Anand Kumria writes “For those of you who have been hungering for Online Registrations to Linux.Conf.Au they are finally open. This is your chance to see great speakers such as Alan Cox, David Miller, John “maddog” Hall, Andrew Tridgell, Rik van Riel, The Rasterman, Raph Levien, Paul “rusty” Russel and many others.Check out the schedule and get yourself geared up for the Beach-proof hardware contest today.“

From SecurityFocus: “Oracle WebDB is part of the Oracle Internet Application Server
package, distributed by Oracle Corporation. A problem exists which
can allow users unauthorized access to restricted resources.”

“Video game manufacturers Nintendo and Sega on Wednesday vehemently denied a New York Times report that the companies are in talks to merge.” More at TheStandard.

TheStandard reports that former Microsoft Internet Explorer lead programmer Satoshi Nakajima “has launched a startup that could fulfill Java’s original potential.
At Microsoft, relying on technology from another company – Sun Microsystems (SUNW) – was tantamount to treason. So Nakajima downloaded Sun’s promising new programming language, Java, and experimented with it at home. “I was so impressed by the simplicity of the language,” Nakajima says, “and was a little sad that I couldn’t use it at work.””

LinuxWorld’s Joe Barr takes a look everything Linux that was worthy of appreciation in 2000.

“In the Terms of Service for pagecreators.net I found this about halfway through.
D. You agree not to post any type of review about Page Creators at any time anywhere on the web.
This includes any statement good or bad. You understand you will be held liable for damages of no
more than fifty-thousand dollars if a review is found and traced back to yourself. What is up with
that?”Complete discussion is at Slashdot.

An Anonymous Reader shares news of a review at LinuxLookup: “With Socket A motherboards now being almost a dime a dozen, Abit
steps in with it’s contender, the KT7-RAID. This board packs a killer
punch, and there is no question it is one of the top boards for Socket A
processors. In the past, Abit has been quite innovative with its products,
and the KT7-RAID continues this tradition. Lets see how this baby
shapes up under Linux.”

From O’Reilly: “Whenever I have too much time on my hands, I can be found perusing the FreeBSD ports collection. I
provide endless amusement for my daughter as I show off my latest geek discoveries; to paraphrase her
favourite Dogbert quote, I’ve entered the state of “nerdvana.” In this week’s article, follow along as I take a tour through the ports collection on the hunt for the obscure,
the amusing, and the useful.”

ZDNet reports that Intel gave up fixing its Pentium 4 bug in favour of instructing PC manufacturers on how to circumvent the problem, which can lead to performance lapses with dual-headed displays and other graphics intensive setups.

ZDNet reports that the German mobile phone network collapsed Christmas day under the strain of people trying their new cell phones. It is expected to happen again on New Year’s day.