From Slashdot: “Well it looks like Intel has done it again. They have absorbed more processor engineers, this time from HP. Alpha is gone, PA-RISC is going, what’s going to be left?”

From EETimes: “Japanese consumer electronics manufacturers are hoping a set-top-box architecture they are calling an “e-platform” will be the recipe for the rebirth of digital TV. A half-dozen of the biggest names in an industry groping for new business models, services and platforms lifted the lid this past week on “ep,” with the lofty goal of ultimately turning the box into a platform for home gateway systems and home servers.”

ComputerUser.com has the story. “The Linux operating system is moving into the mainstream … Evidence of this shift is contained in an August IDC survey revealing that corporate and governmental information
technology decision-makers are anticipating a 9 percent growth in Linux-related spending in 2002, up from 3 percent in
1999.”

From CNet: “Staples, the nation’s second-largest office supply retailer, said Friday it has begun liquidating PC stocks at its U.S. stores and will now focus on built-to-order sales in a bid to boost profitability.”

CNet reports that “Dealers and computer makers have begun to list prices on Advanced Micro Devices’ upcoming Athlon XP processor, which officially goes on sale next week.”

ZDNet reports that “Most corporate customers are unhappy with looming changes to Microsoft software-licensing programs, and many would consider switching to competitors’ products, according to a survey released Thursday.”

Anonymous Reader writes, “LinuxDevices.com just has published an update to their highly popular online Embedded Linux “Cool Devices” Quick Reference Guide. The guide provides a continually updated catalog of end products in which Linux serves as the embedded operating system, including webpads, cell phones, set-top boxes, Internet appliances, entertainment appliances, and “other” intelligent devices (including some really interesting gadgets).”

ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/alan/linux-2.4/. Intermediate diffs are available from http://www.bzimage.org. Cox: “Next chunk of patches. Email warning: It’s possible my static ip range will evaporate about monday. If so that may cause some disruption to the ukuu.org.uk, bc.nu, cabal.tm domains and to my email while I shuffle stuff around.”

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
portability (Paul Mackerras)
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
(only some controllers handle this) (Khalid)
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
in generic_file_write – should fix NFS oopses (Trond Myklebust)
| 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
fields (noticably speeds up Oracle) (Andrew Bond)
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)

From The Register: “We’re receiving credible reports that Microsoft will shortly unveil Java language
support to .NET, alongside its home-brewed Java clone C#, and VB, in a project
that goes under the internal name of “Java.NET”.

Sun and Microsoft have been sparring over Java for several years. Microsoft’s
foray signals a shift in its approach to the Java community, but risks re-opening a
fresh round of litigation.”

EE Times reports that UK development company Silaria has ported a version of Lineo’s embedded Linux to its Proteus 3 processor.