From a press release posted at LinuxPR: “A new version of the most used open source operating
system in the world is available since July 30. The product replaces version 6.0
released at the end of 2000 and it is presented in two editions: Conectiva Linux
7.0 and Conectiva 7.0 Professional Server. The biggest innovation of this version
are the tools for facilitating the use of APT, the automatic RPM packages updater.
With this exclusive and free resource of Conectiva, it is possible for the user to
install only those which are convenient. Other modifications that Conectiva
prepared for CL 7.0 is the elimination of the boot disk (initialization), considering
that practically all of the machines can realize the same process directly through
the CD-ROM. But, if it is necessary, the user can create their own boot disk with
the utilities and images present in the first of the five CDs that are a part of the
product.”

News.com: “Compaq is suing Harry Martin and Shafiq Ahmad, principals of the Virginia-based Millennium
Technology Group, and South Carolina-based Creative Resources Group and its president,
Stephen Pridemore. Compaq is seeking to recover what it alleges were millions of dollars in
unearned rebates and marketing support funds for government contracts that Compaq alleges
never existed.

The alleged fraud was related to $70 million in orders from August 1998 to October 1999.”

EE Times: “Layoffs of employees in the embattled computer
industry were enough last month to move computers into second place on the list
of troubled industries, pushing automotive down to third.

The latest data shows that more than 26,000 computer people were laid off during
July, according to outplacement specialists Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc.”

News.com: “AMD is preparing to launch its next desktop Athlon processor, a 1.5GHz chip, in late September,
sources said.

The new desktop processor will be AMD’s fastest chip. But despite performance boosts, the
1.5GHz Athlon will still be a clock speed underdog compared with rival Intel’s Pentium 4
processor line, set to hit 2GHz later this month.

As a result, AMD faces a huge marketing challenge: shifting the terms of its ongoing speed battle
with Intel from pure clock speed to pure performance.”

News.com: “New Napster Chief Executive Konrad Hilbers is floating a new price for
the file swapper’s planned subscription service, saying that downloading
will soon cost “about $5.””

Chris Faulhaber writes “According to this article, Microsoft’s own Hotmail service has been infected with variants of the Code Red worm. Remember that last year Hotmail migrated from FreeBSD to Windows 2000; and we all know how vulnerable Unix systems are to this problem (not!) :)”

From the San Francisco Chronicle: “Reflecting the deep struggles of the telecommunications
equipment industry, Cisco Systems reported quarterly
earnings yesterday that plunged 99 percent from last
year.

Cisco, one of the most heralded companies of the
Internet era, said profit in its fiscal fourth quarter was $7
million (0 cents per share) versus $796 million (11
cents) in the same period last year.”

Business Wire: “Red Hat, Inc. (Nasdaq:RHAT), the leader in developing, deploying and
managing open source solutions, today announced the first course in a planned series of courses on Red Hat Database, a powerful relational database
management system based on PostgreSQL.
The first course in the curriculum, Red Hat Database Essentials, is an intensive four-day course that covers topics ranging from installation and SQL
fundamentals through more advanced topics such as transactions and stored procedures.”

BSD Today: “OpenPackages intends to create a software packaging system that will allow third-party programs to be
installed, without operating system dependent changes, on as many platforms as are feasible.
OpenPackages was originally based on code from the BSD ports systems, and has been improved and
extended by developers of many heritages.

The OpenPackages Project is pleased to release the Milestone 2 codebase. This release contains a
working package building system and a single test package.”

Juraj Bednar writes “I made a really short interview with Mark Mitchell, GCC Release Manager. He is talking about infamous gcc-2.96 release, new features of gcc-3.0 and where should gcc go. I hope you’ll like it even if it’s so short.”