Microsoft has announced that its consumer products — Windows 95, 98, and Me — are vulnerable to a utility available on the Internet that allows a person to get into password-protected file shares without knowing the entire password. IDG.net reports.

3dfx’s Voodoo4, reports Anandtech, is finally here, but is it too little too late from the former king of 3D? Let’s find out as we pit it against a number of competitors including the GeForce2 MX and the newly released Radeon SDR.

From IDG.net: The troubling ways of the “I Love You” virus that hit computer networks about five months ago are still tormenting some users, who were hit by one of the more destructive variants of the virus that appeared Friday.

From XTRA.com: “You may wonder how the Internet was created, and what makes it work.
The seed for the Internet can be traced back to J.C.R Licklide of MIT, who in 1962
wrote about his “Galactic Network” concept. His vision was of a global network of
computers that could be easily and quickly accessed by anyone – near enough to
what the internet is as we know it today.”

BountyQuest CEO Charles Cella explains, in this story at Salon, why his Web site is offering cash to patent destroyers.

“The Democratic Party has often said that there is a great “digital divide” in America. According to Democrats, the digital divide is manifested in the high price of personal computers, the software that runs them and the outrageous cost of Internet service that allows only rich white males to use them. This separates all minorities and economically challenged persons of America from the miracle of technology.” –Kelly McNeill

From LinuxPlanet: “It seems like development on the Linux 2.4 kernel has taken forever. By Open Source standards, it has:
whereas we used to see new kernel releases come by at a fast and furious pace, the Linux kernel
development team now seems mired in this seemingly impossible task of actually releasing Linux 2.4.”

“Most states have laws governing what is to be done with property that has been abandoned. In one state the amount of time before something is considered abandoned ranges from a mere 2 years up to 15 years. After that maximum — depending on the type of property — the property can be put up for auction, absorbed by the holder of the property, or possibly revert to the state, again depending on the property in question. The laws vary between states, but the principle is there. Property that is not claimed after a reasonable amount of time ceases to belong to the owner. Think of how this might apply to intellectual property.” –Kelly McNeill

By Grant Gross

Managing Editor

Some weeping and gnashing of teeth in the Open Source world this week, as print-and-file server vendor Samba Corp. announced plans to fork its code base because of two warring camps in the company. Reactions were mixed at best, with some in the community concerned about the potential for other products to fork, including Linux. If you want to know what forking’s all about, check out a LinuxPlanet article on the subject.

Open Source from closed-source companies

Sun’s StarOffice continued to get press this week after the company Open Sourced a version of the product. InfoWorld reported that while the source code was released, the Web-based StarPortal version of the software was delayed. ZDNet reviewed the release and wasn’t particularly impressed, saying, “OpenOffice is to StarOffice what Mozilla is to Communicator.” Meanwhile, TechWeb reported that Sun’s CEO promised that his company will become the No. 1 Linux company, by a long shot.

Four spankin’ new Linux desktop applications will hit the stores this week. ZDNet News reported on Chilliware’s unorthodox business plan of using Linux as a “jumping-off point for selling non-Open Source applications. Starting this Monday, the company was shipping its version of Linux, plus a contact manager, a documentation wizard, a desktop publisher, and a server configuration product. But will Linux users embrace closed-source products just because they work in Linux? Stay tuned.

The digital divide extends to Norwegian Nynorsk

Most people in the Open Source community are no fans of Microsoft, but here’s one of the oddest reasons around to stop using our favorite anti-trusters: They don’t support both the Norwegian Nynorsk and BokmÃ¥l languages, only BokmÃ¥l. A group in Norway is urging a boycott in favor of KDE.

Speaking of the Boardwalk of software companies, Microsoft’s Bill Gates spoke at a “digital divide” conference this week, saying it makes no sense to wire up people in developing countries if they have no food to eat or they can’t read. Is the guy starting to make sense in his old age? On the outside of the conference, a group of protestors advanced Linux as a solution to putting computers in the hands of the tech world’s have-nots.

New at NewsForge

Columnist Jack Bryar tries to sort out the differences between Bush and Gore, at least as far as their attitudes about technology and Open Source.

Columnist Emmett Plant wonders what they’re smoking over at Caldera. He’s not sure the Linux distributor actually “gets” the Linux philosophy.

Corporate and government security professionals don’t seem to understand kids who like computers, we found out at the 23rd National Information Systems Security Conference in Baltimore last week.

KDE News has the scoop on the release of VeePee 1.0, a python-based script environment for KDE, and SIP/PyQt/PyKDE 2.1, the python bindings for Qt and KDE. Python 2.0 support is one of the new features of these releases.