From a press release at All Linux Devices: “PlayApp, LLC, Internet distributor of protected PlayApps, in the form of
digital books, music, videos, business apps, and streaming channels, announced today that
they are offering their PlayApp Key technology as a free open-source alternative to Microsoft’s
Passport.”

An article (in Spanish — or Babelfished into English) at ElMostrador.cl reports that the Chilean Public Pension System (INP) has switched its computer systems to Linux. That deployment covers almost 1,500 computers in 73 INP offices around the country, supporting a system used by 2/3 of the national population. INP expects to save USD $67,000 now that it has freed itself from software licensing payments.

A post on GNOME Gnotices helpfully reminds us that tomorrow is Evolution Bug Day. The event will take place from 9AM – 9PM Eastern time on Thursday, and every Thursday until Evolution 1.0 is released. The focus of tomorrow’s event will be duplicate hunting: “We’ve had a lot of
new (and duplicated) bugs as a result of beta 1. We hope to find some volunteers who can help
us clear them out of the database, as well as glean some useful information from them (you
never know which report might be the hidden gem that helps unlock the problem.)”

The 12th issue of LinuxUser is now available online, in PDF format. Articles in this book include a feature on Red Hat chairman Bob Young, a profile of Sendmail creator Eric Allman, a report on how Ugandan children are using free software, and much more.

Sun Microsystems has announced the fastest-yet version of its UltraSparc III processor. Designed by Sun and manufactured by Texas Instruments, the new UltraSparc III runs at 900MHz and is the first to use copper instead of aluminum, a change that will boost the performance of the chips while cutting production costs. The new chip will debut in new Sun workstations this October, then make the leap to servers at a later date. Culled from a Reuters item at CNN.

KDE Dot News: “The main focus for
V0.3.5 [of AtheOS] however has been on the KHTML-based web browser. I have
ported the HTML parser/renderer used in the Konqueror web browser (KHTML) to
AtheOS. KHTML is a very capable HTML parser and renderer that supports both CSS and javascript,
and so does the AtheOS web browser. Finally, a high-quality web browser for AtheOS! The browser is
part of the 0.3.5 base install and the 0.3.4->0.3.5 upgrade archive.”

One constant for the PC industry during the last six years has been the ATA hard disk standard, but with the introduction of Maxtor’s new ATA-133 storage standard, that could change. ATA-133 was designed to bridge the gap between ATA-100 and Serial ATA; the latter having been delayed for 12 months so far by Intel. Intel and Seagate have both announced that they have no plans to support ATA-133, with some smaller chipmakers still on the fence. For the first time since 1994, we have a standards split in the storage industry, an event that’s sure to make system upgrades more irritating for everyone. Full story at eWEEK.

InfoGuerra has an interview with Attrition.org’s Brian Martin, who discusses Sunday’s defacement of his site and the overall state of Internet security.

Daemon News: “There’s been a lot of hubbub the last few months about NetBSD’s new rc.d system being the successor of 4.4BSD’s. At the USENIX Annual Technical
Conference 2001 in Boston, MA, I had the pleasure of sitting down to listen to Luke Mewburn of Wasabi Systems discuss the new rc system NetBSD
introduced in their operating system in the 1.5 release earlier this year.”

Will Bluetooth be a big hit? In Japan, at least, that may be the case. Nippon Ericsson said yesterday that its Bluetooth trial, expected to start earlier last month, was delayed due to greater than anticipated public demand. The company had planned to invite 100 users to take part in the test, but received more than 1,500 applications. The trial is being delayed so that the companies — including Nippon Ericsson and PDA maker Handspring — can ramp up their efforts to accommodate everyone who wishes to take part. Full story at Network World Fusion.