CNet reports that metal-rap band Rage Against The Machine is “offering an olive branch to fans angry
about being booted from Napster last week, posting a long list of otherwise
unavailable songs and videos to its Web site.

Many fans of the band found themselves barred from Napster last week after the band’s
management and record label gave the song-swapping service a list of usernames of people
suspected of trading unauthorized songs.”

Slashdotters discuss an announcement for Vitanuova.com that the company’s Unix-inspired Inferno plugin makes it possible to run an OS in a browser. It’s now available for IE, but other versions are coming.

From CNet: “The motion picture industry’s effort to ban computer code that subverts its DVD encryption scheme has suffered a setback in
California, with the state’s high court issuing an order that could see many of the defendants dropped from the closely watched
case.

The California Supreme Court on Thursday effectively ordered a lower court to show why defendant Matthew Pavlovich should remain in
the case even though he is not a California resident.”

NewsForge reader Cristian R. Arroyo writes: “At last, Argentina has it’s first local-developed Linux distribution ever! GNU/Linux UTUTO is based on SuSE 6.4 and Debian, and is ment to boot and run from its own CD-ROM, thus avoyding the hassle of hard disk partitioning. It includes KDE, StarOffice 5.2 and WebMin for system-wide configuration, including dial-up Internet access. It’s aimed towards the Linux newbie and for Linux presentations. You can read a full review of GNU/Linux UTUTO at Planeta Linux Argentina (in Spanish).”

From an anonymous reader: “Although its name may seem to be unrelated to its field in the infinite space
of the Web, ZioBudda.net is simply one of the most important Italian vertical
portals devoted to the best open-source operating system, thanks to the work of
webmaster and portal coordinator Michel Morelli, who devotes a lot of his spare
time to provide help and a meeting place for all Italian Linux users.”

Anandtech: “It is that time of the week again when AnandTech takes that hard work out of holiday shopping and presents you with the lowest prices on CPUs and video cards around. Take a look to see what should end up on your holiday wish list and what is still too expensive for this season.”

From ZDNET: “Last week my ZDNet colleague Mary Jo Foley asked
publicly why Linux backers don’t fear its new big friends.
With many members of the traditional high-tech industry
jumping on the open source bandwagon — including
IBM, Intel, Dell and others — she wants to know why
Linux users aren’t protesting. Or predicting doom. Or
even complaining.”

From LinuxToday Australia: “Author Shirley Conran once said, ‘Life is too short to stuff a mushroom.’ And so it is. Life is also too short to evaluate
umpteen different Linux distributions. Nevertheless, over the past 18 months I’ve done exactly that.

Testing a range of distributions is not as daft as it might appear. In my case, I can partly justify my actions because I
write about Linux and need a more complete understanding of the market. I also have very specific needs so finding the
optimum distribution required trial and error. The other thing is that I’m just plain curious.”

Linhardware reports: “Palmisano is also one of IBM’s biggest Linux advocates, placing the alternative flavor of the Unix operating system near the center of a broad plan to catch the second wave of technological revolution.”

From The Register: “Interviewed at Comdex, Burney said he was ruling nothing out and nothing in in his
attempts to find a solution to Corel’s financial woes. Burney specifically said that
one option under consideration was the sale of one or more Corel divisions,
including the Linux operation.”