Afghanistan’s Taliban militia updated its Internet restrictions on Saturday, subjecting anyone to using the network within its borders to punishment according to Islamic law. A previous decree forbid citizens from using the Internet, but exempted the United Nations and international relief agencies; that is no longer the case. Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar: “The ministry of communication is duty-bound to make the use of the Internet impossible.” From the Agence France-Presse report on Nando Times

The Royal Auto Club of Victoria sued software maker Unisys in 1996, claiming the company had violated Australia’s Trade Practices Act by selling the organization software that didn’t perform as advertised. Five years and several appellate court hearings later, the Supreme Court of Victoria ruled in favor of RACV, and it is expected that the organization will settle with Unisys for AUS$4 million. The case sets a precedent, said plaintiff lawyer Robin Schute: “Technology companies for years have sold products which weren’t
properly developed, and sold products under the guise of marketing
which was ahead of its actual implementation.” Full story at Australian IT.

Reported at BBC News: “In the slums of Delhi, an experiment has shown how illiterate street
children can quickly teach themselves the rudiments of computers
and the internet.

The aim of the experiment, funded by the Indian Government, local
institutions and the World Bank was to see what role computers
might play in educating India’s illiterate millions.

The results were startling, showing how much children with little or
no English and no computer training at all could achieve.”

Advanced Micro Devices slashed the price of its top of the line 1.4GHz Athlon from $253 to $140 today, and offered discounts of up to 40 percent on its 1.3, 1.2, and 1.1GHz chips. AMD’s cuts are viewed as a response to Intel’s recent Pentium 4 pricing change, and makes for a productive way to clear out inventory to make room for the introduction of even faster Athlons and a new Duron chip, expected in October. CNET News.com has the story.

Reported at CNET News.com: “The bill collectors are knocking on the door at Excite@Home. The struggling high-speed Internet company said Monday that holders of notes worth $50 million
are demanding payments from the company by the end of the month. The holder, Promethean
Investment Group, is arguing that Excite@Home breached its commitments related to the notes.

Excite@Home said it doesn’t believe it has breached the agreement. But if it is forced to pay up,
“it would have a materially adverse impact on the company’s liquidity and its ability to fund its
operations.””

Reported at CNET News.com: “A new permutation of the Code Red II worm was discovered Friday, and experts say Code
Red is now unlikely to disappear.

The new variant has been dubbed CodeRed.d and exploits the same flaw in Microsoft’s Internet
Information Server (IIS) software as the initial Code Red. According to Roger Thompson, technical
director of malicious code research at antivirus firm TruSecure, who detected the variant, the
appearance of a new worm indicates that we are stuck with the Code Red problem “forever.””

Barrister/IT author Denis Kelleher has written an essay for The Irish Times regarding the issues and controversy surrounding the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and Ireland’s Copyright Act 2000: “An odd feature of these new laws is that they may protect
copyright protection systems more strictly than they protect
copyright works themselves. If you copy a CD once, that is a
violation of copyright and you could be sued for damages by the
record company, which would be the cost of one CD or around
£15. However, if in order to carry out that reproduction you
remove what the Irish Copyright Act 2000 terms “rights
management information”, then, if convicted, you could be
sentenced to a 5-year term of imprisonment and a fine of up to
£100,000. The difference is that by removing the rights
management information, you may permit others to create
thousands or millions of copies.”

Aaron J. Seigo posts the latest edition of KC KDE for your review. The hottest topic since the last KC KDE on August 10 has to be “Web form autocompletion and sensitive data” with 47 posts, followed by a discussion of the state of JavaScript in Konqueror with 9 posts, and a tie for third place between “KIOSlaves for SCP and SFTP” and “aRts, soundcardless systems and i18n,” each with six posts.

“This Week’s Summary: Happy Birthday Linux!; MandrakeSoft events at
LinuxWorld; Mandrake Linux PPC Final Release available; Awards &
Accolades for Mandrake 8.0; Buying MandrakeSoft shares; Mandrake in the
News; Business Case of the Week; Security-related Software Updates; Top
Headlines from MandrakeForum.”

***********************************************************************

                     M A N D R A K E   L I N U X

           C O M M U N I T Y      N E W S L E T T E R


                Issue #11    Monday, 27 August 2001

***********************************************************************

Welcome to the Mandrake Linux Community Newsletter -- dedicated to 
keeping you up-to-date with the latest Mandrake-related news & info.

***********************************************************************

This Week's Summary: Happy Birthday Linux!; MandrakeSoft events at 
LinuxWorld; Mandrake Linux PPC Final Release available; Awards & 
Accolades for Mandrake 8.0; Buying MandrakeSoft shares; Mandrake in the 
News; Business Case of the Week; Security-related Software Updates; Top 
Headlines from MandrakeForum.


Ten Years of Linux
----------------------------------------
Ten years ago on August 25th 1991, Linus Torvalds announced to the 
comp.os.minix newsgroup that he was developing a new computer operating 
system. In only one decade, Linux has quickly evolved from one man's 
personal project into a worldwide grass-roots movement.

The entire staff at MandrakeSoft would like to congratulate and thank 
each person who has worked on Free Software projects over the past 
decade, and also the millions of users who have discovered the 
importance & benefits of Free Software. Happy Birthday Linux, we wish 
you many more!


Upcoming Events
----------------------------------------
MandrakeSoft to be present at the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo. Jay 
Beale, MandrakeSoft's Security Team Director, will be conducting three 
sessions/tutorials at this year's LinuxWorld Expo in San Francisco, CA.
* C36: Bastille Linux and Linux Mandrake: Past and Future,
  Wednesday Aug. 29, 10:30am-11:45am
* TD: Securing Linux/UNIX Systems - Part 1 -- Monday Aug 27, 9am-12pm
* TH: Securing Linux/UNIX Systems - Part 2 -- Monday Aug 27, 1pm-4pm"
http://www.mandrakeforum.com/article.php?sid=1116&lang=en&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

Product News
----------------------------------------
Mandrake Linux PPC 8.0 Final Release available.   
In response to popular demand, MandrakeSoft proudly announces the 
immediate availability of Mandrake Linux 8.0 PPC. This new release 
builds upon the highly successful Mandrake Linux 8.0 for x86 
architecture to bring the world-famous "Mandrake Touch" to Macintosh 
users.

For additional details, please see:
http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/ppc.php3

Pre-orders are now being accepted, or download your copy of Mandrake 
Linux 8.0 PPC today!
http://www.mandrakestore.com/http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/ftp.php3#ppc


Awards & Accolades
----------------------------------------
The September issue of Linux Magazine features the "2001 Editor's
Choice Awards: The Tuxies" -- Mandrake Linux 8.0 is awarded first place 
for best Desktop Distribution, and the Mandrake Linux Corporate Server 
is selected as runner-up in the Server category. This is some of 
what they say about 8.0:
"While all Linux distributions share a lot of features, it's the little 
touches that make all the difference. We chose Linux-Mandrake for "Best 
Desktop Distro" for many reasons, and mostly because it makes setup and 
configuration a snap. The Mandrake Control Center makes it dead easy to
configure network settings, printers, and security...
In short, it would be hard to ask for more from a desktop system than 
what you get with Mandrake 8.0."


Financial Corner
----------------------------------------
How to buy MandrakeSoft shares?
Several people have reported difficulties while trying to purchase 
MandrakeSoft shares on Euronext. Please provide your broker or bank the
following information: "Euroclear code 4477.PA" and "Reuters code 
MAKE.PA" when making trades. 

If you have successfully purchased MandrakeSoft shares, or had any
problems doing so, please let us know the details by sending an email to
mailto:jmiller@mandrakesoft.com so that we can create a HOWTO  on this 
so that we can create a HOWTO on this subject to help other potential 
Mandrake investors.


Mandrake in the News
----------------------------------------
Canada Computes.com reviews the Mandrake Linux 8.0 Powerpack Edition
and concludes:
"Mandrake 8.0 is as close to a flawless Linux distribution as you can 
get, and I would highly recommend to anyone. Mandrake 8.0, as far as 
I'm concerned, is now the benchmark against which other distributions 
will be measured.
It really is that good."
http://www.canadacomputes.com/v3/print/1,1019,7144,00.html

ZDNet -- The Linux lineup.
ZDNet evaluates seven major Linux distributions and has this to say
about Mandrake 8.0:
"Simply put, no other distribution beats the polished user experience 
offered by Linux-Mandrake 8.0. If you're currently running release 7.2, 
version 8.0 provides a seamless upgrade. And if you've never tried 
Linux-Mandrake, version 8.0's amazing level of automation and its 
decked-out installation GUI provide the perfect Linux launching point. 
Featuring a GUI face-lift and the latest versions of the kernel, 
XFree86, GNOME and KDE, Linux-Mandrake 8.0 sits squarely at the 
forefront of powerful yet easy-to-use distributions."
http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/main/0,14179,2806764-4,00.html

The September edition of Linux Magazine has a short piece titled: 
Linux-Mandrake Single Network Firewall: Security in Style --
"Everyone knows that Linux is a great OS for building a firewall. 
Unfortunately, setting up a firewall can be tricky for a non-guru when 
you have to muck about with setting up firewall rules at the command 
line.
Linux-Mandrake's Single Network Firewall takes some of the pain out of 
firewall setup and allows configuration to be done through a secure Web 
interface. In addition to firewall features, the Single Network 
Firewall provides Proxy services, DHCP, content filtering, and 
sophisticated network monitoring tools.
The Single Network Firewall distro is available for download, or you 
can purchase it through Mandrake or one of their resellers at the 
street price of $99."


Business Case of the Week
----------------------------------------
Linux Mandrake is a better Domain server than NT!!!
The University of Southampton uses Mandrake Linux 7.2 with Samba 2.0.7 
as a domain logon server for their "Surface Science and Catalysis" 
research group:
"We have about 25 NT4 WS machines with about 35 users and a handful of 
95/3.11 boxes too... We use the linux machine not only for a Domain 
server but also as a filestore, print server, ftp server, mail 
server/router and a compute server."
http://www.mandrakebizcases.com/article.php?sid=122&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

Read many more examples of Mandrake Linux in the workplace at:
http://www.MandrakeBizCases.com/

If you use MandrakeSoft products in your business, please share your 
story by submitting your own personal "Bizcase".


Software Updates
----------------------------------------
Security-related software updates have been released for gdm, openldap 
and telnet. See the entire list at:
http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/security/mdk-updates.php3?dis=8.0



Top Stories of the Week from MandrakeForum
----------------------------------------
Trying To Recover MF (I): The Ifs, the Hows and the Whens.
Tom and Vincent discuss the recovery process for the MandrakeForum 
website, and spark some interesting comments about RAID.
http://www.mandrakeforum.com/article.php?sid=1120&lang=en

Common Misconceptions About The GPL.
Tom kicks-off a lively discussion about the General Public License: 
"Every eight weeks or so there's a somewhat heated discussion on GPL   
related issues. One reason why these discussions are so impassionate is 
that a lot of people misunderstand the nature or the content of this 
license. Here are some of the most popular misconceptions..."
http://www.mandrakeforum.com/article.php?sid=1118&lang=en

Please Shoot Me.
A dead hard drive temporarily disabled the Forum on Tuesday. 
Unfortunately many of the stories posted over the past four weeks are 
now missing; data recovery is being performed on the drive so hopefully 
all of the past stories will be back online soon.
http://www.mandrakeforum.com/article.php?sid=1117&lang=en&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

Read these and other stories at:
http://www.mandrakeforum.com/

----------------------------------------

To subscribe to the Mandrake Linux Community Newsletter, visit Linux-Mandrake, look for the “Keep in touch!” heading in the left-hand column, and enter your e-mail address.

Paul Emsley has posted the latest KC Debian Hurd. Active topics in this edition cover fixing the proc bug, thoughts on the Alpha port, and OSKit-Mach partition checking.