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Gandalf61 writes: "On siliconvalley.com, they've opened up a roundtable discussion concerning MS's Craig Mundie's recent attacks on the GPL. It's titled 'Code War,' and a panel of other-than-MS luminaries is on-board, and attacks on Mundie's the over-the-edge 3 May speech have begun. Mundie started the discussion, and one reply is now posted by a panel member, shredding the MS view of reality ... This looks to be fun." Since this submission rolled in, a number of posts have appeared in this moderated discussion set to continue for the next few days; RMS withdrew from the panel shortly before it began, though, and the result is a discussion which is engaging but perhaps not as fiery as it would be with Stallman in the ring. It's downright civil so far, in fact; hopefully it's a good environment for FUD-busting.

Microsoft's new crusade against licenses that enforce source-code sharing has reached the EULA of their Mobile Internet Toolkit. It even disallows the use of any "Publicly Available Software" tool in the production of software using this SDK. This seems to be a very wide ranging restriction applying to compilers (gcc), editors (vim, staroffice), filesystems (backup on linux server), web-browsers (mozilla logging into some online tool provider), Java (sun's virtual machine). The licenses covered include: the GPL and LGPL, the Artistic License (e.g., PERL), the Mozilla Public License, the Netscape Public License, the Sun Community Source License (SCSL), and the Sun Industry Standards License (SISL). Is this legal? Thanks to Jonathan for the link. Update: 06/26 05:42 PM by S : Here's a legal opinion on the matter.

A reader writes: "There's an interesting Dan Gillmor column about the whole ASP/online storage thing. What happens when these places go away? What happens when they change? "

There's an interesting column on SiliconValley.com from Dan Gillmor (IMHO, one of the few smart columnists out there) about a probably-unimplementable idea: Killing illegal companies. The notion appeals to me though -- but even more, the idea of bad companies wearing electronic tracking bracelets amuses me. *grin*

Thanks to Dan Gillmor for pointing out Linus' reply to the comments that Mundie from Microsoft made this week. The response is vintage Linus - but the points he raises regarding openness vis a vis science & learning and open source is very cogent.

SEWilco writes: "MSN is expecting to increase its users by 10% in a deal with Baby Bell Qwest. Although the MSFT press release does not specifically state it, according to Mercury News and Reuters/Yahoo a later conference call confirmed that Qwest.Net will be replaced by MSN service. MSN said it will 'strike deals with companies that own their own infrastructure rather than wholesalers' in a PC World article pointed at by a recent DSL discussion. You can't strike a much bigger deal than this, unless you get all of a Baby Bell's voice customers too." A few readers have written in unhappy that they're about to become MSN customers, too.

Slashback tonight brings you an update on Intel honcho Gordon Moore (whose famous observation will probably be written about in histories of the 20th century); more news on the state of 802.11 security; a word or three on Linuxgruven; and the odd link on election technologies to leave dimpled chads in the past.

What's the frequency, Kenneth? Maybe the analogies will just never stop, but Jethro73 points to this piece with "802.11's security issues compared to Swiss Cheese ...?"

The downside of all the attention being focused on the problems with 802.11 is that by the time there are some networks on my block to piggyback on, the holes will all be gone;)

Hopefully one of the last words here ... Rivendahl directs you attention to "this link to the StlToday.com web site giving a brief summary of a pending lawsuit against Linuxgruven.com, Inc. A bit of rumor says the owners cannot be found and perhaps fled. While I'd rather not report rumor, I would like to make sure the people Linuxgruven.com, Inc. has burned hear about them going down in flames and let them know also of the pending lawsuits. I don't know how much ex-employees may get out of it but at least spread the word, please. I know the teachers at Linuxgruven.com, Inc. teach their students to read /."

So it's time to put my Linuxgruven bumperstickers on eBay? Maybe they will mate with the LinuxOne distribution ...

Next year he'll be only half as old, though. cnkeller writes: "Gordon Moore has hit the maximum age of employment at Intel. As of May, he'll only be an honorary employee. Story here"

Please pick your poison; after that it's your fault. Erik Nilsson points to four informative articles about that which we Americans might prefer to hear nothing more about for a few years: voting, elections software, and Internet voting.

In 'No Easy Answers,' Lorrie Faith Cranor surveys elections technology, evaluates the prospects for Internet voting, and makes recommendations for action.

'Why Has Voting Technology Failed Us?' examines the performance of existing systems, and considers the prospects for improvement.

In 'Sweden to Experiment with E-voting,' Anders Olsson reports on Sweden's current electoral experiments.

In 'System Integrity Revisited,' Rebecca Mercuri and Peter Neumann examine the reasons why current voting systems have failed. They call on computer professionals to contribute their expertise to an informed discussion."

The upshot is still that there are no easy answers to ensuring that elections are accurate and fair.

theodp writes: "SiliconValley.com has a report today on the strange saga of the Amazon.com 1-Click Bounty contest. BountyQuest president Charles Cella is refusing to answer questions on the contest. Tim O'Reilly admits he's not clear how BountyQuest officials researched and judged the entries, but still lashes out against charges of possible shenanigans raised by a contestant who BountyQuest tried to "buy off" with a T-shirt. In the meantime, Jeff Bezos still has no comment on the contest's odd outcome. "

Maaaac writes "Just read this on GMSV: 'British researchers are developing a new kind of optical fiber that could surpass the known data transmission limitations of fiber. Augmented with a pattern of microscopic air holes that runs their entire length, these aptly-named holey fibers have a variety of surprising optical properties, not the least of which is single mode operation at all wavelengths and the ability to withstand the transmission of huge amounts of energy or data. To produce the fibers, researchers aligned an array of thin glass tubes, melted them together, and then stretched them to make a single fiber several kilometers long and about 125 microns across. While it's previously been suggested that such fibers would be predominantly used to transmit power -- or even matter -- their data transmission capabilities could be instrumental to the development of optical computers.' Now if only they would run this to my curb..."

Mynn writes "Tennesean.com is reporting that copyright.net is now operational." There's another story about copyright.net at siliconvalley.com. Supposedly they just banned 350,000 Napster users on the basis of title scans - obviously they didn't listen to one million mp3 files to make sure they were actually such-and-such a song, that would take years. Sure, this may be a little overbroad - you'll run into situations like the one described here (in German - use a translator), where a webpage offering mp3 files was attacked, except that the *.mp3 files were just text files with the cryptic letters "*aetsch*" in them - but who cares, they're just Napster users, they probably did something bad, right?