Open Source, open letter, open warfare

Open Source leaders Eric Raymond and Bruce Perens have responded to SCO's open letter with one of their own - refusing SCO's call for the new business model for Linux and denying the company any part in the platform's future. The letter pulls no punches. It accuses SCO's CEO Darl McBride of scribing a 'farrago of falsehoods, half-truths, evasions, slanders, and misrepresentations. ...more

NTL blocks Net ports to stifle virus spread

NTL has decided to block a number of ports for its home Internet users in an attempt to prevent new worms from spreading. Ports 137 (UDP), 138 (UDP), 139 (TCP), 445 (UDP & TCP), 593 (TCP), 1433 (TCP), 1434 (UDP), 27374 (TCP) Inbound will be blocked. Although the Welchia and Blaster worms currently spread over port 135, NTL says it is blocking more in the event of virus writers creating variants. ...more

Yahoo! customises IE7

Yahoo is offering its own version of the upcoming Internet Explorer 7 browser to its users. The current beta 2 version is now available from Yahoo Downloads as a 'customised version' which sets Yahoo as the home page and opens Yahoo web mail as the second open tag. Yahoo! used the beta version of the Internet Explorer Administration Kit (IEAK) to customise IE7 which Microsoft has available to all developers and partners who want to create their own versions of IE7. ...more

MS Developer Conference: Bill Gates bets on XML

Bill Gates spoke in London today emphasising the importance of the .Net framework to Microsoft's future. Speaking to a thousand developers - packed in cheek by jowl - at the Microsoft UK Developer Conference, Gates repeated the phrase of 'betting the company' on XML, the technology underpinning all things . ...more

Yahoo! betas new subscription search pages

Internet portal Yahoo! has extended the reach of its search technology behind the firewalls of some of the world's biggest subscription sites. The new beta service Yahoo! Search Subscriptions will integrate results of a keyword search with content from these sites alongside normal 'free' results. However, before anyone thinks that this is a sneaky way not to sign up to the likes of the FT or Forrester Research, you have to have a subscription and sign in before you are allowed to view the content. ...more