Tech-report.com has pictures of several Transmeta-powered devices gathered at Comdex.

German media company Bertelsmann says it has started talks with other music majors on a business model for its
song-swap partner Napster and the company is hopeful they will join the alliance,

reports Reuters.

Maximum Linux offers some tips about easing into Linux for new users: “If you’re used to the Windows interface, why not try lightstep? It’s a program that runs on top of
Windows that will give you an idea of the look and feel of Linux. You will be able to run all of your
Microsoft programs, but get a chance to get familiar with one variety of Linux interface. It’s totally harmless and could
help you get used to the feel of things …”

ZD Net follows up on reports that Linus Torvalds will publish a biography. The story includes a rehash of the history of Linux.

The Register has nugget: “UK musicians trade organisation British Music Rights today launched a campaign
that seeks to persuade fans not to download illicit MP3 files from the Internet. The
scheme, called Respect the Value of Music, aims to show how trading music on the
likes of Napster is hurting musicians, not faceless industry executives.

That’s not an unreasonable point, but BMR do seem to have fluffed the launch by
inviting Elton John and Paul McCartney – two of the music business’ richest men;
John last week told a British court that he had ‘so much money coming in’ he was
too busy spending it to watch what his accountant was doing with it all – to plead
on the behalf of less popular artists.”

LinuxDevices via ZD Net has a how-to article, adapted from John Lombardo’s forthcoming book, “Embedded Linux,” about how to embed Linux and a small application in a M-Systems DiskOnChip solid-state Flash module.

From LinuxToday.com.au: “Before GNU autoconf saved the day, there were more ways of compiling program
source code than there were programmers writing the source code. Reading
README files, hacking Makefiles, and scrutinising config.h files was fun for a
while, but it soon got very tiring. Thankfully, most developers now use autoconf and
friends when writing their programs, which makes life easier for everybody.”

IDG News Service reports that the German IT industry is taking a “wait-and-see” approach to a new fee charged on CD burners, after Hewlett-Packard agreed Thursday to a settlement to pay $1.54 U.S. per CD burner, retroacive to February 1998.

LinuxOrbit reviews the new distribution: “Despite all those neat-o features though, I’m having a bit of trouble at this time, using even simple things
like Aisle Riot, GNOME’s solitaire game. It won’t run, plain and simple. Starts, loads, crashes and that’s all.
KPPP will not run either, along with a host of other problems. Now we are talking about an internet dialer
and a solitaire game here, not configuring Samba from the command line to run in a heterogeneous network
designed for heavy traffic and bullet proof security. No, these type of programs are the bread-and-butter
of newbieville, they’re what people buy computers for in the first place, when they’re not buying them for
business reasons.”

From PR Newswire: In its recent report “The New
Religion: Linux and Open Source,” Zona Research, Inc. determined that
Oracle8i is and will continue to be the Linux database of choice for
e-business.