Red Hat Consolidates Fedora Core and Extras Development
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Seeking to simplify the process of creating its development Linux releases and the related stack of thousands of programs that go into its Fedora Core distribution, the Fedora Project has announced that it is working with the Fedora Extras ancillary project to create a single, merged Fedora project and code repository. Bill Nottingham, a member of the Fedora Core board, which steers the open source project, made the announcement to the Fedora developer list on January 4. READ MORE >

Penguin Hatches Bare-Bones Altus Opteron Server
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Last fall, server and clustering software provider Penguin Computing was hinting that it had a low-cost Linux server in the works specifically for budget-conscious supercomputing customers, and now that Opteron-based machine, the Altus 600, is available. Because of its lean design and low cost, the Altus 600 is bound to be attractive to HPC customers--and is also bound to be imitated by other server suppliers in relatively short order. READ MORE >

Why the Number of Women in IT Is Decreasing
by Mary Lou Roberts

At its Fall Symposium last October, Gartner braved an interesting and controversial topic, examining the reports that women are reportedly entering the information technology workforce in fewer and fewer absolute numbers and in fewer numbers than the decrease of women in the workforce in general is showing up in other professions. Why this is happening, and why this is a serious problem that companies need to address? READ MORE >

Mad Dog 21/21: Between y o u and i
by Hesh Wiener

IBM started it. The company's 1994 annual report had a plain white cover sporting y o u in very large letters. IBM did it again in 2000, rebranding its midrange as iSeries, but that was two years after Apple introduced its iMac. IBM completely missed its chance in mainframes, where it could have called the z9 the zMine. Apple launched its iPod in 2001, and it showed the iPhone just this month, weeks after Time magazine made You its Person of the Year. The echoes persist for a daffy generation whose narcissism may be its nemesis. READ MORE >