ZDNet: “The systems are the first swing of a one-two punch against Transmeta, whose low-power designs caught Intel flat-footed, first in the mobile market and then in the low-power server market. Intel now is fighting back just when most server companies using Transmeta chips are on the ropes.”

Reported at Network World Fusion: “One in nine servers running Microsoft’s Internet Information Services has software installed on it that would allow attackers to take complete control of the system, according to a new survey by Web server information firm Netcraft.”

From LinuxFocus: “The experienced Linux user is not stopped by a missing font or pattern: he would soon install the fonts, or find a suitable path for saving, that wasn’t the case with my correspondents. Everybody has been a beginner, and who still isn’t in some area of Linux? So this article is aimed at the beginner, although even the purists won’t be offended by the methods described.”

– By Andrew Orlowskiof The Register –
After months of closed-door negotiations, open source developers have gained royalty-free access to one of the most significant new storage formats of the future: Mount Rainier.

Mount Rainier is a CD format devised with the goal of replacing CD-RWs and — eventually — floppy and superfloppy formats, such as Iomega’s Zip disks.

Unlike today’s rewriteable optical disks, Mount Rainier CDs will allow users to drag-and-drop data to the disk, dispensing with the need for slow formatting operations, and will provide similar error correction for removable media. So Mount Rainier CDs will simply behave like hard drives or floppies, and the format applies to rewriteable DVDs too, potentially making it a core medium for enterprise storage.

Mount Rainier is needed because CD-RWs “are still too complicated to use for most users,” says Philips’ Eggert Gudmundsson.

Mount Rainier began life two years as an initiative from Philips (which holds many of the patents for the technology). Sony, Microsoft and Compaq are also promoting the format. Native OS support is critical to its success, but the breakthrough for providing free software developers with royalty-free access has only just been made.

However, these four ‘Core Promoters’ originally insisted that knowledge and access to the format layer of the media was to part of the licensed specification, which was effectively closed.

The most contentious aspect was that basic commands to create MRW media from CDRW, in native MRW hardware were closed. This would have created a lucrative business for Mount Rainier licensees in selling preformatted MR media, but excluded open source device driver writers from royalty-free access to Mount Rainier. The original specifications also blocked a back-door for these developers, by ensuring that a ‘BLANK MEDIA’ command on preformatted MRW media rendered the disk a conventional CD-RW.

Elephant Gun

But the proposal ran into opposition from Linux IDE guy Andre Hedrick, now heading his own Linux ATA Development Storage Consultant Group and a name familiar to Reg readers from the CPRM-on-ATA wars.

“The objective was to ensure there were no licensing fees for the most basic parts,” Hedrick told us. “My concern was making sure that simple operations needed to use Mount Rainier devices and create Mount Rainier media were open-specced so they work in native format. It wasn’t open to begin with.”

Agreement was finally reached to open the specifications at a meeting last week.

“The physical layer document will be licensed to anyone who signs an adoptor’s agreement, royalty-free” says Gudmundsson. “The command set was part of the MMC standard, and open document anyway”

At issue was the clarification of the boundaries of what should be published as an open spec and what should be published under license from the Mount Rainier Working Group.

“Microsoft stated, if I were to bypass any parts of licensed documents, then I’d have four 900lb gorillas on my back,” said Hedrick. “That’s OK. I carry an elephant gun.”

“Linux is taking over the server market, and I argued that when people discover they can’t use this format on Linux, the spec would not be adopted.”

A commercial name for the format is not agreed yet, and for now the working groups punningly refer to “CD-MRW”.

Mount Rainier compatible drives should not be more expensive than equivalent non-compatible CD-RWs, according to Gudmundsson. The first drives should appear in the stores by the end of the year, he reckons, although the advantages won’t be seen until
operating systems support the drives natively.

Related LinkMount Rainier Working Group

All Content copyright 2001 The Register

From Slashdot: “Daniel Weitzner is Chairperson of the World Wide Web Consortium’s Patent Policy Working Group,the body that is deciding if it’s okay to charge “Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory” (RAND) license fees for use of W3C-endorsed standards that are covered by patents or other trade restrictions. We sent him the questions you asked back on October 8. Here, at long last, are his answers.”

“Information about the security problems fixed with the new kernel rpm
packages from SuSE Security Announcement: kernel (SuSE-SA:2001:036)
has been withheld in coordination with other Linux distributors/vendors.

We hereby re-release SuSE-SA:2001:036 with the new announcement ID
SuSE-SA:2001:039, now including additional information about the bugs
fixed.” Full details from the post to the suse-security-announce mailing list.

Wired.com has the story, under the heading of “insecure e-commerce.” Here’s how the story starts: “To correct serious security flaws, Microsoft on Friday disabled the virtual wallet function of its Passport service and has
begun notifying partners about the vulnerabilities.”

– By Dan Berkes –
VA wants to be the company formerly known as Linux, Sun tells reporters

that it’s built to last, and Caldera ships 64-bit distribution. Also:

Apple hit with more lawsuits, IBM pays up.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average ended Friday at 9,323.61, down 222

points from the close of business for October 26. Nasdaq’s composite

index closed out the week at 1,745.73, down 23 points from last Friday.

The market took some sharp plunges during the middle of this week as

investors seemed to once again realize that no quick turnaround was in

sight for the ailing economy.

Part of that reality check came from the U.S. Department of Labor’s monthly

jobless report, showing the unemployment rate rising from 4.9 percent

in September to 5.4 percent in October. American employers slashed

415,000 jobs during the month of October, the most job cuts the country

has seen since 1980.

“It wasn’t anything we hadn’t been expecting. These numbers are showing

the effect of the Sept. 11 attacks on the economy,” said analyst Kim

Dahowski.

“[Employment numbers] are a lagging indicator,” said Dahowski, “and

even if the economy does a turnaround as planned by the middle of 2002,

we may still see an 8 percent unemployment rate by next June.”

The jobless numbers may have actually helped the market this week. U.S. Federal Reserve policy makers are meeting this Tuesday and they are expected to

make a 10th cut to short-term interest rates in an effort to keep

consumers spending money.

VA taking Linux out of name
NewsForge parent company VA Linux wants

to take the “L” word out of its name. The company will ask its Board of Directors to approve changing the name of the company to VA Software

Corp., according to paperwork filed Tuesday with the Securities and

Exchange Commission.

The official company line is that the name VA Software is more in line

with the company’s core business of developing its SourceForge

collaborative software development program. Critics have charged that

VA merely took advantage of the Linux “buzz factor” of the late ’90s,

and now wants to distance itself as far away as possible from the Linux

market segment.

IBM: Buybacks, dividends, and self-healing computers
Big Blue was given the go-ahead by its board of directors to buy up to

$3.5 billion of the company’s public shares. With a similar buyback

arrangement approved in April, the company has so far repurchased $4.3

billion of its shares. IBM said it would make the purchases on the open

market.

Also on Wednesday, the IBM board declared a regular quarterly cash

dividend of 14 cents per common share. The dividend will be paid out on

December 10 to all stockholders of record listed no later than November

9.

On the technology side of IBM’s business, the company announced a new service that offers the promise of a computer that can heal itself when something goes wrong.

While the goal is to let machines manage themselves, the IBM package

comes in a services offering that will require about 20 weeks of

initial consulting and $30,000 to $100,000 per month in ongoing

maintenance from the company’s Global Services division.

Sun: We’re built to last
“We’ve got $6 billion in cash, no debt. Short of a multibillion dollar

embezzlement, I think we are in pretty good shape to ride out, you

know, a two or three year economic storm,” Sun Microsystems CEO Scott

McNealy told reporters on Wednesday. The news will, hopefully for Sun’s

sake, reassure nervous investors bitten by two quarters of downturns

after almost a decade of profits.

Apple: No buyback and a tale of two lawsuits
Investors waiting to offload AAPL during an aggressive company buyback

plan can keep holding their breaths. At a technology conference in New

York on Wednesday, Apple v.p. of finance Peter Oppenheimer told the

audience that his company needs its $4 billion cash reserve to retain

employees and reassure customers of the company’s viability.

As Apple found out when consumers didn’t flock to its now discontinued

G4 Cube, the computer-buying public can be very fickle. That’s nothing

compared to a disgruntled shareholder, however, and that leads us to

the recently-announced class action lawsuits against the Cupertino,

Calif., company.

The suits allege that Apple lied to its investors when it promised a

bumper crop of fourth-quarter 2000 profits thanks to new products based

on the G4 PowerPC processor, including the G4 Cube and Power Mac G4

Dual Processor. Just a few weeks later, the company announced record

losses for the fourth quarter. (Schiffrin &

Barroway announcement) (Cauley Geller

Bowman & Coates announcement)

Caldera ships new OpenLinux
On Wednesday, Caldera

International announced the release of OpenLinux 64 3.1, a

distribution of Linux server and workstation software designed for use

on Intel’s 64-bit Itanium processors. According to the official

announcement, this is the first version of OpenLinux from the

Utah-based software company that supports Intel’s new 64-bit processor

architecture.

HP sends Tux to Seattle
In an SEC filing made Tuesday afternoon, Internet retailer Amazon said

it was able to cut technology costs by nearly 25 percent last quarter,

in large part because it adopted Linux. Company executives wouldn’t

mention the specific role Linux played in the Amazon system, but did

credit Hewlett-Packard for helping them make the move.

Here’s how Open Source and selected technology stocks ended this week:

Company Name	Symbol	11/02 Close	10/26 Close
Apple	AAPL	18.57	18.67
Borland Software Int’l	BORL	11.16	12.09
Caldera International	CALD	0.28	0.30
Hewlett Packard	HWP	16.92	17.85
IBM	IBM	109.50	111.16
MandrakeSoft	4477.PA	e2.75	e2.61
Red Hat	RHAT	4.40	4.88
Sun Microsystems	SUNW	11.44	10.40
TiVo	TIVO	5.35	5.38
VA Linux Systems	LNUX	1.26	1.45
Wind River Systems	WIND	14.23	15.70

Advogato.org has a post from kernel dude Alan Cox about that very topic. Here’s how it starts: “People will have been wondering about the 2.4 stable kernel progression. Various bizarre rumours in
Byte seem to have generated a lot of discussion and rumour. Now that the people concerned are all
agreed its time to put the entire roadmap out and make it clear.”

lele writes, “The new release 0.6 of K-Meleon, the GPLed browser for Windows based on gecko, has been downloaded since now (it has been released only three days ago) more than 22.000 times and menus have been translated into Italian, English, French, Spanish, Dutch, German and many other languages!! Thanks to everybody… :)”