Linux in the news

O geeks, what has become of us? (Register)

Here's an editorial in The Register expressing fears that the "geek worldview" is becoming too uniform. "If geekdom becomes tied to a Little Red Book of permitted beliefs, it is likely to go the same way as so many other fixed belief systems, into decline. Another way of putting this is to ask this question: If DRM comes crashing down on our heads, and we can't do anything about it, do we all have to spend the rest of eternity fighting the last war? And if we're fighting that war, who's going to be taking care of the next one?"

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Real Hacking Rules! (O'Reilly)

O'Reilly has an article by Richard Thieme on the meanings of the term "hacker". "In essence, hacking is a way of thinking about complex systems. It includes the skills required to cobble together seemingly disparate pieces of a puzzle in order to understand the system; whether modules of code or pieces of a bigger societal puzzle, hackers intuitively grasp and look for the bigger picture that makes sense of the parts. So defined, hacking is a high calling. Hacking includes defining and defending identity, creating safe boundaries, and searching for the larger truth in a maze of confusion and intentional disinformation."

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Perspective: The patent threat to the Web (News.com)

Bruce Perens has written an editorial that looks at the W3C recommendation to maintain a royalty-free policy. "Had the decision gone for so-called "RAND" patents--licensed with "reasonable and non-discriminatory terms," but sometimes requiring royalty payments--the effect would have been to create a tollbooth on the Internet, owned by the largest corporations, collecting a fee for the right to implement open standards. Open-source developers, who do not collect royalties--and thus cannot afford to pay them--would have been locked out entirely. Smaller companies that develop proprietary software would have been at a disadvantage, compared with the largest corporations, which cross-license their patent portfolios to each other and thus would not be burdened by royalty payments."

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Has Apache peaked? (ZDNet)

ZDNet looks at reasons for the slow adoption of the Apache 2 web server. "Unfortunately, the changes in 2.0 necessary to implement the performance improvements were significant, and they break all of Apache's old module code. It all needs to be rewritten and--amazingly--six months after the release of 2.0, much of the job remains undone."

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Virus writers get Slapper happy (News.com)

News.com covers the most recent worm to threaten Linux users. " The newest variant, dubbed "Mighty," exploits the same Linux Web server flaw that other versions of the Slapper worm have used to slice through the security on vulnerable servers. Russian antivirus company Kaspersky Labs said in a release Friday that more than 1,600 servers had been infected by this latest variant as of Friday morning and are now controlled by the worm via special channels on the Internet relay chat system." Kaspersky's press release can be found here.

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Evesham bundles Lindows on PC (Register)

According to the Register, a UK chain store known as Evesham will be selling inexpensive Linux-based PCs. "Evesham is bundle the open source Lindows OS on a new bargain basement PC knocked out at £249 inc.VAT. Evesham's E-scape Li PC comes with Lindows preloaded, features a VIA C3 processor and the VIA Apollo PLE133 integrated chipset, 40Gb Hard disk, 256MB DRAM, CD drive, modem and mouse. Monitors, speakers and other peripherals cost extra."

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Ballmer heads for Oz to staunch Telstra Windows defection (Register)

The Register reports that Microsoft will be sending Steve Ballmer to Australia, in an effort to head off Telstra's switch to Linux. "Whatever, the real Telstra deal's already gone anyway, and the best Microsoft can now do is to the stop the backshop lockout it's already sustained from turning into a whopping loss of 45,000 desktop software licences and a massive PR triumph for whichever other company gets the gig instead. Microsoft should surely be in with a shot at avoiding this, because junking tens of thousands of Windows and Office installations and setting up an alternative (e.g. Linux-StarOffice) remains a non-trivial exercise."

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IBM signs Linux server 'utility' deal (News.com)

IBM has a new service that lets customers rent access to IBM managed Linux servers. News.com covers the service and its first major customer. "[Mobil Travel Guide] will use the service to meet seasonal peak demands, IBM said. The Linux Virtual Services offering from IBM lets customers pay for the computing capacity they use instead of purchasing computing power to accommodate peak demands."

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Novell Drives Home Linux (eWeek)

eWeek covers Novell's new interest in Linux. "While Linux support has already been built into some Novell products and solutions, the efforts have largely been piecemeal. The goal now is to make all Novell products run on Linux or be Linux-enabled." Thanks to Peter Link

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SCO abandons Linux desktop--for countertop (ZDNet)

ZDNet covers SCO Group's changing focus, away from desktop Linux. "The increased focus on point of sale devices does not mean that SCO is totally giving up on the desktop. Although the company no longer sells a desktop operating system, it is continuing to develop its Volution Manager product, which helps system administrators manage desktop versions of Linux, automatically installing patches and so on, and plans to extend its reach to desktop versions of Windows too."

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SGI funds Linux advocate (News.com)

News.com covers Jon "maddog" Hall's new position with SGI. "At SGI, Jon "maddog" Hall will continue his company-neutral role as executive director of Linux International, said Paul McNamara, SGI vice president of products and platforms. SGI is sponsoring Hall the way VA Linux Systems and Compaq Computer have done in the past, McNamara said."

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Sun's Linux PCs might just work (ZDNet)

ZDNet's Larry Seltzer thinks that Sun may have a chance for success with its attempt to put Linux on the desktop. "Devaluing the desktop is central to Sun's strategy, and there's a lot to be said for this approach, which is why I think it might be well received. Even with Windows-based networks I've always thought it's a good administrative idea for an enterprise to centralize things and generally to make desktop systems as replaceable as possible."

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Sun to restore Intel support for Solaris (News.com)

News.com reports that Sun will revive Solaris on Intel. "Sun is relying on the community of Solaris-x86 users to help support the product. Lovell said the company will release the programming tools it uses to build the "driver" software that lets Solaris communicate with hardware such as network cards. Creating and supporting those drivers is a big part of the expense of supporting Solaris on a wide variety of servers, not just the limited number of models Sun sells." If sales are good for this product it could impact future development of Sun Linux.

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Is Linux taking over the enterprise? (ZDNet)

This ZDNet article takes a long look how Linux is doing at "world domination". "Linux continues to play a role in enterprise markets, but its growth spurt of recent years appears to have slowed a little. In 2001, Linux server environment shipments declined in revenue by five percent to $80 million, according to IDC, after two years of solid growth. That decline does need to be seen in context, however."

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Announcing WindowsRefund.net (Linux Journal)

Linux Journal further explores the process of getting a refund for unused copies of Windows. "Common Misconception #1: "Microsoft is the problem. The OEMs are not at fault.""

"There is nothing to win by going after Microsoft for resolution. The End User License Agreement (EULA) already includes the provision for a refund. At this point, is is the OEM's responsibility to make good on this."

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ExxonMobil Travel Guide Migrating To IBM Linux Virtual Services (TechWeb)

According to TechWeb, ExxonMobil Travel Guide will be using Linux for its online travel-planning and database system. "ExxonMobil Travel Guide this week begins the process of migrating newly developed travel-planning and database applications for its Mobil Companion service to IBM, which will host and maintain them on a mainframe running Linux."

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Lindows to AOL: surely some mistake? (ZDNet)

ZDNet delves into the truth about deals between Lindows.com and AOL Time Warner. "On Thursday, however, Lindows suggested that AOL might not have its facts straight. "Our engineers have been to Dulles, Virginia, and have worked with AOL," said Lindows' public relations director, Cheryl Schwarzman. "It may be the case that the spokesperson was not informed of that information." In response, AOL reiterated that it has "no formal relationship" with Lindows.com."

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AOL surprised to be a Lindows partner (Register)

Here's the Register's take on Lindows' "AOL PC". "In answer to its own bullet point, "why 35 million AOL users should buy a LindowsOS computer", Lindows PR bunnies suggest strongly that the OS is ready to connect at the click of a mouse button:"

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Attack of the freebie software (U.S. News)

U.S. News has an article about the increasing spread of Linux. "... Linux may be picking up interest from end users. Erica Simon, a San Francisco State University psychology major "fed up with Windows crashing and doing weird things," switched to Red Hat Linux on a Dell notebook computer. She needed help from her programmer fiancé but says the learning curve "was not really that hard, and the benefits far outweigh any pain."" Thanks to Dan Kegel.

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Tech giants back Fair Use bills (Register)

The Register takes a look at a new bill announced by Congressman Rick Boucher. "Boucher's bill will specify that share denial CDs are labeled clearly, and like Lofgren's attempt to superseded the draconian provisions of the DMCA. "Boucher would essentially reverse the outcome, and fix the problems that gave us the 2600 case, the Felten case and the Sklyarov prosection," the EFF's Senior Intellectual Property Attorney Fred von Lohmann told us today."

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Congress asked to unpick copy lock laws (News.com)

News.com examines new legislation designed to defeat the DMCA. "Boucher, the most outspoken opponent of the DMCA on Capitol Hill, has spent more than a year rallying support for this measure. After Dmitry Sklyarov, a Russian programmer visiting the United States, was arrested in Aug. 2001 on charges of violating the DMCA, Boucher called the prosecution "a broad overreach.""

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Coming to terms with copyright (News.com)

Here's an article from News.com examining the status of copyright laws in the United States. "In their legal briefs, Lessig and the other law professors correctly stress the importance of paying attention to both of these two vital parts of the U.S. Constitution: The copyright clause, which gives Congress the power to create copyright laws for a limited time, and the First Amendment, which prohibits Congress from curtailing speech or expression."

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Law School in a Nutshell (LawMeme)

For anybody who has had trouble wading through a legal document: the "Law School in a Nutshell" series on the LawMeme site is worth a read. "To understand why legalese is so incomprehensible, think about it as the programming language Legal. It may have been clean and simple once, but that was before it suffered from a thousand years of feature creep and cut-and-paste coding." The first and second parts are available now.

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Mr Linux basks in the limelight (BBC News)

The BBC News interviews Linus Torvalds. "Part of doing Linux was that I had to communicate a lot more instead of just being a geek in front of a computer. It has made me more used to talking to people. I still like coding but I have other things to do."
A companion article, Linux Lowdown, provides a brief introduction to Linux.
Thanks to Paul Sladen

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Interview: The Future of Linux on IA-64 (IBM developerWorks)

IBM developerWorks interviews David Mosberger about Intel's new 64-bit chip.. "David Mosberger has been a 64-bit Linux guy since day one. While pursuing a graduate degree at the University of Arizona in the early '90s, Mosberger led the Linux port to the Alpha processor and soon found that his Linux hobby was taking up as much time as his graduate work."

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The Register interviews Monte Davidoff

The Register has interviewed Monte Davidoff, one of the authors of the original Microsoft BASIC interpreter. ""I'm really excited about Linux," he says. "Having used Unix all these years and put out professional Unix products, they've done a really good job." His other passion, he tells us, is Python."

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Doing the Samba on Windows (Financial Review)

The Australian Financial Review talks to Andrew Tridgell about Samba and other programs. "One of his programs, rsync, was based on his PhD, and looks like it might become a standard part of web browsers. It reduces, by up to 90 per cent, the amount of data that has to travel over a network when someone requests a web page." Thanks to Con Zymaris

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Embedded Linux Newsletter

The October 3, 2002 edition of the LinuxDevices Embedded Linux Newsletter is out with the latest Embedded Linux news.

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On2 and Xiph Release alpha version of Theora

On2 Technologies and the Xiph.org foundation have announced the first alpha release of Theora, a combination of VP3, Vorbis Audio, and the Ogg media framework. ""This preliminary code release represents the first time developers will have access to a completely license- and royalty-free system that includes world-class video and audio codecs in an integrated, streaming-friendly format, with all the source code and intellectual property open, customizable, and available for immediate, anonymous download," said Dan Miller, CTO and Founder of On2 Technologies.

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Security Tools in Linux Distributions (Linux Journal)

Linux Journal looks at some of the security tools available in different Linux distributions. Part 1 looks at various HIDS and NIDS that come with Red Hat distributions. Part 2 is an overview of various tools included in SuSE distributions for hardening, monitoring and securing your system.

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WYSIWYG Web page editors (PCLinuxOnline)

PCLinuxOnline introduces some WYSIWYG (What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get) Web page editors. "Amaya is an especially interesting project. It was created by the W3C specifically to be 100% standards-compliant (like Mozilla). If you didn't like the interface before, you should know that it was recently ported to GTK+."

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Phoenix 0.2 Web Browser: Lean, Mean Mozilla (LinuxOrbit)

Linux Orbit reviews the Phoenix 0.2 Web Browser. "Depending on what you are looking for in a web browser, Phoenix may be just the ticket. Though still in heavy development, it's fast, snappy, surpassingly stable, somewhat configurable and very useable. If it's not what you are looking for now, check back from time to time as new features seem to be added on an almost daily basis."

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Will open source finally kill off the $1.2 million CMS money pit? (ZDNet)

Builder.com investigates the world of open-source content management systems. "We asked two experts, EuroZope Foundation founder Paul Everitt and CMS guru Gregor Rothfuss, to explain this open source CMS movement’s goals and motivations. The open source advocates compare the status of current CMS options—which run the gamut from simple flat-file data storage to robust database solutions—to that of Linux as it flirted with corporate acceptance a few years ago."

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Nigeria Puts Bio-Identity System To The Test (TechWeb)

TechWeb looks at how Linux blade servers will create a flexible architecture for Nigeria's first civilian-run election since military rule ended. "BioLink will deploy 456 800i single-processor Linux blade servers from RLX Technologies Inc. to voter-registration sites in Nigeria's 37 states. The blades will process data from scanned voter-registration cards, which will include voters' thumbprints. BioLink's software will run on the blades, checking for fraud or duplication."

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