From a column at ZDNet: “Microsoft is growing more desperate by the minute.

Tuesday’s petition to the U.S. Supreme Court to have Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson’s
monopoly ruling thrown out because of bias is just the latest legal maneuver designed to
extricate the company from a quagmire of its own making.”

Reuters (on ZDNet) reports that the National Science Foundation will spend $53 million to build a massive computing grid for scientific research. The grid will be based on Open Source standards.

ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/alan/2.4/. Intermediate diffs are available from http://www.bzimage.org.

2.4.7-ac11
o Fix dumb bug in the bootflag handling code (Randy Dunlap)
o Compaq FC update (makefile clean too)
(Charles White)
o Add Matt Domsch to the credits (Matt Domsch)
o Update Randy Dunlap’s contact info (Randy Dunlap)
o SA1100 updates (Russell King)
o Add PnP support to sf16i (Ladislav Michl)
o Acorn drivers update (Russell King)
o Fix clashing ‘cams’ symbol (Keith Owens)
o Fix AGP memory leak on serverworks (Jeff Hartmann)
o Fix an off by one in shmem.c (Hugh Dickins)
o Revert incorrect ATM change (Mike Westall)
o DRM makefile fixes (Keith Owens)
o Next batch of superblock work (Al Viro)
o Fix in2k oopses (Francois Romieu)
o Add reboot by SMP reset (Matt Domsch)
o Add pm support for laptops that resume the (Matt Domsch)
mouse port even if was disabled before..
o Add DMI quirks for all modern dell systems (Matt Domsch)
o Inspiron 4000 needs irqs on for APM (Arjan van de Ven)
o YMFPCI fixes, big endian fixes (Pete Zaitcev)
o Add winbond W83971D ac_97 codec to tables (Andrey Panin)
o pcnet32 oops fix and leak fix (Paul Gortmaker)
o Use static inline in sound drivers (me)
o Fix DRM build/makefile bugs from merge (Andrzej Krzysztofowicz)
o Avoid lp module being pinned down if console
enabled (Tim Waugh)

2.4.7-ac10
o Fix up USB merge mess (Pete Zaitcev)
| Fixes a possible USB deadlock
o IRDA update (Dag Brattli)
o Merge DRM for XFree 4.1.x (XFree86 and others)
o Update freevxfs idents (Christoph Hellwig)
o Fix a bug in access()
checks on X_OK with
DAC ovveride (Christoph Hellwig)
o Add another intel bios ident with bad $PIR (Arjan van de Ven)

Metro Link Inc. (http://www.metrolink.com/) today announced the release of Micro-X for the SONY (http://www.sony.com) PlayStation® 2. With the PlayStation 2 becoming a new consumer standard for multimedia entertainment, Metro Link has jumped ahead of the market by providing its small footprint X server for the PlayStation 2. (Sony already has shipped 10 million systems worldwide and is shooting for another 10 million by April 2002.)
Micro-X is a custom engineered, fully accelerated, 600K small footprint X server. Micro-X is minimized for memory footprint and optimized for performance on the Sony PlayStation 2 platform.

“We are excited to offer the smallest 100% X protocol compliant X server optimized specifically for the Sony PlayStation 2, where memory space is at a premium,” said Morgan Von Essen, President of Metro Link. “Our small footprint Micro-X server is a needed solution to make room for other applications and key features.”

“We see the SONY PlayStation 2 as the convergence between residential gateways, set-top boxes and TV-based Internet appliances. Micro-X is an ideal solution to reduce the size of the software stack to make room for other necessary features and applications, while still embracing standards-based solutions and open source API’s,” said Von Essen. “Our focus is the consumer electronics and set-top box market. When we saw the PlayStation 2 as the most dynamic new entertainment platform in years, we had to be a part of it.”

Further proof of the PlayStation 2’s dominance is the recently announced alliance with America Online to link Sony’s hit PlayStation 2 video-game machine to the Internet. “A move to outflank Microsoft Corp. in the battle for new interactive services,” according to the Wall Street Journal. Sony hopes to get its own boost for the PlayStation 2 by leveraging AOL’s established brand and base of 29 million users.

ABOUT METRO LINK
Metro Link, Inc. provides graphics for embedded Linux and real-time operating systems, and enables UPnP devices to connect with appliances such as set-top boxes, Internet appliances and consumer electronics. Metro Link’s middleware products include a full suite of X Window System software, including Metro-Media? multimedia software, which provides a complete PVR/DVR solution with simultaneous record/playback of video with synchronized audio. X.Org, the worldwide X Window System consortium, has contracted with Metro Link to maintain and enhance the X Window System source code. To learn more, visit www.metrolink.com.

All trademarks are property of their respective holders.

Contact:
Greg Lafferty, Vice President Sales
Metro Link, Inc.
Phone: 954-660-2444
Fax: 954-938-1982
Email: greg@metrolink.com

” Rob Hudson pointed out that a new 2.2.20 prepatch, 2.2.20pre9, has
materialized on the kernel.org mirror sites. No announcement or changelog
has been posted, however. umm I guess I forgot.“

Linux 2.2.20pre9
Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2001 16:07:19 +0100 (BST)
From: Alan Cox 
To: editors@newsforge.com


| Rob Hudson pointed out that a new 2.2.20 prepatch, 2.2.20pre9, has
| materialized on the kernel.org mirror sites. No announcement or changelog
| has been posted, however.


umm I guess I forgot

2.2.20pre9
o        Document ip_always_defrag in proc.txt           (Brett Eldrige)
o        Update S/390 asm for newer gcc                  (Ulrich Weigand
o        Update S/390 documentation                      Carsten Otte
o        Update s390 dump too                             and co)
o        Update s/390 dasd to match 2.4
o        Backport s/390 tape driver from 2.4
o        FDDI bits for s/390
o        Updates for newer pmac laptops                  (Tom Rini)
o        AMD760MP support                                (Johannes Erdfelt)
o        Fix PPC oops on media change                    (Tom Rini)
o        Fix some weird but valid input combinations     (Tom Rini)
         on PPC
o        Add additional checks to irc dcc masquerade     (Juanjo Ciarlante,
                                                         Michal Zalewski)
o        Update 2.2 ISDN maintainer                      (Kai Germaschewski)
o        Fix 3c505 with > 16Mb of RAM                    (Paul)
o        Bring USB into sync with 2.4.7                  (Greg Kroah-Hartmann)

“What happens when you try to combine the user friendliness of Windows with the snazzy features of Mac? Read on to find out more… at FreeOS.com.

The Register: “Microsoft has a reputation of crushing all the companies who stand in its way – it’s often seen as the Seattle giant that uses its software might to take on plucky start-ups and win. The company which crushed Netscape. The problem with being big and successful is what to do next. “

Wired: “It’s time once again for the Hackers at Large convention. Geeks are coming from all over the world, and recent events have made them a little, um, snarky. “

“As an operating system researcher I tend to see everything, including distributed computing, from the OS perspective. But what exactly is distributed computing from the viewpoint of the operating system?” More at Byte.com.

The Register: “Bill Gates this week become the victim of pranksters at MSN’s latest UK project, the cyber-park bench.

On Tuesday Neil Woodman and Dan Sanderson from Bury St Edmunds took a phone handset down to the town’s public gardens, where the bench is located.

When the 17-year-olds plugged it into one of the phone sockets in the bench’s arm, they discovered that – hey presto – they got free international calls, courtesy of MSN.

After a couple of local calls, the two scallywags decided to use the phone to call Microsoft boss Bill Gates and have a chat about the bench project.”