A Reuters story at MSNBC reports: “Long live Napster. Or its idea,
anyway. Two Capitol Hill lawmakers are getting ready to
introduce legislation that would loosen copyright laws to
help legitimate, Internet-based music services get up and
running without the threat of being shut down by the
courts for infringement.”

From Slashdot: “If you weren’t lucky enough to be at OSCon to see Jim Gettys’
unobtainium, or my Linux iPAQ playing MP3’s off Chris DiBona’s gigabyte Microdrive (I downloaded
madplay from the Familiar unstable feed with my 802.11 card, removed that, and inserted Chris’s
microdrive and it all Just Worked®), then at least you can test drive a Linux iPAQ via Compaq’s Test
Drive program. They have a webcam pointing at the screen.”

Noelle Beaudin writes, CYRANO today announced the release of the new DB Monitor module for OpenSTA. OpenSTA (Open System Testing Architecture) is a free and Open Source distributed testing environment that enables you to perform realistic e-business applications heavy load or stress tests with performance measurement.

The DB Monitor module complements the HTTP/S load testing capability of OpenSTA? by extending the range of data collection and monitoring options available when performance testing web applications. It supports the creation of Collectors that monitor and collect data from database server components of production systems and web applications during performance Tests. Collectors are incorporated into Tests to target these components with SQL requests and to collect results data for analysis so that performance of your entire Web application can be evaluated.

DB Monitor allows DBAs, Test Engineers, and QA staff to:

• Identify if the database server is a bottleneck in your Web application, by defining performance rules.
• Identify possible issues on a database server before users notice it, by defining lower thresholds during load test.
• Monitor 24×7 real activity of the database server.
• Define anomalies and associated severity rating for raising alerts.
• Generate snapshots of database server activity to display information about processes, locks and general context so that anomalies can be cleared.
• Show SQL statements and the name of stored procedures running at any given time.Utilize a single tool for monitoring, testing and reporting, so that results can be shared between departments.

DB Monitor Purchase

DB Monitor can be downloaded as a trial version at http://opensta.com/. Purchase of the DB Monitor product can also be made via this web site, or from your local CYRANO office. OpenSTA? can
be downloaded from http://openstaorg/ and as always, it is free.

Special Offer on DB Monitor

“DB Monitor will be priced starting at $1500. To celebrate the release of DB Monitor, CYRANO is launching a special offer good until September 30th,” said Noelle Beaudin, “we will be offering DB Monitor for $649.99 if you order from http://opensta.com/. Also for the months of August and September, you can get the CD with OpenSTA? v1.2 and DB Monitor v1.0 plus the full documentation set for $999.99. How can you go wrong at that price? No other solution comes close with features and functionality.”

Platforms Supported

DB Monitor for Sybase:

• Sybase ASE 11.5 to 12.5
• Windows NT/2000, Solaris 2.6 to 8 (Server only)

DB Monitor for Oracle:

• Oracle 8, 8i
• Windows NT/2000, Solaris 2.6 to 8 (Server only)

DB Monitor for Microsoft:

• SQL Server 7 to 2000
• Windows NT/2000

Further Information

DB Monitor can be ordered or downloaded as a trial version
today via http://opensta.com/.

About OpenSTA

OpenSTA (Open System Testing Architecture) is
an Open Source, user-centric, repository-based testing and monitoring system
for Web Application Environments. Using the same base architecture,
OpenSTA can be deployed throughout the entire lifecycle
of WAE development, from component-based testing, through integration
and acceptance testing, and into production. Once the WAE is in production,
OpenSTA is then used to monitor system performance and
availability on a continuous basis.

OpenSTA’s unique distributed processing facility
allows a single test operator to plan, control, execute and analyze
tests over a complete, enterprise-wide, distributed and heterogeneous
computing network, so that all project management can be controlled
from a single console. Once developed, tests can be run again and
again at minimum cost, so that testing no longer is a ‘throw-away’
activity.

Whenever performance bottlenecks are highlighted during production
monitoring, the data collected from the production run can be used as
the basis for developing load tests. These can be run on-line or off-line
to enable customers to quickly track and correct problems within the WAE.

OpenSTA’s ability to use a single base architecture
for production monitoring and load testing offers major advantages for
scalability testing. By capturing the current input to their WAE, and
then combining this with the modeling capabilities of
OpenSTA’s load testing components, customers can
quickly assess the capabilities of their WAE in line with their
business requirements. OpenSTA is freely available
at http://opensta.org/. Commercial
resources for OpenSTA are available at http://opensta.com/.

Press relations
CYRANO Inc.
Noelle Beaudin
Phone: +1.603.968.7446
Email: nobeau@cyrano.com

The makers of Jabber have the press release. Webb Interactive Services, Inc.
(Nasdaq: WEBB) today announced financial results for the second quarter and
six months ended June 30, 2001.
Net Revenues from continuing operations for the second quarter were
$.748 million versus $.904 million for the second quarter of 2000, a 17%
decline. However, at $1.727 million, net revenues from continuing operations
for the six months ended June 30, 2001 recorded a slight increase over net
revenues from continuing operations for the same period, prior year, which
were $1.716 million.

From CNet: “When business at Akamai Technologies began drying up last year, the tech
company formed a subsidiary that has emerged as its largest customer, raising questions
among some Wall Street analysts.”

– by Tina Gasperson –
Sunspire Studios, creator of the penguin-filled Tux Racer game, will offer the 1.0 release sometime before the end of August, according to lead programmer and Sunspire CTO Jasmin Patry. The first non-beta release will take the code proprietary, because the commercial computer gaming industry doesn’t look kindly on GPLed source.Patry, who wrote the original code for Tux Racer and holds the copyright, says that Sunspire has nailed down a few lucrative OEM (original equipment manufacturer) deals with the Windows port of the game. Tux Racer is a downhill ski race through realistic mountainous territory. A tiny penguin slides, belly-down, over ice and snow and around various obstacles. You can choose your level of difficulty, and if you don’t like Tux, the 1.0 release will be more politically correct. Sunspire is adding other little critters, including a seal, a polar bear, and a female penguin.

When the first release of Tux Racer comes out, it will be an OEM release and will only be available for Windows, because Sunspire has not secured a retail publisher yet, and there aren’t any Linux OEMs. The tuxracer.com Web site is pretty emphatic about its claims that the retail, boxed version of Tuxracer 1.0 will be for Linux, Mac, and Windows, but no deals with publishers have materialized yet.

That means Linux and Mac users will just have to wait. Patry says that Sunspire is working to get a deal with a publisher who would issue a boxed version of the game, which would include ports for Linux, Macintosh, and Windows. “That would still be the 1.0 release,” says Patry, “and if there were any updates to the OEM version we’d issue a patch.”

Since the 0.61 release, the proprietary version of Tux Racer has branched off into closed source. “We want to get the features that will go into Version 1.0 into a better state before releasing them to the public,” a statement on the Tux Racer Web site reads. Patry says that the decision to take Tux Racer proprietary should not be viewed as a slam to the Open Source community. He says that there hasn’t been a lot of participation from developers, anyway. “We’ve had very few contributions” of code to the project, he says. “The major contributions have been user constructed [race] courses.” No community contributed code will be included with the retail product, according to Patry.

“We hope to eventually release the source code for 1.0 under the GPL,” says Patry.

In the meantime, J. Nathan Matias is taking matters into his own hands. He’s put together a project called Open Racer, a GPL-branch of Sunspire’s Tux Racer. “It is my
hope that Open Racer
develops in a different direction
than the commercial Tux Racer
in order to keep from direct
competition and wasteful strife
with Sunspire Studios,” he writes. “This project is proceeding with full approval from Sunspire, as it will be a project based upon the Tux Racer source, but
not directly competing with Tux Racer.”

Matias makes it clear he is looking for someone to take over maintenance of the project. “I hope someone will come along with a real vision for the project and take over.” Matias plans to put the project on SourceForge as soon as other developers join in. Interested coders can visit the Open Racer Web site or email Matias at rubberpaw@sourceforge.net.

CNet has more information about Dell Computer stopping shipping Linux on its desktop and notebook PCs.

Lots of news today about IBM’s Grid project, which creates “computer farms.” Here’s a story from ZDNet. More from The Associated Press.

The Register reports that there’s a security flaw in the server software that allows Quake III players to play
the popular shoot-them-up over a network.

A buffer overflow
vulnerability in Quake III Arena Server could allow a malicious users to crash a
system hosting the game.

ZDNet’s AnchorDesk looks at how Microsoft has been bullying a kids charity based in Austrlia over license issues.