kfarmer@tru64.org writes, "The French Atomic Energy Commission has placed an order for a supercomputer to simulate and analyze nuclear explosions. The supercomputer will use about 2,000 Alpha chips running in the 1.25-GHz range, or about 2,500 chips at the 1-GHz level."

Jim Gettys (rock!) sent us some good news from the DEC/Compaq camp. Itsy, the ARM/Linux/PDA that has been under development for some time now, and is chock full of nifty little features, has had its schematics and software updated for you industrious do-it-your-selfers wanting to contribute to pocket computing.

We asked Jim Hall a bunch of questions Monday. Today we get answers about the reason for and future of FreeDOS, along with a sprinkling of advice for FreeDOS users and developers. Thanks, Jim, for taking the time to do this. (Guys like you, who work on "lower profile" open source projects, don't get nearly as much recognition as you deserve.) Click below for the complete interview.

Yes, we know this is overdue. We put up the original Ask Larry Augustin post on Jan. 10, and here we are posting Larry's answers on the 27th. The first few weeks after an IPO are hectic for any CEO who is involved in one, and we understand this, but the wait has been as frustrating for the Slashdot staff as for anyone else, and there was nothing we could do about it. Anyway, finally, here are Larry Augustin's answers to your questions.

An anonymous reader pointed us to a CNet article that talks about Turbo Linux getting $50M in capital from a variety of investors including Dell, Compaq and others. Also talks about Caldera and Linuxcare and the whole Linux Market right now.

michael writes "Does anyone know a RDP Client for Linux? RDP clients allow you to access Microsoft terminal servers - quite similar to Citrix ICA. I know there are at least two of them - from Compaq and Igel. However, both seem to be bundled with the hardware (thin clients). I spoke to someone at Igel last year and they said they were still unsure whether they'd sell it seperately (or even give it away for free). I wasn't able to reach somebody at Compaq. Are there any other products like this (free or commercial)? "

ContinuousPark writes "MSNBC has an article by Brock Meeks, reporting the formation of a security company called @Stake with members from L0pht and people from Compaq, Forrester and Cambridge Technology Partners. They already have $10 millions to start the whole thing. " Check out the recent interview with l0pht heavy industries, as well.

Jon "maddog" Hall is the head honcho at Linux International. Monday we asked him questions about the future of Linux, his beer preferences, and other burning issues. Today, as our premier interview guest in the last year of the 20th century, maddog answers with his usual wit and candor.

waite writes "The Compaq Testdrive program is now making available a Beowulf cluster of XP1000s running Alpha Linux. If you sign up for the testdrive program you can register for an account on the cluster to try out your applications in this cluster environment. There is no charge for this program. Compaq is making this available to Open Source developers. No strings, catches, or hooks of any type."

Compaq released a document (it's in PDF format) that states that their Alpha is better then IA-64 (Intel next generation Itanium Processor). The document compares Alpha (and future generations of Alpha) against the IA-64 (I hate this "Itanium" name - where do they get these names anyway?). Certainly worth a read. What do you think, folks?

stevel wrote to us with the news that Compaq has announced Version 1.0 of Compaq Fortran for Linux Alpha systems. The compiler is the same as the one that is used on Tru64 Unix, OpenVMS, and Windows. Click below for more details from Compaq.

breadmold was the first to send us the press release from Be. Compaq has licensed Stinger, Be's software platform for Internet appliances, which Be describes as "Be's software solution designed for the creation of appliances that deliver information and entertainment over the web. Based on BeOS, Stinger is fully customizable, offers a complete browser and supports popular streaming audio and video standards." Note that the license says Compaq *can* pre-install and distribute it. It doesn't say what Compaq is actually planning on, but does hint that the two companies are planning work together.

Wacko asks: "What would be the cheapest way to implement a fingerprint door entry system? I was looking at the Compaq Fingerprint Indentification Technology which I hear is about 60 quid (Uk money that :). If that was linked up to an electronic door lock (like door entry systems) it would make a cool entry system. However, is this feasible and is there any software that could perform this (especially software for Linux)." Sounds good, but how secure are these things?

copal7 wrote to us with the word from Infoworld that Compaq & Samsung are going to combine together to pump $500 million into the Alpha chipset. In addition to that investment, 1.5 billion dollars will be put into the chipset over the next decade. The companies are going to be targeting (Wait for it...) Linux, as one would have guessed.

Thomas Edwards from The Sync (where we host Geeks in Space) sent us an interesting site: "Speechbot" is a Compaq Research project that is indexing online radio shows. Apparently it found terms like 'Red Hat' and 'Yahoo' in past episodes of GiS. Interesting technology. Imagine when it lets me ask my TV to find me every show that mentions Sarah Michelle Gellar.

Shortly after their IPO, Red Hat's Bob Young had a book published, written by he and Wendy Goldman Rohm (who, I should add, I had a drink with at @ ALS, and is a very nice woman) about Red Hat, and what Linux is trying to do. Click below to get the full story - and thanks to Malcolm Tredinnick for his indepth review.

Syniq writes "The folks at Tom's Hardware had an interesting story about a new free utility from Intel that checks the frequency of your processor to let you know if that PIII-500 is actually a PIII-500 or a PII-300 over-clocked and relabeled by the retailer to snag a little extra cash. An interesting story, but is this really all that common? Has anyone personally experienced this from an actual company (i.e. Dell, Gateway, Compaq, etc) and not from MrSmiley on Ebay?"

[Xorian] writes "There's a new portable mp3 device called the Personal Jukebox. Apparently, this is the result of a research effort from Compaq's Systems Reserach Center (one of the two Compaq research groups that developed the Itsy). The kicker is that it's supposed to be able to store about 100 CDs worth of music (it's got a a 4.8 GByte hard disk) and have 10 hours of battery life yet fit in your jacket pocket. No word on pricing yet though. "

gjt writes "Finally. The death of of the ISA slot is near. Red Herring is running a story on the Legacy Free PC. Plug all of your mice, keyboards, joysticks, modems, etc. into the Universal Serial Bus. Compaq is releasing a computer called the Vista which will do just that. Yes, Apple did that over a year ago with the iMac and PCI based G3 and G4. Of course, if you're like me, you'd want to build your own box. Asus makes legacy free "PC 99" compliant motherboards. I wonder if this means more IRQ numbers. And what's the state of USB and Firewire support in Linux?" Suddenly USB is everywhere. Will it take hold? A lot of PC manufacturers sure seem to think so.

newt writes "The Australian's Technology section is carrying a story from Compaq which claims that 50% of Compaq server customers are using Linux. As a result of increasing use, Compaq is beefing up its Linux support infrastructure and unveiling new Linux service offerings similar to the support offered for "mainstream" operating systems. "