According to a Reuters report on CNN, Napster is almost ready to launch the public beta of its new premium membership service. The company declined to give an official release date, but said it would launch the new service this summer. In addition to requiring a membership fee that has yet to be determined, the new Napster will replace MP3 trading with its official media protocol, expected to bear a .NAP extension.

Slashdot offers an update on the situation of Russian programmer Dmitri Sklyarov, who was arrested in Las Vegas this week after making a presentation at Def Con: “The complaint specifically mentions the ROT-13 “encryption”
used by at least one “protected ebook” company, so the jokes made about
the DMCA before are now true: crack ROT-13, go to jail. Skylarov is currently imprisoned without
bail.”

“Linux won’t ever be accepted as a truly mainstream OS by most vendors. The
reason for this is quite simply the users. And I’m not talking about everyone, I’m
talking about the 31337 h4x0r kids with the bad attitude. They’re posting right
here on this system, intermixed with others who often share the attitude, but also
have a bit more civility. I saw this once again while learning about the Hewlett
Packard 3300C flatbad scanner … which has zippo Linux support from HP. And I don’t see that
changing. Keep reading and maybe I can explain why.” From Slashdot.

Jungle Monkey 0.1.10 (“Mojo Jojo” release) is now available. Jungle
Monkey is a distributed file sharing program that features file
browsing, chat, and search. This is the first major release in nearly
a year. Large parts have been rewritten and new features added. JM
requires GTK, GNet 1.1.0, and Libglade. Gnome support is optional.

The JM homepage is http://www.junglemonkey.net
Tar and unofficial deb's available.

Changes:

  * Channels indexed for faster joins, less bandwidth
  * Distributed keyword search (JM Multicast Search Protocol)
  * Session saved on exit
  * New toolbar
  * Frontend re-architected
  * jmlite vastly improved. Supports basic scripts.
  * BTP improvements
  * Many bug fixes
  * German translation

Zile is another Emacs-clone. Zile is a customizable, self-documenting
real-time, open-source display editor. Zile was written to be as
similar
as possible to Emacs; every Emacs user should feel at home with Zile.

Zile features:

 - Small but fast and powerful.  It is very useful for small footprint
   installations (like on floppy disk) or quick editing sessions.

 - 8-bit clean.  Zile can operate with binary files.

 - Looks like Emacs.  Most Zile key sequences and function names
   are identical to Emacs ones.

 - Multi buffer editing w/multi level undo.  Zile can open an
   infinite number of files and can record an infinite sequence of
   undo operations.

 - Multi window.  Zile can display multiple windows on the screen.

 - Killing, yanking and registers.  The typical killing, yanking and
   register features of Emacs are available under Zile.

 - Minibuffer completion.  Zile can complete the user written text.
   This is very useful for `M-x' commands and for selecting files.

 - Colors.  Zile makes use of the color capatibilities of the
   terminal if available.

 - Source highlighting ("C", "C++", and shell scripts).  Zile can
   highlight "C", "C++" source files and shell scripts for better 
reading.

 - Auto fill (word wrap).  Zile automatically breaks the lines when
   they become too wide (if the Auto Fill Mode is enabled).

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Zile is now hosted on SourceForge at the address:
http://zile.sourceforge.net/

Latest version can be also found at my homepage:
http://www.sigala.it/sandro/

----------------------------------------------------------------------

NEWS:

Changes between Zile 1.5.2 - Zile 1.5.3

* Fixed wrong behavior in novice mode (Font Lock automatically set).
* Fixed a few core dumps.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

LSM:

Begin4
Title:          zile - Zile Is Lossy Emacs
Version:        1.5.3
Entered-date:   15JUL01
Description:    Emacs-clone editor
Keywords:       zile emacs clone text editor
Author:         sandro@sigala.it (Sandro Sigala)
Maintained-by:  sandro@sigala.it (Sandro Sigala)
Primary-site:   http://zile.sourceforge.net
                220k zile-1.5.3.tar.gz
Alternate-size: sunsite.unc.edu /pub/Linux/apps/editors/emacs/clones
                220k zile-1.5.3.tar.gz
Platforms:      ANSI C compiler, ncurses
Copying-policy: BSD
End

In this edition, popular topics include Robert Chassell’s acceptance speech for the USENIX Lifetime Achievement Award, presented at the recent Debian Conference, an announcement that the ‘update-menu’ problem has been fixed, and ruminations on the meaning of the GNU acronym. Posted at kt.zork.net.

From TheRegister: “While Microsoft has confirmed that latest builds of Windows XP won’t support Java,
Redmond seems to be keeping quiet about its endorsement of Sun’s platform on
other devices.

The Beast is embracing Java with some fervour, exhibiting it at the Windows
Embedded Developer Conference in Japan recently.”

From the humor site, Segfault: “Worldvision Enterprises Inc. announced today a renewal of its Little House on the Prairie series.
John Michaels, a Worldvision spokesperson explained, ‘…we were looking for something old and
new; something that harked back to old fashioned values but reflected today’s high-tech
prospects.’

The story revolves around an open source software distributor known as ‘Walnut Grove BSD.’ Mr.
Michaels confirmed that the new series would have an all new cast but take place in the same small
town. ‘Of course it would have to be set in the present, how in the world could the characters in the
old series have had computers?’ exclaimed a somewhat annoyed Bill Archer, one of the writers of
the upcoming sequel-series.”

TheStandard.com has more information about the Russian e-book hacker arrested at Def Con. More from CNet.

Anonymous Reader writes, “Linuxdevices.com has written an article with further details on the new Linux support for the Palm III, apparently based on several interviews with Empower’s CEO. The article provides a roundup of on various other Linux implementatinos for PDAs and Linux-based PDAs.”