ZDNet is reporting that techgroups are filing briefs to support Napster’s side in the ongoing court battle between Napster and the RIAA. The groups are quick to point out, however, that they mean to stop possible loss of consumer rights, and do not directly support Napster.

“Oi, Windows! No!” The Register has a somewhat tongue-in-cheek blurb on computer stress. The page reports on a study conducted by ICL on computer problems, and their effects on the users.

Automatic Investor, producers of software which helps people choose investments, announced the release of a new version. This latest release includes the ability to quickly change how it makes decisions about the stocks using a new stock modeling system.

Slashdot reports that Case Western University has successfully managed to manipulate liquids via magnetic fields, causing them to behave as if there was no gravity acting on the fluid.

The DukeOfURL reviewed Stormix, the commercial fork of the Debian Linux distribution. This 7 page review goes into detail about the differences between Stormix and Debian, and discusses the software included.

UpsideToday is reporting on the curious instance of TimeWarner posting a link, even though they’d pressed legal action against many other sites for linking to the same material. The link, when followed, led to a list of LiViD (a program used for decrypting DVDs for use under Linux) and DeCSS (the more general decryption code). Time Warner is currently suing a large list of defendants because they linked to the same code.

Linux Weekly News ran this advisory about an update to an already-released patch for a DHCP security hole. It only applies to Mandrake 7.0 and 7.1; earlier Mandrake releases did not include dhclient, the DHCP client in question.

Slashdot’s posted an announcement of a product called FreeVeracity, which is targeted at security conscious individuals. The product works similar to Tripwire in how it verifies file integrity, but also provides the capability for remote monitoring.

The BBC online gives us another article on China and the internet, this time discussing the new laws that have been enacted to combat cyber squatting by some Chinese citizens.

EETimes has a lengthy article which talks about the IXP1200 processor used by Intel for control of optical data networks. It also discusses some of the flexibility and scalability features of the chip.