Red Hat and Novell Nailed by First Linux Lawsuit
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later, and honestly, the wonder is that it has not happened already. After years of setting up patent trusts and portfolios to bolster the open source community in general and the Linux operating system in particular, and several Linux and server vendors offering indemnification against lawsuits relating to Linux, two companies have launched the first lawsuit alleging that Linux violates their patents and copyrights. READ MORE >

Niagara-2 Chips Double Entry Sparc Server Performance
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

The entry Sparc server lines from Sun Microsystems and Fujitsu-Siemens got an upgrade last week as the two companies began selling new servers based on Sun's 'Niagara-2' Sparc T2 multicore processor. The Sparc T2 is a considerable upgrade to the first-generation T1 chips, and even though it runs a little hotter, the roughly doubling of performance in the new Niagara servers more than makes up for the extra heat, yielding substantial improvements in performance per watt. READ MORE >

Zend Puts Out New Release of Commercial-Grade PHP
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

The third annual ZendCon conference for PHP programmers and vendors of PHP-related products was held in Cupertino, California, last week, and Zend Technology, the creator and maintainer of the open source PHP language and runtime tools, is using the event as a springboard for its new Zend Core 2.5 product, which includes development tools and runtime environments for specific platforms. Zend also announced the "Neon" beta release of Zend Studio for Eclipse as well as various integrations with products from IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle. READ MORE >

As I See It: Great Looking Genes
by Victor Rozek

Ever since we began to understand the pivotal role of biology in behavior, the nature-or-nurture debate has been raging between proponents of the 'hard' and 'soft' sciences. Why are some people pleasant and some not? Why are certain co-workers more helpful than others? Alternately, why do some people delight in punishing and behaving cruelly? Are such traits an outgrowth of character; or are they inherited? Is it chance, luck, parenting, the mysterious workings of a deity; or is it the output of the human operating system we call genetics. As science unravels the complexities of the genome, we're confirming what many already suspected--that the guy in the next cubicle just may be a hardwired jerk. READ MORE >