Anonymous Reader writes, “A good deed may lead to prosecution for Brian K. West, a 24 year old sales and support employee for an internet service provider in SE Oklahoma. Mr. West has become a statistic for the Computer Analysis Response
Team because he alerted a local business to a serious security flaw in their website. More information: http://www.linuxfreak.org/post.php/08/17/2001/134. html.”

ZDNet has an interview with Caldera CEO Ransom Love. On his biggest concern: “Our biggest concern has always been compatibility problems. We face a world
where all companies use Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel and other Microsoft applications, so
we have to have compatibility and keep up with what Microsoft does. The idea of companies
moving away from Microsoft is something that may not happen in the near future, if ever, so we
have to explore other areas.” Slashdotters discuss the article and a couple of related ones.

“Just to tell you that the Beta1 of the upcoming Mandrake Linux 8.1 for x86
has hit the mirrors!”

Mandrake Linux 8.1Beta1 Available for download and tests.
Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2001 21:51:59 +0200
From: Gael Duval 

Hello,

Just to tell you that the Beta1 of the upcoming Mandrake Linux 8.1 for x86 has hit the mirrors!

Sticking to the path opened by the 8.0 version, Mandrake Linux 8.1
Beta1 provides a bunch of innovations, more user-friendly and amazing 
tools, and, as always with a Mandrake distribution, highly up-to-date
software.

Please tell your readers to help us releasing a great 8.1 by:

- Downloading
  http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/ftp.php3#81beta

- Testing

- Reporting bugs!
  https://qa.mandrakesoft.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi

More informations about the innovations in 8.1 are available on: 
http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/test81beta1.php3

Enjoy!

        Gaël.

-- 

"Business customers don't want an operating system called Mandrake or an interface called KDE." © ZDNet - David Coursey.
Visit: http://mandrakebizcases.com

Teledyn.com has details and a link on an IBM challenge, in which students can apply their Linux skills to solving real-world problems. For the cost of a 3-page
design document, 25 students will walk away with a new Thinkpad, and three will join the IBM
internships.

– By Dan Berkes –
The Nasdaq took a nasty dive today, plunging into the 1800s for the first time
in months. HP earnings fall from billions to millions, Sun tells employees
to take a temporary hike, and Apple polishes its new retail empire. Plus: IBM
going Hollywood.The Nasdaq ended the week at 1867.01, down 115 points from Monday’s high
of 1982.25. Nasdaq hasn’t seen the 1800s since April 11 of this year,
when it closed at 1898.95. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 10240.78,
losing 175 from this week’s high close of 10415.91, which also happened on
Monday.

Something to shudder about: Some analysts say we’re in the summer doldrums, and
that this activity is just minor league. Even HP’s staggering 89 percent profit
drop couldn’t shake its stock price by much. The truth of the matter is that
Wall Street is experiencing some end-of-summer lethargy, and nothing of any real
importance is expected to happen until just after Labor Day. At that point,
we’ll see the true direction the economy will take, and there are plenty of
indications that it won’t be pretty.

Did technology companies hit a financial bottom this past spring? That was the
consensus of analysts earlier this year, but new information suggests that the
tech slump could last for years. In a report filed by
NewsFactor, Brett Miller, an analyst with A.G. Edwards & Sons, said, “Things
are getting worse across the technology board, and no one can say when they will
improve.” Tough words to swallow for a market that’s looking for a sign, any
sign, that the economy will heal itself.

Hewlett-Packard runs the numbers
HP’s latest quarterly report defied analyst’s expectations, falling twice as
hard as the Street had predicted. On Thursday,
the company reported that its earnings for its fiscal third quarter were 80
percent smaller than for the same quarter just one year ago. Net profit dropped
from $1.05 billion and 51 cents per share in 2000, to just $111 million and 6
cents per share today. Profit from continuing operations totaled $218 million,
or 11 cents per share, down from $1.04 billion, or 50 cents per share.

Vacations, predictions from Sun
Sun Microsystems cheered a bit this week, as Evans Data Group announced the results of a series of studied
it conducted. According to the report, more developers will be using Sun’s Java
programming language in 2002, outnumbering those using C and C++. Only a very
small portion of developers said they would consider dealing with Microsoft’s
new C# language.

This week, Sun announced its latest cost-cutting measure, using a practice in vogue among tech
companies: vacation. The company will require all of
its employees to take five days of paid vacation during the calendar year. The
company hopes to shrink by 300 positions by June of next year, asking 2 percent
of its workforce to find new jobs within the company or leave.

Red Hat’s results
Back to that Evans Data study: In addition to discovering that developers liked
Java, the researchers also discovered that 77.2 percent of the 300 developers
they had surveyed chose Red Had Linux as the distribution they would use for a
Web server or application Server.

Big Blue’s California dreaming
IBM played proud papa this week when it showed off ASCI
White, currently the fastest computer in the world. ASCI White
was built for the U.S. Department of Energy at a cost of $110 million, and is
powered by 8,192 IBM Power3 microprocessors, each capable of 12.3 trillion
calculations per second. Installed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
in California, the computer will be used to model nuclear explosions and monitor
the safety of the United States’ nuclear arsenal.

Big Blue used the ASCI White open house as a chance to talk about its
non-classified computer business, which includes the world’s fastest
civilian computer. That hardware will be used to refine internal
combustion engines and help find ways to solve California’s energy crisis. A
company spokesperson said that more than 70 percent of IBM’s supercomputers are
used by businesses.

In southern California, Linux is quickly becoming a standard tool in many
special effects shops, making movie magic for animated hit Shrek and late ’90s
blockbuster Titanic. Some shops, including Toy Story creator Pixar and
effects powerhouse Industrial Light and Magic, are considering shifting their
entire digital effects operations over to Linux. And of course, IBM wants to be
there to help them.

The company believes that it has the tools and services movie companies need to
make the most out of Linux. IBM entertainment v.p. Steve Canepa told Reuters that he expects his segment of the market to move “en masse”
to Linux. Not without a fight, however: Expect digital effects mainstay SGI to
vigorously defend its turf, offering its own combination of hardware running
Linux.

$85 million for Apple stores
Apple Computer’s latest Form 10-Q filed with the SEC indicates that the
company has settled into the brick-and-mortar business for the long haul. In
addition to the stores planned to open later this year, the company will spend
at least $85 million during 2002 to open even more retail outlets, and will
spend approximately $203 million over the next five to 12 years on lease
payments for those stores. Apple believes its retail division will break even in
the first quarter of 2002, and might even generate a small profit at the end of
the year.

Who’s suing who
Legal actions commenced or announced this week:

Schiffrin & Barroway, LLP
announced that it had recently filed a lawsuit against Caldera Systems; so
did Stull, Stull &
Brody.

Date	Nasdaq	DJIA
Fri – 8/10	1956.47	10416.25
Mon – 8/13	1982.25	10415.91
Tue – 8/14	1964.53	10412.17
Wed – 8/15	1918.89	10345.95
Thu – 8/16	1930.32	10392.52
Fri – 8/17	1867.01	10240.78

Company Name	Symbol	8/17 Close	8/10 Close
Apple	AAPL	18.07	19.02
Borland Software Int’l	BORL	11.98	12.97
Caldera International	CALD	0.67	0.73
EBIZ Enterprises	EBIZ.OB	0.14	0.12
Hewlett Packard	HWP	24.05	25.10
IBM	IBM	104.59	104.95
MandrakeSoft	4477.PA	e6.19	e6.30
Merlin Software Tech.	MLSW.OB	0.16	0.18
Red Hat	RHAT	3.86	3.81
Sun Microsystems	SUNW	14.03	16.22
TiVo	TIVO	6.33	6.90
VA Linux Systems	LNUX	1.83	2.00
Wind River Systems	WIND	15.10	14.95

We thought this was already reported, but eWeek has a story on IBM’s plans to Open Source its WebSphere Studio Workbench for Linux.

Slashdotters ask the Free Software Foundation’s v.p. a variety of questions, including the meaning of “free” and FSF’s view toward Apple these days.

At UnixReview.com, Jason Perlow reviews Caldera (formerly SCO) OpenUNIX 8. The notable new featue in OpenUNIX 8 — and the main focus of this review — is the introduction of the Linux Kernel Personality (LKP), which aims to replicate a full Linux distribution. Bottom line: ” OpenUNIX 8 is a landmark release for Caldera, and we are excited to see what’s in store for future updates of
the OS.”

– By Grant Gross –

In the three years since the U.S. Congress passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the law’s anti-circumvention provisions have now gone head to head with the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment in a handful of cases. So far, freedom of speech is getting its ass kicked by the DMCA.

The DMCA’s collision course with freedom of speech and the press was a topic of much conversation during a panel discussion Wednesday evening after Princeton Professor Edward Felten’s team finally presented the paper describing their hack of the Secure Digital Music Initiative’s watermarking technologies.

Felten’s continuing lawsuit asks that the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA be declared unconstitutional. The U.S. recording and movie industries have used those provisions as a threat against scientists and journalists who would dare to even discuss technologies that “circumvent” those multi-billion dollar industries’ controls on what buyers do with their products.

In my limited understanding of constitutional law, the First Amendment freedoms normally trump any conflicting law Congress can come up with. That’s not much comfort to the editors at 2600 Magazine, who were successfully sued last year for linking to the DeCSS code, which allows Linux users to decode and play DVDs.

However, Cindy Cohn, legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told audience members at the Wednesday panel the assumptions that the First Amendment reigns supreme can no longer be taken for granted after a judge ruled in August 2000 that 2600 Magazine is barred from even linking to the DeCSS code because of its supposed “bad intent.” That case, in which members of the Motion Picture Association of America sued 2600, is now being appealed.

Cohn said that “bad intent” test is highly subjective, and I’ll add, even for mainstream media that don’t have the largely undeserved reputation that 2600 has as being a haven for script kiddies. “It’s pretty cold comfort to think that later on, someone might take a look over your shoulder and say, ‘It’s actually OK what you did,’ ” Cohn said, in response to an audience question on the DMCA’s impact on journalism. “That isn’t the kind of thing that gives a lot of journalists a lot of comfort.”

While some journalism groups did file statements in support of 2600, the potential impact of the DMCA on news reporting hasn’t prompted a lot of protest in the mainstream media.

When journalists scream about their First Amendment rights eroding, few people sit up and take notice because they think it doesn’t affect them. But consider this: If you don’t care about the media’s ability to do its job, you probably should care that there’s now a growing list of cases where the DMCA and similar laws have been used in attempts to silence free speech. Including the 2600 case, Universal v. Reimerdes (a.k.a. the New York DVD case), there’s also the California DVD case, DVD-CCA v. Bunner, in which the DVD Copy Control Association sued dozens of Web sites publishers, including the Linux Video and DVD Project‘s Matthew Pavlovich, for allegedly violating the California Uniform Trade Secrets Act for posting the DeCSS code. Pavlovich’s case, a curious one because LiViD is hosted in Germany and that’s nowhere near California at last report, is also under appeal.

Of course, there’s also the Felten case, in which the recording industry threatened in April to sue Felten’s team under the DMCA if the team released its successful compromises of the SDMI anti-copying technology. The Felten team presented its paper this week after the recording industry gave its “permission,” but Felten’s continuing lawsuit against the recording industry and the U.S. government is based on the fact that Felten’s team — or anyone else for that matter — has no guarantee against a DMCA-driven lawsuit for any other presentations of the SDMI material or research based on that material.

Less connected to freedom of speech on its face, but one with potential impact, is the Dmitry Sklyarov case, in which the Russian programmer wasn’t sued, but actually arrested, under the DMCA for trafficking in circumvention technologies. DMCA makes profiting on circumvention methods an actual crime. Like the Pavlovich case, the Sklyarov case is confusing because he was arrested while visiting the United States to talk at DefCon about his program that allows users to convert Adobe eBooks into other formats. The last time I checked, U.S. citizens weren’t subject to Russian laws.

So how could a news article violate the DMCA? I’d never actively flaunt law-breaking of any kind, but in the interest of journalism, let’s count the ways:

• By linking to circumvention technology, as 2600 did. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that such a news article at a for-profit Web site — shhhh, let’s not mention any names — could be viewed as trafficking in and profiting from circumvention technologies, and thus be a criminal violation of the DMCA, a la Sklyarov.

• By linking to scientific research about circumvention technologies, such the Felten paper. Remember, Felten and crew don’t have the recording industry’s guarantee against a lawsuit on any research beyond the Wednesday presentation.

• By simply critiquing research such as Felten’s. If I were a signal processing expert, I might say that the Felten team’s research was brilliant in exposing the simplistic attempts by the SMDI Foundation to watermark music tracks. The Felten team appeared to uncover the watermarks easier than than a dog digs up a bone. During Wednesday’s panel discussion, American University law professor Peter Jaszi said critiques of Felten’s work — admittedly more brilliant critiques than I’ve just offered — may “theoretically” be interpreted as trafficking in circumvention technologies.

Other examples exist, I’m sure. Cohn said a journalist who hires the 14-year-old down the street to figure out the password on a protected disk containing government “secrets” would likely be violating the DMCA.

So why aren’t the mainstream media up in arms about the DMCA? Good question, says Cohn.

My take: Big Media sees the people fighting this battle as fringe players. Those “hackers” are tilting at windmills Big Media thinks it’ll never care about — until the New York Times or ABC News gets sued for reporting on a circumvention technology. Then we’ll all hear a lot of screaming, and we’ll refrain from saying, “I told you so.”

Cohn also suggested that mainstream reporters covering the issue are trying to appear objective. She also suggested a more sinister reason most of Big Media doesn’t seem to care: “I suspect it has something to do with the fact that there’s a lot of media conglomeration now, and a lot of the mainstream media in the U.S. is actually owned by content holders.

“If I were to speculate, I might speculate along those lines,” she joked, “but I have no evidence, and I’m not normally prone to speculation.”

The Register: “SecurityPortal.com, the online security content aggregation site, has been put on
ice by parent firm, AtomicTangerine. A spokeswoman for AtomicTangerine said development with of site has been
abandoned as part of a restructuring of the parent company’s business, which will
focus on more profitable aspects of its business.”