ZDNet reports on Microsoft’s cleanup from its crippling attacks this passed week. Microsoft has admitted that the attacks have taught the company some “painful lessons”.

BSD Today has an article on installing and actually using CUPS (Common UNIX Printing System), “a portable and extensible printing system
written by Easy Software Products and released under the GNU GPL.”

From LinuxPR: Penguin Computing Inc., a San
Francisco, Calif.-based provider of reliable Linux systems for Internet serving,
today announced that Scott Weinbrandt has joined the company as vice
president of marketing, effective immediately. A seasoned product marketing
and management executive, Weinbrandt brings 14 years of experience
launching, marketing and accelerating market share growth for server products
from Dell Computers (NASDAQ: DELL), AT&T (NYSE: T), and AST
Research.

BSD Today has press release rewrite: BSDi, a leader in Internet infrastructure-grade solutions, and Plesk, a leading provider of
server-based administration tools, announced today that the two companies will
develop system administration tools designed to simplify the administration and
management of BSD-powered Internet server systems.

From InternetWire: Larry Augustin, President and
CEO of VA Linux, is to deliver a special presentation, “Clash of the Titans; Open Source
Infrastructure in the Enterprise” at The Open Group’s San Jose conference. The Conference,
“eFlow – The Bridge between Information Technology and Business Operations”, runs from 5-9
February, with Dr. Augustin’s presentation scheduled for Tuesday night, 6 February, at the
Doubletree Hotel in San Jose, from 6:00-7:30 pm. (VA Linux owns NewsForge.)

Scyld Computing
Corporation today released the first commercial version of its
Scyld Beowulf Next Generation Cluster Operating System
software. The first of quarterly planned releases, the Scyld
Beowulf software provides simplified cluster integration and
setup, easy administration, and seamless scalability.

Beowulf-style cluster systems are computers running
open-source operating systems that are networked together to
form a parallel processing supercomputer. The Scyld Beowulf
distribution is the next generation Beowulf operating system.
It includes an enhanced Linux kernel, libraries, and utilities
specifically designed for clustering. The Scyld Beowulf system
provides a stable, standard, supported platform for the
deployment of advanced clustering applications.

The Scyld Beowulf release and Scyld’s formation is in
response to a driving market need for a cluster operating
system for high performance computing. The operating system is
the next generation of Beowulf style computing originally
architected by Donald Becker, Scyld’s CTO, along with other
Scyld developers who were also part of the original Beowulf
project at NASA.

With the Scyld Beowulf cluster operating system standard,
many industries will be able to write computational and data
intensive applications which can be applied on commodity
hardware around the world at significant price savings.

Patrick Webb, as Steering Committee Membero fo the Houston
Technology Center and CEO of the venture capital firm Enfinit
Global Partners stated, “With the Scyld Beowulf operating
system as a standard, manu industries will be able to write
computational and data intensive applications that can be
applied on commodity hardware around the world at
significant price savings from traditional systems.”

“Our mission at Scyld is to create software that will bring
high-performance computing to the marketplace”, said Becker.
“This release significantly provides a strong, commong,
standard foundation upon which high performance parallel
computing applications and systems will grow. The result will
stimulate deployment of turn-key commercial applications”.

Donald Becker and members of the original Beowulf team of
developers have since augmented Scyld with five other top-level
NASA software and systems engineers familiar with the
discipline and rigor it takes to develop and deploy truly
“mission critical” systems. “When you launch or re-enter a
satellite, you only have one chance to get it right.” states
Tom Quinn, ex-NASA employee responsible for systems on over 4
satellites and the recent successful re-entry of NASA’a Compton
Gamma Ray Observatory. Now Director of Operations and Business
Development at Scyld, Quinn states, “Our software engineering,
development, quality control, test methodologies, and support
at Scyld is nothing short of the processes we used at NASA to
ensure a successful mission.”

Scyld released its “Preview” edition of Scyld Beowulf
software at the Atlanta Linux Showcase on October 11, 2000.
Since the release, Scyld has received world-wide interest and
positive feedback about the advanced technology and features of
its product.

The preview release featured Scyld Beowulf’s core
technologies and features. Scyld Beowulf enhances the Linux
kernel with features that allow users to start, observe, and
control processes on cluster nodes from the cluster’s front-end
computer while supporting standard Linux interfaces and tools.
The result is that the cluster appears to be more like a single
multiprocessor computer to a user or developer. This reduces
the cost of cluster application development, testing, training,
and administration. The system is also simple to install,
update and scale based on Scyld’s unique cluster installation
and slave boot software.

Joe Barr of Linuxworld states, “The most amazing thing I saw
on the exhibit room floor (of ALS) was probably the
transformation of the email garden into a Beowulf cluster.
Honest. And it only took about 10 or 15 minutes for Scyld
Computing to convert the machines on the LAN into a
supercomputer.”

This latest release adds many new features over the preview
including slave node power and state controls to ease
administrative tasks, user and group permissions to allow
cluster sharing and security, improved GUI and command line
tools for setup and administration, improved diagnostics and
run-time status reporting to help optimize cluster performance,
broader hardware support with updated driver packages, and
tools for easy hardware compatibility checks and
demonstrations. These improvements and many others show Scyld’s
commitment to providing the best operating system and tools for
Beowulf clustering.

Scyld has formed, and is in the process of forming,
partnerships and alliances with over two dozen corporations
around the world including experienced traditional high
performance computer providers and system integrators such as
API, Compaq, Microway, Paralogic, Aspen Systems, Atipa, eLinux,
Linux Networx, Myricom, PSSC Labs, VA Linux, and Cendio Systems
amongst others. The interest from traditional parallel
application and tool providers has been great and is leading to
partnerships and alliances with MPI-Softtech, Wolfram
(Mathematica), Backbone Networks, NAMD, and Veridian. Scyld has
a formal “Authorized Vendor” Program where it certifies, trains
and teams with system vendors to provide off-the-shelf, fully
integrated and supported turn-key cluster systems.

About Scyld Computing Corporation

Scyld Computing Corporation is the leading developer of
second generation Beowulf cluster operating systems. Donald
Becker, CTO, and Scyld developers are known in the Linux
community for their extensive contributions to the Linux
kernel. Based in Annapolis, Maryland, Scyld is a privately held
company. Further information may be obtained at www.scyld.com.
Scyld Beowulf and Scyld Computing are registered trademarks of
Scyld Computing Corporation.

About Beowulf

Beowulf, and Beowulf clustering are terms that describe a
technique of connecting commodity computers together using a
modified version of Linux, to create a High Performance
Computer. Started in 1993, by Donald Becker and Thomas
Sterling, early development was sponsored by NASA. In 1997,
Beowulf clusters broke the ten billion operations per second
mark, and today can perform over 200 billion operations per
second. Today, there are tens of thousands of Beowulf clusters
installed in government, educational, and commercial
facilities. Beowulf is a descriptive service mark held by Linux
International.

Submitted by Tom Quinn.

Kelly McNeill writes: “Microsoft’s corporate objectives are to dominate the desktop, the network and everything in between. This all-encompassing vision must guarantee that every mission-critical element of the Microsoft software family work properly. But where does Microsoft go for help outside of the Microsoft software family, when something crucial in the Microsoft family is not working the way it should? And what does it mean for Microsoft to have to face that choice?” Read the column at OS Opinion.

Saint writes: “A meeting of the medical open source minds will be occurring in Fresno, California this weekend at Dr. Pepper’s (his real name) house. Known as Fresno III after the first two meetings that occurred subsequent to the fall 2001 AMIA Conference, Fresno III will gather together some of the most active participants in the open source medical software revolution. Dr. Pepper of MedMapper fame writes: “…if anyone want to come to Fresno and provide input we’d
love it. The main development team is Alex Caldwell, Bob Shepard and I
(three Family docs, all with 15+yrs experience and computer-programming
skills) along with programmer Tim Cook from PM. Dr. Nicola Ellis from
Britain (PhD in informatics) will join us for this meeting, we’ve had a
British and Dutch contingent previously…” In other news, one of the most intelligent things ever written about medical open source was uttered by Adrian Midgley on the Fam-Med list. See the article at LinuxMedNews for details

“Microsoft just announced a goofy little plan called “JUMP” or Java User Migration Plan. Although
not directed specifically at users but at developers, Microsoft hopes to entice and/or force people to
“jump” from Java to .NET, thus removing Java as a permanent alternative to Microsoft platforms.” From OSOpinion.

ZDNET reports that “The next wave of hacking schemes focuses on a vulnerable and extremely difficult area to
defend: Web applications.”