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Legislation and More Legislation
Jon Johansen
As has been reported in previous months, Jon Johansen, the Norwegian man charged in relation to the DeCSS computer code, has been successful in his legal travails. Now, it has been reported that he is going to attempt to turn the tables and seek compensation from the Norwegian white collar crimes unit.
PATRIOT Act
EFF is taking a weekly look at the various provisions of the PATRIOT act which
could/should be allowed to lapse in December 2005. The first provision
studied is
Section 215 allowing the FBI access to your private records.
DVD CCA and DeCSS
The DVD Copy Control Association (also known as the DVD CCA) has abandoned its case against Andrew Brunner. Brunner found himself at the sharp end of legal action as a result of having distributed the DeCSS computer code on his website. The thrust of the DVD CCA legal action was to assert that Brunner was a violator of trade secret laws. However, the legal action taken by the DVD CCA, which was one many cases, proved unsuccessful in halting the global distribution of the computer code, which is now anything but secret.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation maintains a DVD-CCA v. Brunner case archive.
Linux Links
GNUstep Live CD (based on Morphix)
Converting an existing system to use the 2.6 kernel.
An interesting article by B. D. McCullough on errors in the statistics functions of Excel and Gnumeric. The two packages shared some of the same errors, Gnumeric has been fixed, Excel has not. (courtesy Linux Today).
developerWorks on the improvements in Linux kernel development from 2.4 to 2.6.
IT Manager's Journal sees embedded Linux as a disruptive force.
PC World takes a look at Mozilla.org's new Firefox web browser
Six Things First-Time Squid Administrators Should Know
Which Linux distribution is the most popular? Which is growing fastest?
Linux and the distributed chess-brain.
Munich's switch to Linux facing a bumpy road
News in General
Nonprofit Open Source Primer
NOSI (Nonprofit Open Source Initiative), has released a primer document for nonprofit bodies considering the use of open-source alternatives to closed-source applications. The PDF document can be downloaded from their website
Linux
The Linux kernel has been updated to a new stable version: 2.6.3. Changelog is available.
The old stable line has also received an update, to a new version: 2.4.25, while the previous stable tree has also seen a fresh addition in version 2.2.26.
Firefox
The browser formerly known as Firebird (and before that as Phoenix) has now changed its name to Firefox. Though you may be interested to read the background FAQ to the name-change, it is probably more useful to look at the new features included in this release
wxWindows
wxWindows is to change name to become wxWidgets following pressure from Microsoft regarding possible trademark infringement of Microsoft's "Windows" name. The agreement appears to be relatively amicable.
The Battle for Wesnoth
The Battle for Wesnoth is a fantasy turn-based strategy game.
Nicely, it is has been released under the GPL, and can be used on
GNU/Linux, Windows, MacOSX, BeOS, Solaris and FreeBSD. You can read about
the game on the
project website.
Linux Gaming Planet has also posted a review of the game, including an
interview the project originator, David White.
Distro News
Debian
Fedora
Fedora, as reported by eWeek, appears to be the first major Linux 2.6 based distribution. LXer has a review of the 2.6 based distro online.
Linux From Scratch
The LFS Development Team has announced the release of LFS-5.1-PRE1, the first pre-release of the upcoming LFS-5.1 book. You can read it online or you can download the book from to read it locally at http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/
This being a test release, the team would appreciate any feedback, in particular bugs in the installation instructions. Any and all feedback should be sent to the lfs-dev mailinglist.
Xandros
The Register has
reviewed Xandros Linux. "User-friendly to a fault".
Software and Product News
REALbasic 5.5
REAL Software has released REALbasic 5.5 Professional Edition. This software enables developers to compile Visual Basic source code under Linux.
AP Intelligent Mail SwitchT
Secluda Technologies has launched the AP Intelligent Mail Switch, an SMTP perimeter-gateway solution for e-mail productivity. With the company's existing product InboxMasterR, the AP Intelligent Mail Switch gives IT professionals greater ability to monitor and manage e-mail environments; improve the performance and reliability of e-mail applications including anti-spam filters, virus scanning, and e-mail servers; and prevent false positives and other problems caused by e-mail filters.
Secluda's AP Intelligent Mail Switch runs on SUSE, Red Hat, and Mandrake Linux, and is priced on a user/server basis starting at $195 up to $3,995 for an unlimited server license.
Mick is LG's News Bytes Editor.
![[Picture]](../gx/2002/tagbio/conry.jpg)
Born some time ago in Ireland, Michael is currently working on
a PhD thesis in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, University
College Dublin. The topic of this work is the use of Lamb waves in
nondestructive testing. GNU/Linux has been very useful in this work, and
Michael has a strong interest in applying free software solutions to
other problems in engineering. When his thesis is completed, Michael
plans to take a long walk.
