From FreeOS.com: “Grab some popcorn! These are great times for watching
movies on your desktop. There have never been so many
options available. Read on for more about the choices
you have under Linux for MPEG/VCD playback.”

Linux.com brings us these juicy tips for newbies and others.

Wired News celebrates the most highly anticipated goods or services that, despite all the promises, failed to be transformed from ethereal vapor into real, tangible hardware or software.

The Register reports: “A squadron of heavily armed IBM spin bombers left their hilltop base
at Almaden, Ca at the end of last week. Their destination – Vulture
Central. Their mission – to disarm public outrage at the proposed
inclusion of CPRM copy control mechanisms into hard disks. The
bombers were loaded with a good-natured arsenal of flattery, non
sequiters, and laser-guided hand waves.”

From oLinux.br: “Originally, the NetBeans IDE began as a
student project – a few students who were Borland Delphi fans
wanted to see if they could write something like Delphi in Java,
for Java. In fact, the first version was called Xelfi.

This attracted some interest, and eventually a company was
created, and the name was changed to NetBeans. Open source
was always a consideration – the simple rationale was this: No
one vendor will either have the resources or find it strategic to
build all of the functionality users want. So without some
openness, developers would never have a tool that is truly what
they want.”

The OSDEM website has been updated with a new design and lots of info about speakers and talks of the 3rd and 4th february event taking place in Brussels. If you are in the area, be sure to be there to get presentations from Fyodor, Jeremy Allison, Rasterman and lots of other leading Open Source and Free Software Developers. –Raphael Bauduin

According to CNet, Sony has said there is nothing it can do about the recently reported purchase of as many as 1400 Play Stations by the Iraqi government for military purposes.

Nando Times looks back a year to the Year 2000 bug and reflects on what was learned there and what benefits came out of the scare.

CNet reports that Microsoft’s Xbox will not be available in Europe until the year following its North American and Japanese releases, to avoid Play Station 2-like shortages.

Wired reports that the Mir 1 space station lost contact for much of Tuesday, causing fears that the space craft could come tumbling out of orbit. Communications were established late in the day, and the troubled spacecraft was found to be low on power, unable to communicate.