My apologies. Because I did a wholesale "copy and paste" of the first
article in my message:
INTEREST: ICANN surveys proposed Net domains, "Net is moving into Iron
Age"
...there were included a couple of access tracking graphics included. I
did not realize they were there or I would have cleaned them out before
I sent the email.
I'll take greater care in cleaning my messages of such unwanted
"hitch-hikers" in the future.
Wayne
...from:
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5176438.html?tag=default
By Declan McCullagh
CNET News.com
March 19, 2004, 3:42 PM PT
The Internet's real estate may soon be expanding, with the proposed
addition of up to nine new top-level domains, including .jobs, .xxx,
.travel and .mail.
Ten organizations have submitted detailed proposals to the Internet
Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) for the rights to
sell the potentially lucrative domain-name suffixes. ICANN, which made
the list public on Friday afternoon, has not approved any new top-level
domains since adding .biz, .info, and .aero and four others in 2000.
The other proposed suffixes include .cat, .post, .asia, .mobi, and
.tel. Two groups, New York-based Pulver.com and the U.K's Telname
Limited London, are vying for .tel, which places ICANN in the
uncomfortable position of judging which company is better qualified to
run it.
It is unclear how long it will take for ICANN to consider the new
top-level domains, and how many will be approved. In a recent interview
with CNET News.com, ICANN Chairman Vint Cerf said he has no upper limit
in mind.
"There is no specific number that has been set for acceptance," Cerf
said. "My understanding is that we have not put any limits on the
number of applications, and that as applications are qualified, that
they would presumably be approved."
ICANN plans a public comment period for the proposals over the month
of April, followed by submission to an independent evaluation panel in
May. The criteria for judging the proposals require that there be broad
support for a top-level domain, that it not negatively affect the
domain name system (DNS), and that it be financially viable. Each
applicant paid $45,000 to ICANN, and proposals were due by March 16.
Stuart Lawley, the president of Toronto-based ICM Registry, said he
hopes ICANN will approve his request for .xxx so "responsible adult
entertainment businesses can go about their business in a less
restricted way."
==========================================================
...from: (requires the ability to play Microsoft streaming video)
http://zdnet.com.com/1606-2-5239781.html
ICANN chairman and MCI Senior Vice President Vint Cerf contends that
the Net is still early in its evolution, in the process of moving from
a figurative stone age to an iron age. In his Face to Face interview
with ZDNet Editor in Chief Dan Farber, Cerf discusses the Internet's
future and outlines his views on spam, privacy, IPv6 and interplanetary
networking.
...from:
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5237356.html
By Jo Best
CNET News.com
June 17, 2004, 7:19 AM PT
Munich, the city whose switch to Linux was seen as so significant it
attracted a personal visit from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, has
announced that its yearlong trial is a success and that it will stick
with open source for its PCs.
The change will officially take place on July 1, and 14,000 desktops
will permanently migrate to the open-source platform. The pilot was run
using Novell's SuSE Linux and IBM products. But the eventual
contract--which could be worth tens of millions of euros--will be put
out to tender.
The city's move to Linux is the biggest migration ever from
proprietary software to open source, and it will call for municipal PCs
and notebooks to move from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice and to use
the Mozilla browser. City officials voted last year to make the change.
The decision will doubtless come as a blow to Microsoft, which pulled
out all the stops to get the German city to stay with proprietary
software.
According to a document seen by USA Today, the concessions the
software behemoth was prepared to punt Munich's way included
undercutting a Linux bid by $12 million, letting Munich license
stripped-down versions of Windows, and offering training and support
for nothing.
The migration is expected to be complete by 2008 or 2009.
Earlier this week, Norway's second-largest city, Bergen, announced it
would be following in Munich's footsteps and opting to run Linux.
...from:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1613842,00.asp
By Peter Galli
June 16, 2004
The open source Linux operating system continues to gain ground in
governmental agencies around the world, winning another two converts
this week.
The Norwegian city Bergen on Tuesday said it plans to move 100 schools
and 32,000 users away from its proprietary Unix and Microsoft Windows
applications platform to Linux by the end of this year.
And the German city Munich on Wednesday also voted resoundingly in
favor of its plan to switch to Linux from Microsoft Windows following a
closed-door city council meeting.
Bergen decided on a two-phased implementation of Novell Inc.'s SUSE
Linux Enterprise Server 8, which will impact some 50,000 users of the
city's administrative and educational networks.
The implementation will initially see the current 20 Oracle database
servers running on HP-UX, which power the City's core health and
welfare services applications, being replaced with Enterprise Server 8
running on 64-bit Itanium-based Hewlett-Packard Co. HP Integrity
servers.
The second phase of the implementation will involve the migration and
consolidation of the current Microsoft Windows application servers that
power Bergen's educational network to Enterprise Server 8 on IBM
eServer BladeCenters.
Bergen will also be able to consolidate its more than 100 Microsoft
Windows application servers to 20 IBM eServer BladeCenters running SUSE
LINUX.
The implementation is expected to be completed by year's end and
officials hope to be able to channel the resultant cost savings into
building core public services for the public, Janicke Foss, the CIO of
Bergen, said in a statement.
"The most important issue for the City of Bergen is to provide best
possible public services to our citizens through cost-effective
municipal operation. In addition to the IT-based benefits from
migration to Linux, we attain a business model that doesn't tie us to a
single vendor's solution architecture.
"By migrating to Linux, the City of Bergen has a business model that
is open and democratic, and we believe that will ensure a greater
degree of freedom of choice, more efficient operation and major cost
savings that will benefit the citizens," Foss said.
Richard Seibt, the president of Novell for the EMEA (Europe, Middle
East and Africa) region, expected more public and private sector Linux
deployments to follow. "The City of Bergen needed to do more with less
and the advantages of Linux such as lower costs and greater reliability
are clear and will certainly continue to drive Linux adoption among
enterprise and public sector organizations, he said.
Michel Teyssedre, the vice president for IBM's business development in
EMEA, said that with 32,000 students and 4,000 teachers accessing
Bergen's educational network, the city's current server environment was
not scaling with growing demand.
Rudi Schmickl, HP's vice president of enterprise storage and servers
for EMEA, added that Bergen's current database servers ran several
critical applications, so it was essential that the new solution
offered maximum uptime while being cost effective.
Meanwhile, Munich moved forward with its Linux plans on Wednesday. The
city last May decided to develop a detailed conceptual implementation
and migration plan for the move, which has been under wraps until now.
This week's vote approved that move and started the process of putting
the matter out for bids and receiving tenders, a source close to the
decision told eWEEK.
Last May, the Munich city council said it was looking to migrate its
14,000 desktop and notebook computers away from Windows products to
Linux. The city currently runs Microsoft Office, Windows 3.1, 95, 98
and NT as well as the Internet Explorer browser. The council also
planned to move to the free OpenOffice desktop productivity suite.
Walter Raizner, the country general manager for IBM Germany, said at
the time that the German public sector is embracing open
standards-based software such as Linux.
"Worldwide, more than 75 IBM government customers—including agencies
in France, Spain, UK, Australia, Mexico, the United States and
Japan—have now embraced open computing and Linux to save costs,
consolidate workloads, increase efficiency and enact e-government
transformation, Raizner said then.
Hans-Juergen Croissant, a spokesman for Microsoft in Germany, said
last year that "with respect to the Munich administration, we will
continue to work closely with them to explore additional programs and
offerings that best meet the needs of Munich's citizens and
businesses."
In addition, Linux continues to gain footholds in U.S. governmental
organizations. eWEEK reported this week that the latest stateside
governmental win for Linux is the Administrative Office of the U.S.
Courts (AOUSC), in Washington, which provides administrative support,
program management and policy development services to the federal
courts.
The agency is migrating applications from Solaris to Linux using HP's
ProLiant servers that are running Red Hat Inc.'s Enterprise Linux
Advanced Server and HP's StorageWorks tape libraries.
