Slashdot Mirror

Ektanoor writes "Found this today on "Linux Today". Michels "retracts" several earlier citations attributed to him and clarifies his position regarding Linux. " Man - and I thought I have been misquoted (well, assuming Doug was, of course)! Hopefully, this will ease some of the furor regarding Michels supposed earlier comments.

Quite a number of people wrote in to alert everyone to Microsoft's joining of the Internet2 Consortium. They becoming a corporate partner, meaning they will contribute at least 1 million in goods and services to universities involved in the I2 project.

Found in the files of LinuxToday: Computer Reseller News has an article about SGI being in talks with Linux vendors, hoping to reach an agreement with one, presumably so they can ship it on their upcoming server line. The new servers will be for the telco and ISP markets. As was previously suspected, the company says it will "contribute components" of its technology to the open source community, including OpenGL. Maybe XFS will be in there, too. I've heard it's quite nice...

An anonymousr reader pointed us to this Linux Today story that has the new KDE mascot. Its an unnamed rendered dragon- the lighting on some of the renders looks like it needs a bit of work, and although he doesn't beat the FreeBSD Demon, he's pretty cool. Check out dragon1.jpg, dragon2.jpg, dragon3.jpg, and dragon4.jpg. The server is really slow, so someone post a mirror?

SMR writes "This article features Richard Stallman's proposal on how should DOJ deal with Microsoft's monopoly practices, should the company lose the trial. "

dave writes "It's Loki day at Linux Today. First, we have an interview with the president of Loki. Then, Mike Maher has written an editorial where he laments the lack of games for Linux, and discusses Loki as a possible savior. "

dave writes "It's Loki day at Linux Today. First, we have an interview with the president of Loki. Then, Mike Maher has written an editorial where he laments the lack of games for Linux, and discusses Loki as a possible savior. "

dave writes "It's Loki day at Linux Today. First, we have an interview with the president of Loki. Then, Mike Maher has written an editorial where he laments the lack of games for Linux, and discusses Loki as a possible savior. "

Stephen Williams writes "After a three-year break, Eric S. Raymond announces that a new version of the Jargon File (4.1.0) has been released. " Lots of new terms. The Slashdot Effect is actually in this time around, but as you old timers know, this is pretty good stuff, and you newbies should consider it required reading.

dave writes "There is a thin line between publishing groundless falsehoods about Linux (FUD) and writing about serious limitations that need to be addressed by the Linux community. Nathan Cochrane opens his first in a series of editorials on Linux Today about this very subject. "

dave writes "There is a thin line between publishing groundless falsehoods about Linux (FUD) and writing about serious limitations that need to be addressed by the Linux community. Nathan Cochrane opens his first in a series of editorials on Linux Today about this very subject. "

ZDNN reports that Larry Ellison doesn't want to pay the $1 million bet when he challange MS last comdex regarding Oracle 8 (each company accused the other of misrepresentations), and if you're looking for a job, then Apple is looking for Linux Technology Manager (Credit goes to Linux Today)

Langston01 writes "According to LinuxToday, a pre-beta of Slackware 4.0 is out. " I remember Slackware. Wow, its been years since I used it. I still need a Debian 2.1 CD. Or a T1.

We've all heard what Bruce Perens and ESR think of the APSL, so it's time to give RMS a chance. Read what he has to say. He brought up some very interesting things which I don't think have been discussed before, and are very important (the copyright bit).

Stephen Williams writes "LinuxToday reports that Bowerbird Computing have released a new open source license called the New Copyleft License. Seems to be aimed at people who want to sell their free software, rather than charge for support." At the rate these licenses are proliferating, soon there will be one license for every app. Does anyone besides me think this is getting crazy?

belbo writes "According to a notice on KDE's news page Redhat is now funding two KDE developers in their efforts to port KDE to the upcoming open-sourced QT 2.0." Indeed KDE 1.1 is apparently in Red Hat 5.9. Furthermore, Moritz Moeller - Herrmann tells us that our ubiquitous friend Kalle Dalheimer announced to the KDE-dev list that " KDE was awarded "Innovation of the Year 1998/99" in the category software at a Ziff-Davis event in relation to the CeBIT fair. The other finalists were Lotus eSuite and Microtest Visual CD. This award is a great achievement of the whole KDE team! Congratulations to all of you! We will provide scanned pictures of the award and other items we got (like posters and stickers) as soon as possible on the KDE web site." Finally, Linux Today has a brand new look and is sporting interviews with people of the Linux community. In one of them, Corel CEO Micheal Cowpland reveals that Corel's open-source GUI will be based on KDE. Please folks, don't let this good news bring on a flame-war. Many people want to choose which desktop suits them best: GNOME, GNUStep, KDE are all worthy contenders.

belbo writes "According to a notice on KDE's news page Redhat is now funding two KDE developers in their efforts to port KDE to the upcoming open-sourced QT 2.0." Indeed KDE 1.1 is apparently in Red Hat 5.9. Furthermore, Moritz Moeller - Herrmann tells us that our ubiquitous friend Kalle Dalheimer announced to the KDE-dev list that " KDE was awarded "Innovation of the Year 1998/99" in the category software at a Ziff-Davis event in relation to the CeBIT fair. The other finalists were Lotus eSuite and Microtest Visual CD. This award is a great achievement of the whole KDE team! Congratulations to all of you! We will provide scanned pictures of the award and other items we got (like posters and stickers) as soon as possible on the KDE web site." Finally, Linux Today has a brand new look and is sporting interviews with people of the Linux community. In one of them, Corel CEO Micheal Cowpland reveals that Corel's open-source GUI will be based on KDE. Please folks, don't let this good news bring on a flame-war. Many people want to choose which desktop suits them best: GNOME, GNUStep, KDE are all worthy contenders.

Steve Bergman sent us a link to a Linux Today Article that talks about claims that MacOS X Outperforms Linux running Apache on machines under $5k. What do you think? Anyone have some numbers?

An anonymous reader pointed us to this linux today bit that points to Varkon which has GPLd their Linux CAD software. We definitely need some CAD round these parts. Drawing wireframes in the Gimp doesn't work nearly as well as you'd think.

ZDNET UK made an Interview with Corel's executive vice president of engineering Derek Burney, he's talking about Corel helps the Wine Project. But the biggest surprise is that Corel is going to release a new Distribution which is aimed to the "avrage windows user". (thanks to Linux Today for the news

Dave Miller, the ultracool hacker who does (definitely) work at Red Hat, wrote in to let us know Linux 2.2.2 has been released. A summary of changes should appear on Cutting Edge Linux shortly. This new kernel should fix the recent autofs bug (fixed in ac7). Update: 02/22 11:35 by J :Dave Whitinger, the guy behind the fabulous Linux Today site, wrote in with the linux-kernel-announce(ment). Update: 02/24 03:13 by CT : Dave Miller does work at Red Hat.

shaldannon writes "This morning on National Public Radio there was a story about the ongoing Justice department case against Microsoft. Yesterday Justice Department attorney David Boies challenged Microsoft's Windows licensing policies, particulary the "verbal contracts" not to include Netscape on the desktop. He questioned a Mr. Rose of Compaq on this subject. Mr. Rose tried to distance himself from Microsoft by claiming that he'd never had close dealings with the company or Mr. Gates. Attorney Boies produced an email in which Bill Gates specifically thanks Mr. Rose for his assistance to Microsoft on the DoJ case. Boies then dropped a bombshell announcement: Compaq had been having secret negotiations with BeOS to do some development for them. At the same time, Compaq sent representatives to Microsoft for their blessing on the arrangement. Microsoft killed the deal. Compaq's attorney jumped to his feet, emotionally denying the charge and accusing David Boies of 'cheap courtroom tactics.' Attorney Boies then produced evidence from BeOS substantiating his announcement." ZD-net and PC-Week both also carry the story. Thanks to Rick Irvine (a Furious Be User) and BitMan. In related news,Matthew Tebbens tells us that CNN is reporting that Windows 2000 will need apps to be rebuilt or even rewritten to be compliant (whatever that means). Update: 02/19 06:02 by S : And to top the cake, Microsoft has been charged with monopoly pricing in a California Class Action suit. Thanks Dwight Johnson. Update: 02/20 12:57 by S : More on the Be Story: Alledgedly, Be is making an embedded OS that would have better media capabilities than WinCE for information appliances.

The Source of the Jikes Parser Generator has been released. It's hiding here. While Bison deals with LALR(1) grammars, it can generate parsers for LALR(k) grammars. David Shields also claims it makes providing good error support easier to program. In other programming news, Code Crusader 1.2.0 has been released as opensource. Anyone have any experience of this tool?

Linux Today has a translated transcription of a Danish Radio Interview with Bill Gates. How many of you think that Bill's "Oh - I - you know - my job is to fear everything." shows he caught himself before saying "No"? In the meantime Jean-Louis Gassee is dismissing Microsoft's new bedtime story that BeOS integrates the Browser into the OS. Here's a little more detail from Patrick Hajek. Finally, in related news, Bill had the opportunity to visit a German School which accepted a local company's offer to install Linux its PCs for the occasion

nicedreaM writes "Found this link: SuSE will be introducing a new cluster system called SALT (SuSE Advanced Linux Technology). Also they'll be releasing an Alpha distribution."

P.J. Hinton wrote in to send us a link to a CERT advisory explaining that the sources to TCP wrappers were actually replaced with a nice new and improved version. Complete with a trojan. It was caught fairly quickly after it was uploaded, but it's still kinda scary. Update: 01/22 01:07 by CT : Several people sent the Bugtraq post over at Linux Today. A lot more details clarifying the situation.

An anonymous reader sent us a link to Wall Street Journal article about the music industry and MP3s. Talks about efforts by IBM and AT&T to create new formats that will successfully prevent the advancement of music and artistic freedom so that the industry can continue to overcharge consumers and rip off the people that make the music. Not that I'm biased. Update: 01/22 09:55 by B : There's another article in Wired about a recent panel discussion on standards in digital music: "It's become un-American to argue against security, but five companies sell 87 percent of the music. They'll say anything to protect their position." Update: 01/22 03:17 by S : An anonymous contributor emailed me his notes on the digital audio panel session of the Fashion Institute of Technology Software Summit yesterday: Industry in "sad state". The consolidation of music labels and radio stations has resulted in reduced variety.It is hard for artists, who must join the system to have a chance at success, but doing so requires giving up rights to master recordings (forever), royalties of 10-20 per cent, but only after paying back costs to producer, etc. Labels only interested in artists who can sell at least 250,000 albums.

Solution is "digital efficiency". For example, mp3 allows artists to leave at any time, artists get 50 per cent royalties, can have special targetting such as sending e-mail to all fans in a particular area where band is about to give concert.

Issue is that we have now way to separate bits from Intellectual Property via internet, and this will change the way that music is distributed. Music is the simplest case of this, in that it can be done "now". Similar problems with arise with video, etc at later time.

Can have multiple formats, but need means to transfer terms and conditions of use, such as "ok to play this song three times until next Thursday" -- this is goal of SDMI initiative.

Today have oligopoly -- 5 companies sell 87 per cent of the music. On pragmatic level, unrealistic to expect securitysystem that will restrict how people will use content. e.g., today cd discs are not encrypted, so people can make copies, but can't make cd from a2b music format. Result is that vendors will have to add value to maintain price (current model of $15/cd won't persist), or else reduce price.

Music industry is mature with structure that is decades old, with tight control of distribution. There will have to be new model for internet. For example, music is given away via radio, and broadcasters are given special exemptions, but there is yet no realistic solution/approach for internet radio.

Michael Howard writes "netproject is sponsoring the Linux and Open Source Software Conference and Exposition to be held January 20, 1999 at the Venue Commonwealth Institute in London." Sounds sweet for the UK readers. Wish I could go, but there's that big blue thing in the way, and its a bit cold to swim it.

Emmanuel Marty of the ggi-project wrote to me saying "Thanks to announcements on LinuxToday and /., Paul Jones of UNC Chapel Hill contacted me to offer a new home to the GGI www and ftp servers on the best possible server we could dream of, MetaLab, "the site formerly known as sunsite.unc.edu". Thanks to the kindness of Paul and Adam Fuller, everything is now functional there (to a few minor exceptions), in time for the release. Thanks to everyone who emailed to offer their help, this makes us very proud to belong to the community. Promise, I'll answer every email, even though I've been drowning in them :)" Obviously when the full release comes out, we'll be posting it. In related news, libggi beta 1 is out so please hammer it.

According to CNN, Just as House members were preparing for their vote on impeachment, constituent e-mail messages began dropping into a void. It seems that there was a bug in the Microsoft Exchange server. H: And I ask - isn't it time for a 10,000 users who uses e-mail, and uses it a LOT, to switch to a Unix solution? (from Linux Today )

Dave Whitinger wrote in to tell us that Linux Today has an update from Dave Shields regarding the recent IBM Jikes Source Release. Worth checking out if you're into this one.

Dave Whitinger wrote in to tell us that Linux Today has an update from Dave Shields regarding the recent IBM Jikes Source Release. Worth checking out if you're into this one.

Dave Whitinger sent us this link where you can read about Intel's Lawsuit against a spammer. This is interesting because he is a former employee, spamming all the employees of his former company with information about the Human Resources dept at Intel. This is a pretty significant case in my eyes anyway.

Dave Whitinger sent us a link to an Interview with Corel that you can read over at Linux Today. Questions about Gnome, KDE, The NetWinder, Debian and more.

Dave Whitinger sent us a link to an Interview with Corel that you can read over at Linux Today. Questions about Gnome, KDE, The NetWinder, Debian and more.

A nonymous Coward writes "Computer Retail Week claims that Acer may soon sell Linux servers for the educational market. This was seen on Linux Today. " H: It's a bit hard to find-read down in the article.

Jim Dennis (The Answer Guy from the Linux Gazette) has written an editorial at Linux Today suggesting that GNUStep and GNOME work together. Has anyone noticed we are getting three environments: KDE, GNOME and GNUStep, each based on a particular variant of C (C++, C, Objective C)? Since GNUStep and GNOME are GPL'd, collaboration between them would be simple on the Licensing front. update Here's some reaction from the unofficial GNUStep guys.

te wrote in to tell us that penguins are being threatened by oil spills, habitat destruction, the overfishing of their food supplies and even the weather. For those that do not know why the Linux mascot is a penguin, read the latest Linus interview. (It also tells us what he thinks of the DOJ-Microsoft trial). Since the ocean is far away (from me in Colorado at least), does anyone know of any organisations set up to help our favorite feathered friends?

After a long night in the darkroom working on photography projects, nothing will make me happier than cleaning out the submissions box. So hit the link below and read the huge flood of stuff that has been accumulating while I've been trying to vanquish my end-of-the-semester projects. There is a ton of cool stuff in there worth checking out. Realcosmo commented that OpenBios Project Is looking for a logo. Visit their page for info. James Keller wrote in to send us an entertaining article about using Microsoft Manuals as Targets . Idan Shoham wrote in to say that the The Linux in business reference page has grown to 300 entries of companies that use Linux in a mission-critical setting. Good PHB data.

jahn wrote in to send us a link to Linus and RMS in a techno remix of Join us Now and Share the Software. I think we mentioned this a few months ago, but probably bears repeating anyway. I'm on a total MP3 craze again (4.5 gigs and growing) so this is entertaining me all over again.

[-SwM-] wrote in to send us a link to an online version of Rock Paper Scissors. Goofy. DaveWhitinger from Linux Today wrote in to say that Linux Mandrake 5.2 is available. Gordon Delp sent a link to a new FreeBSD news site called (appropriately enough) FreeBSD Rocks

acb wrote in to send us an entertaining parody of O'Reilly book covers. Several folks commented that WindowMaker v0.20.3 is now out, and several other folks commented that it has a new logo "Well, as you can see the new official logo has been put in place, and the logo contest is officially over. We appreciate all the logo submissions and the people who took time to vote. You can read about the winning entries here." LynXmaN wrote in to send us a link to Sololinux.com, a Spanish Linux News site. have opened. Ant wrote in to send us a link to Quake 2 Penguin Models for you penguin nuts. YogSothoth writes "I've always been interested in fractals, but what I always thought would be fun would be a scripting language-based approach that would give you a lot flexibility (with regard to choosing equations, bailout conditions, coloring techniques) without requiring a math degree to enjoy. Its hot off the presses but works quite well." you can check out Samples or Source Code. Vorx wrote in to warn everyone that this weeks User Friendly has been featuring a strange Star Wars/Linux/ESR takeoff that folks might enjoy reading. Bain wrote in to send us a link to a company that is selling Tux Stuffed Animals that actually look like tux.

Nate, My roommate and all around swell guy, has put a bunch of his Gimp Artwork online if you're interested in that sorta stuff. Its pretty excellent. Chris DiBona wrote in to send us a link to Chick Magnet which has some cool essays including one that explains that the best place for women to pick up guys is at Linux User Group Meetings. Quite funny. J. David Eisenberg wrote in to send us A response to his article on Linux and the Consumer Market. This addresses comments made by Slashdot Readers. Also, his opinions on the KDE thing which probably isn't all that relevant anymore.

See? Lots of good stuff! Anyway, I'm gonna get some sleep so I can get up nice and early and get back on the grind. The zany thing is that in 340 or so hours, I'm ton. Forever. No more school. Then I can finally finish Slash v0.3, fix the rest of the bugs in Slashdot, and actually start working on all the new stuff thats coming. Yee haw. In the meantime, I just wanna beg folks to go easy on the email. Don't hesitate if its important, but please read FAQ first and save us all some time.

After a long night in the darkroom working on photography projects, nothing will make me happier than cleaning out the submissions box. So hit the link below and read the huge flood of stuff that has been accumulating while I've been trying to vanquish my end-of-the-semester projects. There is a ton of cool stuff in there worth checking out. Realcosmo commented that OpenBios Project Is looking for a logo. Visit their page for info. James Keller wrote in to send us an entertaining article about using Microsoft Manuals as Targets . Idan Shoham wrote in to say that the The Linux in business reference page has grown to 300 entries of companies that use Linux in a mission-critical setting. Good PHB data.

jahn wrote in to send us a link to Linus and RMS in a techno remix of Join us Now and Share the Software. I think we mentioned this a few months ago, but probably bears repeating anyway. I'm on a total MP3 craze again (4.5 gigs and growing) so this is entertaining me all over again.

[-SwM-] wrote in to send us a link to an online version of Rock Paper Scissors. Goofy. DaveWhitinger from Linux Today wrote in to say that Linux Mandrake 5.2 is available. Gordon Delp sent a link to a new FreeBSD news site called (appropriately enough) FreeBSD Rocks

acb wrote in to send us an entertaining parody of O'Reilly book covers. Several folks commented that WindowMaker v0.20.3 is now out, and several other folks commented that it has a new logo "Well, as you can see the new official logo has been put in place, and the logo contest is officially over. We appreciate all the logo submissions and the people who took time to vote. You can read about the winning entries here." LynXmaN wrote in to send us a link to Sololinux.com, a Spanish Linux News site. have opened. Ant wrote in to send us a link to Quake 2 Penguin Models for you penguin nuts. YogSothoth writes "I've always been interested in fractals, but what I always thought would be fun would be a scripting language-based approach that would give you a lot flexibility (with regard to choosing equations, bailout conditions, coloring techniques) without requiring a math degree to enjoy. Its hot off the presses but works quite well." you can check out Samples or Source Code. Vorx wrote in to warn everyone that this weeks User Friendly has been featuring a strange Star Wars/Linux/ESR takeoff that folks might enjoy reading. Bain wrote in to send us a link to a company that is selling Tux Stuffed Animals that actually look like tux.

Nate, My roommate and all around swell guy, has put a bunch of his Gimp Artwork online if you're interested in that sorta stuff. Its pretty excellent. Chris DiBona wrote in to send us a link to Chick Magnet which has some cool essays including one that explains that the best place for women to pick up guys is at Linux User Group Meetings. Quite funny. J. David Eisenberg wrote in to send us A response to his article on Linux and the Consumer Market. This addresses comments made by Slashdot Readers. Also, his opinions on the KDE thing which probably isn't all that relevant anymore.

See? Lots of good stuff! Anyway, I'm gonna get some sleep so I can get up nice and early and get back on the grind. The zany thing is that in 340 or so hours, I'm ton. Forever. No more school. Then I can finally finish Slash v0.3, fix the rest of the bugs in Slashdot, and actually start working on all the new stuff thats coming. Yee haw. In the meantime, I just wanna beg folks to go easy on the email. Don't hesitate if its important, but please read FAQ first and save us all some time.

EngrBohn writes "A number of the HOWTOs at the Linux Documentation Project have been updated. Linux Today has compiled a table of which ones have changed. "

Robert Wikander was the first to write in and tell us that S.u.S.E. is taking orders for 6.0 and will begin shipping on December 15. S.u.S.E. 6.0 will upgrade to glibc 2.0.7, and feature egcs 1.1.1. You can read more over at Linux Today. This combined with the possible 2.2 kernel release is going to make for some happy holidays.

Dave Whitinger from Linux Today wrote in to tell us that Corel has announced that they will be shipping Netwinders with KDE in the relatively near future.

Dave Whitinger from Linux Today wrote in to tell us that Corel has announced that they will be shipping Netwinders with KDE in the relatively near future.

Well, we've received a ton of Comdex Reports. Firstly there's Linux World reporting that IBM may be porting Linux to the AS/400. Then there's a Linux Today report, discussing Linux' success in France, a new French Linux Magazine France, and the presence of an HP representative in Red Hat's Booth demonstrating an apparently impressive Firehunter.Jedi Mind Trick wrote in about a demo of 500 Mhz K7 silicon. And finally many of you told us that Novell is claiming Comdex Novell-network traffic is being sniffed.

Dave Whitinger writes "Oh Boy did Red Hat make some serious announcements today. Check out the press release here. " Indeed. Check out even more news at Red Hat's page. The enterprise, GNOME, messaging, oh my!

Dave Whitinger writes "Oh Boy did Red Hat make some serious announcements today. Check out the press release here. " Indeed. Check out even more news at Red Hat's page. The enterprise, GNOME, messaging, oh my!

According to Sm@rt reseller, Softway is considering adding Linux and possibly Solaris interfaces to NT. H: I really don't understand why they are doing this, since it will be SLLOOWWW...(seen on Linux Today)

Dave Whitinger of Linux Today wrote in to tell me of an article claiming that Linux and OSS would be hard to sue. It points out that Microsoft's strategy was to copy others' inventions which makes it hard for them to complain if the OSS community does the same. The second part of the article is the stronger, introducing the idea that Windows as a platform is likely to lose many innovative third-party products now that Microsoft's trend of absorbing the good ideas of smaller companies is becoming clear. updated.

Information Week has an article debating the hidden costs of code reuse. Although Code Reuse is obviously not a magic bullet, three flaws appeared to me in their argument: First, companies only need to scramble to reuse their components because they keep their software proprietary: with a wider market (eg OpenSource) they could benefit from others' work by using others' components, while contributing themselves. Second, fewer lines of code and more uses of the same code stress it out better, so it should contain fewer bugs. Third, while it is very hard to come up with really good reusable objects or a good library API, this mental training results in employees with sharper minds able to see a problem from many angles rather than just employees that churn out Klocs of simple code... which might even improve employee productivity in the long run. What do you think? Link courtesy of Linux Today.