From MaximumLinux.com: “Even with the exponential growth in Linux’s popularity over the past few years, the Big Box stores truly have been the sleeping giants when
it comes to getting on the Linux bandwagon, to their detriment. The independent retailers are more than happy to pick up the slack, and as
long as the “little guy” continues to stock, promote and support Linux to the extent they do, you’ll see them do well in business. And Linux’s
popularity will continue to grow.”

ComputerWorld.com reports that Truste, a nonprofit organization that previously created a set of data-privacy guidelines for Web sites, now plans to certify companies for compliance with the U.S.-European safe harbor agreement that went into effect today.

A Texas company is suing ICANN and one of its top
officials, claiming it is intimidating registrars not to sign
agreements with the company, which offers customers
the chance to get a jump start on registering names
among the new groups of domains expected to be
announced by ICANN later this month. From ZDNET.

CNET.com reports that Torvalds originally wanted to release the 2.4.0 version of the Linux “kernel” in 1999, but cramming in a host of new features took longer
than expected. The 2.4 kernel improves Linux’s ability to run on high-end servers with several CPUs and adds support for desktop
features such as universal serial bus.

From ZDNet: How about an e-mail worm that can
automatically upgrade itself with each
new infection? The Sonic worm
(W32.Sonic.Worm) hails from
Germany, spreads via e-mail, and
consists of two parts: a loader and a
payload.

The Pentium 4 is expected to debut at a clock speed of 1.4GHz and above, according to this report at Infoworld.

“By far the most notorious of security news this past week
was the admission by Microsoft that their internal network had been compromised, the FBI called in to
investigate and the source code to Microsoft Windows and/or other Microsoft products possibly accessed
by the intruders.” From LWN.

Interactive Week reports that an advanced feature of database management, row-level
locking, is coming to open source code database
MySQL in version 4, targeted for release next spring.

From 2600.com: “Our poll of visitors to our website on who the best presidential candidate is has resulted in a clear majority for Ralph Nader as the person who would best represent the interests of people concerned about freedom of speech, the DMCA, and all of the bad things that have been happening in the hacker world in the recent past.”

Bill Gates to his company:”Happy Halloween, everyone! It is the time of year where we review the Linux
operating system’s position again, so I thought I would sit down and pass on my
thoughts for this year.” From Linux.com.