ZDNet UK reports: “A leading UK Internet rights group is to warn United Nations representatives that international plans to fight cybercrime pose a serious menace to the privacy and rights of all Internet users. Yaman Akdeniz, director of Cyber Rights & Cyber Liberties is expected to warn that developing techniques to combat high-tech crime could lead to unjustified Internet surveillance.”

“Linux2order.com, the online resource offering the largest and most current selection of Linux applications on the Internet, today announced a partnership with the U.K.-based open source services provider SlashTCO, Ltd. The partnership, Linux2order.com’s first significant entry into the global open source marketplace, will enable the company to reach a broader audience of Linux users in European markets.” Press release at Internet Wire.

The Register reports that major IT players have signed on to a NASA research effort that aims to create a crash-proof computer. “We wish the consortium well, but can’t resist the observation that the fortunes of the IT industry over the last 30 years haven’t exactly been hurt by the production of ropy software and servers that are up down like a pair of tart’s knickers”

From an AP story posted to CNET News.com: “A man who took over an Internet service to send millions of anonymous emails about pornography and get-rich-quick schemes has pleaded guilty to second-degree forgery.”

“A technique that exploits the way Web browsers store recently viewed data could compromise Internet users’ privacy by allowing an attacker to check what sites a person has visited recently.” Full story at CNET News.com.

From The Register: “A Finnish professor reckons he has the means by which to make 3G phones obsolete, making a mockery of the billions spent on the spectrum licences for the next-generation phones. According to the Daily Telegraph, Hannu Kari plans to use the 2.4GHz radio frequency to get a huge 11Mbps download on new-style phones.”

“Most current Linux distributions don’t run on the Pentium 4, but it’s nobody’s fault, and nobody much cares. Intel itself confirms that only Red Hat and TurboLinux will install on the P4, but rather than this being a case of rival distributions being starved of vital technical information by Chipzilla, it seems the other outfits got the info, but didn’t reckon the P4 was worth catering for from a commercial perspective, right now.” Full story at The Register.

A story on VNU Net hints that IBM May release its first Itanium workstations with Linux: “IBM said 64bit Linux from Red Hat, Turbo Linux, SuSE and Caldera will be available at the same time as Itanium is released, while AIX 5L – IBM’s next-generation Unix operating system – will be available in April. Whistler, the 64bit version of Windows 2000, is expected to follow a few months after that.”

IT-Analysis ponders the upcoming Linux 2.4 kernel release, wondering if the latest changes and additions “may not be enough to get Linux right up into the data centre.”

Slashdot reviews and discusses David N. Blank-Edelman’s Perl for System Administration. “Anything that saves a beleagured sysadmin time is very good. Any one chapter read in isolation will yield at least one new idiom, if not many ideas on improving efficiency and accuracy.”