VA Linux rolled out a four-way 700MHz Pentium III-based system that company officials promised will be targeted at users looking to speed e-commerce or Web serving applications, reports Infoworld.com. The new model 4450, which can be rack-mounted in a 4-unit, or 7-inches-high form factor, features three independent PCI buses, 64-bit PCI card slots, and a 66MHz PCI bus, which helps quicken RAID and Gigabit Ethernet performance. The system can be set up to hold five 36-gigabyte hard drives. (Full disclosure: VA Linux owns NewsForge.)

The Palm virus threat was short-lived and few users were affected by the destructive software, which unlike a computer virus does not reproduce, reports LATimes.com. But the minimal impact of the Trojan horse masks future danger, ZDNet UK says.

IBM, Hewlett Packard, and Intel have teamed up to form an independent lab for Linux developers to expand the alternative operating system for heavy business tasks, says Interactive Week. The press release is at LinuxPR. More from The Associated Press, and even more from CNet.

From an Inter@active Week column: “Regulations designed to protect my ‘privacy’ or my rights as a ‘consumer’ are not the same as enforcing my rights against fraud or damage.”

From IDG.net: Thirty-four percent of U.S. colleges and universities have banned the music file trading program Napster for Internet users surfing over campus servers, according to a report from technology market research company Gartner Group. As students return to campus from summer vacation, college administrators wrestle with the legal and ethical questions surrounding the controversial program from Napster Inc.

File swapping is back on college campuses — offered by some of the very same colleges that have banned Napster. A group of 40 universities, including Stanford University, will offer students a Web-based memory storage system from I-drive.com that has, as one of its functions, file swapping, according to a story at ZDNet.

From a story at 2600.com: “As expected, the Motion Picture Association of America has begun to threaten people all over the world in the wake of their victory in the 2600 lawsuit. This time, not only are sites that mirror DeCSS being targeted, but also those that merely have LINKS to other sites with DeCSS. The MPAA points to the anti-linking ruling in the 2600 decision and apparently intends to pursue people who type a single line of HTML — if it points somewhere they don’t want it to point.”

They may not get as much attention as Microsoft’s high-profile legal battle against the U.S. Department of Justice, but dozens of private antitrust lawsuits are working their way through the nation’s courts — claims that could cost the company billions of dollars in damages.
While the government case seeks drastic remedies to reel in what Microsoft can do in the future, the private suits want to force the company to pay for what it’s done in the past. Unlike the DOJ, the plaintiffs seek monetary damages, which could be tripled under antitrust laws. ZDNet reports.

From a column at ZDNet: “While I don’t agree with piracy, I strongly disagree with some of the RIAA’s actions in this matter, mostly in the way that the music industry has ripped off the consumer. While this does NOT justify piracy, I think all the piracy shows how tired the American people are of getting ripped off.”

From humor site Segfault: In a federal court today, God Almighty filed suit against several condom manufacturers for violations of section 1201 of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. “It has come to my attention that these companies manufacture a device that is being widely used to circumvent a process of my design,” said the well-known deity in a telephone interview. “Many people have been using these products, purchasable over the Internet, to control access to certain components of their bodies. I don’t see how anyone can justify the use of such circumvention devices,” God asserted, “and I will file a million lawsuits a day if that’s what it takes.”