LinuxPR: “HP has made a public statement supporting royalty-free web standards and calling on members of
the community to send their comments to W3C.”

Kelly McNeill writes: “In a determined effort to change the rules of a game in which it is falling increasingly far behind rival Intel, chip maker AMD on Tuesday released four new Athlon XP chips that, for the first time, have been assigned names intended to convey a strategic rather than a technical message. The Athlon XP chips were so named under AMD’s “True Performance Initiative,” which aims to make buyers focus on overall performance rather than speed. Ironically, the new names tell buyers of the chips’ performance relative to each other but give little hint of their true performance.”

PCWorld: “IBM has announced a fall lineup of desktop NetVistas and ThinkPad notebook PCs that focus on the growing wireless and security needs of businesses, and is
putting an emphasis on selling services as well as systems.

Introduced are four desktop lines that include seven new NetVista computers. IBM also introduced four ThinkPad notebooks that launch three additional lines.
Most are available now, and all are scheduled to ship by the end of October.”

Mikael Pawlo writes: “Interesting article published in Stanford Technology Law Review: ‘In this Article, I have two goals: First, I will suggest a possible reason why parts of legal academia have reacted so favorably to the open source philosophy. Second, I will take a closer look at the philosophy itself and try to show that it is conceptually flawed.'”

CNET: “Four months after it was first announced, the energy-efficient Crusoe 5800 still isn’t shipping in production volumes to
notebook makers. And although notebooks using the chip are expected to appear around the time of the Comdex
trade show in mid-November, Transmeta is still performing final tests.”

ZDNET: “When MobileAria’s service launches later this year, it will require a laptop–instead of a handheld computer–to access
e-mail, driving directions, traffic information and calendar/address book data. And even though Palm is one of the
start-up’s three main backers, Palm’s personal digital assistants (PDAs) have moved into the background of
MobileAria’s efforts.”

LinuxPR: “Mysql.org was launched on July 26 to provide MySQL developers and the open source community
with an independent forum for sharing code and ideas surrounding the use of this leading open
source database. In its first few months of operation, mysql.org has welcomed more than 4,200
voluntary registrations. Since its launch, there have been more than 1,300,000 hits on the site and
over 200,500 downloads.”

Kelly McNeill writes: “The U.S. Supreme Court announced Tuesday that it will not hear Microsoft’s appeal of a U.S. Court of Appeals ruling on its antitrust violations. As is its normal practice, the Supreme Court declined further comment. Had the case been heard, it would have delayed the impending penalties faced by the Redmond, Washington-based software giant. Rob Enderle, vice-president and research fellow for Giga Information Group, told NewsFactor Network that Microsoft’s appeal was a longshot and that there was never any real likelihood that the Supreme Court would have ruled in its favor.”

– By Larry A. Price –

Many of the visitors to the Eugene Computer and Internet Expo in Oregon this past weekend noticed that one of the booths had more traffic than some of the commercial internet service providers and hardware
vendors who made up most of the exhibitors. As the expo hall filled
and emptied, one booth in the back of the hall always seemed to have a
cluster of people asking questions and picking up literature.

The
people staffing the booth represented a fairly broad cross section of
the local computer industry, from sharply dressed business consultants
to guys in T-shirts who looked mostly at home, planted in front of a
monitor whacking away at a keyboard.

The odd thing was that this booth, unlike many of the others, was not
selling a particular product or representing a service vendor, it was
instead a community group talking about a concept. They were EUGLUG,
the Eugene Unix and Gnu/Linux Users Group. As the first day of the
expo drew to a close and the LUG members chatted and compared notes, they started noticing something odd. People that were known to be die-hard Windows NT admins were sidling up to the EUGLUG booth and asking questions, about running Apache on Red Hat, about Staroffice for small businesses, about basic Linux and Unix
administration. They would nod gravely when security was mentioned and
walk away with copies of Kevin’s Redhat Uber Distribution or SuSE LiveEval CDs and flyers.

Over the course of the weekend, expo visitors attended classes on Linux
for Business, and presentations on security and Python for Business
given by Sean Reifscheider from tummy.com.
Computer Security heavyweight Symantec, one of the sponsors of the event, was there giving presentations on viruses
and the security issues that are arising with the current generation
of wireless network devices. The expo’s keynote address was given
by Chris Monnette of Symantec, and exhibitors included IBM, the
Software Association of Oregon, Netcorps and A-1 computer wholesalers.
More than 2,000 people attended the event and most of them stopped by the EUGLUG booth, whether just to gawk at the penguins (plastic ones) or to ask probing questions like “Red Hat owns Linux, right?”

The consensus among EUGLUG members is that there was a difference in
the tone of the inquiries, compared to earlier events. Compared to the LUG’s last demo day, in June 2001, there were more business oriented questions, and more questions about using Linux for Web services. There were more than a few references to Code Red, Nimda and Sircam as reasons to be interested in Apache on Linux
servers, instead of Microsoft prodcuts. And it was clear that some questioners had spent many hours cleaning up after Microsoft’s security mistakes, and that the recently announced XP licensing changes were forcing businesses to consider whether or
not they wanted to be dependent on a single monolithic vendor, or if
they would be better off making an investment in educating their staff
about Open Source. The conclusion among LUG members is that there is
now a growing interest in the Eugene business community
about putting Linux to work in a variety of different settings.

Rusty Savage of Webolium, who organized the
expo, said he was pleased that the event attracts more vendors and attendees every year. Savage
emphasized that the expo is not just about sales but that it also has
strong community and educational components. At the conclusion of the
expo, a $2,000 check was presented to Patterson Elementary School
representing a portion of the gate proceeds from the event.

When asked about the popularity of Linux Savage said that he was impressed by and
grateful for the energy the LUG had put into making the expo a
success. This is the third year that the LUG has had a presence at the
expo, and the fifth year that it’s been presenting demos in the
Eugene/Springfield metro area.

LUG members answered a bewildering variety of questions ranging from
“What can Linux do?” to bewitchingly specific questions about using
USB peripherals under Mandrake. After giving away more than 200 copies of
complete Linux distros, Ximian monkeys and frisbees, and many copies of
“The Beautiful Gift of Linux” pamphlet, tired Penguinistas dismantled the network that allowed them to download and burn “distros on demand.” There were quite a few
questions about Linux on the Mac. And one or two about repurposing old
Sun workstations.

The most popular Linux distros were:

DemoLinux

Mandrake 8.0

KRUD

and among Luggers themselves, Debian

T he Eugene Unix and Gnu/Linux Users Group can be found at
http://euglug.org.

International Data Group reports: “Fujitsu Technology Solutions upped the processor speeds on its PrimePower line of Unix servers, boosting chip output by about 20 percent.”