Wired.com follows up on earlier reports that an Oklahoma State University student was arrested for downloading “illegal” music files. The faces possible state felony charges for copyright infringement after university officials acted on a complaint from RIAA.

From an annoucement at Linux Today: “The teaming up of the USENIX Association and the Atlanta Linux
Showcase is producing a new kind of Linux Conference. Next month’s 4th Annual
Linux Showcase & Conference (ALS 2000) technically saavy program has
already attracted platinum sponsorship from heavyweights in the Linux community
such as VA Linux, SuSE, Atipa, IBM, Compaq, and RedHat.”

From an opinion at ZDNet UK: “Despite its successes as a server operating
system, Linux has had a rough time on the
desktop, and quite rightly so. For all the potential
benefits of open source code, and Linux’s
reliability in comparison with some of Microsoft’s
operating systems, none of Linux’s various
distributions offers anywhere near the ease of use
required from a general-purpose operating system.”

LinuxPlanet has a column about conflicts in the Open Source community: “I watch the conflicts in the Linux world with a good measure of
amusement and detachment. Really, when it comes to whether the majority
of Linux users adopt KDE or GNOME it’s not worth a lot of mental energy:
users usually move in the direction of their self-interest, enlightened or not. I
don’t particularly care about toolkits, as most programmers will use the one
that best fits their needs. Since I dislike being defined by others, it matters
little to me what Microsoft is doing at any particular moment. And the nature
of many of the hot-buttons issues in the Linux community really does throw
me for a loop.”

Tech news site Kuro5hin has returned after a brief layoff due to a denial of service attack. Slashdot readers celebrate. More from The Register.

Wireless networks running at 54 mbps are due out early next year, and will lead to greater adoption of wireless LANs, reports PC World.

Comperworld reviews Hewlett-Packard’s new Superdome server.

“Hewlett-Packard Co.’s new Superdome high-end
Unix server, announced last week, is aiming to be different from
competing machines, not just on the technology front but also in the
way it’s priced and supported, according to users and analysts.”

The number of Linux users in an OS survey fell suspiciously quickly, a German news service reported. Slashdot readers discuss the report. A Linux Today staffer sends MSNBC a letter saying how disappointed he is.

A ZDNet column says Microsoft is on the way out: “Today, Microsoft presents users with a
bewildering array of end-user operating system
options: Windows 95, Windows 98 SE, Windows ME,
Windows 2000 Professional and Windows CE. With
so much potential confusion, is it any wonder
that people are beginning to look at other
end-user operating systems? Corel Linux, a
consumer’s Linux, while far from a hit, has
garnered a small following. As the Unix desktop
interface programs KDE and Gnome mature, we can
look forward to seeing even more user-friendly
interfaces appearing on top of Linux, the BSD
OSes and Solaris.”

An eWeek story about a new “system-on-a-chip” product of National Semi says some companies are frustrated with chip-maker Transmeta for not shipping a product yet.