eldavojohn writes "Red Hat has announced their release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1, which includes integrated virtualization. Also of note, 'Red Hat Enterprise Linux is also available on Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), a web service that provides resizeable compute capacity in the cloud. This collaboration makes all the capabilities of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, including the Red Hat Network management service, world-class technical support and over 3,400 certified applications, available to customers on Amazon's proven network infrastructure and datacenters.'"

surfingmarmot writes "An HBO executive has figured out the problem with DRM acceptance — it's the name. HBO's chief technology officer Bob Zitter now wants to refer to the technology as Digital Consumer Enablement. Because, you see, DRM actually helps consumers by getting more content into their hands. The company already has HD movies on demand ready to go, but is delaying them because of ownership concerns. Says Zitter, 'Digital Consumer Enablement would more accurately describe technology that allows consumers "to use content in ways they haven't before," such as enjoying TV shows and movies on portable video players like iPods. "I don't want to use the term DRM any longer," said Zitter, who added that content-protection technology could enable various new applications for cable operators.'"

Carter writes "Ars Technica is reporting that Musicload, one of Europe's largest movie stores, has found that 75% of its customer support problems are caused by DRM. Users have frequent problems using the music that they have purchased, which has led Musicload to try selling independent label music without DRM. Artists choosing to abandon DRM in favor of good old-fashioned MP3 have seen 40% growth in sales since December. Good to see someone in the business both 'gets it' and is willing to do something about it."

mjhuot writes "Last week SearchNetworking.com announced their Product Leadership Awards for 2007. It was a pleasant surprise to see an open source project, OpenNMS, win the Gold in their Network and IT Management Platforms category. OpenNMS beat out the established players of Hewlett-Packard's OpenView and IBM's Tivoli. This was based on a user survey of all IT solutions, not just open source; it demonstrates that open source software is indeed making inroads into the enterprise."

ahab_2001 writes "Yahoo has introduced a new product called Pipes. It seems to be a GUI-based interface for building applications that aggregate RSS feeds and other services, creating Web-based apps from various sources, and publishing those apps. Sounds very cool. TechCrunch has a decent write-up, and Tim O'Reilly is all over it. The site was down for a few hours and is just back up. Has anybody tried this?" From the TechCrunch article: "Pipes is... akin to a shell scripting environment for the web rather than just a simple conduit between applications."

boyko.at.netqos writes "Jim Sampson at Network Performance Daily writes about his attempts over a decade to get Linux working in a business/enterprise environment, but each time, he says, something critical just didn't work, and eventually, he just gave up. The article caps with his attempts to use Ubuntu Edgy Eft — only to find a bug that still prevented him from doing work." Quoting: "For the next ten years, I would go off and on back to this thought: I wanted to support the Open Source community, and to use Linux, but every time, the reality was that Linux just was not ready... Over the last six years, I've tried periodically to get Linux working in the enterprise, thinking, logically, that things must have improved. But every time, something — sometimes something very basic — prevented me from doing what I needed to do in Linux."

Kranfer writes "The register has an article about how the Chinese have recently launched an attack against the US Department of Commerce. From the article: '...attacks originating from computer crackers largely located in China's Guangdong province are aimed at extracting sensitive information from targets such as the Commerce Department's technology export office. Security consultants and US government officials reckon the assaults have at least the tacit support of the Chinese government...' This is not the first time Chinese hackers have attempted to gain access to US Government systems."

An anonymous reader writes "When AM2 was first announced it seemed like it was going to be a guaranteed hit. After all, this platform would be moving the tremendously successful socket 939 into the future with its use of DDR2 memory, a greatly increased memory bandwidth, hardware virtualization, and a number of exciting new CPUs. Despite everything AM2 had going for it, this includes a dedicated enthusiast base and a tremendous amount of pro-AMD spirit at the time, the new platform has largely been dismissed by consumers. The question now is, what happened? How did AMD go from record growth and being the darling of enthusiasts to having a new platform which failed to impress?"

Robbedoeske writes "The first Optimums Mini Three keyboards have been shipped to Holland and Tweakers.net managed to lay hands on one of them to review this precious gem." Apparently the drivers crash a lot, consume way to much CPU, the device is capable of only 3 frames per second, and the packaging makes the images look far more crisp than the actual device. And with a price tag of over $100, I'm scared to imagine what the price of a full keyboard will actually be should it ever actually ship. But it still would be neat.

Aerenel writes, "CNN reports that Sony has teamed up with Folding@home to use the PS3 to study how proteins are formed in the human body and how they sometimes form incorrectly. From the article: 'Donating [a gamer's] PS3's down time to researchers could help cure Alzheimer's, Parkinson's or mad cow disease.' PS3 users will be able to download a software package that tracks when the PS3 is not being used. While gamers are in school, at work, or asleep, their system's Cell processor can be used to perform simulations for research organizations. The PS3, due in November, has gotten serious negative press in the past few months, and this refreshing good news may win back the hearts of gamers still undecided about purchasing the system."

Largecranium writes, "I-names, the only globally unique, resolvable namespace in parallel to the DNS system and compatible with OpenID, are being introduced during Digital ID World in Santa Clara. I-Names are only as useful as the services they enable; the services that are available today are interesting but not life-changing. The ones that are coming in the next 6-12 months could change the way people interact online. I-names and their value (today and tomorrow) are casually explained at iwantmynamenow.com." I-names are the lineal descendant of the technology that began as XNS and continues evolving today as XDI.

fiorenza writes "At least one state is forgoing the process of cooking up gaming legislation only to have it thrown out in the courts. Georgia is working with the ESRB to educate parents in the state about game ratings, with the state's Attorney General leading up the charge. The obvious question is, why wasn't this tried first, before the mad rush to pass laws that never stand judicial review on account of first amendment issues? The article suggests that similar cooperative announcements from other states may soon follow."

ReadWriteWeb writes "Microsoft's Chris Wilson, the Group Program Manager for IE addresses the issue of whether IE7 is CSS and Web standards compliant. Last week a Slashdot post claimed that IE7 was basically non-compliant with CSS standards. But Chris Wilson says that isn't true and that standards improvements is a big part of IE7. He admits that there were a ton of bugs from IE6 that have caused web developers a lot of pain, but says that IE7 will address those and be standards compliant. He goes as far to say that IE7 supports Web standards even at the expense of more backwards compatibility."

suntory writes "Paul Thurrott, one of the most important Microsoft advocates, has been bitten by Windows Genuine Advantage. As some Slashdot users have reported, Paul installed a bunch of updates in his machine and now Microsoft thinks that he is using pirated software." From the post: "Truthfully, I can only imagine what triggered these alerts. The software was installed to a VM a long time ago and archived on my server. I no doubt used a copy of XP MCE 2005 that I had received as part of my MSDN subscription. If the WGA alerts are to be believed, it's possible that Microsoft thinks I've installed this software on too many machines, though that seems unlikely to me. I can't really say. Anyway, that's what it looks like to be a suspected pirate. Like many people who will see these alerts, I don't believe I did anything wrong. I'm sure that's going to be a common refrain in this new era of untrusting software and companies. Ah well."