Slashdot readers discuss the annoucement from the European Patent Office saying software patents will not be granted for another year.

Reuters reports: Transmeta officials say flawed Crusoe chips may have been used on other laptops besides Japan’s NEC, which is recalling 284 computers with faulty chips, but it was unlikely that the chips are in other computers.

From Internet Wire: Multicast Technologies, Inc., announced today that the company is releasing the Internet’s first
multicast audio player, The MCT Player. The MCT Player is available to the public starting today, November 29, 2000, as a FREE downloadable file on the
company’s audio station, www.On-The-I.com . The MCT Player is the first to deliver CD quality sound and the first to track multicast traffic. The MCT Player
also features Staggered Erasure Protection, a patent pending technology developed by Multicast Technologies that corrects for missing data, which
otherwise causes drop-outs in sound.

The MCT Player is being released under an open-source license, which will enable other programmers to contribute
improvements to subsequent player updates.

From a press release at LWN.net: “Reasons to use this:
* More hardware detected. If you still have any hardware you think we
should be able to autodetect, we would love to know.
* Kickstart is as always very close, but we never got it all the way. Sorry.
* Installer now lets you specify serveral network cards along with
serveral nameservers.
* We think it is pretty stable, and would love for you to agree with us.” Here’s a more formal press release.

Slashdotters talk about a CNet interview with Sun COO Ed Zander in which he brings up the often-repeated fear that Linux will fragment: “The thing with Linux today — I call it the bathtub. I can throw source in there. It’s all floating around and it’s available to everybody. But I as a
vendor can take anything I want out of that bathtub and call it Linux.

Now if you think that’s going to work for application developers, call me in a year or two when IBM’s Linux is different than HP’s Linux is
different than Dell’s Linux and (a customer) will have to recompile five times. You’ve broken it effectively. So you cannot depend on one Linux.”

On ZioBudda.net (the Italian Linux Portal) there is a review (in italian language) of the italian book “Imparare Linux in 24ore” (say: how to learn Linux programming in 24h).
From the original: “Sono davvero lieto di poter recensire uno dei pochi libri in italiano che parlino della programmazione sotto Linux, soprattutto se il testo in questione è davvero di buon livello…”
–Michel Morelli

Microsoft today released a free 120-day downloadable version of
its Commerce Server 2000 software, which is slated to be
generally available at retail outlets next month, reports ZDCOUK.

ZDCOUK reports: “Transmeta — which made its codemorphing software the
centrepiece of its low-power chips — has developed one
approach to insuring compatibility. IBM Research, with its
Dynamically Architected Instruction Set from Yorktown (DAISY)
translator, is building another.”

Newsforge reader Saint writes: “The Journal of Open Source Medical Computing (JOSMC) is open and issuing its first call for papers. The Journal was started after the success of Linux Medical News indicated the need for a more scholarly publication. The Journal ‘…is an electronic forum for disseminating information on free
and open source medical computing.
Scholarly work on any aspect of free
and open source medical computing will be considered for
peer-reviewed publication…’ Read the editorial guidelines for information on submitting articles, editorials or features. There is a list of possible subject matter here.”

Wired reports: “The so-called ‘first sale doctrine’ takes the spotlight at public hearings on copyright law. Current owners like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, but critics say new encryption technologies impede the rights of the public to re-sell what they’ve purchased.”