically registering domains based on user searches.

ICANN’s decision to investigate comes just as Network Solutions reportedly is changing the policy.

In a brief note to eWEEK, ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), the international body in charge of TLDs (top-level domain name registrants) and Internet addressing, stated that it will be looking into Network Solutions’ new policy of registering any domain name that is searched for on its site.

However, Network Solutions told ICANN about this policy change before it implemented them.

“Network Solutions informed us when they launched this process,” said Jason Keenan, ICANN’s media adviser. It was only after Network Solutions quietly implemented this policy and users noticed the change and protested about it online that ICANN took note of it. Now, “ICANN has begun looking into the matter to see if it is in compliance with the Registrar Accreditation Agreement,” said Keenan.

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January 10, 2008
by sjvn01
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Kicking XP SP3’s Tires

Microsoft released a release candidate of the long delayed Windows XP SP3 to Microsoft MSDN (Microsoft Software Development Network) and TechNet subscribers on Dec. 3. The release comes about a month after a beta release of SP3 was made available to about 15,000 users.

With customers still showing no eagerness to move to Vista, interest has been building in XP SP3. While there’s little when it comes to new features in SP3, it does include a roll-up of the several hundred fixes that Microsoft has published for XP since XP SP2 arrived in August 2004, significant security and stability fixes, and a handful of new features.

While there have been reports that XP SP3 also increased its application speed by about 10 percent over SP2, this isn’t an attempt to benchmark or review XP SP3.

Betas and release candidates are, by their very nature, subject to a good deal of change between the version that a small group of testers sees and what will finally end up in users’ hands. It is noteworthy, though, that in a later apples-to-apples comparison Office 2003 on Vista SP1 vs. Office 2003 on XP SP3 on the same PC-XP still ran faster than XP SP2 and almost twice as fast as Vista SP1.

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January 9, 2008
by sjvn01
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Is Network Solutions Snatching Domain Names?

Numerous reports confirm that Network Solutions, the well-known domain registry company, is automatically registering domain names when individuals search for a potential name using its site’s search tools.

This was first reported in a forum message in DomainState, a news and discussion site for Internet site owners. In the message, a domain owner and developer who goes by the handle “Stratagenix” reported, “Network Solutions has instituted a four-day lock on all domain names searched on their site. They are effectively using phishing techniques to hijack or steal domain names and forcing domain name registrants to register their names at Network Solutions. The standard domain name registration fee at Network Solutions is $34.99—significantly higher than the leading alternatives. I was forced to register a domain name with them today or chance losing it to another registrant.”

In a follow-up story at DomainNameNews, a reporter confirmed that after using the popular whois tool on the Network Solution site to search for a domain name, they then found that the site had been registered to a private registrant, but that the domain name was still available from Network Solutions. At other domain registry sites, however, such as Dotster and GoDaddy, the domain name was unavailable.

I was also able to determine that simply searching for a domain name with Network Solutions’ Whois utility was sufficient for Network Solutions to automatically register the name. Moments after searching for the domain name: sjvn01.com, the next whois search revealed the following information:

Whois Server Version 2.0

Domain names in the .com and .net domains can now be registered with many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net for detailed information.

omain Name: SJVN01.COM

Registrar: NETWORK SOLUTIONS, LLC.

Whois Server: whois.networksolutions.com

Referral URL: http://www.networksolutions.com

Name Server: NS1.RESERVEDDOMAINNAME.COM

Name Server: NS2.RESERVEDDOMAINNAME.COM

Status: ok

Updated Date: 09-jan-2008

Creation Date: 09-jan-2008

Expiration Date: 09-jan-2009

As a result, the domain name was no longer available for purchase from other domain registry companies. Given this information, it would appear that we would have no choice but to buy the domain name from Network Solutions at their price if we wanted the site before Jan. 9, 2009.

Network Solutions, the only domain registry company from 1993 to 1999 for the .com, .net and .org sites, has not replied yet for requests for comments on this policy. According to a report in Circle Hub, an Internet infrastructure community site, Jonathon Nevett, Network Solutions’ vice president of Policy, Network Solutions is protecting its customers from “Domain Name Front Running [domains being registered by someone else just after they have conducted a domain name search]. … The measure will kick in when a customer searches for an available domain name at our Web site, but decides not to purchase the name immediately after conducting the search.”

Thus, “After the search ends, we will put the domain name on reserve. During this reservation period, the name is not active and we do not monetize the traffic on these domains. If a customer searches for the domain again during the next four days at networksolutions.com, the domain will be available to register. If the domain name is not purchased within four days, it will be released back to the registry and will be generally available for registration.”

Numerous Slashdot and Circle ID community members are treating this explanation with disdain. eWEEK’s own Larry Seltzer, in a Circle ID note, declared, “My word, that’s on the short list for most self-serving, hypocritical excuse I’ve heard from a business. We’re front-running in order to save you from the front-runners.”

Other individuals have started automated scripts to flood Network Solutions with bogus domain name searches in an impromptu DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack. Others are protesting Network Solutions new policy to ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), the oversight organization for top-level domain name providers. At this time, ICANN has not replied to requests for its stand on Network Solutions’ policies.

A version of this story was first published in eWEEK.

January 8, 2008
by sjvn01
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Microsoft becomes the online channel for Olympic coverage

Maybe it’s just me, but when I read that Bill Gates had inked an exclusive deal with NBC to deliver live and on-demand Olympics coverage on MSN with its Silverlight, cross-browser, cross-platform video plug-in, I saw a new world of online video opening up.

In the past, online video has gotten a great deal of interest, but it’s never been really big business. Oh, people love their YouTube videos, many sites use Adobe Flash to add, well, flash, to their sites; some people legally download online video via iTunes for Apple TV and iPods, and far more skirt the law and company policies with illegal video downloads via various BitTorrent sites. Now, for the first time to my knowledge, a major “television” event is being made available over the Internet… if you use Microsoft Silverlight.

Now, I will give Microsoft credit. They could have made Silverlight Windows-specific, but they didn’t. Microsoft and Novell are working together to bring Silverlight to Linux Web browsers with Moonlight. Microsoft is already supporting Silverlight on Mac OS X.

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January 7, 2008
by sjvn01
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A marriage of convenience broken: OLPC and Intel

Can I be honest? Intel was never really interested in partnering with the One Laptop Per Child project. The marriage of Intel and OLPC was destined for divorce before the two ever walked down the aisle.

As so often is the case in a divorce, the partners have very different explanations for the split-up. In a press statement, Intel spokesperson Chuck Mulloy said the OLPC board “had asked Intel to end its support for non-OLPC platforms, including the Classmate PC and other systems.” Further, “they wanted us to focus our support exclusively on the OLPC system.”

The OLPC organization fired back the next day in its own press statement, saying, “since joining the OLPC Board of Directors in July, Intel has violated its written agreement with OLPC on numerous occasions. Intel continued to disparage the XO laptop in developing nations that had already decided to partner with OLPC–Uruguay and Peru, with countries that were in the midst of choosing a laptop solution [such as] Brazil and Nigeria, and even small and remote places [like] Mongolia.”

The New York Times dug up more dirt on the split over the weekend. According to writer John Markoff, an Intel salesperson tried to talk the Peruvian government into dropping the OLPC’s XO computer for Intel’s Classmate PCs. When OLPC leader Nicholas Negroponte found out, that was the last straw, and OLPC and Intel were on their way to splitting.

Not that they were ever really together anyway. Intel joined OLPC for one reason: After Negroponte lambasted Intel for its lack of support for the child-friendly OLPC on 60 Minutes in May 2007, Intel felt it had to do something to make it look better, even if it meant allying itself with the Advance Micro Devices-powered OLPC.

To Negroponte, the OLPC is all about getting computers into the hands of the poorest of the poor. To Intel, it was about improving its public image. In short, it was idealism vs. pragmatism. This is one of the oldest of conflicts and one that seldom ends well for the leaders of either side.

For most people, however, I believe that the conflict will end well. As a result of the OLPC XO and Intel Classmate, we have the first generation of truly powerful–but low-priced–computers. This can only benefit desktop Linux.

It also can only benefit the children of this divorce. No matter whether the computers they use are OLPC XOs, Intel Classmates or some other design, ultra-cheap PCs mean more computing power in the hands of children. And that can only be a good thing for all of us in the long run.

A version of this story was first published in DesktopLinux.

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