Red Herring features Gnutella: “Gnutella had very peculiar beginnings. After inventing the program, Nullsoft’s Justin Frankel and Tom Pepper
were forbidden by the company’s corporate parent, America Online, to do any further work on
the project or even to speak to the press about it. So Gnutella’s development was then left to a loose
amalgam of programmers from all over the world. It’s a model of development that is just as anarchic as
Gnutella’s network. But the programmers have one unifying tenet: a steadfast commitment to maintain the
interoperability of all of the different versions of the program.”

From LinuxPR: Tuxtops has been honored with the prestigious Linux Journal 2000
Editors’ Choice Award for the best mobile device. “Choosing the Best Mobile
Device in Linux Journal’s 2000 Editors’ Choice was an easy decision — a Tuxtops
laptop,” said Richard Vernon, editor-in-chief of the monthly
magazine, Linux Journal. “Their people are great and their products are
outstanding.”

The Register examines some of the poltics behind IBM’s decision to dump a Transmeta chip from one of its laptops. IBM Mobile Systems marketing director
Leo Suarez … “was bound to get asked about the Transmeta ThinkPad cancellation, so he
was bound to have his story straight when he talked to ZDNet and CNet. Or was
he? According to ZD, Suarez lashed out at Intel for focussing almost exclusively on
the GHz wars while forgetting about low power CPUs for notebooks. But when
Transmeta arrived on the scene, Intel ‘woke up.’ So Transmeta’s power
management was good, right? But according to CNet, IBM dumped Transmeta
because its power management wasn’t good enough. Right.”

Security Focus examines the impact of vote-bots on Internet voting systems. “Experts have to surmount an obstacle that makes butterfly ballots look like a cake walk: the potential that hackers could create custom programs that target voters’ PC en masse, and steal Internet elections.”

The Washington Post has an article about the opportunity that some companies see in “developing software and services to tag copyrighted material
and track where it goes on the Web, allowing its owners to find out who’s using
their content without permission. Some of the software would prevent
unauthorized users from opening a file.”

From CNet: “Internet music company MP3.com Thursday was slapped with another lawsuit, coming just two days after ending its costly
legal battle with the major record labels.

Thursday’s lawsuit was filed as a class action for copyright
infringement by Unity Entertainment and others.” More from The Register.

EE Times has a report on Sage Systems Inc.
licensing its operating system for networked home appliances to
Urbana.ca Inc., which plans to use it with set-top boxes to be deployed in eight Canadian
communities next year.
“The deal marks the first licensing pact for Sage Systems. The
company’s proprietary narrowband networking technology
sends small packets of data in the ‘tens of bits’ range, the
company said, to and from home appliances over power lines.”
Some of Sage Systems’ set-tops are Linux-based, and come with
dial-up modems and wireless keyboards.

ABC News has a feature former Czech spy Katrina Barillova, one of the co-founders of Charmed Technology, which as has
developed is the CharmIT, a three-piece wearable
computer running on an Open Source, Linux-based
operating system called Nanix, which is “designed for small
wireless Internet devices to optimize multimedia add-ons
such as cameras, Global Positioning System receivers, MP3
files, and broadband streaming audio and video.”

Linuxnews.com reports on the LinuxFEST scheduled for Dec. 15 to 17 in Belgrade. Organizers hope to expand it from a
Linux enthusiasts’ event to a full conference, featuring research, educational and
promotional presentations and lectures as well as an install-fest and Linux exhibitors.

The Globe and Mail’s Steven Chase sends a COMDEX report leading off with Maddog’s take on Linux adoption in mainland China. Lots of stray quotes in this: China cites national security and technical support, Balmer calls Linux “communist,” and Dirk Hohndel warns that the U.S. is lagging behind. –garym