Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

About

I'm editor-at-large for Ziff Davis Enterprise. That's a fancy title that means I write about whatever topic strikes my fancy or needs written about across the Ziff Davis Enterprise family of publications. You'll find most of my stories in Linux-Watch, DesktopLinux and eWEEK. Prior to becoming a technology journalist, I worked at NASA and the Department of Defense on numerous major technological projects.

Customized Linux PC for MySpacers

PC vendor Everex and gOS (Good OS), the Linux distribution based around Google applications, is taking the next step in online-based computing by introducing a limited edition MySpace PC.The companies hope that the white-cased, two-pound MyMiniPC will attract what Everex officials claim is some of the more than 100 million MySpace users. As such, it’s […]

Linux Partisans Gather at Linux Foundation’s Annual Meeting

AUSTIN, Texas-How do you herd cats? Well, as the famous EDS commercial shows, it isn’t easy. In a sense, that’s what the Linux Foundation, the nonprofit pro-Linux organization, will be doing this week at the invitation-only LF Collaboration Summit at the University of Texas Super Computing Center here. Linux, as anyone who follows it knows, […]

Finding the Right Open-Source Savvy Lawyer

Some days, like it or not, you need a lawyer. For most business purposes, picking the right law firm isn’t usually that big of a deal. Chances are you already have at least an idea of how to find a contract lawyer, a tax law specialist or a real-estate attorney. But what if your programmers […]

Microsoft Gives Up on Vista

Vista is dead. That’s not what Bill Gates said at a seminar on corporate philanthropy in Miami on April 4, but it might as well have been. What Gates actually said, according to the Reuters report, is that he expects that the next desktop version of Windows, Windows 7, would be released “sometime in the […]

XP Home Lives, and So Does Linux, on UMPCs

When I thought Microsoft was going to extend XP’s lifetime to better slug it out with Linux on Ultra Mobile PCs and Mobile Internet Devices, I was afraid Linux was going to have to fight hard for the low-end of the desktop. Now that we know that only XP Home is going to have a […]

Sun to Bring Latest Ubuntu to x86 Servers

Sun was the first major company to give Ubuntu a shot at making the big server show in May 2006. Then, the deal was all about putting Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (Long Term Support) on the UltraSPARC T1 processor on Sun Fire T1000 and T2000 servers. The 2008 version of the partnership between Sun and Ubuntu’s […]

The Enterprise Creates Linux

Some people are still under the delusion that Linux is written by unwashed hackers living in their parents’ basements whose only social life is playing D&D and having flame wars over IRC (Internet Relay Chat) about whether vi or EMACS better and debating Picard versus Kirk. Nothing, nothing could be further from the truth. The […]

OpenXML ISO Approved: Reports

According to multiple observers, Microsoft’s OpenXML is on its way to becoming an ISO standard. The three sites that have been following the International Organization for Standardization re-vote on the OpenXML standard-Command Line Warriors, Open Malaysia and ConsortiumInfo-are all reporting that, barring some unforeseen circumstances, OpenXML will become an ISO standard. Since none of the […]

10 Greatest Tech Hoaxes

10 Greatest Tech Hoaxes 10 Greatest Tech Hoaxes – PigeonRank PigeonRankhttp://www.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.htmlGoogle reveals the secret behind its algorithms: pigeons. 10 Greatest Tech Hoaxes – Telepathic Internet Data Exchange Telepathic Internet Data Exchangehttp://www.redherring.com/Home/6286Red Herring told this story about TIDE, the bridge between the human brain’s impulses and a variety of Internet-based computing functions, as a perfectly straight-faced […]

Red Hat Posts Impressive 2008 Earnings

Anyone under the delusion that you can’t make money from open source and Linux should have been on Red Hat’s 2008 fiscal year earnings call on March 27. If they had been, they would have heard Red Hat executives report that the Linux giant posted net income of $76.7 million, or $0.36 per diluted share, […]