Linux.com

Counterpane Internet Security has teamed up with Lloyds of London to offer
hacking insurance,
with policies of up to US$10,000,000.

Sun Microsystems has released the source code of its StarOffice suite, the company announced via Linux PR.

ThinkFree Office (what a name, huh?) has rolled out a suite of office software that works across multiple OSes, including Linux and Windows. GNULinux.com staffers review it, and like what they see.

Linux certification company Sair has announced that global publisher John Wiley & Sons will publish a second series of test preparation guides for the Sair Linux and GNU Certification program, according to Linux PR. The series will cover the program’s Linux Certified Engineer (LCE) level and be released in 2001.

–By Grant Gross –

Free Software and consumer-rights activists are asking for their positions to be heard during a digital rights management workshop sponsored by the Technology Administration of the U.S. Department of Commerce. Critics say the panel as of now — with bigwig representatives from the Motion Picture Association of America, Recording Industry Association of America, EMI, Disney, Microsoft, and ContentGuard — sounds like a “pep rally for Hollywood.”
Of 17 panelists scheduled to speak at the workshop Wednesday afternoon, only two — Digitalconsumer.org and the Home Recording Rights Coalition — appear to be opposed to Big Hollywood’s vision of digital “rights management.” But consumer-rights activists are expected to show up in force, including representatives of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Free Software Foundation and New York’s Linux community.

“These panelists represent the major forces who have prompted
Congress to propose such radical measures as Senator Fritz Holling’s CBDTPA bill, which proposes to require content control to be built into all computers,” says Seth Johnson, of the Information Producers Initiative. “Since the public holds the largest stake in the prospects of digital information and communications technology, it is crucial that a strong showing be made at this meeting.” More of Johnson’s “We are the Stakeholders” message he’s been circulating is at the Information Producers Initiative Web site.

Members of the public are able to comment on digital rights management at the Technology Administration’s Web site. Among the topics the Commerce Department is asking for comments on (our comments follow):

• “The effectiveness of efforts to pursue technical standards or solutions that are designed to provide a more predictable and secure environment for digital transmission of copyrighted material.” While at the same time taking away the public’s fair-use rights to copyrighted material?

• “Major obstacles facing an open commercial exchange of digital content.” Could an obstacle to exchanging digital content be the commercial entities themselves?

• “What a future framework for success might entail.” If it’s up to the RIAA, the MPAA and Microsoft, success is a lock-down on all digital content.

• “Current consumer attitude towards online entertainment.” Perhaps that fat-cat entertainment companies are trying to get richer by controlling every little detail about how their customers use legally purchased products?

Consumer-rights activists are also encouraging people to contact their congressional representatives to ask about fair representation on this panel and about digital “rights management” issues in general. [See the “What you can do NOW!” comment on the above linkedNewsForge NewsVac item.]

Cheryl Mendonsa, a public affairs officer for the Technology Administration, encourages people to comment on the Web site or to show up at the workshop, from 1 to 4 p.m. While she notes that only two consumer groups are on the panel, she adds, “we’re in no way trying to leave the public out.”

Comments from the Web site will be posted, she says, and members of the audience should have time to ask questions Wednesday. The workshop, a follow-up to one held last December, is a chance to “button-hole” big players in the debate, she adds, although it’s hard for us to imagine someone changing Disney’s opinion during a five-minute discussion

The purpose of the workshops is to get both sides on the issue together and talking, Mendonsa says, but there’s no specific goal of introducing digital “rights management” legislation based on what happens during the workshop. “We’ve got two sides that disagree, and we can’t move forward until we solve the problems,” she says. “Let’s solve the problems and move forward.”

It should be interesting to see if the workshop moves the two sides closer together.

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The following patch will change the behavior of the window maker dock to that of the clip allowing you to place icons in any arbitrary order.

(click the read more button for the patch)

---

Author: Mike Baker

--- wmaker-0.61.1.orig/src/dock.c Mon Sep 27 11:58:05 1999
+++ wmaker-0.61.1/src/dock.c Tue Nov 2 18:34:12 1999
@@ -1231,10 +1231,7 @@
dock = wmalloc(sizeof(WDock));
memset(dock, 0, sizeof(WDock));

- if (type == WM_CLIP)
icon_count = CLIP_MAX_ICONS;
- else
- icon_count = scr->scr_height/wPreferences.icon_size;

dock->icon_array = wmalloc(sizeof(WAppIcon*)*icon_count);
memset(dock->icon_array, 0, sizeof(WAppIcon*)*icon_count);
@@ -1673,14 +1670,6 @@
wwarning(_("bad value in docked icon state info %s"),
PLGetString(dPosition));

- /* check position sanity */
- /* incomplete section! */
- if (type == WM_DOCK) {
- aicon->xindex = 0;
- if (aicon->yindex xindex, aicon->yindex);
- }
} else {
aicon->yindex = index;
aicon->xindex = 0;
@@ -2538,82 +2527,30 @@
return False;

if (dock->type == WM_DOCK) {
- if (icon->dock != dock && ex_x != 0)
- return False;
-
+ int neighbours = 0;
aicon = NULL;
for (i=0; imax_icons; i++) {
nicon = dock->icon_array[i];
- if (nicon && nicon->yindex == ex_y) {
+ if (nicon && nicon->xindex == ex_x && nicon->yindex == ex_y) {
aicon = nicon;
break;
}
}
-
- if (redocking) {
- int sig, done, closest;
-
- /* Possible cases when redocking:
- *
- * icon dragged out of range of any slot -> false
- * icon dragged to range of free slot
- * icon dragged to range of same slot
- * icon dragged to range of different icon
- */
- if (abs(ex_x) > DOCK_DETTACH_THRESHOLD)
- return False;
-
- if (ex_y>=0 && ex_y= 0) {
- for (j = 0; jmax_icons; j++) {
- if (dock->icon_array[j]
- && dock->icon_array[j]->yindex==closest) {
- /* slot is used by someone else */
- if (dock->icon_array[j]!=icon)
- done = 0;
+ for (i=0; imax_icons; i++) {
+ nicon = dock->icon_array[i];
+ if (nicon && nicon != icon && /* Icon can't be it's own neighbour */
+ (abs(nicon->xindex - ex_x) yindex - ex_y) = 0 && closest = closest && ex_y - closest = 0 && ex_y 

‘vim’ (vi Improved) has built in syntax highlighting. To enable this, simply enter command mode (:) and type syntax on. You can even add your own syntax highlighting schemes, which are placed in /usr/share/vim/syntax

---

Author: Marius Aamodt Eriksen

Did you know the IEEE is responsibe for the MAC (machine address) of your network card? Click here and punch in the first 6 hex digits of your card (3 bytes) to see the manufacturer.
On a related note, you can also have your card use a different MAC address

ifconfig eth1 hw ether deadbeef0001
(this needs do be done while the card is down for obvious reasons)

now your card will answer all arp requests with DE:AD:BE:EF:00:01.

Note:

The kernel performs this trick on most cards by setting the card into promiscuous mode and using software to filter out all MACs that aren’t yours which stands to reason it would be slightly slower than just using your real MAC.

---

Author: Mike Baker

Elfstone Linux is a highly stable Linux distribution
specifically designed for
programmers, engineers and network administrators. This distro is a networking specific OS and perhaps the most Unix-like of all commercial
distributions. Keeping it simple, thin, and fast is the common sense principal and basis for all Elfstone products.

Elfstone Linux

Elfstone Linux is a highly stable Linux distribution designed specifically for programmers,
engineers, and network administrators. As a real
network OS and perhaps the most Unix-like of all commercial distributions, Elfstone Linux is built around the OSF Motif 2.1 API with a universal
package management feature. This distribution currently based on the .RPM format easily allows for the installation of both RPMs and Tar/Tar.gz
packages.

Unlike other commercial distributions, Elfstone Linux was not designed from the installation perspective to share disk partitions with other
operating systems. Elfstone Linux is among the first distributions to provide USB
support as well as the highly intuitive, and extremely fast, interface that is a Motif/Athena hybrid.

Click for screen shots

The key to the outstanding performance of Elfstone Linux is really very simple. When servers are called upon to perform specific tasks, potential
points of failure are created when the software includes more than what is required to perform these functions.

Keeping it simple, is the common sense principal and basis for the development of all Elfstone products. Elfstone Linux contains only the software
that is necessary to operate your network each and every day without fail. Each app has been chosen strictly on the basis of
functionalityand reliability. While Linux has many fine applications available, we believe there is no need to load working servers with
unnecessary software.

Here is a quick list of what’s included with Elfstone Linux

• The Linux 2.2.6 kernel with supporting libraries.
• The Xfree86 windowing system with supporting libraries.
• The GNU gcc compiler and supporting tools.
• The Elfstone RTX Runtime libraries based on OSF Motif 2.1.
• An excellent collection of handpicked system administration tools.
• An efficient universal package management system tool.

  For more information about Elfstone Linux, please visit our website at
  http://www.elflinux.com