June 2004 - apple-list - University of Manitoba Mailing Lists

Apologies for inadvertent image inclusion in email
by billing 21 Jun '04

21 Jun '04

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

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INTEREST: ICANN surveys proposed Net domains, "Net is moving into Iron Age"
by billing 21 Jun '04

21 Jun '04

...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.

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INTEREST: Munich to stick with open source
by billing 18 Jun '04

18 Jun '04

...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.

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INTEREST: Linux Enterprise Grip Tightens with EU Wins
by billing 17 Jun '04

17 Jun '04

...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.

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