Industry Canada reports that the Government of Canada is considering a digital copyright law, with the stated intent of “prevent[ing] the circumvention of technologies used to protect copyright material,” among other purposes.

– By Grant Gross –

The last remains of the Indrema Linux console project are being shut down, as Indrema partner CollabNet plans to close the idn.indrema.com and gamexchange.indrema.com Web sites shortly.

Both appear to be mostly ghost sites. Before an announcement of the shut-down sent out Monday, the last message in the Indrema discuss mailing list archive at idn.indrema.com was June 1. Even the latest announcement from project hosting service CollabNet, which told subscribers to send questions to the list, generated no response.

Over at gamexchange.indrema.com, there are about 30 commercial projects and about 20 freeware projects listed on the hosted projects page, but most appear to be inactive.

“Nobody has been using the idn.indrema.com site for a long time,” says David Boswell, project manager for CollabNet. “There might still be people using the gamexchange.indrema.com site, though. It’s hard to tell there. there are a lot of projects that have been started there but not much source code in any of them.”

Indrema, which tried to develop a Linux gaming/Web console, shut down in April after running out of cash. Company founder John Gildred said then that Indrema would need more than $10 million to stay afloat.

Boswell promised to check for active projects at gamexchange.indrema.com before shutting it down. Those with concerns about the shut-down should contact Boswell through the discuss@idn.indrema.com mailing list.

“We tried hard to find someone else to pick up the site after
Indrema announced bankruptcy, but unfortunately no one could justify
spending the money on it right now, although there was certainly a lot
of interest in hosting it when we asked around,” Boswell adds. “CollabNet has kept the sites going without a sponsor as long as
possible, but at this point we just need to turn them off.

“I’m coordinating on archiving all the data from both sites and finding a home for it so
people can still get to the data when the sites are down. I’ve enjoyed
working on this project for almost a year now, so it’s sad to see it go, but I
guess that’s just how things are going this year.”

A beta version of the K Desktop Environment (KDE) 1.1.2 for Cygwin is now available from the project’s SourceForge home page. Cygwin is the name given to the POSIX emulation layer for windows, including the Qt library and XFree86 server.

The latest beta release of the Linux Standard Base Filesystem Hierarchy test suite(LSB-FHS) for FHS 2.2 is now available from The Open Group. This release aligns LSB-FHS with the version 2.2 specs of FHS. Read the full post at Linux Weekly News.

This Week’s Summary: CNET analysis of MandrakeSoft’s IPO; PPC “Release Candidate” available
soon; Spotlight on the Clara OCR Free Software project; Business Case of the Week;
Security-related software updates; MandrakeForum headlines. Mandrake in the News
—————————————-
CNET provides
an analysis of MandrakeSoft’s Initial Public Offering: — French Linux company braves IPO
waters — “When I look at the consolidation of the Linux market, I think MandrakeSoft is one of
the few companies that will survive, even though Red Hat has become the de facto standard for
enterprise”.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-6627298.html?tag=mn_hd

What’s Cooking at MandrakeSoft?
—————————————-
Mandrake Linux PPC “Release Candidate” available soon. The final Mandrake Linux PPC beta
will soon be released; this is your last chance to test this new port of Mandrake Linux 8.0 and
report any bugs and/or suggestions. The Release Candidate contains the following changes from
the previous beta: * Improved modem detection. * Reworked CD boot scheme to accommodate
newer machines. * Post-install X configuration via XFdrake. * Reworked installer to accommodate
“OldWorld” machines and alternate bootloader setups. * Reworked installer to accommodate
complicated partition map setups. * Security updates. * Added kernel 2.4.4 with PPC specific
patches for video drivers. * Patched xmms for wave/mp3 files. * Many other changes based on
Beta user feedback.

For information on how to get involved, please see the PPC Beta FAQ:
http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/demos/PPC/FAQ/

Spotlight on the Clara OCR Free Software project
—————————————-
One of the many exciting Free Software
projects that MandrakeSoft sponsors is Clara OCR. Clara OCR is a free (GPL) Optical Character
Recognition program for Linux/Unix. It features a powerful GUI and a web interface for cooperative
digitalization of printed materials. Clara OCR development started in 1999 and is approaching
production level.

Everyone is invited to test Clara OCR and participate in the project. To learn more about Clara
OCR, please visit the website at http://www.claraocr.org/ where you can view screenshots, read
the FAQ and online tutorial. The project’s announcement page is also available.

Business Case of the Week
—————————————-
“Mandrake
is becoming a consultant’s dream.” A computer consultant recommends Mandrake Linux to his
clients for gateways, DNS, email, web, FTP and database duties: “Every site that called me with a
problem today was running IIS+Windows on their LAN and had contracted the Code Red Worm. I
have sites still running their original Mandrake 6.0 installation (plus updates), and they only ever
call me for problems with the few remaining Windows workstations on their LAN, or for hardware
failures.”
http://www.mandrakebizcases.com/article.php?sid=126&mode=thread&order=0

Read many more examples of Mandrake Linux in the workplace at:
http://www.MandrakeBizCases.com/

If you use MandrakeSoft products in your business, please share your story by submitting your
own personal “Bizcase”.

Software Updates
—————————————-
Security-related
software updates have been released for Tripwire and OpenSSL. See the entire list at:
http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/security/mdk-updates.php3?dis=8.0

Top Stories of the Week from MandrakeForum
—————————————-
Ximian Gnome for Mandrake 8.0. A
reader writes: “Does anyone know the status of Ximian Gnome and Mandrake 8.0? I have been
watching Ximian’s web site and they said that a port was being worked on. I have also seen
messages over the last couple of months with no replies. Is this a project that Mandrake is working
on or is it low on the list for the Ximian folks?”

http://www.mandrakeforum.com/article.php?sid=1102&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

MandrakeSoft IPO confirmed. Jacques Le Marois (CEO of MandrakeSoft) makes an important
announcement: “I am proud to announce that we have received the “Visa COB” yesterday
evening to go public on the French Marché Libre. We will be listed on the market July 30th.
Mandrakesoft will be the first Linux company listed in Europe on a public market.”
http://www.mandrakeforum.com/article.php?sid=1099&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

IDE-RAID for Mandrake 8.0. A user asks for advice about IDE-RAID controllers that work with
Mandrake 8.0. Civileme responds with some helpful tips & links, and several users share their
experiences.
http://www.mandrakeforum.com/article.php?sid=1097&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

How would YOU advertise Linux for the Desktop? Putting Linux on a server instead of
windows is a “no-brainer”: a Linux box will provide everything that a Windows box can, and
more, for a fraction of cost and no one except the system administrator knows what runs on a
server machine anyway. But, how would YOU make people switch over from Windows to Linux?
http://www.mandrakeforum.com/article.php?sid=1096&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

APT vs. URPMI article at Linux.com. Linux.com provides a brief article comparing the software
package management applications URPMI and APT. It’s worth reading, if for nothing else than the
description of the “auto-select” feature of urpmi.
http://www.mandrakeforum.com/article.php?sid=1094&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

Fun with regular expressions. “It’s dark and rainy day, and Civileme just came for a
“bug-reports” chat before Cider-bust party. As usually, this brought up some really weird facts,
and I’m sure you are going to LOVE this one:”
http://www.mandrakeforum.com/article.php?sid=1093&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

Which Mandrake product should be used for a server? An anonymous user writes “I am setting
up an Internet server that will act as a web, ftp, smtp, etc server and I was curious as to which
Mandrake product would work best for this.”
http://www.mandrakeforum.com/article.php?sid=1092&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

Ad blocker for Linux??? Several readers submit very good ideas for blocking advertisements
while surfing the Web.
http://www.mandrakeforum.com/article.php?sid=1084&mode=&order=0&thold=0

Windows2000/NT and Mandrake 8.0 on the same disk. Users describe how to manage two,
three, and even four operating systems on the same PC.
http://www.mandrakeforum.com/article.php?sid=1083&mode=&order=0&thold=0

Read these and other stories at:
http://www.mandrakeforum.com/

Latest headlines from the Linux-Mandrake Demo & Tutorial Center
—————————————-
A tutorial about the Mandrake
Software Manager has been translated into Spanish and is now available:
http://www.linux-mandrake.com/es/demos/Spotlight/SoftwareMgr/

———————————–

The latest version of MOSIX for the latest version of the Linux kernel is now available for download. MOSIX is a collection of software packages that enhance the Linux kernel, and enable scalable cluster computing for that operating system. Complete information available at mosix.org. Changelog below:

MOSIX 1.1.0 for Linux 2.4.7 (July 23, 2001)

     Upgrade to Linux 2.4.7 
     Fixed the "file-leak" 
     Fixed a "umask" bug in DFSA 
     Support new option (as in 2.2) to be able to "select" when other processes attempt to read a pipe 
     Fixed several drivers that did not behave well with MOSIX 

Help Net Security has posted an interesting message from system admin Daniel Wittenberg, who discovered that the commercial version of Knox Software’s Arkeia bakcup software creates most of its database files with permissions of 666. Apparently, Knox isn’t very interested in hearing about this issue: When Wittenberg called the company to let them know of the problem, he was basically told they didn’t want to talk to him because he had not purchased a support contract.

PC Magazine has commentary from John Dvorak: “The group could be called the Internet Class, the Digital Age Workers, or
even the Digerati–a term popularized by writer/agent John Brockman in his book of the same
title, which profiles the elite of the technology world. In the newest sense of the term, if you are
reading this column, you would quite likely be categorized as one of the digerati. And
apparently, you are about to become important, as a group, to politicos. Maybe now is the time
to organize into a massive pressure group.”

Thank you, Sircam, may I have another? While Linux users have been merely annoyed at the proliferation of Word documents littering their inboxes the past few days, the Sircam worm continues to wreak havoc on computers running Microsoft’s operating system and Outlook e-mail client. The Globe and Mail reports that Sircam has gone from being something of an irritation last week to become Asia’s top computer security problem, and Trend Micro’s tracking service has logged more than 2,200 reports of new infections within the last 24 hours.

If the PC industry is in one of its worst slumps ever, how did chipmaking giants Intel and AMD manage to pull off increases for their most recently concluded quarters? Analysts say the contradication can be explained by a cutthroat price war between the two companies, and the fact that cost-conscious PC builders are stocking up on parts now in antcipation of stronger sakes for this quarter. Full story at ZDNet.