“Dell, which had a JP Morgan moment earlier this month when it came to New York and stuck to its guidance for its current quarter, becoming for the moment the sole support of the US stock market, is reported to be contemplating a second round of layoffs for all its bully talk.” More at LinuxGram.

– by Tina Gasperson –
The first full release of Red Carpet, bundled with Ximian’s Gnome 1.4, is playing temperamental at installation time, refusing to proceed without having its many dependencies satisfied. It’s RPM-hell.Since the release date, the mailing list has been inundated with error reports worded like this:

"Red Carpet has encountered an error while trying to process your request:

An error has occurred while Red Carpet was processing this transaction. 
This may be caused by an improperly built or corrupted package. You may 
want to try the transaction again with fewer packages. You should report 
this problem to red-carpet@ximian.com as soon as possible."

This message is usually followed by a list of unsatisfied RPM dependencies, and sometimes a request to remove packages.

Reports of this nature, posted by beta-testers of the software, were also showing up on the Red Carpet mailing list right up to the release date. It is clear that Ximian knew about the dependency errors before releasing Red Carpet 1.0 on April 24, but decided to go ahead with the schedule and ask for forgiveness later.

“It was our intention to release another beta version in the last few days, but unfortunately, we’ve run out of time,” said Ian Peters of Ximian in an April 21 post to the Red Carpet mailing list. “Unfortunately, all of us at Ximian got caught up in working on the next version of the Ximian GNOME Desktop, and were unable to make another beta release (of Red Carpet).”

NewsForge editors read and respond to comments posted on our discussion page.

ZDNET.co.uk: “Two pending browser upgrades — one from Microsoft and one from
Mozilla — have fallen behind schedule.

Mozilla.org’s Mozilla 1.0 browser, which until last week was expected
to go gold in May, is now expected sometime in the third calendar
quarter of this year.”

The Register: “For a limited time only, Oracle says, special financial incentives will be awarded to
the lucky few who want better security and less downtime than IBM customers get
by availing themselves of the company’s SafeSwitch Program.

“IBM bought Informix. The question is whether they can buy you,” a provocative
marketing slogan reads.”

Bjarne Stroustrup, author of C++, will speak at 7:30 pm
in 501 Schermerhorn Hall of Columbia University in the City of New York. This meeting of the Association for Computing Machinery, Columbia chapter,
is free and open to the public.

ACM @ Columbia Univeristy welcomes all ACM members and interested persons:
Thursday, April 26th, 2001

JAVA BYTES

OK, maybe not, but there are certainly alternatives.  Far and away the
most popular programming language in the world today is C++.  Unlike many
modern inventions, C++ has one clear creator: Bjarne Stroustrup.

On April 26th, he's coming to speak at Columbia, thanks to Columbia's ACM
chapter with the support of the Department of Computer Science.  This is a
rare chance to hear one of the major figures in both computer science and
the information economy speak about his creation.

The topic will be C++ itself, and thus should be of particular interest to
dedicated Java types, as C++ is the primary programming language of the
"real world."  Used a Microsoft product lately, either operating system or
application? Written in C++.  Played a computer game?  Used any retail
software whatsoever?  Ditto.  Tens of billions of dollars worth of
software written in C++ are sold every year.

So anyway, come and listen to the guy who wrote the world's main
programming language talk about programming.  The talk will be aimed at
intermediate-level computer science undergraduates.  We promise that your
mind will be stretched.

Please go to our site: http://www.cs.columbia.edu/acm for directions to
the lecture hall at Columbia U. where the talk will be taking place.
Columbia U. itself is located at 116th and Broadway.

-- ACM @ Columbia U.




Distributed poC TINC:

Jay Sulzberger 
Corresponding Secretary LXNY
LXNY is New York's Free Computing Organization.
http://www.lxny.org

BBC: “A series of computer problems on the international space station could delay space tourist Dennis Tito’s mission.”

The Register: “In a brief SEC filing Linux distributor has announced that it will lay off 32 of its 188
staff ahead of closing its acquisition of SCO’s Server and Services businesses.
Caldera will take a one-time charge of $450,000, about half of its quarterly income.”

“IglooFTP is an X-based shareware FTP client. That’s right, its shareware and you have thirty days to evaluate it. This is becoming an
increasingly popular route that Linux software writers take. While Linux purists might disagree with the concept of Linux shareware, the fact
remains that some great Linux software is shareware. Having said that lets go back to IglooFTP, which is available at
http://www.littleigloo.org/iglooftp_downloads.php3. Download the appropriate version for your distribution and fire up X.” More at FreeOS.com.

“DNS stands for Domain Name Service. It is a service that can keep large number of machines ipaddresses for huge
network communication. In this article we look at what DNS is, why is it needed, its use, and how to configure it.” More at FreeOS.com.

“At the National Association of Broadcasters annual trade show on Wednesday IBM(R) announced five new IntelliStation M Pro workstations and 12 new NetVista(TM) A60 business and A60i home desktop systems, all boosted by advanced Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 processors at speeds up to 1.7GHz(superscript: (1)). The IntelliStation M Pro features new Fire GL4(superscript: (2)) graphics based on IBM’s copper chip technology, boosting performance in ways designed to simplify the
manipulation of large three-dimensional models.”The new IntelliStation M Pro is the first in the industry to offer the
new Fire GL4 graphics card. Microprocessors based on IBM’s copper chip
technology — launched only two years ago on high-end IBM servers —
improve performance dramatically as compared to chips based on aluminum.
Pioneered by IBM researchers, these microprocessors are smaller, denser,
faster and cooler than their aluminum counterparts. They are also more
reliable and less expensive to manufacture.

“This new graphics card offers high-end performance and function at a
lower price,” said Doug Oathout, director of marketing, IBM IntelliStation.
“It provides existing and new customers with many of the capabilities of
high-end 3D, enabling them to attain new levels of productivity.”

In addition to offering the new Fire GL4 card, the industry’s
next-generation 3D graphics accelerator, IBM also offers the Fire GL2
(superscript: (2)) card. They are among a comprehensive range of
performance 2D- and advanced 3D-graphics solutions certified by IBM for
IntelliStation compatibility. They include the Matrox Millennium G450 and
NVIDIA Quadro2 MXR graphics adapters, both supporting dual displays for
enhanced productivity.

Also at NAB today, LGI Media Technologies announced plans to use IBM
IntelliStation workstations and other IBM technologies in its new
Hollywoodbury Studios in Woodbury, Minn., near Minneapolis-St. Paul.

“IBM provides a complete and synergistic solution, and we are excited
to go forward with the IBM technology partnership,” says LaSalle Gabriel,
the president and CEO of LGI. “It is our mission to stay ahead of the
market with leading technology and software solutions.”

Other enhancements to the IntelliStation M Pro line-up include:

larger hard drives, up to 40GB(superscript: (3)) in size, for greater
storage capabilities;
increased memory supported by the Intel 850 chipset with up to PC800
RAMBUS ECC, delivering more data;
user-friendly mechanical design allowing for tool-free access
accommodating six adapters (five PCI slots, one 4X AGP Pro 50) and 7
storage devices (4 bays open); and
more operating system choices, as systems are preloaded with
Microsoft(R) Windows(R) 2000. IntelliStation also supports Windows NT(R)
4.0 and Linux(R) 6.0

IBM IntelliStation workstations provide owners with a three-year,
parts and on-site labor limited warranty(superscript: (4)); free
24x7x365(superscript: (5)) technical support is standing by for the duration of the warranty, augmented by the IntelliStation
“Ask Engineering” rapid response team. Through the Web, users can directly contact IntelliStation system engineers on
issues ranging from setup to optimizing system components for peak performance with mission-critical applications.

New NetVista A60 and A60i Desktops

The NetVista A60, designed for business users, and the NetVista A60i,
built for productive individuals at home and small businesses, now feature
Pentium 4 processor speeds of up to 1.7GHz. First introduced in the fall
of 2000, the NetVista A60 and A60i series of personal systems occupies the
high-performance category of the IBM NetVista family of desktop products.

In addition to boasting the fastest processor speeds available from
Intel, the A60 and A60i desktops provide users with huge hard drives, some
models featuring up to 80 gigabytes of capacity. Additionally, the A60 and
A60i desktops offer four bays and four slots, providing users with a high
degree of expandability.

While the A60 line is built for performance, it also packs in a number
of useful software tools that allow users to run their businesses more
efficiently. Easy-to-use NetVista software tools like IBM Backup and
Restore and IBM Data Transfer help people transfer their data and
electronic personality settings from previous personal computers, and
provide one-button restore capabilities in the event of software glitches
or system crashes.

Pricing and Availability

The new IBM IntelliStation M Pro with 1.7GHz Pentium 4, available immediately, starts at $3,320(superscript: (6)). IntelliStation M Pro
workstations with 1.7GHz Pentium 4 and the Fire GL4 card are available in June, starting at $4,820(superscript: (6)). The new NetVista A60i
starting at $1,234(superscript: (6)), and the A60, starting at $1,239(superscript: (6)), are available for order now. All can be purchased directly
through www.ibm.com or by calling 1-888-SHOP-IBM.

(c) International Business Machines Corporation 2001. All rights
reserved.

IBM and IntelliStation are registered trademarks and NetVista is a
trademark of International Business Machines Corporation in the United
States and other countries. Microsoft, Windows and Windows NT are
trademarks or registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. Intel and
Pentium are registered trademarks of Intel Corporation. Linux is a
registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.Other company, product and service
names may be trademarks or service marks of others.

1. GHz only measures microprocessor internal clock speed; many factors affect application performance.
2. Fire GL2 and Fire GL4 are trademarks of ATI Technologies, Inc. and are used under license.
3. GB equals 1 billion bytes and MB equals 1 million bytes when referring to storage capacity; accessible capacity may be less.
4. For information regarding the terms and conditions of IBM’s limited warranty, please visit our Web site or call 1-800-772–2227.
Copies are available upon request. For warranties including on-site service, a technician is sent after IBM attempts to resolve
the problem remotely.
5. Response time varies. May exclude some holidays.
6. IBM Direct price; does not include taxes or shipping and is subject to change without notice. Reseller prices may vary. IBM
reserves the right to alter product offerings and specifications at any time without notice.