O'Reilly to resell Mandrake Linux

Linux vendor Mandrake has signed a deal with publisher O'Reilly to ship its product in the US and Canada. The deal is significant for Paris-based Mandrake - well respected both for being one of the easiest to use and one of the quickest to market with the latest Linux technologies - as it gives the distro a leg up to compete with Linux giants Red Hat and Novell on their home turf. (Although Novell's Linux is SUSE, which is based in Germany). ...more

Intel signals computation at the speed of light

Intel scientists have claimed a breakthrough in the development of optical switches made of silicon. The company says it created a transistor like optical device which switched at over 1GHz. The Intel team began by splitting a beam of infrared light into two. ...more

Koreans slay Chinese for monster droppings

Korean online gamers are joining forces to slaughter Chinese players, and all over a load of monster droppings. The problem, reports the FT, is grounded in etiquette. Proper protocol for online fantasy games such as NCSoft's Lineage is that once you've whipped your monster, other players nearby stand back and let you go through its pockets for gold and special items. ...more

$100 laptops lined up for February test pilot

Children in developing countries will get the first $100 laptops as early as February. The first computers, from the One Laptop Per Child project, will be test machines, with volumes building towards an official launch in July 2007. The XO laptop is currently expected to cost around $135 to produce, although MIT professor Nicholas Negroponte, who leads the project, forecast that that figure could drop to $50 once real volumes are established. ...more

AOL pops pop-ups

The next version of AOL's Internet browser will include the ability to block pop-up adverts. AOL 8, which is due to be released in the UK within the next three months, will allow users to block all pop-ups or to specify which sites they do and do not want to receive pop-ups from. The feature is being added to AOL 8 in the US, which was released last year. ...more