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An anonymous reader writes "The latest offering of Mandrake's distribution, 9.2, has been found to not only be incompatible with some LG CD-ROM drives, but to destroy them during the installation process. Mandrake have posted information on their errata page and further information can be found on this thread [google]. Along with over 350Mb of updates within a week of release, it's not been a good start for this latest release."

An anonymous reader writes "The latest offering of Mandrake's distribution, 9.2, has been found to not only be incompatible with some LG CD-ROM drives, but to destroy them during the installation process. Mandrake have posted information on their errata page and further information can be found on this thread [google]. Along with over 350Mb of updates within a week of release, it's not been a good start for this latest release."

joestar writes "Mandrake Linux 9.2 was released yesterday, and a first review is already available at ofb.biz! It focuses on the new desktop-oriented Mandrake 9.2 flavor, the Discovery, a 2-CD office/multimedia product for beginners which comes without any server capability. It seems that a new competitor to Windows is born, and according to Tim Butler, 'Another key to making a distribution novice friendly is insuring that everything works out of the box, and Mandrake Linux 9.2 succeeds there.(...) To the best of my knowledge the only other distribution presently including the Radeon drivers from ATI is Lindows.' Waiting for reviews of 'real' Mandrake 9.2 products (PowerPack, Corporate Server...), this review is nevertheless quite comprehensive and very interesting reading, and this new Mandrake Discovery thing should do well with the public, at least as an office desktop affordable solution in corporations."

joestar writes "Just announced at Mandrake's website, Mandrake 9.2 (FiveStar) has just been released. Mandrake Club members get full access to 9.2 ISOs (through BitTorrent), as well as... all 9.2 contributors and translators. But the best news, in addition to all (impressive) 9.2 features is that everybody can access the traditional binary & sources tree! Public release of Mandrake 9.2 ISOs will happen at the same time as Mandrake 9.2 Pack availability in retail. It makes sense."

joestar writes "Just announced at Mandrake's website, Mandrake 9.2 (FiveStar) has just been released. Mandrake Club members get full access to 9.2 ISOs (through BitTorrent), as well as... all 9.2 contributors and translators. But the best news, in addition to all (impressive) 9.2 features is that everybody can access the traditional binary & sources tree! Public release of Mandrake 9.2 ISOs will happen at the same time as Mandrake 9.2 Pack availability in retail. It makes sense."

joestar writes "Just announced at Mandrake's website, Mandrake 9.2 (FiveStar) has just been released. Mandrake Club members get full access to 9.2 ISOs (through BitTorrent), as well as... all 9.2 contributors and translators. But the best news, in addition to all (impressive) 9.2 features is that everybody can access the traditional binary & sources tree! Public release of Mandrake 9.2 ISOs will happen at the same time as Mandrake 9.2 Pack availability in retail. It makes sense."

joestar writes "Just announced at Mandrake's website, Mandrake 9.2 (FiveStar) has just been released. Mandrake Club members get full access to 9.2 ISOs (through BitTorrent), as well as... all 9.2 contributors and translators. But the best news, in addition to all (impressive) 9.2 features is that everybody can access the traditional binary & sources tree! Public release of Mandrake 9.2 ISOs will happen at the same time as Mandrake 9.2 Pack availability in retail. It makes sense."

Colin writes "The founder of Slackware, Patrick Volkerding, released version 9.1 RC-2 of the upcoming Slackware. Good ol' Slack comes with new versions of packages while the addition of the Swaret tool adds dependency checking on Slackware for the first time! Here is an enthusiastic preview of Slackware 9.1 with plenty of screenshots." And pacc points out that Mandrake 9.2 will soon be ready, but only for Mandrake Club members at first. "But it will soon come to a mirror near you(TM). Though by choosing to distribute it with BitTorrent, do they effectively limit the downloads for a limited release?"

Slashback tonight brings you more on the recent cracking of GSM encryption,the odds of file sharers escaping industry scrutiny in Canada, the recently found (and stomped) OpenSSH bug, installation-time ads in Mandrake, and more. Read on below for the details.

Art of the Saber Jagaast writes "As a counterpoint to all the hype about the Star Wars kid, here's a Star Wars fan film that's actually very well done. Art of the Saber is 'a light saber fight sequence with the flavor of a Hong Kong martial arts action movie.' Well worth watching." Update by J : I've made torrents available.

Vote early, often, and reversably. An anonymous reader writes "As a follow up to a previous story here on Slashdot on electronic voting, Excite has a story on the same subject with a bit more information including this amazing quote from Deborah Seiler, Diebold's West Coast sales representative: '"These activists don't understand what they're looking at," Seiler said.'"

GSM-crack paper online morcheeba writes "Copies of the GSM-crack paper described in last week's Slashdot article are now available online (PDF) thanks to John Young's Cryptome"

Mandrake ads...take 2 *no comment* writes "Apparently there has been some controversy over the ads in the upcoming Mandrake 9.2. I thought it was pretty cut & dried, but apparently Mandrake thought it was enough of a controversy to to release a written statement about it. I wonder how many flames were posted in the slashdot forum using the download version of Opera."

Blaster Worm still alive and well on MIT campus fwc writes "MIT still has 900 network drops disabled due to the Blaster worm infection. Of particular interest is that MIT network security requires users to reformat their hard drive and re-install their operating system before they get back on the network. Sounds like a good excuse to reinstall something other than a Microsoft operating system."

A big AWOOOGAH for Canadian file sharers. Rumor writes in response to a recent story suggesting that Canadian users could swap files scot-free: "Listen, Canadians, don't go using your p2p apps and thinking you are immune from lawsuit, you are liable for copyright infringement if you share files on p2p apps.

To wit: a fellow law student and I have written an analysis of s. 80 of the Copyright Act and we've concluded that one can download music safely under the Private Copying provision, but no one can share or upload files without infringing on copyright.

In a nutshell, Private Copying allows anyone to make a copy of a song purely for their own use. As you probably know, when you share files and someone downloads from you, what actually happens is that their computer makes a request and your computer actually sends the file to them. Thus, you're copying for someone else's use and infringing. It doesn't matter if you didn't realize that's what happens, either... intent is not required for infringement.

The upside is that you can accept copies from other people (ie. download) all you want. Although there might be an issue of contributory infringement to worry about... I won't go into analyzing that, since so far the record companies are only suing uploaders.

The article can be found on greplaw.

I've recently confirmed this analysis with an IP law professor at my university, so I'm pretty damn sure of it. So, please, be aware of this danger. Downloading cool, uploading/sharing not. I guess the situation still better than nothing."

Why not ask for your money back? zaaj writes "There are several articles out about a newly found/fixed(openssh.org) buffer management bug in OpenSSH and some derivatives. Cisco's Advisory only mentions DoS attacks against certain of their SSH-enabled devices, but ZDNet's article hints at rumors of long-existing root exploits. Regardless, RedHat's got their typical list of updated packages with the patch back-ported. A few other distro's have info in the vendor section of Cert's advisory CA-2003-24"

thedarb writes "Mandrake has decided to sell ads to be seen during installation, web browsing and in screen savers. This all comes in their upcoming 9.2 release. Seven G's and you could put your face in their installer." Update: 09/12 18:07 GMT by M : Mandrake has a page about the ads.

DCowern writes "Mandrake today announced 9.2 beta 1 of their distribution. More interestingly, Mandrake has included a test version of kernel 2.6 in cooker (their development version). It's dated 27 July so it should be on all the cooker mirrors in the RPM2 directory by now. If you can't find it on your favorite mirror, it's definitely on ftp.sunet.se." Better yet, Bruha points to BitTorrent files for the 1st 2nd, and 3rd ISOs, and a link to the Mandrake 9.2 wiki, writing "Note that the beta1 installation uses the same kernel as 9.1 did, so if you had problems installing 9.1, you may want to wait for beta2 (which will use an updated kernel)."

DCowern writes "Mandrake today announced 9.2 beta 1 of their distribution. More interestingly, Mandrake has included a test version of kernel 2.6 in cooker (their development version). It's dated 27 July so it should be on all the cooker mirrors in the RPM2 directory by now. If you can't find it on your favorite mirror, it's definitely on ftp.sunet.se." Better yet, Bruha points to BitTorrent files for the 1st 2nd, and 3rd ISOs, and a link to the Mandrake 9.2 wiki, writing "Note that the beta1 installation uses the same kernel as 9.1 did, so if you had problems installing 9.1, you may want to wait for beta2 (which will use an updated kernel)."

sonatinas writes "Well, Mandrake 9.1 is out for PPC processors and a nifty utility included is the Mac-on-Linux feature where you can run mac os 9/x in a window at native speed." MoL is one thing that has impressed me for years about YellowDog Linux, too.

Not to load you up with Mandrake, but joestar writes "Mandrake Linux 9.1 (Bamboo) is now officially available at a number of FTP mirrors. This version appears to be a key release for MandrakeSoft and includes many new features such as a new simplified installation procedure, ZeroConf network support, Wi-Fi support, NTFS partition resizing and a brand-new... MandrakeGalaxy theme. It's very beautiful and the whole thing has apparently very few bugs, which is a good news. A full presentation is available at Mandrake's website, download is available from their FTP page as usual. As I see it, it's certainly the most important Mandrake release since version 7.0..." Update: 03/25 21:44 GMT by T : And if you like the distro, you can do both yourself and Mandrake a favor by ordering box sets straight from them, or joining Mandrake's Club.

Not to load you up with Mandrake, but joestar writes "Mandrake Linux 9.1 (Bamboo) is now officially available at a number of FTP mirrors. This version appears to be a key release for MandrakeSoft and includes many new features such as a new simplified installation procedure, ZeroConf network support, Wi-Fi support, NTFS partition resizing and a brand-new... MandrakeGalaxy theme. It's very beautiful and the whole thing has apparently very few bugs, which is a good news. A full presentation is available at Mandrake's website, download is available from their FTP page as usual. As I see it, it's certainly the most important Mandrake release since version 7.0..." Update: 03/25 21:44 GMT by T : And if you like the distro, you can do both yourself and Mandrake a favor by ordering box sets straight from them, or joining Mandrake's Club.

Not to load you up with Mandrake, but joestar writes "Mandrake Linux 9.1 (Bamboo) is now officially available at a number of FTP mirrors. This version appears to be a key release for MandrakeSoft and includes many new features such as a new simplified installation procedure, ZeroConf network support, Wi-Fi support, NTFS partition resizing and a brand-new... MandrakeGalaxy theme. It's very beautiful and the whole thing has apparently very few bugs, which is a good news. A full presentation is available at Mandrake's website, download is available from their FTP page as usual. As I see it, it's certainly the most important Mandrake release since version 7.0..." Update: 03/25 21:44 GMT by T : And if you like the distro, you can do both yourself and Mandrake a favor by ordering box sets straight from them, or joining Mandrake's Club.

Not to load you up with Mandrake, but joestar writes "Mandrake Linux 9.1 (Bamboo) is now officially available at a number of FTP mirrors. This version appears to be a key release for MandrakeSoft and includes many new features such as a new simplified installation procedure, ZeroConf network support, Wi-Fi support, NTFS partition resizing and a brand-new... MandrakeGalaxy theme. It's very beautiful and the whole thing has apparently very few bugs, which is a good news. A full presentation is available at Mandrake's website, download is available from their FTP page as usual. As I see it, it's certainly the most important Mandrake release since version 7.0..." Update: 03/25 21:44 GMT by T : And if you like the distro, you can do both yourself and Mandrake a favor by ordering box sets straight from them, or joining Mandrake's Club.

icantblvitsnotbutter writes "With Mandrake Linux 9.1 right around the corner, it's OSNews first out of the gates with a review of this desktop-oriented distro's latest release. The review is actually pretty bland, skimming the surface to linger on some of Eugenia's pet peeves. Having used 9.1 in a production environment since beta 3, I can say that the improvements to the installation and the signature Mandrake tools are much-appreciated. Don't forget that Mandrake Club members get their own set of mirrors, as well as being eligible for extras like the voting process that selected the packages for the 9.1 release." Update: 03/25 18:29 GMT by T : anyweb also points out a review of Red Hat Linux 9 on the same site, writing "an informative article -- well I had to say that, I wrote it ;-)"

icantblvitsnotbutter writes "With Mandrake Linux 9.1 right around the corner, it's OSNews first out of the gates with a review of this desktop-oriented distro's latest release. The review is actually pretty bland, skimming the surface to linger on some of Eugenia's pet peeves. Having used 9.1 in a production environment since beta 3, I can say that the improvements to the installation and the signature Mandrake tools are much-appreciated. Don't forget that Mandrake Club members get their own set of mirrors, as well as being eligible for extras like the voting process that selected the packages for the 9.1 release." Update: 03/25 18:29 GMT by T : anyweb also points out a review of Red Hat Linux 9 on the same site, writing "an informative article -- well I had to say that, I wrote it ;-)"

icantblvitsnotbutter writes "With Mandrake Linux 9.1 right around the corner, it's OSNews first out of the gates with a review of this desktop-oriented distro's latest release. The review is actually pretty bland, skimming the surface to linger on some of Eugenia's pet peeves. Having used 9.1 in a production environment since beta 3, I can say that the improvements to the installation and the signature Mandrake tools are much-appreciated. Don't forget that Mandrake Club members get their own set of mirrors, as well as being eligible for extras like the voting process that selected the packages for the 9.1 release." Update: 03/25 18:29 GMT by T : anyweb also points out a review of Red Hat Linux 9 on the same site, writing "an informative article -- well I had to say that, I wrote it ;-)"

bloodeu writes "Mandrake Linux has been beaten down by linux experts alike, but this new release of Mandrake may hold many promising Linux users what they have been waiting for, like NTFS resizing(which is a first), Automatic Network config(zeroconf), Supermount, and many more. You can download the Mandrake 9.1 RC1 Here"

bloodeu writes "Mandrake Linux has been beaten down by linux experts alike, but this new release of Mandrake may hold many promising Linux users what they have been waiting for, like NTFS resizing(which is a first), Automatic Network config(zeroconf), Supermount, and many more. You can download the Mandrake 9.1 RC1 Here"

bloodeu writes "Mandrake Linux has been beaten down by linux experts alike, but this new release of Mandrake may hold many promising Linux users what they have been waiting for, like NTFS resizing(which is a first), Automatic Network config(zeroconf), Supermount, and many more. You can download the Mandrake 9.1 RC1 Here"

Slashback tonight brings updates and amplifications on file-swapper hunting in Australia, Blender's progress since going open source, the badly subtitled LotR rips mentioned a few weeks ago, and more. Read on for the details.

Yes, does that come with insurance? An anonymous reader writes "Channel 4 news has a small report on the way that financial institutions are moving their computer systems and data backup out of central London to establishments such as The Bunker and Sealand."

Suddenly, those places seem a bit like less of a novelty and more good plain sense.

Copyright vs. Presumptive Scanning, part VXIIIXIX AnElder writes "The SMH (Sydney Morning Herald) now reports that 'Recording companies have asked the Federal Court to allow their computer experts to scan all computers at the University of Melbourne for sound files and email accounts, so they can gather evidence of claimed widespread breaches of copyright.' Are libraries next? "Counsel for the companies, Mr Tony Bannon SC, said industry studies of piracy had found public institutions such as universities and libraries were the biggest repositories of unlawful sound recordings."

Speaking of brand integrity. increment writes "The Engrish TTT Captions Site that was mentioned earlier here has apparently received a cease and desist order from AOL/Warner Bros and taken down their hilarious bootleg screenshots of The Two Towers. You did know that AOL is the parent company of New Line Cinema, right? AOL probably contends that humorous captions 'degrade their brand integrity,' though they should be grateful for such a vivid illustration of the poor quality of bootlegs. A few mirrors of the site can still be found around the net."

What about robotic juicers for the home? CallNElvis writes "Here's another interesting (translate that to "Cool! I want one") site lazydrinker.com showing a tabletop automatic drink pouring machine. It seems to be a little more polished than the last one posted here. The site includes a pretty cool mpeg of it in action."

Blend it into Knoppix, please :) 3-D modeling program Blender was converted from a proprietary license to the GPL last October. What's been going on since then? An anonymous reader writes "A couple of days ago, Blender 2.26 was released. This is the first open source version, and has all the features of the previous proprietary version, except physics support in the gamekit, which was not owned by NaN, and could thus not be opened.

Blender is 'the vi of 3d-modeling,' and was Freed by the community, when NaN (the company creating blender) went broke. It is platform independent (with roots in Unix), scriptable, has a steep but rewarding learning curve, ingenious but nonstandard user interface, and can be used to make games, 3d-web-thingies (there exists a browser plugin) and of course images, animations and models (which among others, can be exported to POV-ray)."

Mandrake keeps moving -- give it a whirl. An anonymous reader writes "The Mandrake 9.1 testing cycle is coming to an end. I haven't noticed any big fan-fare for testing this version, but I noticed that RC-1 is now on many of the ftp mirrors found here.

If you like the distro, don't forget to join MandrakeClub where you can help the company and have a say in what packages they include in their user-friendly distro."

Slashback updates and clarifications regarding recent posts on CodeCon, the rumored takeover of Vivendi by Microsoft, SDF, DDoS and NWLink (and IRC and AUPs), and more. Read on for the details, I'm out of letters.

"Uhh ... isn't this the 'Slammer'?" An anonymous reader writes "According to the BBC, two people suspected of creating the Slammer worm have been arrested in a combined operation by the FBI and the UK's National Hi-Tech Crime Unit. The raids in the UK resulted in the seizure of two men, aged 19 and 21, accused of being members of a hacker group that calls itself THr34t-Krew."

Gather together, hoist a few drinks. We've made a few mentions of this year's CodeCon; Len Sassaman writes "The schedule for CodeCon 2.0 is now online. CodeCon is already starting to get some media attention. There's less than two weeks left to register at the reduced rate, and conference seats are filling up quickly.If this conference is anything like its predecessor, expect to see some of the most interesting new technology of the coming year discussed."

And a slightly different type of gathering: Tony Stanco writes: "The agenda is up for the March 17-19 Open Source in Government conference and the free registration is now open. Please see www.eGovOS.org.

It promises to be another educational and exciting event with over 120 sessions and the keynote from the White House. Even Microsoft is trying to directly engage the community at this conference."

On the count of three, everyone shrug at once. In January, I posted a link ("far from confirmed") about the possibility that Microsoft would buy Vivendi. Now, Yagdrasil writes "USA today is reporting that the Microsoft buyout of Vivendi's game division (which includes Blizzard) was a hoax. It looks like the hoax originated from a student at Purdue."

But the EOLs are nearly upon us! Flee! Wister285 writes "Mandrake announced that they are going to stop updating the packages of 'legacy products.' It seems as though they took their cue from Red Hat and their continuing financial problems. I was a little surprised though about how short the support periods will be. Mandrake 9.0 will be considered obsolete September 30, 2003 (for desktop) and March 31, 2004 (for the base). This brings up two questions. First of all, do distros release too often thus creating too many versions to maintain? Secondly, how much faith do you have in the upgrade feature of install?"

I hope it features a dunk tank and some perpetrators. The ongoing war on spam continues; here's your chance to influence its direction (or at least to hear about what's going on in that sphere), even if you missed the conference at MIT. wayne writes "The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced today that they will be holding a three day public SPAM workshop in the end of April. I wonder if they will get an overflow crowd they way the MIT SPAM conference did. I hope they also make streaming video available."

Bandwidth is expensive. ndogg writes "NWLink.com has posted a response to the events that have happened in regards to SDF. In short, they say that they support SDF and what it is doing, however, the DDoS attack over the last three weeks has been costing them a lot of money."

fonixmunkee puts it differently: "The message is an interesting read, to say the least. instead of working the issue, NWLink's apparent (unofficial) solution to combating DDoS'es is to simply terminate the subscriber's connection. with all the slammer worms & Code Reds nowadays, NWLink should have no more customers left in about 2 years."

Legal liability is expensive, too. Tom Allender writes "irc-chat.net has announced a more restrictive Acceptable Use Policy after being contacted by the MPAA. They also refer to DALnets AUP changes mentioned here recently."

Slashback tonight with followups on previous stories about tablet computers, the fire at Mt.Stromlo, and Mandrake Linux -- read below for the details. Update: 01/24 00:08 GMT by T : One more update added below, regarding the post earlier this week on nVidia's new video card.

The silver lining.dragonsister writes "Regarding the recent slashdot story on Mount Stromlo Observatory being hit by fire, it seems the damage is not nearly as extensive as it might have been. The Australian National University has posted details here. In particular, the office buildings were spared, meaning that the work of staff and students is safe, and the many years worth of data collected should still be usable. The main question remaining in my mind is whether or not there were backups of the data on the computers that were actually located in the telescope buildings themselves, as these contained information crucial to the interpretation of some of the data. The importance of off-site backups has just been demonstrated. Everybody backup now!"

And blakduk writes "We were able to enter the site and retrieve computing equipment that survived the fire. This enabled us to set up our servers and have all staff back on-line within 24 hours."

Other than that, how was the parade? Back in November, I posted an article about the DocuNote, an inexpensive tablet PC available with Linux. According to richardbondi , maybe "cheap" would be a better word. He writes:

"I bought one, it arrived today. It was clearly used, not new, and didn't work. If you tilted it, it hung. I gave up after a dozen reboots. Only purchasable from www.microsono.com, where all sales are final.

The handwriting recognition software turned out to be trialware.

And although the stepupcomputing.com site says it works with Windows 2000, it came with a note that said now it has to be OEM installed.

One user's bad experience -- bad hardware, deceptive advertising re software."

Looks nice over two monitors, too. Znonymous Coward writes "Mandrake is trying to prove it's not dead yet. Yesterday[Note: the 19th, that is], they released Beta 2 of Mandrake 9.1. You can get the 2 ISO images from the usual mirrors." There's a (critical but mostly positive) review of this 2nd beta running at DistroWatch, too.

Once this starts it always gets messy. Per Hansson writes

"Yesterday we at Techspot posted a Interview with Nvidia plus high-resolution pictures of the Geforce FX.

A few sites rightfully claimed that this material had been stolen from Nordichardware however this was not the case, we interviewed Nvidia at the same time and therefore our Interviews looks so similar."

Anton Nilsson, assistant editor in chief of Nordic Hardware writes, in contrast,

"... [I]t seems as if they have used my material as found here.

I've spoken to the TechSpot staff and the person who reported the news item to you and it seems as if they overheard me doing my interview with nVidia at Comdex. Since they didn't want to bug nVidia with the same questions again they later on read the interview at my page and then posted it on theirs. Still that doesn't make up a fair excuse in my opinion."

You'll have to make up your own mind on this.

DCowern writes "Mandrake today announced version 9.1 of their distribution. While there are some interesting choices for new packages (like kernel 2.4.21pre2 and XFree86 4.3 beta) the most groundbreaking thing about this release is the way in which they decide which packages are "high priority" for development and inclusion in the standard install. Any registered user at MandrakeClub can vote. Their opinion is that no one knows where development effort needs to be spent better than the end-user." Update: 01/10 19:38 GMT by T : That's "distribution."

An anonymous reader writes "It seems that MandrakeSoft's short-term financial problem is worse than was thought. A new page on the Mandrake web site says: 'Everyone who is concerned with the company's future is encouraged to read and distribute the following message. In order to reach the next release, MandrakeSoft currently needs to raise cash, and quickly complete the Increase of Capital.' Darn, and I thought they were almost over this hump. Looks like a good time to help recruit Mandrake supporters for the Club."

joestar writes "According to their website, Mandrake and partners (Bull, INPG/INRIA...) have launched an 'easy-to-deploy easy-to-use Linux Clustering solution,' that has already been tested on a 40-node cluster. Of course, it's published under the GPL, comes with parallel applications, and is available for download as an ISO. It seems the project is financed by French government. It's great because I've always dreamed of having my own supercomputer at home."

CoolCat writes "It seems that Mandrake 9.0 has been surpassed or at least catched up by the latest versions of Red Hat and SuSE. OSNews has the review of the new Mandrake version and they have hit a number of bugs and problems. In fact, a number of Mandrake users in the OSNews comment's section agree that this release has been buggy and not a big step from version 8.2 or their competition. I use Mandrake for years and I really hope that the next version will bring us back the good ol' Mandrake we knew..."

jukal writes "Open for Business's Timothy R. Butler talked with Mandrake co-founder Gaël Duval about the company's past, present, and future. Worth a read, clip: "GD: For one year, we had a so-called "World Class Management" team that left us in a very bad financial situation, and engaged the company in ventures (such as e-learning) that we should never have been involved with. But that's all part of our history now, so I'd prefer to not dwell too much on that. ""

leviramsey writes "MandrakeSoft has released the first beta of the next version of its distribution. It features XFree86 4.2, KDE 3.0, GNOME 2.0, and is compiled with gcc-3.1, which (alas) makes it incompatible with a fair amount of commercial software."

fabiolrs writes "Mandrake Linux has an article in response to the message they sent on march 11th. They claim that because of user help they are "cash-flow positive"! That is great news since Linux community is now sure it will continue using one of the nicest distros available!"

Slashback arrives tonight with updates on the lukewarm path to cold fusion, one more update on what Microsoft claims is "the way out" (really, this time), a hopeful look at Mandrake's Club, and more -- read on below for the details.

"Congratulations! You may already own goats.cx!" King Mongo writes: "Well, well. First Verisign sent mail to trick domain owners into switching registrars ( as described earlier on Slashdot ); today I received a similar letter from Verisign asking me to renew cruel-intention.com with them. The problem is, I never bought cruel-intention.com and I've never used Verisign as a registrar. But what's this? Whois says I've owned it since September 2001? And the Technical Contact is Verisign? And it's registered for 10 years? You can bet I'll be contacting my state AG, as well as the USPS Inspectors' office; what if the domain name was offensive, or actionable (it may even be a DMCA violation)? Verisign has taken it upon themselves to hijack my identity and expose me to litigation! At least they let me know!"

Port softly, and carry a big Club. joestar writes: "Just seen in Mandrake Linux news... It seems that the recent call for Mandrake Club subscriptions had a double effect: it was a financial success for MandrakeSoft ($390,000 since the Club was first created on November 28th, 2001), and at the same time it generated lots of questions about this new approach of doing business with Free-Software. In a really interesting message, MandrakeSoft's CEO Jacques Le Marois gives all details about the Club results and why and how they are currently inventing a new business model dedicated to Free-Software oriented companies, since the traditional business models fail for these companies. Actually I'm impressed."

OK, perhaps we only have the way sideways. gh0ul writes "news.com is featuring an article regarding Microsoft and Unisys' joint venture to steer companies/individuals away from Unix and branch in to the corporate servers based on Windows2000. With all the negative impact towards 'wehavethewayout.com', im supprised they kept it going.. guess that $28 million matters.."

We've patented that way to think, sorry. An Anonymous Coward writes: "The Symantec marketing droids are on the rampage again. After patenting their definition update technology, this time they patented heuristic virus scanning. When will this insanity end? :P"

I'll believe it when it's powering my air-car. abburdlen writes: "A month ago an article in the Journal Science appeared hyping the possibility of tabletop fusion. Quick summary: Sonoluminescence in heavy acetone ... temperature of collapsing bubbles reaching temperature hotter than the Sun ... evidence of fusion. There was some excitement. There were also many initial skeptics. Looks like the doubtful win again. From the APS, 'The possibility of a major discovery has been obscured by substandard experimental techniques.' Ouch."

One day we'll all have decent bandwidth, right? Pathway writes "I know this has been looked at by slashdot before, but here's a good update comparing the Zipp Fiber to the Terabyte Triangle in Spokane at thelocalplanet.com. In the article, they compare how one prodject is so successful, while the other is foundering. It's a good read."

joestar writes: "As seen at Mandrake's website, Mandrake Linux 8.2 Beta seems to be available for download at different places. The new features include the ability to install a Mandrake as small as 65Mb on the HD, and encrypted file-system support. I guess it's the good time to report all bugs we don't want to see in the final version. Very promising release, worth a look at!"

joestar writes: "As seen at Mandrake's website, Mandrake Linux 8.2 Beta seems to be available for download at different places. The new features include the ability to install a Mandrake as small as 65Mb on the HD, and encrypted file-system support. I guess it's the good time to report all bugs we don't want to see in the final version. Very promising release, worth a look at!"

It's not a contradiction: Free software costs money. (That's because server space, bandwidth, coffee, electricity, computers, and workspace all cost money.) Besides which, the time it takes to code new window managers, programming libraries (and languages), web browsers, and all the other goodies which make a modern computer useful may be spent as a labor of love, but it's time that competes with real-world jobs, family time, vacations in the Riviera and sleep. Besides the relative few who work at work on their Free software projects, the programmers, project managers, web-site maintainers, documentation jockeys and QA volunteers behind the programs we enjoy every day don't seem to be in it for the money, so much as the thrill of releasing new software, a desire to make their own world a little better, and for plain old fun. The staffers and volunteers who put long hours and dedication into organizations trying to safeguard online freedoms are also obviously interested in rewards that go way beyond salaries. This New Year's, consider giving them a little money anyhow. Here are a few ideas; you're invited to point out projects and organizations that I've left out.

As you may have read the other day, the FreeBSD project is now taking donations via PayPal. And if you're in a clean, roots-UNIX kind of mood, the folks at OpenBSD and NetBSD (NetBSD PayPal) would probably also appreciate your goodwill, not to mention your money, hardware and time.

If you don't have a specific project in mind, but would like to donate some of your chunk of the time-money continuum to a worthy software undertaking, a good place to start is Software in the Public Interest. They can take both general donations as well as earmark for projects they support, like Berlin, Debian, GNOME and more. (Not into GNOME? KDE could use some assistance, including money, too.)

If you like the projects funded by the boxed-distribution makers (like paying for full-time work on endeavors like KOffice), you can do more than buy the box: Mandrake has recently formed something called the Mandrake Club as a gathering place for both people and funds.

To encourage (and reward) cross-platform goodness, supporting the Mozilla project is hard to beat. (This story was posted using a 9.7 build using the wonderful Modern theme.) Source of Mozilla wisdom Mozillazine could use some help paying for the switch to a new host, and to defray ongoing costs. Another good place to cast your perls is Yet Another Foundation, which supports the somewhat scrutable development of the not-so-scrutable Perl.

More generally, consider investing some money in organizations like the Free Software Foundation, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the Electronic Privacy and Information Center (EPIC), all of which help battle (in court and in the marketplace of ideas) the forces who wish to monitor and otherwise exert top-down control of your computer and everything to do with your on-line life.

Remember, with all of these projects, non-monetary contributions are welcomed as well -- if you can write or correct some online documentation, create test-cases to root out weaknesses, or create some pretty graphics to smooth the user experience, you can contribute. (Long-distance pizza deliveries to developers are also generally appreciated.) Teaching a coworker, classmate, parent or friend how to set up mailfilters on a Linux box, or how to edit photos in the GIMP, is a nice way to save them money, too. Making a difference locally might also mean contributing some time, money or hardware to help run local LUG events.

Note: Many of the organizations named above are set up as 501(c) charities; if you'd like to claim any charitable contributions as tax deductions, now's the time to get the postmark, at least if it's important to you for those donations to be on the current calendar year. For a few more ideas on ways to donate geekily this year, see Jack Bryar's Newsforge column with some more links.

And a Happy New Year's!