CNet reports that a US federal judge has “ordered the government to reveal the high-tech snooping technique used by the FBI to gather evidence against an alleged mobster.”

Long seen as invulnerable, CNet reports that Adobe’s PDF file format may be susceptible to embedded viruses. The PDF file itself is not vulnerable, but a feature allowing other files to be embedded in a PDF file creates the vulnerability.

ZDNet reports on fears that the Open Source community’s answer to Microsoft’s .Net could face royalty fees from Microsoft.

Kelly McNeill writes “Ever used the Unix “locate” command? It was a wonderful thing. It let you instantaneously search a database of all the files on your system and quickly find what you’re looking for. Unfortunately, that’s no longer true. Try running “locate kppp” or “locate mozilla.” You get hundreds — if not thousands of hits. Now you can get clever with regular expressions and filter out all the .xpm’s, .html’s and whatnot, and maybe the list will become manageable. But screwing up “locate” is just the tip of the iceberg.”

PC World reports that Microsoft is planning voice recognition software which will interact with users through Compaq IPaqs over 802.11.

Kelly McNeill writes “An Internet security company announced Tuesday that it is offering one-click “cloaking” software to Web surfers who want to retain their privacy. Anonymizer.com said its new Privacy Button will enable users to turn advanced privacy protection on or off with a single click in their Internet Explorer browser toolbar. The San Diego, California-based company said the technology makes users’ Web activity invisible to the Web sites they visit and to other prying eyes, such as collection companies specializing in compiling personal information. The company claims it also protects users from most pervasive security threats on the Internet.”

An Anonymous Reader writes “The plan which appeared on “2001: A Space Odyssey” and called popularity in which talkative computer =HAL9000 is realized as an electronic pet started.

The president of a project is “JUN”.
As his latest work, there is an interactive alarm clock using the speech-recognition tip.
By making owner’s words memorized, this clock accumulates a vocabulary and has the function to talk with man.
As a product adapting this function, it is scheduled to say that HAL will be realized.

However, in order to realize this as goods, about 30,000 persons’ sale is required to pay a loyalty to a copyright person.
Then, on the Internet, it appeals for “JUN” to the comrades which want HAL, and it is performing signature activities.

Most of this is a Japanese although the signature of about 500 persons has gathered now.

http://www.spcourt.com/hal/e”

ZDNet has a short item on Sun’s update to Solaris 8. Sun says it can dish out Web pages faster and is easier to manage.

“Only in 2.4.8pre5aa2: 00_alloc_skb-gfp_dma-1 –
Only in 2.4.8pre5aa2: 00_drop_write_unlocked-get_bh-1 –

Merged in mainline.”Date:
Wed, 8 Aug 2001 02:17:13 +0200
From:
Andrea Arcangeli
To:
linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject:
2.4.8pre6aa1

Only in 2.4.8pre5aa2: 00_alloc_skb-gfp_dma-1
Only in 2.4.8pre5aa2: 00_drop_write_unlocked-get_bh-1

Merged in mainline.

Only in 2.4.8pre5aa2: 00_sync_old_buffers-3

Alternate fix in mainline.

Only in 2.4.8pre6aa1: 00_alpha-ds20l-support-1

DS20L support from Christopher Chimelis.

URL:

ftp://ftp.us.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/andrea/kernels/v2.4/2.4.8pre6aa1/

ftp://ftp.us.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/andrea/kernels/v2.4/2.4.8pre6aa1.bz2

Andrea
–

ZDNet UK follows up on reports that Lineo has licensed FSM Labs’ patented RTLinux technology. The patent, like most software patents, was controversial when granted last year.