Reported at The Register: “Microsoft has quietly slipped a Universally Unique ID (UUID) into the ISO of build
2600 of Windows XP, thus giving itself the capability of tracking code leaks back to
whoever it was that leaked them. News of the UUID’s presence originally broke in
the Microsoft beta newsgroups, but the matter has been followed up by Steve
Gibson of GRC after postings were forwarded to him.”

ActiveState has been chosen by Profit Magazine as one of Canada’s Hottest Startups for 2001. The annual ranking celebrates the achievements of the best and brightest young businesses. “We’re honored to be chosen amongst the top 50 emerging growth companies in Canada,” said Dick Hardt, Founder and CEO. “We appreciate the recognition of the unique challenges we’ve faced in finding a successful business model around open source.”

ActiveState provides open source based programming products and services for cross-platform development. ActiveState’s key technologies are Perl, the Internet’s most popular programming language; Python and Tcl, user-friendly scripting languages; PHP, the dynamic Web programming language; and XSLT, the XML transformation language.

In our four year history we’ve gone from a small two person shop to the leader in our market with many of the top open source developers on staff and as advisors.

Our mission is to make programming easier and we believe in the core values of creating a great place to work, integrity, responsibility, and superior customer service. Over 50% of the Fortune 500 are customers and we are working hard to attract the remainder!

Read more about the road blocks we faced and how we overcame them in Profit’s fear factors.

ActiveState and its stars have also won many other awards, for our productivity tools, entrepreneurial abilities, and more…

PR News Wire: “Lineo(R), Inc., a leading
innovator of embedded systems and real-time solutions, today announced the
availability of the Lineo Embedix(TM) GPL Compliance Toolset. The GPL
(General Public License) Compliance Tooolset, expected to ship in September,
2001, gives OEMs and embedded developers the confidence to combine the
benefits of both open source and proprietary software in the same embedded
solution.”

In the next two weeks, Intel is expected to release its 845 chipset, enabling PC builders to combine Pentium 4 processors with SDRAM for the very first time. While not the best solution, in terms of performace, many computer makers are looking forward to the new chipset, which will free them from paying the higher prices the Rambus-only Pentium 4 generated. The use of SDRAM should knock anywhere from $150 – $200 off the retail price of a new PC. Full story from CNET News.com.

Intel plans to pump up the speed of its budget Celeron processors on Friday, says CNET News.com. The chipmaker will add 1GHz and 1.1GHz Celerons to the product line, and you can already buy made-to-order systems featuring the new processors from Compaq. The newer, faster Celerons are part of Intel’s short range strategy, which calls to eliminate all Pentium III chips from the product line by the end of the year. According to the report, Intel will then most likely use the Celeron lineup to fill the PIII’s vacancy.

A screen capture at The Register points out the latest Microsoft marketing blunder. At least one online advertisement for Microsoft’s new Windows XP operating system shows a user configuring something… on a Macintosh.

Reported at CNET News.com: “Microsoft on Tuesday opened the door to 64-bit Windows.

The company announced that its Windows Advanced Server, Limited Edition, is now available for
computers based on Intel’s 64-bit Itanium chip.

Microsoft said that Compaq Computer, Dell Computer, Hewlett-Packard and IBM will start
shipping servers running the new operating system within 30 days. Other computer makers will
ship it later this year.”

Robert X. Cringely’s latest PBS column: “This is the week I said we’d roll our own DSL. On the surface it looks like a
daunting task, but it is actually not that hard at all – if you can get past the
many regulatory loopholes. But why would you even want to do such a
thing? Well maybe DSL isn’t available in your area. Maybe you want a
significantly cheaper alternative to a T-1 line. Or just maybe you and the
kid down the block want to play networked games at warp speed. Well here
is how to do it.”

From a press release posted at Business Wire: “Caldera International Inc. (Nasdaq: CALD) Tuesday announced its Professional Services group will work with Intel
to develop support of FORTRAN 95 for both IA32 and the Intel(R) Itanium(TM) Architecture in the GNU Debugger (GDB).
Working with Intel, Caldera Professional Services is developing and testing code, which will be open sourced and made available to the official GDB tree.
Upon its completion, the GDB code will enable FORTRAN compiler customers to debug all FORTRAN applications effectively. Previously, users of GDB have only been
able to debug some FORTRAN applications. The enhanced GDB will also accelerate FORTRAN application porting to Pentium and Itanium processors by speeding up the
debugging process.”

From IT-Director: “Where there are clear economies to be gained, governments could and should lead the way
in the use of open source. They also might like to consider trying to provoke open source
developments for some of the software that they need, for example, in the local government
area or for charities or for education. And the political wing of the open source movement
should lobby governments to do so. It would do much more to advance their cause than
posting derogatory remarks on the web every time someone makes a negative comment
about Linux. Unfortunately, that is what they seem to spend much of their time doing.”