Microsoft has declared war on the Linux operating system and other rival software that share their basic instruction codes with the public, saying the free software movement poses a fundamental threat to commercial intellectual property rights. Craig Mundie, senior vice president of the world's largest software company unsurprisingly savaged the open source philosophy as impractical for businesses like Microsoft in a major address at New York University.
"Fundamentally, the thing that informs our choice is this belief in protecting our intellectual property," Mundie said. "The really big difference is there's not as much focus (in open source models). . . that you have to make a business out of this." Open source, with roots in scientific and academic information sharing, is a software industry tradition through which source code is made freely available for use or modification by developers. No one claims ownership or holds a copyright.
Napster's Not Dead: Reports of Napster's demise have been greatly exaggerated, the company's CEO has said. He was responding to research reports showing sharp declines in usage as the song-swap service struggles to filter out copyrighted songs from its service to comply with a federal court order. "The most striking fact in the latest Webnoize study is the high number of music consumers who remain loyal to file sharing," Hank Barry said, referring to a report that showed the number of songs swapped on Napster fell by more than a third in April from March as its court-ordered filters blocked more pirated files.
Fantasy Leaving Cert: CollegesWeb is running an odd sort of competition for students doing their Leaving Cert this year. The competition is intended to relieve some exam pressure while keeping the Leaving high on the priority list of the students - the competition is called "Predict Your Points". Essentially students log on to www.collegesweb.com and make an estimate of what their points will be in the up-coming Leaving Certificate.
Aid Online: Christian Aid has become the latest charitable organisation to take to the Web to raise funds. The charity has launched an ISP, www.fish.co.uk, that could prove to be best working model for other charities looking to make money online. Although there are no plans to launch an Irish version of the ISP, the content is good. and people accessing the site from the State can still make ethically sound purchases.
Future For Phones: Samsung Electronics, aspiring to grab a major chunk of Europe's mobile phone market from Nokia and other European giants, will begin selling 2.5G mobile phones in Europe late in May. Samsung's European sales of 2.5-generation mobile handsets will begin with German operator T-Mobile as the first customer, a Samsung executive said on Friday.
Joining The Dots: AOL Time Warner Chairman Steve Case has said his work at the helm of the world's largest media empire is largely a challenge of integration - between the company's multiple businesses, its customers, and all the different devices they use to access news and entertainment. "The basic challenge is to connect all the dots," he said, paraphrasing the often used high-tech buzzword of convergence.
Ebay Bows To Pressure: Bowing to pressure from anti-hate activists around the world, the online auction site eBay has banned the sale of items associated with Nazi Germany, hate groups and murderers. The ban followed a similar move by Yahoo!, which pulled memorabilia associated with hate groups earlier this year after a storm of controversy and a legal battle.
Germany To Vote Online: Germany outlined cautious plans on Thursday to allow some citizens to vote online in 2006, but officials stressed that reliability and security were more important than speed and ease of access. "We want to be totally sure that electoral integrity will be maintained, thus it will be a step-by-step process," Interior Minister Otto Schily told reporters after a government organised conference on Internet democracy.
Diary
May 16th: The Copyright Association of Ireland presents a seminar on the WTO Intellectual Property Arbitration Procedure entitled The Real Story Behind The Copyright War Between Ireland And The United States. It takes place from 6.00 p.m. in the Georgian Suite, Buswells Hotel, Molesworth Street, Dublin 2
Modem World
www.bikebits.ie
An online bike shop offering a wide range of bicycles, parts, accessories and clothing. The site also has a free monthly competition, custom wheel build section and speedy delivery anywhere in Ireland and the UK.
www.oasis.gov.ie/
Oasis is an Irish e-Government system providing access to comprehensive information on public services.
www.askaboutmoney.com
Askaboutmoney, the Irish Consumer Finance Website today launched its guide to the Special Savings Incentive Accounts.
www.beo.ie
Nicely designed online Irish language magazine.
Textbites
"It's not a question of whether there's going to be a price war, we're in a price war." - Compaq Chairman Michael Capellas, whose company lost the number one PC maker position to Dell during the first quarter.
"We will be ruthless in how we address our cost structure going forward." - Tom Meredith, Dell's senior vice president of business development and strategy.
"We remain concerned about Dell's continued price aggression and we lack confidence that the PC industry's sacrifice of short-term profitability will lead to long-term gains." - UBS Warburg Analyst Don Young.
News monitor column compiled by Conor Pope, Computimes Editor.
The full text of Computimes reports is available on The Irish Times web site at www.ireland.com