Tom’s Hardware Guide notes that future Athlon processors will be specified by a model number, rather than megahertz: “For instance a Palomino-Athlon that runs at 1.4 GHz will be MODEL 1600, because AMD considers Palomino 1.4 GHz to be at least as fast as a Pentium 4 1.6 GHz. The printing on the chip will be ‘A1600 …..’, even though its a 1400 MHz part only. The same is valid for motherboards and their POST. A new BIOS Writer’s Guide prohibits the BIOS from ever displaying the true core frequency of Palomino! It has to display the MODEL number instead.”

Posted at Canada NewsWire: “Merlin Software Technologies International,
Inc.- (OTC: MLSW) today announced that SDS Merchant Fund, LP continues to fund
its ongoing operations. SDS Merchant Fund is a private equity fund based in
Connecticut that specializes in providing financing to growing small to mid-
capitalization companies. SDS Merchant Fund has provided Merlin with funds
totaling more than $758,000 to date including $298,000 received in connection
with the convertible debenture, which closed August 18, 2000.” Merlin produces a variety of communication and backup software, including CommunicadoFAX for Linux.

Linux Journal: “Vim enhances the original vi so you can edit faster, but the Happy Hacking series of keyboards removes features to achieve the same goal. There’s no top row of function
keys or anything right of Enter. Escape moves down to just left of the number one, which is why we’re mentioning this keyboard in an review of a book about Vim–there’ll
be no more “Mom, can you make me some sandwiches? I’m going to go hit Escape today, be back for dinner.” The missing keys are available with Fn, so you can still do a
SysRq if you need to.

The Control key is where it belongs, above the left Shift. And the upper right corner is a little changed from a standard PC keyboard too. A DIP-switchable
backspace/delete key is above Enter, and backslash/pipe and tilde/backquote are above that.”

ZDNet (on Yahoo News) reports: “A recent global wave of legislation is compelling government agencies, and in
some cases government-owned companies, to use open-source or free
software unless proprietary software is the only feasible option.

This legal movement, earliest and most pronounced in Brazil, but also showing
signs of catching on elsewhere in Latin America, Europe and Asia, is finding
ready converts as governments struggle to close sometimes vast digital divides
with limited information-technology budgets.”

Little more than a year ago, IT executives surveyed by InfoWorld regarded Open Source software as nothing more than an experimental plaything. Catching up with those execs, InfoWorld has discovered that most of them are now using or plan to use Open Source operating systems and applications for the enterprise concerns. The writer nots: “Sometime during the past couple of years, big software companies took a wrong turn, and Open Source found a way to change how corporate America buys IT solutions.” There’s even a handy graph at the bottom of the article to present survey results.

Cryptome has posted a press release from the U.S. Department of Justice, announcing the indictment of Dmitry Sklyarov on five counts of copyright violations. You can also view the indictment document.

Posted at LinuxPR: “Easy Software Products today announced
the release of ESP Print Pro v4.2, a complete printing solution for UNIX®. The
product is based on the company’s Common UNIX Printing System technology
and supports AIX, HP-UX, IRIX, Linux, Solaris, and Tru64 UNIX.

ESP Print Pro v4.2 includes a new server configuration wizard, a new Windows
driver “export” functionality via SAMBA 2.2.x, and new drivers for several Dymo,
HP, Infotec, Lexmark, and Xerox printers.”

Posted at Century Embedded Technologies: “Century Embedded Technologies, a leader in graphical application
technologies for embedded Linux, today announced the immediate availability of PIXIL[tm], a commercial ready embedded Linux
operating environment and development suite optimized for small footprint smart flat-panel devices. PIXIL leverages technologies
from standards-based embedded Linux to deliver a complete solution for rapidly developing and deploying next generation
handhelds and wireless devices.”

Reported at Linux Today: “Shawn Gordon, president of theKompany.com, has been named chief executive officer of American
operations for HancomLinux, Inc., the Korean software vendor.

Gordon and theKompany.com have become well known in the Linux world over the last 18 months through
their contributions to KDE and KOffice, their suites of developer tools, and their infant Kapital personal
finance program.

HancomLinux publishes the Hancom Office suite, which comprises a number of standard office applications
written to the QT toolkit and a word processor which is a WINE port of their Windows word processor.”

Sun Microsystems now offers a kit that enables users to make use of XFree86 video drivers with the X Window System server for Solaris. Check out Sun’s site for more information and download.