From a press release at LinuxPR: “Boston, MA, January 17, 2001 — Ximian, the leading open source
desktop company (formerly known as Helix Code), today announced it
has secured $15 million in funding from Charles River Ventures and
Battery Ventures. Formed in late 1999, Ximian is turning the open
source desktop into the industry’s most collaborative and useful
Internet-based tool. Ximian currently has more than 500,000 users, and
is a founding member of the GNOME Foundation advisory board which
includes such industry leaders as Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard,
Compaq and IBM.”

ZDNet’s eWEEK loves the latest version of the Linux kernel, but advises users to wait a few months until the major distributions release new versions that incorporate the 2.4.x release.

Wired News reports that UUNet subsidiary Pipex, often cited by anti-spammers as the most persistent source of unsolicited commercial email, was recently innundated with so much of the stuff that it crashed their servers. Spam fighters are celebrating “an ironic bit of payback,” while Pipex blames the attack on “hackers,” preferring to believe that anyone sending that much email posesses “pretty sophisticated hacking skills.”

Know your computing past. It will help you appreciate current technology much, much more. Slashdot readers — at least those old enough to remember the 1980s — share memories of old DEC computers. This trip down memory lane was triggered by coverage of an “nontechnical reminiscence written in 1988” that was penned on the occasion of Columbia University unplugging its last DECSYSTEM-20.

Art Technology released version 5.1 of of its Dynamo application server this morning. In addition to the speed tweaks and Chinese language options now offered, the latest Dynamo now includes “enhanced platform support” for Red Hat 6.2. Get the full story at TechWeb.

ZDNet UK reports on Sun’s new Cobalt line of servers, some selling for less than $1000, all running Linux. Inexpensive servers running Linux won’t cannibalize Sparc and Solaris sales, Sun said with a straight face.

In the latest installment of system administration tutorials at Linux Journal, the focus is on file sharing services. Welcome to the wonderful world of cross-platform network file trading via samba, coda, afs, and of course, NFS.

Reuters reports that super-huge media company AOL Time Warner has entered a licensing agreement with Nokia to provide an
Internet browser for wireless devices. AOL will develop and market a Netscape-branded version of Nokia’s existing browser,
known as WAP, for use in many mobile communications
devices.

From the humor site Segfault: “The current negotiations with the President at a peace summit in Washington, D.C. seem to be going nowhere, as the two warring factions in the PC-Mac war refuse to compromise. The most recent meeting got completely out of hand, with the two sides arguing endlessly and calling each other ‘lamers.’ “

LogError writes: “Help Net Security has organized a contest through net-security.org in which participants have to write an opinion on the “most secure OS”. The best five opinions will be published on the site and their authors will get a free copy of the The FreeBSD Corporate Networker’s Guide.”