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News Bytes By Michael Conry

Contents: Legislation and More Legislation Linux Links Conferences and Events News in General Distro News Software and Product News

Selected and formatted by Michael Conry

Submitters, send your News Bytes items in PLAIN TEXT format. Other formats may be rejected without reading. You have been warned! A one- or two-paragraph summary plus URL gets you a better announcement than an entire press release. Submit items to gazette@ssc.com

December 2002 Linux Journal

All articles older than three months are available for public reading at http://www.linuxjournal.com/magazine.php. Recent articles are available on-line for subscribers only at http://interactive.linuxjournal.com/.

DMCA

Finding bizarre implications of the DMCA with which to ridicule it is as easy as shooting fish in a barrel. The Register recently reported that four major retailers (WalMart, Target, Best Buy and Staples) had invoked the DMCA to prevent FatWallet.com from disseminating information about sales and price comparisons. The argument runs that sale prices are copyrightable information (and not just simple facts). FatWallet has had to comply to avoid the risk of a very costly legal battle.

In other DMCA related matters, Security Focus reported that hardware manufacturers producing games console mod chips have found themselves under pressure, applied through the device of the DMCA, to cease such production. The argument hinges on whether the non-infringing uses legitimise the chips, and its a criterion which can vary substantially from country to country.

Finally, there is a very interesting DMCA article by Adam C. Engst at TidBITS. It provides a good overview of the issues arising from the law, and the stakes the "content industry" is playing for in its long-term strategy. Related to this is another article at TidBITS (by Cory Doctorow) entitled Can the Digital Hub Survive Hollywood?. It does a fine job of highlighting the tensions between the content/media industries versus the interests of the technology industry at large (as opposed to the welfare of sectoral interests within the tech industry who might do very well if their technology is used for protecting "content"). Particular attention is paid to the BPDG (Broadcast Protection Discussion Group).

Mobilix

In a reversal of an lower court's decision, a German court has ruled that the name Mobilix is sufficiently close in sound and appearance to Obelix to cause confusion. Mobilix is a website dealing with the area of Unix on mobile devices. Obelix is a character from a French comic book. The final implications of this decision are not clear. You can follow the entire story on the Mobilix website.

DRM

Slashdot recently reported on the ACM Digital Rights Management Workshop. Among those present was Ed Felten whose brief commentary can be read here. It was reported that there was some scepticism that DRM was truly a panacea for the copy-protection worries of Hollywood info-hoarders. In a not unrelated story, The Register reported on the future of Microsoft's Palladium and the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance (TCPA). Even proponents of the system admit it is not totally secure and potentially vulnerable to intelligent hardware attacks.

Some links from Linux Weekly News:

• Summary of a US Department of Defence report on its level of use of free software. The initial brief for the report was to evaluate the possibility of banning such software, but the final document is quite positive on the role and importance of free software to the department's operations.
• Linux in emergency-response switchboards.
• LinDVD, a Linux DVD player. Available only to OEMs for embedded systems, not to individuals.

Some links from the O'Reilly websites:

• An article on the future of threads in Linux.
• Python for Bioinformatics.
• The SSH Cryptosystem.
• TriSentry, a Unix Intrusion Detection System.

DesktopLinux.com have an article about Film Gimp. Film Gimp is a motion picture frame-editing tool. The article has some technical details and reports on its use in the film industry.

Linux Journal have an article explaining how to train mutt to catch spam using ESR's bogofilter.

News.com have reported on IBM's plans to build two new machines which would be the fastest supercomputers to date. The Blue Gene/L, the faster of the two, will be Linux powered, and 10 times faster than the current title-holder, NEC's Earth Simulator.

A survey of some open source multimedia projects which might be of interest.

Some links from Linux Today

• Linux and Main article on The Linux kernel as a periodical publication, and Linus as editor in chief.
• NewsForge talk to Jay Beale of Bastille on improving Linux security
• OSDir.com interview with Bram Moolenaar (most famous for VIM) on the subject of his new project, A-A-P. A-A-P aims to be a kind of "super make".

The Inquirer has run a series of articles describing the Linux install process in a way designed to help beginners. Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

IBM Developerworks have an article on open source scientific software, being used increasingly by those involved in scientific research.

A report at Linux and Main on the path to the next major kernel release.

From Debian Weekly News, a link to an interview with Klaus Knopper of Knoppix. Particular comments on hardware detection implementation.

Some links of interest from The Register:

• IBM's S/390 Linux guru interviewed on the Open Source patent question
• A guide for relatively experienced users on securing your data under Linux.
• Brussels to spend €250k on Linux migration study
• Namibia rejects MS in favour of Linux

Some links from Slashdot which may interest you:

• Community wireless network in Bristol, England.
• Humorix reports that Red Hat is hoping to make a universal shell and a mutant vi/emacs hybrid editor to complement their synergised KDE and Gnome (tongue firmly in cheek).
• ESR presents a recently leaked Halloween document from Microsoft describing their strategy to combat Linux. This is the latest in a tradition of such leaks.
• Tablet PCs with Lindows, notebooks for $800.
• LinuxBIOS, is a non-proprietary system BIOS that can boot Linux, Windows 2000 and OpenBSD. It works only with certain motherboards.
• Mozilla 1.2 is out
• Linus tells eWeek about the upcoming Linux 2.6

Listings courtesy Linux Journal. See LJ's Events page for the latest goings-on.

Linux-Bangalore/2002	December 3-5, 2002 Bangalore, Inda http://linux-bangalore.org/2002/
USENIX 5th Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI)	December 9-11, 2002 Boston, MA http://www.usenix.org/
Consumer Electronics Show	January 9-12, 2003 Las Vegas, NV http://www.cesweb.org/
LinuxWorld Conference & Expo	January 21-24, 2003 New York, NY http://www.linuxworldexpo.com/
O'Reilly Bioinformatics Technology Conference	February 3-6, 2003 San Diego, CA http://conferences.oreilly.com/
Game Developers Conference	March 4-8, 2003 San Jose, CA http://www.gdconf.com/
SXSW	March 7-11, 2003 Austin, TX http://www.sxsw.com/interactive
COMDEX Canada	March 11-13, 2003 Vancouver, BC http://www.comdex.com/vancouver/
CeBIT	March 12-19, 2003 Hannover, Germany http://www.cebit.de/
4th USENIX Symposium on Internet Technologies and Systems	March 26-28, 2003 Seattle, WA http://www.usenix.org/events/
4th USENIX Symposium on Internet Technologies and Systems	March 26-28, 2003 Seattle, WA http://www.usenix.org/events/
PyCon (the first "low budget" Python conference) Note: This is the first low budget Python conference, so if you've been avoiding Python conferences due to the cost, this one is for you! Another conference, the main International Python Conference, will be held in July as part of O'Reilly's OSCON (Open Source Convention).	March 26-28, 2003 Washington, DC http://www.python.org/pycon/
AIIM	April 7-9, 2003 New York, NY http://www.advanstar.com/
SD West	April 8-10, 2003 Santa Clara, CA http://www.sdexpo.com/
COMDEX Chicago	April 15-17, 2003 Chicago, IL http://www.comdex.com/chicago/
Real World Linux Conference and Expo	April 29-30, 2003 Toronto, Ontario http://www.realworldlinux.com
USENIX First International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services (MobiSys)	May 5-8, 2003 San Francisco, CA http://www.usenix.org/events/
USENIX Annual Technical Conference	June 9-14, 2003 San Antonio, TX http://www.usenix.org/events/
CeBIT America	June 18-20, 2003 New York, NY http://www.cebit-america.com/
O'Reilly Open Source Convention	July 7-11, 2003 Location: TBD http://conferences.oreilly.com/
12th USENIX Security Symposium	August 4-8, 2003 Washington, DC http://www.usenix.org/events/
LinuxWorld Conference & Expo	August 5-7, 2003 San Francisco, CA http://www.linuxworldexpo.com

MySQL, NuSphere and the GPL

MySQL AB has settled its dispute with NuSphere corporation. MySQL AB had claimed that NuSphere violated the GPL and misused the MySQL trademark. (NuSphere includes MySQL with NuSphere's enhancements in its product.) NuSphere has assigned to MySQL AB the copyrights for its contributions to MySQL. Not so coincidentally, MySQL AB has just donated $25,000 to the Free Software Foundation's GPL Compliance Lab, which helps companies offering GPL'd software follow up on GPL violations. According to the FSF's Executive Directory Bradley Kuhn, almost all GPL violations are mistakes rather than wilful infringement.

Debian

Debian Weekly News highlighted a LinuxOrbit HOWTO on installing and configuring ALSA. The piece describes the correct "Debian way" to perform the task.

Knoppix

Debian Weekly News Reported that people from the Debian-Med subproject have started a Knoppix-Med project. The aim is to include particular pieces of medical software into the Debian Based Knoppix distribution. Details of the procedure are available online.

SuSE

SuSE Linux has announced a multi-stage product campaign for the corporate desktop deployment of SuSE Linux. Starting January 2003, small and medium-scale enterprises will be able to migrate to Linux on desktops using the "SuSE Linux Office Desktop". "SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop", a Linux version optimised for desktop deployment in large-scale enterprises, is expected to be released in the first quarter of 2003.

SuSE Linux has also announced that the SuSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) has proved itself as a powerful Linux platform for IBM`s DB2 Version 8 database software with SLES latest certification for DB2. SuSE Linux Enterprise Server is the first distribution to be validated on all hardware platforms supported by DB2 for Linux (including IBM zSeries mainframes) and validated to run DB2 Enterprise Server Edition. More information on IBM's DB2 for Linux Validation Program is available online.

UnitedLinux

The UnitedLinux group have announced the release of Version 1.0 of its UnitedLinux product, a standards-based Linux operating system targeted at the business user. UnitedLinux is the result of an industry initiative to streamline Linux development and certification around a global, uniform distribution of Linux. Founding companies of UnitedLinux are Linux industry leaders Conectiva S.A., The SCO Group, SuSE Linux AG, and Turbolinux, Inc.

New kernels

A new stable kernel 2.4.20 has been released. A new ancient kernel 2.2.23 has also been released if you're still living in the medieval ages. Get your update at a kernel mirror near you.

Mathematica Ported to NEC's Itanium Linux Platform

Wolfram Research and NEC have collaborated to port Mathematica to NEC's Itanium Linux platform for the upcoming release of Mathematica 4.2.

Appligent Alliance Program

Appligent has unveiled a new Alliance Program designed to help integrators and consultants develop more powerful electronic document management applications for their clients. Appligent's main product is a range of PDF-related software which supports, among other operating systems, Red Hat Linux.

Updated Opera 6.1 for Linux on Intel and PowerPC

Opera Software have released Opera 6.1 for Linux for Intel and PowerPC users. The PowerPC version is the first released on this platform since the tentative Opera 5 for Linux Beta in May 2001. In addition to several bugfixes, this release features better support for fonts in the new version, with font anti-aliasing enabled by default and improved support for Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters. The changelog documents all the new developments in this release.

Pygame

Cylant Secure

Cylant has ported the management console for its Linux Intrusion Prevention system to Windows. The Windows console allows administrators to managed CylantSecure server agents from their Windows workstations.