From OSOpinion: “One constant in the debate surrounding Open Source Software has
been the claim that Open Source Software has only a limited claim on
the heartstrings of software developers because most PC userland
software such as accounting packages, etc., is not as “sexy” as
compilers, etc. So they won’t be developed, or won’t develop quite as
fast as compilers, etc.”

Steven Levy, writer of the underground classic “Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution“, wrote a new book entitled “Crypto: When the Code Rebels Beat the Government –
Saving Privacy in the Digital Age”. The book will be available on Amazon.com on January 4th 2001. In association with the book publishers, you can win 2 copies of “Crypto” on the HNS web site. –LogError

LinuxMedNews.com has this Christmas greetings: From us (“the wishor”) to you (“hereinafter called the wishee”) Please accept without obligation, implied or implicit, our best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, politically correct, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral, celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all…and a financially successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2001, but with due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures or sects, and having regard to the race, creed, colour, age, physical ability, religious faith, choice of computer platform or dietary preference of the wishee. Author Unknown–Saint

LinuxMedNews.com has this Christmas greetings: From us (“the wishor”) to you (“hereinafter called the wishee”) Please accept without obligation, implied or implicit, our best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, politically correct, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral, celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all…and a financially successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2001, but with due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures or sects, and having regard to the race, creed, colour, age, physical ability, religious faith, choice of computer platform or dietary preference of the wishee. Author Unknown–Saint

Well, somebody seems to be enjoying ecommerce this year, specifically K-Mart, whose BlueLight.com site has seen over a 1000% increase since K-Mart used it to replace their original, basic KMart.com, according to this CNet story, anyway.

Continuation of a previous discussion at net-security.org about vulnerabilities in ssh and ssl and what you can do about them.

Linuxlookup.com TOTW: Using ‘tr’ to translate data –
This week’s tip is about using the “tr” command. The things I’m going to
do with it could also be done with perl, sed, awk, etc. The use of tr
doesn’t seem to be widely known, so I’ll show it here to add to your bag of
tricks. –
link-Anonymous Reader

Computerweekly.co.uk says, “The demand for Java has reached such a crescendo that one recruitment agency plans to place part-qualified Java developers
two to three months before they are ready to hit the workplace.”

LinuxMonth: “In this article I will explain how to make your Linux box secure by taking basic security measures. This article will enable anybody to tighten the
security of a Redhat Linux box.”

LinuxToday has this story: “Upon introduction Transmeta’s Crusoe processor has generated much interest with its promises of strong performance and
long battery life. This, in combination with announcements from well-known manufacturers that they will incorporate
Transmeta’s processors in their notebooks, has led many people to believe that we’ll see substantial improvements in
price/performance levels for these devices. “