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He is not just a science fiction guru; he's also quite the computer aficionado. Clarke's HAL is not actually here yet, but he is on the way. Clarke expects to see HAL-like computer capabilities in 2020, about the same time we land a man on Mars -- if we're lucky, he muses..

Big Doin's at Novell

Novell, continuing to suffer at the hands of Microsoft, is cutting staff and traded in its chairman. After a long and mixed reign, Eric Schmidt has stepped down, replaced by Jack Messman. Messman ran Cambridge Technology Partners, which Novell bought in March. A couple of days after this latest announcement, Novell laid off 1,400 people (guess you can't blame that one on Eric).

Novell, though, has some solid and exciting technology and some solid and exciting ways to sell it. Take NetWare 6.0. Instead of forcing NT/Win 2000 shops to switch (or even more difficult, getting NetWare shops to upgrade something that has been running flawlessly for years), Novell is pushing key features of NetWare 6.0 as an add-on to your existing NOS. Ifolder (which stores files over the Internet) and Iprint (which prints over the Net) are two utilities the company feels are worth the cost of a full NetWare license.

George Lucas Versus Your Network