CNet reports on Sendmail’s acquisition of Nascent Techologies, which makes software for accessing email from cell phones or the Web. Read the press release from BusinessWire.

From MSNBC: “MSNBC.com has learned that the hacker who
recently tried to extort CreditCards.com has been at it before.
Another site victimized by the hacker has stepped forward,
telling MSNBC.com it suffered a similar extortion several
months ago. The hacker followed the exact same routine,
demanded $20,000, and used the same e-mail address as the
CreditCards.com hacker. What’s more, the owner of this site
told MSNBC.com the hacker is suspected in more than a dozen
other hacking extortion attempts.”

From LinuxPR:
Andamooka, which provides open support for open content, has added two more
books to its growing library of open content.

Linux Kernel Module Programming Guide, by Ori Pomerantz, teaches
readers how to write modules for the Linux kernel version 2.2. It is geared
toward readers who know C and have written Linux programs.

Linux From Scratch, by Gerard Beekmans, shows how to build a Linux system
directly from the source code included with Linux distributions. Readers will also
learn deeply about Linux and about operating systems in general.

From BusinessWire: EMBLIX, the Japan Embedded Linux Consortium, today announced their first elected officer
corps, the results of an election process that was initiated at Japan’s largest embedded systems conference, MST 2000 last month. Today, the
consortium also established three working groups designed to initiate discussion within the embedded Linux community about platform and
interoperability issues.
The new EMBLIX officer corps will consist of leaders in the Linux community who are well versed in the issues surrounding the Japanese
embedded Linux market.

From Reuters: Online music service Emusic.com says it has filed a copyright
infringement complaint against MP3.com, an Internet music service
that earlier resolved similar litigation by five major record labels.

From a guest column on ZDNet News by Lutris Technologies’ David Young: ” Mary Jo Foley’s recent column “Open-source backers:
Are you afraid?” gets it all wrong. The suggestion that big companies pose a threat to open
source misses the big picture, focusing instead on a
worn-out generality that positions Microsoft Corp.’s
competitors against the open-source movement in a way
Bill Gates himself would envy.”

– By Grant Gross –

A longtime Linux user hopes a petition will convince British Telecom to back off its claim of having a patent on hyperlinks.

Rick Collette, a Unix system administrator and Webmaster of the Linux community site deepLinux.com organized the petition Friday, after hearing that British Telecom was suing Internet service provider Prodigy on BT’s claims that it should be compensated for the use of hyperlinks.

“Just think of the impact it could have on anybody’s day-to-day life,” Collette says of BT’s claim. “I don’t know if anybody can grasp how big this is. This could affect the way we do business — this could affect everybody.”

Collette says he’s not sure what he hopes the petition will accomplish, short of the unlikely event that BT will back down from its claims. He plans to give the petition to Prodigy, as a show of support, and he plans to distribute it to as many media organizations that will listen — “online, offline, it doesn’t matter, just anybody and everybody.”

BT researchers developing text-based information services, applied for a patent in 1976 . The U.S. Patent Office granted the company a patent in 1989. But Collette says it’d be chaos if all the creators of the many Open Source projects that help run the Internet would sudden decide they want royalties. “I’m puzzled why anybody would want to do this,” he says of BT’s actions.

Collette, a Linux user since 1993 or ’94, says the petition isn’t a publicity stunt for deepLinux.com, a hobby site he launched in mid-November. The petition is hosted away from his site, at i-Charity.com. The petition announcement on his site does include a link to some hypertext history.

As of Tuesday morning, the petition had more than 150 signatures, many including comments. A German resident wrote: “Hypertext is the digital equivalent to footnotes, which are even older than the British Telecom!”

Another comment, from someone in the U.K.: “The only good thing about this whole issue is that it highlights the stupidity of software patents.”

Collette hopes that anyone who uses hyperlinks on the Web will consider signing the petition.

NewsForge editors read and respond to comments posted on our discussion page.

“Before you spend any money on an Internet filtering program, beware. A new “antifiltering” software
application could render it useless.

Peacefire, a free-speech group, on Monday announced software that can disable filtering programs
such as SurfWatch, Cyber Patrol, Net Nanny, CYBERsitter, X-Stop, PureSight, and Cyber Snoop.” Full story at PCWorld.

“Schools and libraries that receive federal funds will
find new strings attached to the money — they’ll
have to filter Internet content.” Full story at ZDNet News.

Previously, if you wanted 64-bit computing power, you would have had to
choose one of the proprietary 64-bit platforms. Linux does run on several
of these but it is not the first choice for the enterprise on these
platforms. Prakash Advani explains in this
article on FreeOS why the Itanium is expected to
change all that and cement Linux’s position at the top-end of the corporate segment. –Chandrashekhar Bhosle