Anonymous Reader writes: “Microsoft, like Enron, now pays zero federal income tax, even though Microsoft’s earnings for the two years ending June 2001 exceeded $15 billion. This nonpayment of federal income tax is indeed the largest source of Microsoft?s massive $40 billion cash balance. http://www.portlandtribune.com/archview.cgi?id=972 6 An Overview of Financial Pyramid at Microsoft http://www.billparish.com/msftfraudfacts.html“

– By Robin “Roblimo” Miller –
At first I thought it was just me. I bought my wife a new Compaq laptop (on sale at an insanely low price) with Windows XP pre-installed. We decided it might be nice to keep a Windows partition on it, besides Linux for everyday use, so we could have Microsoft IE and the Windows versions of Navigator, Opera and Mozilla handy for Web site tests. We already had a Mac, so this would let us view sites in all major operating systems, in all major browsers. But I had trouble getting XP to coexist with Linux. It turns out that I am not alone. XP simply doesn’t like to share a hard drive with another operating system.
I am a simpleminded Linux user, not good with Windows, which is obviously designed for computer geeks, not for end users like me. It had been quite a while since I had dealt with Windows, and that time it was some mutant form called “Mimi” after the Drew Carey show character, I think. Or maybe it was just one “Me.” Either way, it was a bad experience I tried to blank out with the help of cheap bourbon. Still, I recall that in the end I gave up on the “Windows Mimi” or whatever it was called, wiped it off the hard drive and stuck to regular, easy-to-use Linux. The laptop that came with “Windows Mimi” is the HP Pavilion 5340 I am using right now. Although I had trouble with the Mimi thing it came with, I have never had any trouble running Linux on it. I swear, HP would have been better off shipping this thing either with Linux pre-installed or no OS at all, but you know how those deals go between Microsoft and the computer manufacturers they have enslaved. Fah!

At least I had no trouble getting Mimi Windows and Linux to work side by side. (My Mimi problems had to do with drivers and other software.) But XP resisted the basic installation. I did what I had done successfully in the past: I wiped the hard drive and installed Linux, leaving a nice big FAT32 partition to hold Windows, right up front (because Windows doesn’t like to be number two to another operating system, you know), then tried to reinstall XP from the “restore” CDs, which are all Microsoft and its slave companies feel you deserve these days instead of a complete, transferrable operating system.

XP automatically formatted my Linux partitions and installed itself right over them. I tried again. Same thing. I did another Linux install, but left the front half of the hard drive unformatted. Again, total takeover. Finally, in disgust, I went to the closest store that sells software — Staples — and grabbed a copy of Partition Commander, a program that is neither free nor Free, and used it to partition my hard drive and “hide” the Linux partition from the Redmond-created monstrosity that so aggressively monopolized my computer when left to its own devices.

You’d think that if Microsoft’s talk about how its products are so much better than the competition had any truth to it, the company would want people like me to try XP and Linux side by side so we could see how much nicer and more stable its stuff is than that commie home-made patched-together hacker hobbyist Linux junk. But instead Microsoft chose to have XP extend itself to my Linux partition, then embrace it, and finally extinguish it.

The funny thing is, at first I really thought this was a problem I alone was having, that perhaps people who are skilled in the ways of Windows knew some cool trick to make XP behave. But I started noticing other tech journalists mentioning the same problem. Many of them, of course, blamed Linux for it, and used this as another chance to pontificate about how Linux might be okay for ordinary people, someday, if it were only easier to install, set up, and use.

I find Linux plenty easy to install, set up, and use, thank you. It’s Windows that’s hard, and this latest XP wrinkle makes it even harder. I also find this XP “feature” downright mean, and — in my mind at least — anticompetitive.

Not once, in reading many articles about the Microsoft antitrust trial’s penalty phase, nor in reading many days’ worth of the actual trial transcripts, have I seen XP’s “take over your whole hard drive” behavior mentioned. There’s been a little talk about how Microsoft has made it hard in a busines sense for computer manufacturers to offer BeOS alongside Windows, and a lot about how Microsoft has made it hard for companies like Real and AOL to offer software on a Windows XP computer that competes with anything Microsoft makes, but nothing about XP’s bullying behavior toward other operating systems.

I wonder if Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly knows or cares about this problem. If so, it might color her ruling. (Or it might not; it’s hard to tell with federal judges.)

I also wonder if the upcoming Service Pack for XP that will supposedly make it easier for users to choose non-Microsoft email, Web browsing, instant messaging, and multimedia software will address the dual-boot problem. Supposedly Microsoft is releasing this Service Pack specifically to address antitrust concerns, so one would hope so.

If not, there’s always the Partition Commander trick. And I’m sure new Linux distribution releases will contain XP workarounds of some sort, because part of life in a computer world where one company’s software runs over 90% of all desktops is finding ways around the restrictions and defects that company builds into its software, as witnessed by the endless shelves full of “utility” programs in every computer store whose only purpose is to overcome Windows problems.

ZDNet UK reports that support for Bluetooth has been added to the Linux development kernel, and it’s a step, but not the whole enchilada, toward native Bluetooth support in upcoming releases of the Linux operating system.

LinuxToday has the announcement and changelog and download links, etc.

Slashdot has links to the changelog and other stuff. From the announcement posted there: “Hundreds of updated to the current tree in the last few months have had all the slackers drooling, and now it is almost upon us. Now, I don’t want to hear any more talk of Slackware being dead.”

Anonymous Reader writes, “Considering that Audiogalaxy is one of the older post-Napster P2P brethren, I guess they have to feel pretty good that they have avoided the music industry lawyers this long. But that’s of little consolation should lengthy court procedures still cripple them financially like they are designed to do.

http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/2002/agsued.html.

–
By John Leyden of The Register –

The first beta of Netscape 7, released earlier this week, has been received with cautious enthusiasm.
Netscape 7.0 Preview Release, which is based on the recent Mozilla 1.0 RC2 build and the Gecko browser engine, features a variety of enhancements on Netscape 6.2. These include tabbed browsing (a la Opera), print preview, the ability to save complete web pages, email return receipts, message labels and S/MIME support. A quick search within mail and the address book has also been included.

There’s also enhancements to the proprietary components including an Instant Messenger that supports file transfers, buddy icons and ICQ support. An additional feature is Radio@Netscape, a streaming audio service in an improved toolbar.

The release of Netscape 7.0 Preview Release 1 comes at an interesting time with increased speculation that America Online is to ditch IE as its preferred client browser. Such a move could re-ignite the browser wars of the ’90s, and even its possibility makes Netscape a more important target client for developers.

Early feedback on developer site MozillaZine ranges from highly positive to comments about glitches or comments that the browser is broken. Overall the view seems to be that Netscape 7.0 is better than 6.2 and IE, but as a site focusing on tech-savvy Mozilla users, it’s hardly surprising that there’s plenty of grumbles — not least about the size of the browser. Netscape 7.0 Preview Release 1 is 30.8 MB compared to the 10MB footprint of Mozilla for Windows.

Still those who prefer the Mozilla Open Source browser will welcome the availability of RC3 last wek, the last release before the full version, whose availability is drawing closer. You can see the release notes for Mozilla RC3 here.

All Content copyright 2002 The Register

– By Grant Gross –

A little controversy erupted late this week when it was revealed that Red Hat has filed for patents related to the TUX webserver, for Embedded Protocol Objects and the method and apparatus for atomic file look-up. As many of you know, many people in the Free Software community see software-related patents as a tool for creating more proprietary software.
The anonymous hordes at Slashdot had a good debate on the issue, but LinuxandMain.com argued that the community should hold its outrage until it knows more about Red Hat’s intentions.

Leaps of logic

Equally controversial, but in a trolling-for-page-views kind of way, was a column at WorldTechNews blaming Open Source for one company’s programmer recruiting problems. Here’s the twisted logic: Open Source allows programmers to copy each other’s work, and that’s why this company can’t find skilled Microsoft programmers. Yeah, really, that’s the point this columnist is making.

Then there’s the columnist at Forbes who complains that Linux distributions don’t include Windows software to help make dual-booting easier. Where do you start to argue against that kind of logic? Gee, perhaps copies of Windows should include a Linux distro to make dual-booting easier, too? Hmmm, I smell a new anti-trust remedy.

Violating the DMCA en masse

We note that a Reuters story, carried on CNN.com, Yahoo.com and in dozens of other publications, may have violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by describing in too much detail how people can use a felt-tip marker to defeat a Sony CD copy protection scheme. Of course, Sony will never sue Reuters, because if we have the entertainment industry going after Big Media instead of sites like 2600.com, we’d have companies like AOL Time Warner and Disney suing themselves, and it’d be chaos.

Trying to grab your tax dollars

“Microsoft has beaten a retreat — albeit a rumblin’, bumblin’, stumblin’ retreat — from its proposed audit of the 24 largest school districts in Washington and Oregon …” notes the Oregonian. Microsoft, as you may recall, was threatening to unleash the license cops on those schools. As the Oregonian column notes, perhaps it’s time more schools investigated using Linux.

Success story of the week

IBM is painting its new deal with Sherwin-Williams as one of the largest retail adoptions of Linux ever. The paint retailer is converting cash registers and other store computers to Linux.

Newly released

Mozilla 1.0 release candidate 3 hit the download shelves this week.

KDE 3.0.1 is shipping.

Open SSH 3.2.2 has been release and gets a review at O’Reilly’s Linux site.

FrozenBubble 0.9.3 has been released. It’s an “addicting” game that works in Linux.

Newly reviewed

Robin “Roblimo” Miller gets the comments flying when he reviews Opera 6 for Linux ands says it often performs better than Netscape or Mozilla.

Dee-Ann LeBlanc looks at TransGaming’s WineX 2.0 and its promise of playing Windows games on a Linux machine and finds mixed results.

IT-director.com says StarOffice 6.0 is worth every penny; Sun may decide to charge for it.

OSNews checks out Win4Lin Workstation 4.0 and says nice things about it.

LinuxWorld.com says Mandrake 8.2 “offers the easiest installation ever.”

New at NewsForge/Linux.com

Among the other stories we reported first this week:

Jack Bryar looks at the Microsoft vs. Open Source fight in Third World countries and finds it doesn’t always come down to which offers the best software.

Robin examines Zend and how the company is making money off PHP by offering proprietary tools.

Stock news

The Nasdaq dropped from 1741.39 to 1,661.49 this week, ending a one-week rally. Of our 11 Open Source related stocks, only TiVo posted a gain for the week, a whole nickel for the week.

Here’s how Open Source and related stocks ended this past week:

Company Name	Symbol	5/17 Close	5/24 Close
Apple	AAPL	25.01	24.15
Borland Software Int’l	BORL	9.99	9.80
Caldera International	CALD	0.73	0.67
Hewlett-Packard	HPQ	19.68	18.69
IBM	IBM	85.69	83.10
MandrakeSoft	4477.PA	e2.70	e2.25
Red Hat	RHAT	5.12	4.59
Sun Microsystems	SUNW	7.35	6.86
TiVo	TIVO	3.90	3.95
VA Software	LNUX	1.0497	.97
Wind River Systems	WIND	7.22	6.88

Jason Spisak writes, “Barry Shalliday of Personal Computer World reviews Lycoris Desktop/LX, and gives it the magazine’s high rating. He states, ‘Desktop/LX gives you cutting-edge applications with some unique features, and is great for someone new to Linux.’ Read the whole article here: PCW Lycoris Desktop/LX review.”

Mikael Pawlo writes, “How much do you know about free software licensing? Time to find out! In a
quiz presented by the Free Software Foundation you can test your abilities. How should Joan license her web browser?”