Our Man In Charge Of IPv6

It's good to see that things are progressing steadily on the IPv6 front. With the expected continued proliferation of IP-enabled devices, the additional address space and quality of service features in IPv6 will probably be needed sooner, rather than later.

And farther down in the story, an interesting note: The name of the man in charge of the North American IPv6 Task Force (NAv6TF) is Jim... Jim Bound. Can't fool us with that new spelling, old chap. Now would you like that protocol stack shaken, or stirred?

Fine? What fine?

Good to see that Microsoft's Bill Gates can keep his mind on the message. According to our report, during a keynote speech Tuesday at a developers' conference Gates never mentioned that silly little fine the European Union has decided to slap on his company.

Of course, one reason for Gates' reticence to talk about such matters is that he knows, in the long run, nothing short of an armed invasion of Redmond is going to change the way Microsoft does business. Dan Gillmor of the San Jose Mercury News, who has covered this topic exhaustingly, tells you why, here.Back Together, Again

Industry old-timers like myself love it when history repeats itself, as it did with the "Everybody loves Novell" announcements today from IBM and HP.

In the old days, the partnerships were all about trying to sell Unix to NetWare users, an idea that never really took off (mainly because Novell itself never seriously believed in Unix, or TCP/IP). Now, the partners are dancing together again to the sounds of Linux, and the sales it's ringing up for IBM and HP hardware. Let's see if the song lasts longer this time.

(BTW, one of my favorite industry tchotkes ever was a lapel pin with the old Novell logo colored in IBM blue. Wonder how many arguments between marketing people it took to make that one happen.)