ZDNet Asia reports that pirated copies of Windows XP are selling like hotcakes in Kuala Lumpur. For as little as US$1.50, shoppers in Malaysia’s capital city can pick up a fresh copy of Microsoft’s latest operating system. Microsoft says it’s aware of the sales, but that purchasers are most likely getting incomplete copies intended for testing purposes. At least one street vendor specializing in illicit copies goes as far to offer a full refund if his XP disks turn out to be beta versions. The BSA chimes in near the end of this story, expressing frustration over public indifference to its intimidating advertising campaign, but somehow also managing to claim victory because Malaysia has a 66 percent piracy rate, down 5 percent from 1999.

Bradley M. Kuhn writes “The GWU Cyberspace Policy Institute and the FSF will sponsor a conference
about Free Software, designed so that policy makers and leaders of
non-profits can learn about software freedom. A press release about
the event is available. We’ve asked Microsoft to come to the event to
debate us, but they have so far declined.”

Posted at debian.org: “Byrial Jensen found a nasty problem in slrn (a threaded news reader). The notice on slrn-announce describes it as follows:

When trying to decode binaries, the built-in code executes any shell scripts the article might contain, apparently assuming they would be
some kind of self-extracting archive.

This problem has been fixed in version 0.9.6.2-9potato2 by removing this feature.”

“Vladimir Ivaschenko found a problem in squid (a popular proxy cache). He discovered that there was a flaw in the code to handle FTP PUT commands:
when a mkdir-only request was done squid would detect an internal error and exit. Since squid is configured to restart itself on problems this is not a big
problem.

This has been fixed in version 2.2.5-3.2. This problem is logged as bug 233 in the squid bugtracker and will also be fixed in future squid releases.” More information at debian.org.

All the news that’s fit to link within the Python developer community. Topics this week: Please welcome the Ottawa Python Authors Group, a discussion on just how much knowledge objects need of other objects, and scoping, binding, and “Borg” patterns, oh my! Posted at Linux Weekly News.

What computer ships with support for USB 2.0 and 1394b? Well, none right now, but come January you can expect to see new models from Apple bearing those double connectivity standards. The Apple Hardware Fairy is expected to bless San Francisco’s Mac World Expo with new machines and software supporting not only the latest USB standards, but with Motorola’s PowerPC 8500 processor — the chip called G5 by Apple. Read the full report at The Register.

SimDan writes “JesusGeeks has posted an interview with RMS. From MIT to defending our civil liberties, Stallman speaks.”

Christoph Wille writes “The debate about implementing backdoors in encryption products
heated up right after the terrorist attacks on the WTC. But how effective would this move be when there is the unbreakable
Vernam algorithm around, already used by Abel back in the fifties?”

Reported at Bloomberg: “International Business Machines Corp. has sold its
1,000th zSeries mainframe computer in what one analyst calls “a year of resurgence” for the
refrigerator-size machines known for their reliability.

Some companies are cutting costs by eliminating “farms” of smaller server computers that run Web
sites and network printers. Instead, they are installing one mainframe and partitioning it into scores
or even hundreds of “virtual” servers running the free Linux operating system.”

A New Zealand PC maker has the dubious distinction of being the first in the world to ship a computer pre-installed with Microsoft’s new Windows XP operation system. Read the full story at NZoom.