The European Commission says that Microsoft lied to investigators and tried to obstruct the antitrust case, and the commission wants Microsoft to pay dearly for its transgressions. The European Union’s executive body is expected to demand that the company drop certain features from its Windows operating system, and has the authority to impose a fine as much of 10 percent of Microsoft’s annual revenue — about $2.5 billion. Read the Wall Street Journal Online story at ZDNet.

The Register reports that chip-making giant Intel will roll Pentium 4 technology into its Celeron line next summer. The company’s latest development roadmaps indicate that a P4 Celeron at 1.8GHz will ship to computer builders in the third quarter of next year.

Wired News reports on the latest courtroom appearance of the Napster vs. RIAA show. This time, the two sides argued over whether a trial was needed to determine if Napster is liable for copyright infringement damage. Judge Patel did not make a ruling on the matter today, and courtroom observers say that it was impossible to determine what her final decision on the matter might be.

CNET News.com: “Technology stocks posted solid gains Wednesday, driving the Nasdaq up more than
3 percent, as investors focused on earnings and put the U.S. retaliation against Afghanistan
on the back burner.

The Nasdaq jumped 56.06 points, or 3.57 percent, to 1,626.25, and the Dow Jones industrial
average was up 188.42, or 2 percent, to 9240.86. CNET’s technology indexes also gained across
the board.”

”
Simply put, we feel that the proposed changes in the way
that the W3C operates threaten the organization that we
have turned to in the past as the arbiter of standards
for the Web. The W3C is a resource for those groups who
want to create a standard that will allow multiple
implementations to interoperate. With the addition of
patents into that mix, the standard’s merit is no longer
the important factor in determining how that standard is
used and who can use it.” So reads a portion of the Mozilla.org response to the w3C’s ongoing patent controversy. Read the brief at MozillaQuest.

A German ad firm says it has the perfect solution for curbing the use of ad-blocking software by Web users. MediaBeam said it will soon unveil a new product that can detect software that blocks online advertisements, and in turn, block those users from viewing sponsored online content without paying a fee or ditching the blocking software. Reported at ZDNet.

Secure that computer, or no Net for you! British ISP Telewest is pulling the plug on users who have yet to properly patch their computer to avoid spreading malicious worms like Nimda. Read all about it at ZDNet.

ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/alan/linux-2.4/
Intermediate diffs are available from
http://www.bzimage.org.

*       Small fixes to various long standing bugs, various architecture and
 *       driver cleanups. The 2.4.10-ac tree now seems pretty solid.
 *

 2.4.10-ac11
 o       Update wireless API and drivers                 (Jean Tourrilhes)
 o       Trident driver fixes and cleanups       (Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo)
 o       Use set_current_state in cmpci          (Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo)
 o       The 1Gb limit in our iso code is wrong          (Joerg Schilling)
         (and I trust Joerg on specs..)
 o       Handle large HRT in i2o_proc                    (Vojtech Pavlik)
         | Fixes a crash on the SX6000 board
 o       Use set_current_state in maestro3       (Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo)
 o       Kill a dead .version file                       (Russell King)
 o       Kill bogus include in vt.c                      (Russell King)
 o       Blink keyboard lights on panic on x86           (Andi Kleen)
 o       Update motioneye documentation                  (Stelian Pop)
 o       Remove unneeded symlink faking in sys5fs        (Christoph Hellwig)
 o       Update sony pi driver                           (Stelian Pop)
 o       ARM makefile fixes                              (Russell King)
 o       Fix ide build problem                           (Keith Owens)
 o       Clean up aci driver                     (Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo)
 o       Fix memory handling error in pnpbios            (Thomas Hood)
 o       License tag for amd7930                         (Frank Davis)
 o       Further VM tuning                               (Rik van Riel)

 2.4.10-ac10
 o       Fix panic on certain fat error cases            (Martin Josefsson)
 o       Fix silly dpt_i2o naming error for alpha        (Arjan van de Ven)
         | It still doesnt work on alpha..
 o       Add license tags to sbus drivers                (Frank Davis)
 o       Fix ARM module export cases                     (Russell King)
 o       Clean up ufs byteswap handling                  (Christoph Hellwig)
 o       Support attaching USB irda as serial device     (Greg Kroah Hartmann)
 o       Add error reporting to more of pnpbios          (Thomas Hood)
 o       Update parport_pc to know about configured v    (Thomas Hood)
         unconfigured PnP resources
 o       Fix non module using build                      (Keith Owens)
 o       S/390 build fixes                               (Martin Schwidefsky)
 o       Update cris support                             (Bjorn Wesen)
 o       Fix IPS driver build non modular                (Jack Hammer)
 o       PPPoE updates                                   (Michal Ostrowski)
 o       init_idle race fix for Alpha                    (Peter Rival)
 o       cdrom bracketing/missed copy fix                (Toby Milne)

 2.4.10-ac9
 o       Fix osb4 warning                                (Christoph Hellwig)
 o       Merge Configure.help updates for ARM            (Russell King)
 o       Intel i860 GART                                 (Paul Mundt)
 o       Toshiba driver compile fix                      (Christoph Hellwig)
 o       Fix 3dnow+pae compile problem                   (Christoph Hellwig)
 o       aic7xxx modules.h fix                           (Arjan van de Ven)
 o       Further i2c cleanups                            (Christoph Hellwig)
 o       Fix printk type warning in zone printkis        (Christoph Hellwig)
 o       Remove unused variable in mm/filemap.c          (Christoph Hellwig)
 o       Attach license tags to freevxfs                 (Christoph Hellwig)
 o       Add RTS/DTR support to the pl2303               (Johannes Deisenhofer
                                                          Greg Kroah-Hartmann)
 o       SAA9730 is mips only                            (me)
 o       License tags for ide layer                      (Frank Davis)
 o       Next PnPBIOS update                             (Thomas Hood)
 o       Zisofs inflate compile fixup                    (Keith Owens)
 o       Fix Dell C600 fix for newer PM code             (Tim Stadelmann)
 o       Parport license tags                            (Frank Davis)
 o       Fix smb naming clash                            (Urban Widmark)
 o       Clean up ad1816 resource handling       (Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo)
 o       Remove ext2_notify_change                       (Christoph Hellwig)
 o       Remove dead ext2/acl.c code bits                (Christoph Hellwig)
 o       Pentium pro store fence fixes for pci interface (me)
         and spin_unlock
 o       spin_unlock for OOSTORE SMP kernels             (me)

 2.4.10-ac8
 o       Fix inflate ksym problems                       (Keith Owens)
 o       Fix missign return in errata 50 case            (Udo Steinberg)
 o       First tiny bits of making i2o use the new pci   (me)
         API
 o       I2O mtrr handling improvements                  (Vojtech Pavlik)
 o       Remove ARM dependancies on libgcc               (Russell King)
 o       Use spin_lock_irqsave in bootflag code          (Thomas Hood)
 o       Kill remaining users of malloc.h                (Dave Jones)
 o       ARM documentation updates                       (Russell King)
 o       ARM module tag updates                          (Russell King)
 o       ARM nexus updates                               (Russell King)
 o       Remove double include of bitops in fat          (Russell King)
 o       Add further export symbol checks                (Keith Owens)
 o       Report initrd ramdisk unpack failures           (Russell King)
 o       Wait for context thread to start before         (Russell King)
         returning from start_context_thread
 o       Remove unused prototype in the pagemap.h file   (Anton Altaparmakov)
 o       Move asm-um/page_offset.h to the right place    (Jeff Dike)
 o       Add hooks for ARM pcmcia merging (32bit I/O     (Russell King)
         and per mapping info)
 o       SA1100 pcmcia           (John Dorsey, Woojung Huh, Jordi Colomer,
                                  Ken Gordon, Russell King)

 2.4.10-ac7
 o       Miscellaneous arm fixes                         (Russell King)
 o       Arm include updates                             (Russell King)
 o       SA1100 updates                                  (Russell King)
 o       EBSA110 and integrator updates                  (Russell King)
 o       ARM arch updates                                (Russell King)
 o       Zero length packets for UHCI                    (Johannes Erdfelt)
 o       Update the uml block driver, make it 64bit clean(Greg Lonnon)
 o       Change UML adress mappings                      (Jeff Dike)
 o       Update UML signal handling                      (Jeff Dike)
 o       Miscellaneous UML fixes                         (Jeff Dike)
 o       Update the UML example iomem driver             (Greg Lonnon)
 o       Next batch of fs/namespace cleanups             (Al Viro)
 o       Fix PPP over ATM configuration                  (me)

 2.4.10-ac6
 o       Fix nfs symlink breakage                        (Trond Myklebust)
 o       Fix SCpnt->pid value                            (Dario Ballabio)
 o       LDM partition merge fix                         (Al Viro)
 o       Namespace fixes from 2.4.11pre*                 (Al Viro)
 o       pipe.c cleanup                                  (Al Viro)
 o       Fix the iobuf oops                              (Anwar Payyoorayil)
 o       Fix bootp image loader on Alpha                 (Jay Estabrook)
 o       scsi tape module locking fixes                  (Kai Mäkisara)
 o       opl3sa2 dual DMA fix                            (Jerome Auge)
 o       Quota fixes for -ac using S_NOQUOTA flags       (Jan Kara)
 o       Fix pci64 broken irq mask hack and an SRM fix   (Jay Estabrook)
 o       Fix DRM procfs oops                             (Abraham vd Merwe)
 o       Toshiba SMM driver check laptop is a Toshiba    (Jonathan Buzzard)
 o       Clean up rep_nop stuff in init/main.c for       (Paul Mackerras)
         portability
 o       Update EV6/EV67 cpu selection                   (Jay Estabrook)
 o       Small alpha fixups                              (Jay Estabrook)
 o       Remove ASSEMBLY bits                            (Keith Owens)
 o       Change PPC64 contact person                     (Dave Engebretsen)
 o       Update cyberpro frame buffer driver             (Bradley LaRonde,
                                                          Russell King)
 o       Add sysrq-M memory zone free info               (Marcelo Tosatti)
 o       Fix mtd export oddments                         (David Woodhouse)
 o       Export handling cleanup/doc update              (Keith Owens)
 o       Irda cleanups                                   (Jean Tourrilhes)
 o       Irda discovery in passive mode fixes            (Jean Tourrilhes)
 o       Irda usb updates                                (Jean Tourrilhes)
 o       VLSI irda updates                               (Martin Diehl)
 o       PPP over ATM support                            (Mitchell Blank,
                                                          Jens Axboe)
 2.4.10-ac5
 o       Initial fix for the ELF loader bug              (Linus Torvalds)
 o       Revert 2.4.10 sys_personality ABI change bug    (Paul Larson)
 o       Add support for 16 byte commands to scsi        (Khalid)
         (only some controllers handle this)
 o       Small updates to the ide raid drivers           (Arjan van de Ven)
 o       Update the hermes drivers                       (David Gibson)
 o       Airo driver update                              (Javier Achirica)
 o       NCR 53c700 update                               (James Bottomley)
 o       Next set of pnpbios work                        (Thomas Hood)
 o       Update ARM includes                             (Russell King)
 o       Update nwflash driver                           (Russell King)
 o       ARM alignment fix                               (Russell King)
 o       More pci.ids                                    (Russell King)
 o       Add another SB variant                          (Jerome Cornet)
 o       SMBfs updates                                   (Urban Widmark)
 o       Further mtd driver updates                      (David Woodhouse)
 o       Update ibmcam idents                            (Dmitri)

 2.4.10-ac4
 o       Switch to Linus behaviour for kmap              (Trond Myklebust)
         in generic_file_write - should fix NFS oopses
         | I dont have any highmem boxes so you get to test 8)
 o       ext3 deadlock versus truncate fix               (Tachino Nobuhiro)
 o       Small reiserfs transaction fix                  (Nikita Danilov)
 o       Fix a fencepost error in the vm decision making (Rik van Riel)
 o       Shmem accounting fix                            (Christoph Rohland)
 o       BH async flag changes from 2.4.10               (Andrea Arcangeli)
 o       Remove wbinvd macro the acpi people re-added    (Dave Jones)
 o       Make the kiobuf init code only clean needed     (Andrew Bond)
         fields (noticably speeds up Oracle)
 o       Move DMI scanning earlier in the kernel boot    (Stelian Pop)
         | This is needed to detect the vaio early enough
 o       Try and fix 21041 problems with tulip, better   (Herbert Xu)
 o       Tulip rx dropped calculation
 o       Add further PCI idents                          (Jeff Garzik)
 o       Add another ident to the clgen fb               (Jeff Garzik)
 o       Add intel i830 to the agp code idents           (Christof Efkemann)
 o       pl2303 usb serial fixes                         (Greg Kroah-Hartmann)
 o       ipconfig typo fix                               (Ralf Baechle)
 o       Fix user mode linux build with new ptrace       (Jeff Dike)
 o       JFFS tags update                                (David Woodhouse)
 o       Kill of remaining old style video4linux inits   (Ladis Michl)
 o       Update i2c to rev 2.6.1                         (Christoph Hellwig)

 2.4.10-ac3
 o       Fix page_kills_ppro call                        (Peter Blomgren)
 o       mtd jffs and jffs2 updates                      (David Woodhouse)
 o       Partition handling updates                      (Al Viro)
 o       S/390 documentation updates                     (Martin Schwidefsky)
 o       S/390 code updates                              (Martin Schwidefsky)
 o       Add clean config for bust_spinlock generics     (Martin Schwidefsky)
 o       Correct EXPORT_MODULE_GPL                       (Keith Owens)
 o       NFSv3 mkdir fix                                 (Glen Serre)
 o       Clean up NFS yielding                           (Trond Myklebust)

 2.4.10-ac2
 o       Merge Configure.help changes from 2.4.10
 o       Fix the spin_unlock oostore to maybe work       (me)
 o       Fix for pentium pro errata #50                  (me)
 o       initio driver type cleanups                     (Arjan van de Ven)
 o       rpc_queue_lock needs to be non static           (Frank Davies)
 o       Fix a potential crash in ldm partition code     (Al Viro)
 o       Acenic updates                                  (Jes Sorensen)
 o       Fix scsi tur direction info                     (James Bottomley)
 o       Further natsemi updates                         (Manfred Spraul)
 o       Add license tags to jffs/jffs2                  (Frank Davies)
 o       Console driver optimisations                    (Geert Uytterhoeven)
 o       Add belkin F5U120 serial to belkin_sa           (Amy Fong)
 o       Big endian fixes for console drivers            (Geert Uytterhoeven)
 o       Add module tags to the mwave driver             (Thomas Hood)
 o       i2o header file cleanups                        (Russell King)
 o       Fix C2 power state in ACPI                      (Martin Röder)
 o       Deadlock and error handling fixes for 8139too   (Manfred Spraul)
 o       Update NR_DEAD in keyboard driver               (Arnaldo Carvalho
                                                                 de Melo)
 o       Fix race in processor init sequence             (Martin Bligh)
 o       Check procfs returns in acpi                    (Pavel Machek)
 o       Add DMI handles for problem K7V-RM and          (Pavel Machek)
         Tosh 4030cdt
 o       Fix analog joystick breakage from 2.4.10        (Vojtech Pavlik)
 o       Work around vaio weird pnpbios happenings       (Thomas Hood)
 o       Update ninja scsi driver                        (YOKOTA Hiroshi)
 o       Adbmouse typo fix                               (Paul Mackerras)

 2.4.10-ac1
 o       Merge with Linux 2.4.10 tree
         - Drop VM changes
         - Drop raw/block I/O changes
         - Drop out O_DIRECT
         - Basically remove the seriously unsafe stuff and
           keep the -ac VM
         - I've not applied the obvious fixes so ACPI and joysticks
           are still icky - that is for ac2
 o       Fix the noncompile of SMP OOSTORE kernels       (me)

Visual J#.Net, the new Microsoft Java development tool that isn’t actually a Java development tool. It’s the latest offering from Redmond, geared to get Java developers building XML Web services and applications for its .Net campaign, but isn’t actually an implementation of Java and won’t allow developers to build Java applications. Considering that Microsoft tends to attract flocks of Sun Microsystems lawyers any time it toys with Java, the preemptive “this is not Java” announcement is understandable. Expect a beta of Visual J#.Net (“Visual J-Sharp Dot Net”) to appear by the end of this week. Full story at Network World Fusion.

According to research from Ernst & Young, an aggravating fact of corporate life in the former Soviet Union is that your network will play host to unwelcome guests twice as often as computers in other parts of the world. A big part of the problem, apparently, is that it’s just so darned easy to do: Rules and regulation regarding technology and information security are “underdeveloped” and most local companies don’t put forth enough effort to thwart attacks. Full report at The Moscow Times.