machining

IBM is bringing Microsoft Windows into the fold of its high-end graphics visualization system, but plans more sophisticated network abilities for its current Linux-based product in 2007.

IBM's Deep Computing Visualization technology, which uses Linux today, will work on Big Blue's Windows workstations as well in December, the company told customers Tuesday. Specifically, IBM will release Windows support for its Remote Visual Networking (RVN) software that lets geographically distant co-workers collaborate by sharing graphical images over an encrypted network connection.

IBM already offers a separate Linux tool called the Scalable Visual Networking (SVN), which lets a cluster of … Read more

The idea of a fabric keyboard sounded kind of nutty to us until we saw the photos of this one on Engadget. jkOnTheRun reports that Glen Evans of PocketPC Solutions has tried out this working model from Eleksen, which doubles as protective case, and found it "very usable on a daily basis"--despite its decidedly weird look. It's not that we have anything against this concept, but what's with that electric lime color?

(Photo: jkOnTheRun)

Cell phones and MP3 players aren't the only things that can be gussied up. Yes, even the lowly washing machine can become a swan with the right wardrobe. Well, sort of.

Samsung is apparently taking a Vegas approach to domestic appliances with this red washing machine (or is it magenta?) by Korean designer Andre Kim. By the looks of this photo, he and Samsung apparently think the stainless-steel Viking-range look is out. (If this is the alternative, we beg to differ.)

But we're no experts. If Swarovski can do a fridge, why not do your laundry in style … Read more

Novell on Wednesday announced the availability of a product that bundles its Suse Linux Enterprise Server with several IBM software packages and is designed to run on IBM x86 servers. The product, called the Integrated Stack for Suse Linux Enterprise, includes Novell's operating system and IBM's WebSphere Community Edition, DB2 Express-C and Centeris Likewise Management Suite.

The software support subscription for the first year costs $349, Novell said.

SAN JOSE, Calif.--If there was any doubt that a chip's clock frequency is no longer the preeminent measure of the chip's worth, a senior Intel chip designer put the idea to rest Tuesday.

"We're not focused on gigahertz at all," Dileep Bandarkar, architect at large in Intel's Digital Enterprise Group, said in a speech at the Fall Processor Forum here. Performance matters, but only within the context of power consumption, and clock speed is just one way of boosting performance for the company's server chip lines, Xeon and Itanium, he said.

"… Read more

IBM in January began giving away its low-end Express-C version of its DB2 database at no cost. But to hear Big Blue tell it, the company isn't just promoting its products by giving them away for free, it's pioneering an innovative adaptation of the open-source software movement.

"We're using the open-source licensing model but not the development model. We've learned we can separate the two," said Scott Handy, IBM's senior vice president of Linux and open source, in a news conference here at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo on Tuesday. By offering the … Read more

When Advanced Micro Devices releases its next-generation "Rev F" Opteron processors, expected Aug. 15, it will debut a new model numbering scheme.

Currently, there are three classes of Opterons: the 100 series for single-processor computers, the 200 series for dual-processor models, and the 800 series for machines with four or more. But new model numbers will be larger by an order of magnitude, according to Scott Tease, worldwide product manager for IBM's BladeCenter servers, who spoke after IBM announced a full family of Opteron servers on Tuesday.

That means that when the Rev F models arrive, the … Read more

Microsoft and IBM will jointly announce a new specification Monday for information technology resources and services, a company representative said Friday. The two companies aren't the only ones involved in the initiative, however, but rather are "representing a larger workgroup," the representative said.

One possible alliance area could be management software, where customers are calling for standard interfaces to computing equipment.

A Utah judge dealt the SCO Group a significant blow in June by throwing out more than 180 of the company's specific allegations of IBM programmers moving proprietary Unix code to Linux, or otherwise misbehaving. When SCO fired back last week with a filing that seeks to reverse that decision, it salted its justification with a few instances of IBM actions that SCO believes show its case.

The instances were taken from material Magistrate Judge Brooke Wells threw out of the case. SCO's claims are sometimes redacted so that crucial quotations aren't visible to those without access … Read more