Novell Sees Sales Slip in Q3, Undertakes Stock Option Review
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Commercial operating system and identity management software maker Novell announced preliminary financial results for the third quarter of fiscal 2006 after the markets closed last Tuesday after we were on press, which was something of a surprise. And so was Novell's announcement that it had begun a voluntary review of past stock option grants and the related accounting issues surrounding them and that it might not file its 10-Q quarterly report with the Securities and Exchange Commission on time, pending the completion of that review. READ MORE >

SPEC Creates New CPU2006 Benchmark Tests
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Like the computers that they stress and decent beer, benchmark tests have a shelf life. As desktop and server architectures evolve and the applications that we all use change with the times, a benchmark test that was appropriate for gauging performance is no longer as useful because it cannot stress a system that has more inherent capacity--clock cycles, cache and main memory, I/O bandwidth, and so forth--in the same way as it could a machine with a much leaner architecture. That's why the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation, or SPEC, has just released a new series of benchmark tests. READ MORE >

Scalent to Support Solaris with Virtual Operating Environment
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

As everyone now knows, the IT industry is in the midst of a transition from physical to virtual computing. But what many people do not know is that this transition is just getting under way, and that logical or virtual hypervisors, which virtualize processors and therefore the operating systems and applications that run on top of them, is only part of what needs to be virtualized. Network and storage interfaces have to also be virtualized, and that is why Scalent Systems has created what it calls the Virtual Operating Environment. READ MORE >

As I See It: Biology and Technology--the Uneasy Union
by Victor Rozek

Legend has it that the King of France had a problem. Too many people to kill and too little time. So he commissions a fellow named Joseph-Ignace to invent an expedient way of dispatching the assorted criminals, heretics, and revolutionaries who are deemed enemies of the state. Joseph-Ignace sets to work and, using a Scottish apparatus as a model, creates a device originally called the Louison (no doubt a sardonic tribute to Louis XVI), and presents it to the King. But, alas, Louis is busy with affairs of state and the contraption is moved to some neglected corner of Versailles where it and Joseph-Ignace are mightily ignored. READ MORE >