Advogato: “A new magazine called Free Software
Magazine will be published starting January 2002 by the Free
Software Foundation, China Academy. The table of contents is
already online, with the preface by Richard Stallman and topics include
GNOME, GNUStep, GnuPG, Zope and others. The editor also calls
for contributions from the free software community and projects like KDE. Apparently the first
issue will be published in English and Simplified Chinese.” Read more here.

The Register: “British boffins have made a breakthrough in quantum cryptography, an advanced code-making technology which is theoretically uncrackable, by developing a single photon-emitting diode.” Read more here.

ZDNet: “IBM, which plans to announce Friday that its top-end p690 “Regatta” Unix server is available in volume, had long planned the server as an assault on Sun Microsystems. But Big Blue must now take Hewlett-Packard into account too.” Read more here.

CNN reports that “[a]n FBI spokesman confirmed Wednesday that the United States government is working on a controversial Internet spying technology, code-named ‘Magic Lantern,’ which could be used to eavesdrop on computer communications by suspected criminals.”

Century Embedded Technologies,
a leader in graphical application technologies for embedded Linux, and
VT Media Technology, a leading supplier of set-top computers and related
convergent media equipment, today announced the immediate availability
of WebMedia for the VT900 Set-Top Box (STB). The collaboration offers
multimedia services delivered over standard broadband networks, allowing
access to services such as interactive television (iTV), Video-on-Demand
(VOD), and high speed Internet access.

The combined solution, based on VT Media Technologies’ VT900 STB
reference design and Century’s WebMedia software platform allows the
deployment of a wide range of streamed audio and video content via the
Real-Time Streaming Protocol (RTP). RTP provides a standard way for
clients and servers from multiple vendors to stream multimedia content.
The VT900 STB offers broadcasters, cable operators, and other content
providers a full-featured, easily scalable hardware and software
solution for delivering and maintaining services on their networks.

The VT900 is a high quality STB system at a low cost. It has easy-to-use
interfaces for Internet browsing and a supports a wide range of digital
video applications. Combined with WebMedia, the solution provides a
comprehensive platform that hosts hardware and software components
including enhanced TV applications, high-speed Internet access, a
customizable user interface and program guide, digital video recording,
and streaming audio and video. The VT900 addresses a growing consumer
demand for personalized content, convenience, and control over
information and entertainment media.

“Our collaboration with VT Media Technologies delivers a complete and
flexible production-ready STB,” said Gregory Haerr, CEO of Century
Embedded Technologies and Open Source leader. “The VT900 is a
ready-to-deploy option for cable operators and accelerates their speed
to market with proven and fully integrated advanced digital technologies
provided with WebMedia.”

Century Embedded Technologies’ Webmedia provides an open standards
software platform based on embedded Linux with the flexibility required
to integrate enhanced television services and content, manage and deploy
applications via IP multicast and coordinate services from multiple
vendors. WebMedia is a suite of embedded development tools, SDK, runtime
utilities, and applications that work together to form an interactive,
graphical user environment.

Technical Details

Optimized for National Semiconductor’s Geode system on chip, the VT900
uses Sigma Designs’ EM8400 MPEG Decoder and the MacPHYTER Ethernet
adapter. Additional peripherals are available and include DVD Player,
CDRW, and standard IDE Hardware.

WebMedia supports multiple industry standards including a full featured
Internet browser that supports HTML, Javascript, and plug-ins such as
Macromedia?s Flash, Secure Socket Layer (SSL) for secure e-commerce
transactions, and the TCP/IP protocol. Software upgrades and maintenance
are delivered via multicasting to any or all STBs across a subscriber
base. This mechanism also ensures that the STB is scalable for future
enhancements.

A Software Development Kit is available and offers a suite of software
development tools that enable third-party developers to build and
customize applications on top of WebMedia using APIs and application
components. The SDK includes documentation, software libraries, sample
code, and user interface templates

For an overview of Century?s WebMedia, visit
http://embedded.censoft.com/documents/index.php#webdocs. A downloadable
open source version is also available:
http://embedded.censoft.com/downloads/downloads.php.

To view more details about VT Media Technologies and VT900, visit
http://www.vtmt.com/. A datasheet about the VT900 platform is available
http://www.vtmt.com/html/vt900.html.

Availability

For commercial inquiries and pricing, contact Century Embedded
Technologies at: cetsales@centurysoftware.com or +1.801.268.3088.
Century offers custom engineering services, maintenance and support.

About VT Media Technologies

VT Media Technologies is a leading supplier of Set-Top Computers, and
related convergent media equipment. They can be reached at
sales@vtmt.com, www.vtmt.com or 1.320.763.8491. The address is VT Media
Technologies, 6307 County Road 87 SW, Alexandria, MN 56308.

About Century Embedded Technologies

Century Software Embedded Technologies, a newly created division of
Century Software, Inc., is a leading developer of core applications
technologies for the worldwide embedded Linux applications market. These
technologies include: graphical windowing system development and runtime
environments; customized Internet browsers and HTML viewers; embedded
and Internet appliance multimedia technologies, including MP3 audio and
MPEG video players and recorders; PDA/WebPAD runtime and development
suites, PIM suites; and set-top boxes. Complete solutions These core
technologies are designed specifically to allow chip manufacturers,
hardware board vendors, and their customers to build embedded
applications on x86, PowerPC, StrongARM, MIPS, SH and other
microprocessor architectures running on either the Microwindows or the X
Window System. Based in Salt Lake City, Century Software was founded in
1985 and is privately held. Century Software’s CEO, Gregory Haerr, is
the founder and chief maintainer of the Microwindows Project, and
founder of the ViewML Project.

Century Software, Century Embedded Technologies, and PIXIL are
trademarks of Century Software, Inc. Linux is a registered trademark
owned by Linus Torvalds. WebPAD and MacPHYTER are registered trademarks
of National Semiconductor Corporation. All other names mentioned are
trademarks, registered trademarks or service marks of their respective
owners.

Contacts:

Jill Ratkevic
1.408.209.5181
jillr@centurysoftware.com

Jon Beutler
1.801.268.3088 X145

Linux Journal: “CodeCon 2002, scheduled for February 15, 16 and 17 in San Francisco, California, is the premier event in 2002 for the P2P, cypherpunk and network/security application developer community. It is a workshop for developers of real-world applications that support individual liberties… Examples of excellent presentations include Mixmaster remailers and extensions, OpenNap, Swarmcast, Mojo Nation, Magic Money and OpenPGP applications. Novelty in technical approaches, security assumptions and end-user functionality are excellent properties.” Read more here.

The API frozen Developer Platform Beta, “Everyone’s Excited and Confused”,
is ready for your porting pleasure! It is available for immediate download:

ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/pre-gnome2/releases/gnome-2.0-lib-beta1/

This release marks the first API frozen release of the GNOME 2.0 Developer
Platform, and is 100% parallel installable with the latest GNOME 1.x
platform libraries.

The GNOME 2.0 Developer Platform provides many technical advantages over
GNOME 1.x, including full multi-lingual text support, high-quality
anti-aliased text, accessibility support, substantial API and usability
improvements to the libraries and widgets, and greater ease of development.

Please file bug reports for this release at http://bugzilla.gnome.org/


Porting Your GNOME Applications
===============================

Now is the perfect time to begin porting your applications to the new GNOME
platform libraries! The GNOME 2.0 Porting Guide offers tips and guidelines
for porting applications to the new platform, and API docs exist for many of
the platform libraries.

GNOME 2.0 Porting Guide: http://developer.gnome.org/dotplan/porting/

GNOME 2.0 API Documentation: http://developer.gnome.org/doc/API/

  (Please note that whilst most modules contain API docs already, many are
  not yet available on the main API documentation web page. Please check the
  tarballs for API docs, and bug maintainers with inadequate documentation.)


GNOME 2.0 Desktop Release Progress
==================================

Often the best way to solve a porting problem is to check out someone else's
code; the best way to do that right now is to keep up with the porting
progress on the GNOME 2.0 Desktop modules.

The dot.plan website includes a building guide for the very in-development
GNOME 2.0 Desktop, the aforementioned porting guide, and a list of modules
and their status, amongst other things (like pretty screenshots).

  http://developer.gnome.org/dotplan/

Many of the core GNOME developers are 'eating their own dogfood' by using
the GNOME 2.0 Desktop day-to-day.

  Keep in mind that right now, building the GNOME 2.0 Desktop from CVS is
  NOT for the faint-hearted! However, if your idea of support is prompt
  integration of your patches, please consider testing, using and
  contributing to it.

George Lebl's vicious-build-scripts are the fastest way to build the current
CVS HEAD code, and a guide to using them is also available on dot.plan:

  http://developer.gnome.org/dotplan/notes/


Thank you to the many hackers who have already begun porting, testing and
contributing to GNOME 2.0...

Happy porting!

- The GNOME 2.0 Release Team

--
   "When there's public debate and mass hysteria, that's when the patches
                         roll in." - Michael Meeks                            
_______________________________________________
gnome-announce-list mailing list
gnome-announce-list@gnome.org
http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-announce-list

From The Register: “The UK government has published the first draft of its proposed policy on the use of
open source software and is seeking comments from the public.

The policy essentially seeks to increase the use of open source software at all
levels of government and public sector IT provision. Behind this broader
acceptance of open source solutions lies a desire to ensure interoperability and the
support of open standards and specifications.”

Salon.com has the story. “Under the terms of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), radio stations
around the country are supposed to pay thousands of dollars in annual fees to broadcast
streaming audio over the Web. Managers of college and community stations say while
their commercial counterparts may be able to pay the fees, their stations don’t have the
cash and will shut down their webcasts.”

BSDToday.com has short item saying Voicetronix has released Open Source FreeBSD-4.4 drivers for its V4PCI four-port
analogue Computer Telephony card.

A computer telephony card is a PCI card that interfaces your PC to telephone lines.