Slashdotters discuss an article from Tomshardware questioning the site’s MPEG-4 benchmark results.

ZD Net UK reports that Hewlett-Packard has been forced by a court in Germany to shell out
an undisclosed amount of money for manufacturing hardware that allows users to
burn copyright protected music to CDs.

The internet is chock full of them! While some are a little buggy at present, the internet houses some top notch tools. In fact, Some of these tools either meet or exceed commercially available tools in quality. So what’s the catch! In one word, “documentation.” This seems to be a weak area in a lot of free projects on the web. While some projects are addressing this problem, the majority aren’t. So you might have to dig a little to find some information on certain projects. But with that all said, there still is a lot of great free development tools to be had. So below is links to the best free development tools. Read more at osfaq.com. -Anonymous Reader

InfoWorld reports on what’s being billed as the first exposition of human partner robots in Japan.

Our friends at Linux.com have a story on webs of trust: “When we hear of Users Groups participating in new, different and exciting activities, we
feel the need to get the word out for anyone else who may like to join them in the
endeavor or try it for him or herself.
One such activity is the Web of Trust. Darxus with PhillyLUG wrote in to tell us about
PLUG’s venture with PADS. Both groups have come together to develop a Web of
Trust. At the end of each of their respective meetings, they gather for keysigning
parties.”

The Debian project has been invited to join the Advisory Board of the recently created Gnome Foundation. The Advisory Board is a forum for
organizations and companies that have an interest in Gnome to communicate with the Board of the Foundation and work together to support Gnome. The announcement is posted at Linux Today.

Yomiuri.com.jp reports that three people were arrested in Japan Thursday “on suspicion of illegally obtaining IDs and passwords and using them to invade Web sites belonging to a university and a tourism association.

It is the nation’s first bust of a hacker group on suspicion of violating the law on
illegally accessing computers.”

7bulls.com, the biggest Linux company in Poland,
announced recently on linuxnews.pl
that in conjunction with TU Mobile (the Italian telecom company) it wants to gain
one of five UMTS licences. “Now we are waiting for that Ericsson
mobiles with Linux on board.” (Warning: This story is in Polish.)
-Anonymous Reader

Creator of the WWW, Tim Berners-Lee, spoke to thousands via satellite TV in an unprecedented event marking the world’s largest student technology forum. Lee fielded challenging questions about Open Source, Napster, Web voting, and of course, Al Gore. Lee was the first technology leader to appear on the VisionQuest Series, the brainchild of the VisionQuest Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering students by connecting them to the wisdom and experience of visionaries. It’s at vqfoundation.org. -Anonymous Reader

The BBC reports that half a million Sony Playstation 2 games consoles go on sale across Europe Friday, and most of them are already sold before they hit the shelves.