Following up a story from late last week (and a smidgen late in my follow up), Oracle has indeed announced Oracle(r) Database 10g Express Edition (XE). Unfortunately, the details aren't exactly to my liking. The biggest complaint that I see with the product in the initial release is that …

Oracle, the biggest name in commercial databases, is preparing a new version Oracle 10g Express Edition for free use by users who would otherwise go to Open Source solutions (such as MySQL or PostgreSQL). The new version, to ship by the end of the year according to an article from …

It took me a little while to figure out what was going on, but once I did, I was able to get my phone talking to POP on my Tiger Server again. If you're having problems POPing to a Cyrus or Tiger Server using SSL, you may be in need …

I was quite happy to see that Apple decided to include amavis / clamav / spamassassin in OS X 10.4 Server, but although I found the virus protection nice, the spam protection looked weak in comparison to my previous experience with spamassassin. So, here's how I fixed that... A few things …

The transition from 10.3 to 10.4 in our location has been both easy and hard. For everything except our master server, the transition has been a breeze. Here are some things to do and a couple of things to avoid. Note: this is only for OS X Server …

Tom Yager of InfoWorld has reviewed Tiger and Tiger Server and has found them worthy of 9.5 and 9.3 ratings (on a scale of 0 to 10). Of particular interest is his mentioning of Darwin, which is often left out of discussions about the two cats.

OK, this is really esoteric, so if you're not a Macintosh OS X Server administrator, just go ahead and skip it. I decided to get the 10.3.9 upgrade and Security Update 2005-003 out of the way today before leaving to go out of the country. Of course, I …

An interesting interview this morning with Bruce Chizen, CEO of Adobe on CNet goes into some of Adobe's strategy for staying profitable and relevant. Unlike some large computer software manufacturers, they are focused on growth through innovation and quality, and it's hard to argue with their success. In the interview …

A detailed article from AFP548.com (Macintosh server administrator's website) gives a pretty disturbing description of a problem that has been around in OSX for a while. The good news: it was finally fixed in the September 30, 2004 security patch. Those of you doing insecure management of OSX Servers …

IBM has announced a contest designed to encourage the development of Linux applications for the PowerPC architecture. Among the prizes are a Toyota Prius, 100 G5's and some cash. Total value of the prizes is over $365,000. Not bad.

Another company is reevaluating its Windows-based desktop requirements and is looking at Apple's MacOS X and Linux as alternatives. Of particular interest in the article from Cnet is the comment from the AT&T CIO stating "There's competition; there's choice now. Any CIO would not be doing due diligence if …

An article from LinuxInsider goes through the cost differences between Macintosh and PC computers. When compared Apples-to-Apples (pun intended, of course), the Mac is less costly than the PC.

In another interesting demonstration of open protocols and open source, Apple's grid computing initiative, XGrid, has been ported to generic Unix (including, especially, Linux and Solaris). Code, instructions, and details can be found at the XGrid for Linux web site.

This is a pretty technical article for those who are interested in putting SSL facilities on a Panther Server. So, you have obtained a certificate for your XServe or other OS X server and you want to use that certificate for the built-in email services. Unfortunately, if this is documented …

After noticing the new IBM advertisements touting the benefits of open source (check out the IBM Open Source page), I was intrigued to see that it took only days for the ads to generate an article in BBC News. Maybe they were having a slow news day. Perhaps they were …

According to an article from CNet, SCO has filed a lawsuit against Novell in an attempt to get Novell's much- talked-about remaining UNIX copyrights. In yet another round of the near-never-ending SCO vs Linux saga, SCO has decided to attack Novell's claims of UNIX ownership head-on by asking the court …

A number of developments in the SCO/IBM/Linux saga this week, including some disclosures by SCO and the announcement that Novell has completed its acquisition of SUSE which leads the way for IBM to pump money into Novell. The ongoing drama (such as it is) between SCO and the …

Sick of hearing the accolades for Apple in 2003? Don't read this article from InfoWorld. Tom Yager gives the Apple G5, Panther, and Panther Server scores of 8.8, 9.2 and 9.3 respectively. For the G5, he likes the memory bandwidth and processing power, noting that for his …

SCO, the company that the rest of the UNIX community loves to hate, fired their latest salvo in the anti-Linux wars, claiming that SCO owns the copyright on 65 system include files (see the following letter supposedly from SCO to "violators"). In response, Linus has responded that he remembers vividly …

SCO, in its reply to IBM's suit, has basically declared that they believe that the GPL is bunk and that therefore they don't need to follow it, according to an article from net legal site, Groklaw. According to the interpretation by the folks at Groklaw, the SCO folks would like …