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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

March 2003 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/.

Fox News report on the US Congress's tech agenda.

ITworld.com reported that the European Commission has presented a draft directive that punishes copyright infringement for commercial purposes, but spares home music downloaders, irritating music industry lobby groups (from Slashdot). Also reported at The Register.

Washington Post reports that Howard Schmidt, the new cybersecurity czar, is a former Microsoft security chief. (from Slashdot).

The Register reports how US gov reps "defanged" pro open source declaration.

EFF's comments on the "German DMCA" as part of its ongoing effort to avoid the worldwide export of over broad DMCA-type legislation. The German judicial commission is currently holding hearings on draft German legislation to implement the 2001 European Union Copyright Directive (EUCD).

After winning the initial judgement in a trademark suit, the German software firm MobiliX had to give up its name after all to the publishers of a similarly-named comic book character. MobilX.org is now TuxMobil.org. (NewsForge announcement.)

The EFF has announced the release of "Winning (DMCA) Exemptions, The Next Round", a succinct guide to the comment-making process written by Seth Finkelstein, who proposed one of the only two exemptions granted in the last Library of Congress Rule-making.

The Register reports that the DMCA has been invoked in DirecTV hack. 17 have been charged.

Slashdot Interview with Prof. Eben Moglen who has been the FSF's pro bono general counsel since 1993.

The Happypenguin Awards for the 25 Best Linux Games (courtesy NewsVac).

Lindows launches $329 mini PC, ubiquity beckons.

ZDNet UK reports on how KDE's new version has responded to government needs.

NewsForge report: The rise of the $99 'consumer' Linux distribution

A look at installing Bayesian filtering using Bogofilter and Sylpheed Claws.

Doc Searls at Linux Journal writes on the value shifts underpinning the spread of Linux and free software.

PC-To-Phone calls available for GNU/Linux.

Wired reports on getting an iPod to run on linux.

Jay Beale (of Bastille Linux) with an article on computer security, and how to tell if you've been hacked (from NewsVac).

Monthly Monster Machines back in action LinuxLookup.com have announced a monthly feature Monthly Monster Machines. This is a monthly updated spec of budget, workstation, and dream Linux machines.

It has been reported that starting this year, the Swiss State of Geneva will mail all tax forms with a CD which includes OpenOffice and Mozilla. This replaces an Excel sheet.

Recent NewsForge IRC chat with OpenOffice.org publicist/activist Sam Hiser.

Open Source security manual. There is a report on this at NewsForge.

Possible data write corruption problem on Linux.

NewsForge report on the launch of the new Linux in Education portal.

Slashdot highlighted a recent Business Week feature of Linux comprising 9 articles.

Slashdotters respond to an article about the Microsoft Home of Tomorrow by speculating what an AppleHouse, SunHouse and LinuxHouse would look like.

Howto do things in GNU/Linux

Interview with Dennis Ritchie, a founding father of Unix and C.

Some Links from Linux Weekly News:

• South Africa moves positively with regard to Linux in government.
• SCO hires lawyers to comb through Linux to see if it infringes on any of SCO's patents or copyrights; SCO owns the rights on the original UNIX. SCO is being tight-lipped about what it would do if it finds anything. Also reported at OS Opinion.
• Multi-part interview with Guido van Rossum, parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6.

For the Chinese readers among you, a Chinese translation of the Peruvian refutation of Microsoft FUD.

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

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
CeBIT	March 12-19, 2003 Hannover, Germany http://www.cebit.de/
City Open Source Community Workshop	March 22, 2003 Thessaloniki, Greece http://www.city.academic.gr/cosc
Software Development Conference & Expo	March 24-28, 2003 Santa Clara, CA http://www.sdexpo.com/
Linux Clusters Institute (LCI) Workshop	March 24-28, 2003 Urbana-Champaign, IL http://www.linuxclustersinstitute.org/
4th USENIX Symposium on Internet Technologies and Systems	March 26-28, 2003 Seattle, WA http://www.usenix.org/events/
PyCon DC 2003	March 26-28, 2003 Washington, DC http://www.python.org/pycon/
Linux on Wall Street Show & Conference	April 7, 2003 New York, NY http://www.linuxonwallstreet.com
AIIM	April 7-9, 2003 New York, NY http://www.advanstar.com/
FOSE	April 8-10, 2003 Washington, DC http://www.fose.com/
MySQL Users Conference & Expo 2003	April 8-10, 2003 San Jose, CA http://www.mysql.com/events/uc2003/
LinuxFest Northwest 2003	April 26, 2003 Bellingham, WA http://www.linuxnorthwest.org/
Real World Linux Conference and Expo	April 28-30, 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/
ClusterWorld Conference and Expo	June 24-26, 2003 San Jose, CA http://www.linuxclustersinstitute.org/Linux-HPC-Revolution
O'Reilly Open Source Convention	July 7-11, 2003 Portland, OR 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
Linux Lunacy Brought to you by Linux Journal and Geek Cruises!	September 13-20, 2003 Alaska's Inside Passage http://www.geekcruises.com/home/ll3_home.html
Software Development Conference & Expo	September 15-19, 2003 Boston, MA http://www.sdexpo.com
PC Expo	September 16-18, 2003 New York, NY http://www.techxny.com/pcexpo_techxny.cfm
COMDEX Canada	September 16-18, 2003 Toronto, Ontario http://www.comdex.com/canada/
LISA (17th USENIX Systems Administration Conference)	October 26-30, 2003 San Diego, CA http://www.usenix.org/events/lisa03/
HiverCon 2003	November 6-7, 2003 Dublin, Ireland http://www.hivercon.com/
COMDEX Fall	November 17-21, 2003 Las Vegas, NV http://www.comdex.com/fall2003/

IBM and Smallpox

IBM, United Devices and Accelrys have announced a project supporting a global research effort that is focused on the development of new drugs that could potentially combat the smallpox virus post infection. The Smallpox Research Grid Project is powered by an IBM infrastructure, which includes IBM eServer[tm] p690 systems and IBM's Shark Enterprise Storage Server running DB2[r] database software using AIX and Linux.

Opera and the Swedish Chef Go After Microsoft

Opera Software has released a very special Bork edition of its Opera 7 for Windows browser. The Bork edition behaves differently on one Web site: MSN. Users accessing the MSN site http://www.msn.com/ will see the page transformed into the language of the famous Swedish Chef from the Muppet Show: Bork, Bork, Bork! This is retaliation to apparent targeting by MSN of Opera users. Opera browser users were supplied with a different stylesheet to MSIE users, which made the site display in a less appealing way.

Debian

Debian Weekly News reported the announcement of the new archive key for 2003. This is used to sign the Release file for the main, non-US and security archives, and can be used with apt-check-sigs to improve security when using mirrors.

Also from DWN, and of use to many Debian users, is Adrian Bunk's announcement of the backport of OpenOffice.org 1.0.2 to woody. Packages are available online.

Debian powers PRISMIQ MediaPlayer home entertainment gateway device.

Knoppix

IBM developerWorks has published a recent article on Knoppix.

Mandrake

Part 4 of DistroWatch's review of Mandrake 9.1 is online

SuSE

Open For Business has published a review of SuSE Linux 8.1

NewsForge has reviewed SuSE Linux Office Desktop.

Vector

C.O.L.A software news

• The GUI library wxWindoes version 2.4.0 has been released.
• The release of Version 22.4.1 of LILO has been announced.
• teTeX version 2.0 is now available as is Lyx version 1.3.0.

Candy Cruncher

LGP is pleased to announce that Candy Cruncher has arrived from the replicators and is available immediately.

CourseForum 1.3

CourseForum Technologies today introduced CourseForum 1.3, its web-based software for e-learning content creation, sharing and discussion. CourseForum can be hosted on MacOS X, Windows 98/ME/NT/2000/XP, Linux or other Unixes, while users need only a standard web browser.

ProjectForum 1.3

CourseForum Technologies today introduced ProjectForum 1.3, a web-based software for flexible workgroup collaboration and coordination of projects and teams. ProjectForum can be hosted on MacOS X, Windows 98/ME/NT/2000/XP, Linux or other Unixes, while users need only a standard web browser. Licenses start at US$199, and a free version is also available.

AquaFold

AquaFold, Inc have announced the latest version of Aqua Data Studio, a universal database tool for building, managing and maintaining enterprise relational databases. Aqua Data Studio includes support for all major database platforms such as Oracle 8i/9i, IBM DB2, Sybase Adaptive Server, Microsoft SQL Server and the open source databases MySQL and PostgreSQL. Developed with the Java programming language, Aqua Data Studio supports all major operating systems, including Linux, Microsoft Windows, Mac OSX, and Solaris. Screenshots and downloads available online.