SeattleP-I: “In Washington, Microsoft told a meeting of security experts that its new operating system and Internet services will protect, not endanger, consumer privacy. Meanwhile, back in Redmond, it readied helicopters for XP’s splashy launch.”

LinuxPR: “Blue Linux announced today that they will be working
toward a Blue Linux Educational version that will be based on
reaching out to the Educational Community. Blue Linux
Founder Matt Jezorek says “We hope that we can help cut the
cost of running the school systems and keeping up with
licensing so that learning can once again become the major
part of todays schools.”

ZDNET: “As security becomes an increasing concern across all platforms,
Hewlett-Packard Co. has stepped up to the plate and will announce
the availability of its triple-layer Secure Operating System Software
for Linux at the LinuxWorld conference in San Francisco next week.”

AustralianIT: “Murdoch’s senate confirmed the administration’s expulsion recommendation on Monday night. It is the university’s fifth expulsion. The male student was studying in a twinning program with a Malaysian institution, Kolej Damasara Utama.

Under the bachelor of commerce program, the student was enrolled at Murdoch but was being taught by KDU staff under Murdoch’s direction. The man is understood to have created a false email account in a KDU staffer’s name to get information.

After receiving answers by email, apparently from KDU staff, the man allegedly shared the results with two other students before the exam.”

– by Jack Bryar –
Open Source Business –

On the west coast this week, VA Linux, our parent company,
will announce its most recent quarterly earnings. That announcement
will have followed months of sober re-assessment of where the money
is in the Linux business. It has been a tough stretch. The mood hasn’t
been helped by dozens of legal sharks circling the both the company and
the investment banks that helped it go public.

It is no secret that
the wild run-up of VA Linux’s stock following its IPO has been cited as
the most extreme example of the “irrational exuberance” that
characterized the Linux and Internet speculative bubble. Its subsequent fall-off
attracted suspicion and lots of lawsuits.

Whatever the merits of the particular legal claims in the VA Linux
case, there’s blood in the water, and lawsuits are mounting against a host of
Linux companies and dot-coms. As of last week there were nearly seven
hundred lawsuits pending just in the U.S. District Court for the Southern
District of New York. Lawsuits are being filed at the rate of over 50 a week.
Suits typically name both investment houses and the firms they
promoted, although in many cases companies were taken along for the ride, right
along with stockholders.

Much of those stock run ups were driven by hilariously inaccurate
“recommendations” generated by analysts who worked for investment banking companies underwriting stock or holding it in speculation. Toward the end of the stock
bubble these recommendations had become an industry in of themselves.
Analysts dominated cable shows. Services like First Call, which featured analyst
speculation, became required reading among investors. Unfortunately,
the advice these analysts gave was worse than valueless. Earlier this
summer, four professors from the University of California’s Haas School
of Business studied “buy” and “sell” recommendations by analysts
attached to U.S. investment banks like Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch . Their
report, titled “Prophets and Losses,” found that the average stock recommended
by analysts fell over 30% below the market average. Stocks with sell or similarly
negative recommendations outperformed the market by nearly 50%.

One major reason for these inaccuracies has been blatant conflict
of interest. In a statement before the U.S. House, Rep. Edward
Royce (R-Calif.) cited the example of Merrill Lynch’s high profile
“analyst” Henry Blodget. Blodget is best known for his nearly tireless promotion
of Amazon.com, which sent the company’s stock price soaring toward $400
per share until reality sunk in. According to Royce, Blodget should be better
known for what he did to GoTo.com. During the period when Merrill Lynch
and Credit Suisse First Boston (CSFB) were competing to be the chief
underwriter of GoTo’s stock, Blodget couldn’t say enough good things about the
company. Within two hours of CSFB winning the business instead of Merrill, Blodget
downgraded the stock.

Is this ethical? American courts are deciding if its
legally actionable. This week, U.S. District Judge Milton Pollack threw out
lawsuit aimed at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter and its star analyst Mary
Meeker. The lawsuit, one of several, alleged that Meeker issued impossibly
optimistic “analysis” concerning Amazon.com with one objective — to generate fees
for her employer and hike her own salary. Pollack dismissed the suit
without a hearing, saying that the allegations were repetitive and in
“bad taste.”

Bad taste or not, the entire investment industry has been tarnished.
The Association for Investment
Management & Research (AIMR) and its chair, Thomas Bowman,
suggested that the analyst community ‘fess up to the fact that ”
firms pressure their analysts to issue favorable research on current or
prospective investment banking clients,” including IPO candidates, and warned
that that not fixing the problem will result in “… deteriorating
investor confidence in the independence and objectivity of … research reports
and recommendations.” Bowman warned that this “does NOT advance the
interests of the global investment community.” Strong language for a trade group,
but the AIMR consists of more than just analysts. The organization
caters to portfolio managers, fund managers and a variety of other
investment specialists.

AIMR has embarked on an aggressive revamp of its own regulations.
The organization’s Board of Governors has generated an Issues
Paper on Analyst Independence. (PDF file). The paper is remarkably frank,
suggesting that “the perception that research reports and recommendations are
biased threatens the reputation of the entire profession.”

Self-regulation may require government assistance, and,
remarkably, many North American regulators don’t seem to want to address the issue
head on. During discussions with Canadian regulators, the AIMR had to
protest that a set of proposed regulationsweren’t strong enough. In response to questions, the AIMR suggested that proposed regulations, like forcing disclosure when an analyst’s company owned over 10 percent of a company, was far too lax. The AIMR suggested that “investment positions below the 10 percent threshold pose significant conflicts of interest.” It further
suggested that a proposed requirement that analysts not serve on the boards of
firms they review be extended to an analyst’s employees and associates. The
AIMR suggested that the common practice of basing analyst pay on the
revenues generated by the investment bank was an obvious conflict of interest.
(Surprisingly few analysts are compensated according to their
accuracy.)

The AIMR also suggested that analysts post a history of their
recommendations so that consumers could judge for themselves if a given “analyst” had
any credibility.

U.S. regulators and politicians seem even less eager to take on the
investment bankers and support a clean up of the analyst community.
Under pressure, the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Capital
Markets recently held hearings concerning alleged abuses by stock analysts.
Committee Chair, Rep.
Richard Baker, (R-La.) suggested that public concerns about analyst
integrity and independence were
“fully warranted”. However, the majority of the committee
seemed inclined to stay out of the issue.

Other congressmen were simply embarrassing. Throughout the hearing,
Connecticut Rep. Christopher Shays seemed to be having trouble
understanding what analysts had done wrong. Texas Democrat Ken
Bentsen suggested that investors were to blame — they simply didn’t
read the boilerplate in the average stock offering. Rep. Michael
Oxley (R-Ohio) spent much of his time during the first day of
hearings speculating that the “media” was somehow responsible for the problem.

Under such circumstances, the most that the AIMR can expect is lip-service
support for industry self regulation. But until some sort of internal or
external regulation takes hold, the complaints and the lawsuits are likely to
continue to plague dot-coms and Linux pioneers for some time to come.

LinuxPR: “In a move that will take
it to the next level, the GNOME Foundation, the organization
driving the direction and development of GNOME desktop
software for GNU/Linux, UNIX and other free software
systems, has hired Timothy Ney as executive director.”

Cacao writes: “I have found an article
by DanyRC at Bulma (a local LUG in Spain) explaining the advantages of licensing
our projects under the GPL license. I think it is a very interesting reflection
on the future of programming. Article in English – Spanish –
French.

Mikael Pawlo writes: “What happens when a professor of law at Stanford–a strong advocate for free software and freedom of speech–does music? As reported by Gnuheter Larry Lessig provides us with an answer in I Thought We Knew That. I am not a critic, but it sounds like The Orbs Little Fluffy Cloud meeting Peter Gabriel.” (ed. note: the Gnuheter page is in Swedish.)

Kelly McNeill writes “Microsoft’s meeting Wednesday on Capitol Hill with consumer privacy advocates received a “good” rating by attending groups, as the organizations squared off over the company’s release of Microsoft’s Windows XP operating system, its Passport login and its .Net strategy. Following a two-hour meeting with Microsoft representatives, Ari Schwartz, associate director for the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), told NewsFactor Network that some headway had been made between opposing factions and that talks will continue.”

Rajesh Goyal writes
“LinuxCertified announces the weekend system administration
bootcamp for busy IT professionals.

– All attendees get a free Linux laptop!

Media Contact:

info@linuxcertified.com
http://www.linuxcertified.com/

LinuxCertified, Inc., a leading provider of Linux training, will offer weekend system administration bootcamp on September 1-2, 2001 in San Francisco bay area (south bay). This workshop is designed for busy information
technology professionals and is designed to cover the most important Linux administration areas.

In addition to carefully designed lecture material delivered by experienced Linux professionals, there is a heavy emphasis on hands-on learning. The training starts two weeks before the actual class,with access to an online Linux server, where students complete few challenging pre-class activities. Attendees get a powerful Linux laptop on their arrival, along with other class materials. They load Linux on their laptop during the class, and use it for all the class activities and assignments. At the end of the class they take this laptop with them to further enhance their Linux expertise. Absolute beginners with no UNIX experience can first come to the popular “Linux for Beginners” class and subsequently join the
system administration bootcamp.

Rapid growth of Linux into corporate and government IT environments is fueling the need for Linux certified
professionals. CIOs and managers are eager to have Linux experts in their organizations. A certification provides a
tangible mechanism for their hiring evaluation, as well as a means to market the prowess of organizations.

“As an independent IT consultant I am always on my toes to learn new technologies, without much free time to
devote to classes. The LinuxCertified.com bootcamp was a perfect way for me to jump start my Linux knowledge. I
can now use Linux as a valuable tool in my career,” said Taylor Cottam, an independent consultant who joined one of
the LinuxCertified.com weekend bootcamps.

This weekend bootcamp is specially designed to prepare the attendees for the objectives of Level 1 certification
exams offered by Linux Professional Institute (LPI). The workshop also meets the objectives of the Red Hat Certified
Engineer (RHCE) exam and Sair Linux & GNU certification (LCA).

Our attendees build a strong sense of community with our instructors, fellow students, and our network of recruiters
and companies looking for Linux consultants.

About LinuxCertified.com

The mission of LinuxCertified.com is to bring Linux to mainstream IT usage. We firmly believe that Linux has an
enormous potential, once it crosses over from the early adopters to the more mainstream users. Our goal is to help this
transition by providing:

– Linux trained and certified professionals

– Linux certified products that cater to mainstream users rather than early adopters.

Contact:

info@linuxcertified.com

http://www.linuxcertified.com/
Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.
Linux Professionals Institute and the LPI logo are trademarks of the Linux Professional Institute, Inc.
RED HAT is a registered trademark of Red Hat, Inc.
LinuxCertified.com is an independent entity from organizations providing Linux certification exams, and they do not sponsor our classes.
All other names and trademarks are the property of their respective owners.”