MSNBC pointedly asks who will be the new US government’s point-man on high-tech matters. While Al Gore was at least somewhat tech-aware, George W. Bush’s cabinet appointments appear to be lacking in that respect.

Wired.com reports that MP3.com, “hoping to capitalize on the goodwill of open-source developers by making available its costly Beam-It
application-programming interface,” is running into some resistance.

Upside.com follows up on an earlier story:
“Speaking in an interview (published today) with online
news site VNUnet, Gartner Group analyst George Weiss said that unless smaller
companies such as Red Hat (RHAT) and VA Linux (LNUX) get their act together,
IBM could be in a position to exert a ‘stranglehold’ on the community.
Weiss’ comments came after a midweek briefing with IBM execs. It’s no secret that
IBM has become increasingly bullish on open source software within the past 24
months. In December, IBM chief Gerstner publicly announced his company’s
willingness to invest $1 billion in marketing, support and development efforts related
to the GNU/Linux operating system.” (VA Linux owns NewsForge.)

From Readersdigest.co.uk: “In the middle of the night, a scruffy 21-year-old
sat in a darkened room at his mother’s house in
Helsinki, Finland, tapping out a message on his
computer keyboard. ‘Hello everybody out
there,’ he typed, sipping tea and nibbling the
dry pasta he habitually ate. ‘I’m doing a (free)
operating system (just a hobby, won’t be big
and professional)…I’d like any feedback on
things people like/dislike…’
The young man’s name was Linus Torvalds.
And what he sent out to the world on that
August night in 1991 has transformed the whole
landscape of computer use.”

ZDNet has the press release telling of LinuxDevices.com’s launch of a fully support Embedded and Real-time Linux Technical Q&A Forum, staffed by volunteers.

InfoWorld reports companies touting Unix servers could face troubles with industry heavyweights such as IBM putting money behind Linux serviers.

jeramy b smith writes: “penguinppc.org has launched a new section to provide short bios of notable members of the PowerPC Linux community. The first bio is of a person who has been in the news lately, Jason Haas of LinuxPPC, Inc.”

Posted at LWN.net: There is a bug in the current version of the GNU C Library (glibc)
that is shipped with Immunix Linux 7.0-beta. This bug can allow
unprivileged users to read files that would normally be restricted
(like /etc/shadow). This is done by setting the RESOLV_HOST_CONF
environment variable to the file that the user wishes to read, and
then running any setuid root program (like sudo or ssh.) This causes
the restricted file to be written to stderr.

From LinuxPR: LinuxCertified.com, a leading provider of Linux training, will offer its next
weekend system administration bootcamp on February 10-11, 2001 in San
Francisco bay area (south bay). This workshop is designed for busy information
technology professionals and is designed to cover the most important Linux
administration areas.

Upside reports on the possiblity that the StarOffice leader may leave Sun for greener pastures.