Anonymous Reader tells us about a whitepaper by Dr. Doug Locke, Vice President of Technology at TimeSys Corp., who explores the changes recently made to the mainstream Linux development kernel to improve its preemptibility, discusses the implications of these changes relative to embedded and real-time applications, and contrasts the recently adopted approach with that used in TimeSys Linux GPL. Locke writes: ” . . . we believe that this is an excellent step towards reducing the average latency of the Linux kernel and should provide numerous benefits for users of Linux in desktop and server distributions. However, we must note that although this patch will help reduce the average latency of the kernel, it does little to improve upon the maximum or ‘worst-case’ latency that is critical to developing embedded systems . . .” Read it here at LinuxDevices.com.

Anonymous Reader writes, “An intriguing puzzle over at Linux and Main. There is supposed to be a big press announcement held jointly by SuSE, Caldera, TurboLinux, and Conectiva Thursday morning that in the words of the press release will change enterprise Linux computing. All that’s known is here, but not much is known. Are there any informed guesses?”

“This document describes how to quickly setup a backup environment on a client GNU Linux box to a host GNU Linux box which has a tape backup device.”I wanted to setup a simple backup environment for my desktop RedHat 6.0 GNU Linux box so that the files were archived to a DAT tape device on an SGI
O2 Irix-6.5 box. After reading some documentation and writing some scripts I got the archiving working. Since I had been unable to find a backup FAQ
or HOWTO, I thought that I would share my experience and write my own.”

There’s a big announcement coming Thursday from Caldera, SuSE, Turbolinux, and Conectiva. No one knows the substance of this announcement, except apparently Linuxgram. They say their sources tell them that these guys are planning to form some kind of super-distro and team up against Red Hat.

Jan Schaumann writes, “Following Todd Vierlings announcement to the current-users Mailinglist, the
release process for NetBSD 1.6 has begun. This means not only that 1.6 has
been branched off the -current CVS tree, but also that daily snapshots will
soon be available. A list of changes from 1.5 to 1.6 is available here; a
short announcement including a best-case scenario timetable is available here (at NetBSD.org).”

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
today announced an entertaining campaign to prevent passage
of a seriously abusive copyright law. By distributing an
Internet video parodying Disney’s attempts to control
the public’s use of CDs, DVDs, and other digital media,
EFF intends to spur widespread opposition to the Consumer
Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA)
proposed by Senator Hollings.
“We hope people will contact their legislators once they
understand how Hollywood is stifling innovation, fair use,
and the right to tinker,” said EFF Outreach Coordinator
Cory Doctorow. “CBDTPA is an anti-consumer, anti-technology
attempt to control how people can use the technology they
own.”

“The entertainment industry is manipulating copyright law
to impose government regulation on all new digital media
technologies,” added Fred von Lohmann, EFF Senior
Intellectual Property Attorney. “If they got their way in
1979, all VCRs would have been impounded as tools of
piracy.”

The EFF video parodies Disney’s attempts to control digital
media with the song “Tinsel Town Club,” a remake of the
theme song to the Mickey Mouse Club.

The parodied lyrics for Tinsel Town Club are the following:

“Sing Along Kids!

Chanting:
Tinsel Town Club
Tinsel Town Club…..

Verse 1:
Who believes the average Jane’s
a criminal on the make?
Disney and its showbiz friends
who have a lot at stake.

Verse 2:
Who with their locks
turn back the clocks
on rights we have today?
The entertainment moguls and
CBDTPA!

Bridge:
They sell us stuff. (It’s overpriced!)
Then lock it up (and that’s not nice)!
So they can keep their profits
in the sky. (High! High! High!)

Verse 3:
So, join the fight!
Defend your rights
before they’re whisked away.
Speak up fast!
Don’t let them pass
CBDTPA!

Numbers count. (They make Congress pay attention!)
Tell all your friends about
that old
CBDTPA!”>br?

For the Tinsel Town Club video:
http://action.eff.org/tinseltown/

For the CBDTPA action alert:
http://action.eff.org/

For this release:
http://www.eff.org/IP/SSSCA_CBDTPA/20020528_eff_cbdtpa_pr.html

For a previous alert on the CBDTPA legislation:
http://www.eff.org/IP/SSSCA_CBDTPA/20020322_eff_cbdtpa_alert.html

For more information about CBDTPA (and its older
“parent”, SSSCA):
http://www.eff.org/IP/SSSCA_CBDTPA/

About EFF:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is the leading civil
liberties organization working to protect rights in the
digital world. Founded in 1990, EFF actively encourages and
challenges industry and government to support free
statement and privacy online. EFF is a member-supported
organization and maintains one of the most-linked-to
websites in the world at
http://www.eff.org/.

LinuxPlanet.com has the column: “The adoption of a new platform is not something that happens overnight, especially in the corporate arena, where conservativism often makes the decision to change a slow and complicated process. There are shades of grey wrapped up in every decision–quite a contrast to the often black-and-white world of an IT worker. In that world, if something is broken, fix it. If it breaks repeatedly, re-code it (if you can) or replace it.”

ZDNet has a column talking about the new Solaris 9 and how it stacks up to Linux. ” Sun’s bundled services will have a lot more credibility with customers than the mass of bundled free (as in beer and speech) utilities and services that accompany the typical Linux distribution. Many of these are top quality, but many are simply thrown in with the distribution because there’s no cost to do so. But Sun can compete in all these areas while still, like Windows and Linux, allowing customers to use third-party add-ons if they prefer.”

This history of Debian is from Linux Magazine’s March edition, now online: “Even Murdock himself started a company that sold a boxed version of Debian in April 2000, but he abandoned the effort in October 2001. It wasn’t until last May that Debian really made a mark in the business world. That’s when HP changed everything by announcing plans to standardize its internal Linux development on one distribution: Debian. Suddenly, the 600 or so Debian developers scattered around the world had a very large friend in Palo Alto.”

We heard it was coming. ZDNet UK reports that Sun will drop its free downloads of StarOffice 5.2 this week. The story also notes Sun’s deal with Ximian to bundle StarOffice 6.0 with fee-based Ximian products.