Stories by: Staff writers

With the end of 2002 in sight, many in IT will be heading into 2003 happy to put this palindromic year in the rearview mirror. Still, this year offered up some important tech advances: wireless and pervasive computing exploded; edge computing and edge applications often took center stage; and XML and Web services wove themselves further into the enterprise, impacting everything from IT integration plans to EAI vendors' strategies.

As part of a campaign to equip students, researchers and educators worldwide with access to open source technology, Sun Microsystems has donated $12 billion under the StarOffice 6.0 Donation Licensing Program.

IBM has signed a four-year deal with Centrelink to provide mainframe capacity and associated software and services and to establish a world-class Linux laboratory.

Covalent Technologies has released a version of its Web server based on Apache 2.0, even though the official keepers of Apache claim Version 2.0 is still in beta testing.

In a statement today, Opera Software ASA welcomed Microsoft Corp.'s 'quick backtracking on denying millions of Opera users access to their main Web portal, MSN.'

The largest high performance Linux server cluster in ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) running IBM Corp. eServer x330 machines will be installed at Singapore's Institute of High Performance Computing and at the Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA) by the end of the year.

In the fight against cybercrime, the Australian federal government has released new measures which could see computer hackers jailed for up to 10 years.

Sun Microsystems in association with the NSW Government will offer 15 Java scholarships with a total value of $135,000 to high school and TAFE students in NSW.

U.K.-based petroleum giant WesternGeco will use an IBM Linux supercomputer for its seismic imaging applications.

IBM Corp. plans to launch two beefed-up midrange Unix-based servers this week containing its copper-chip and Silicon-On-Insulator technologies.

VeriSign, the company charged by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) with registering and administrating the.com, .org., and .net domain names, which act as addresses for Web sites, announced Friday that it has added support for an additional 180 languages.