Mark Hatch writes: “Integrated Computer Solutions, Inc. (ICS),
the leading supplier of Motif(r) products and support, today announced
that the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) chose Linux to host
the upgrade to their Electrification Display System.” This system tracks
the flow of electricity from the high voltage DC power lines of Pacific
Gas and Electric to the distribution of electricity via the third rail.
If an emergency required the evacuation of a train, this system would be
used to turn off the electricity to ensure the safety of passengers as
they exited the system.

BART also selected Open Motif for their GUI toolkit, ICS’ Builder Xcessory
PRO to build their application user interface and LOOX++ from LOOX Software
for the visualization aspects of the application. Open Motif was selected
because of developer knowledge, use by existing applications, and “rock
solid stability”. Builder Xcessory PRO was chosen because of its ability
to quickly build and tailor the user interface in response to user input.
BART selected LOOX++ to simplify the graphical display of the model of
the Electrification Display System.

In reviewing their decision, the BART implementation team estimated
that they saved between 15 to 20 percent of the total project budget through
the use of commodity PC hardware, not having to purchase software licenses
for the operating environment and the use of rapid development tools such
as ICS’ Builder Xcessory PRO.

Further Details
Further details of this Linux success can be read at http://www.ics.com/bart
. The April issue of the Linux Journal includes a summary of BART’s decision
and experience too.

About Integrated Computer Solutions
Founded in 1987, ICS (http://www.ics.com) was chartered to provide software
development tools and training for developers working with the then emerging
X Window System(tm). Prior to the widespread adoption of Motif by the UNIX
workstation vendors, ICS was the leading independent supplier of the Motif
toolkit. In 1998, The Open Group chose ICS to provide technical support
for its Motif source code licenses.

Today, ICS’ Builder Xcessory PRO (BX PRO) is the market leader in Motif
graphical user interface development tools. In its fifth major release
and representing over 100 person years of effort, BX PRO defines a level
of sophistication, functionality and ease of use that is unmatched in the
industry. In November of 1999, the combination of BX PRO from ICS and Code
Fusion from Red Hat software was awarded the Editor´s Choice award
for the Best New Application for Software Development by The Linux Journal.
Commenting on the importance of this alliance, The Linux Journal described
the software as “…the first Visual C/C++ equivalent for Linux.”

ICS sponsors the MotifZone (http://www.motifzone.net), a community site
for Motif developers to gather additional knowledge and request input on
technical problems from other engineers. The MotifZone also hosts the Public
CVS source code repository for Open Motif as well as the defect database.

# # #

UNIX and Motif are registered trademarks of The Open
Group in the US and other countries. The Open Group and the X Window System
are trademarks of The Open Group. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus
Torvalds. All other names and trademarks are the property of their respective
owners.

“

The Register: “AMD has an 800MHz Mobile Duron in the works – according to Sony.

The Japanese giant yesterday announced the latest additions to its Vaio notebook
line, one of which sports “the new 800MHz AMD Duron mobile processor” with a
200MHz frontside bus, 128KB L1 cache and 64KB of on-die L2 cache. The
machine contain the 800MHz part, the Vaio FX210, is due to ship early May.”

IDG: “With the recent spate of viruses, hack attacks, and identity theft, cryptography and security has moved beyond the venue of mathematicians and technologists. But it’s no less complicated.”

An anonymous reader writes: “From ITWorld (fka LinuxWorld): Wallace Stevens was famous for writing poetry which can be difficult to grok. As a poet, he gave us many gems, among them a poem called “The Sense of the Sleight-of-hand Man.” On one level, that poem seems to me to say that if one can imagine something, it can happen. The Uniform Computer Information Transaction Act (UCITA) says something very similar. UCITA says that if a large software publisher can imagine terms more favorable to itself than to the customer, it can make them real. The poem is art. UCITA is a crime against consumers.”

Wired: “A federal judge says she would allow music publishers to join in a class-action suit against Napster. That means up to 27,000 new plaintiffs could try and get a piece of the file-trading company.”

An anonymous reader writes: “From ITWorld (fka LinuxWorld): “Linus Torvalds said April 8 that reports of him trashing the new Mac OS X are simply misquotes, as he has “never commented on OS X.” The reports (see Resources for links) stem from early looks at his upcoming autobiography, Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary, which he coauthored with David Diamond.”

MSNBC tells us: “Using a Hewlett-Packard ScanJet 3200C scanner may cause a
computer running Windows 95, 98, or Me to stop responding
for a period of 3 to 5 seconds several times every hour, says
Microsoft.”

PCWorld: “In recent months Juno, Adobe,
Verant, and now Microsoft have been among a number of companies that have felt the sting of a backlash
against particularly unreasonable licensing terms for the use of software and web services.”

Anandtech: “The VIA KT266 is here, and it is the third Socket-A DDR Chipset to hit the streets. Is the third time around the DDR block going to be a good experience for the Athlon? Find out if your next motherboard should have a KT266 on it or not.”

Nandotimes: “NakedNews.com, the nude newscast which claims its has nothing
to hide, will flash its first nude male presenter Thursday on its Internet webcast.
Lucas Tyler, a 33-year-old former investment adviser, will join the all-female news team, which strips
bit-by-bit as they read the business, international, entertainment, sports and weather each day, said
spokeswoman Kathy Pinckert.”