ZDNet asks if Dell Computer, currently the leading manufacturer of pre-assembled computers, will achieve its goal of 40% market share. Due to the low profit margins in the industry, the article argues, companies are likely to avoid a bloody price war and instead try to pick up the scraps the market leaves them.

Fortune Magazine has a lengthy piece on the trials and tribulations of Rambus, the memory chip-maker who sued everyone in sight for violating its patents, and was soundly trounced in more than one courtroom: “Though Rambus declined interview requests (and
would answer only a handful of questions via e-mail), a review of 3,000 pages of
transcripts and exhibits from the trial shows that the company plotted to gather
patents on standardized technology for years, even as it participated in a standards
committee that requires companies to disclose their patents. It’s no surprise, then,
that Rambus stock has plummeted more than 90% from its June 2000 peak.”

NewsFactor Network: “Two electronically defaced Web servers have prompted AOL (NYSE: AOL) officials to launch an investigation into who gained illegal access to their ICQ
instant messaging servers on Monday. For the second time this year, ICQ users were greeted with various messages by hackers as they tried to access
their user groups and the ICQ search engine.

An ICQ logo with a flashing “Hacked” graphic across it, a flag with another graphic depicting the name of the hacker group and a text message taunting
system administrators made their way onto at least two ICQ home pages, and possibly an unconfirmed third page.”

Australian IT: “Since IBM’s reinvention as an e-business provider five years ago, the
computer giant has thrown its weight behind open source projects.

IBM Asia Pacific senior middleware manager Justin Martin said IBM
supported any platform that was attractive to customers, whether it was
IBM, open source or a third-party operating system.”

From the New York Times (free registration required) reports that Intertrust Technologies has filed suit against Microsoft, stating the Redmond, Wash. company’s Windows Media Player infringes upon Intertrust’s digital rights management technology patents. Microsoft says the small company is using “patent terrorism.”

Technology Review: “Buy a copy of The Matrix on DVD and take it home. Play
it on a Mac or on a Windows PC and you’re in for a pretty
good time. But play it on a PC running the Linux operating
system, and the movie industry says that you’re breaking
the law.

Your transgression is that of “circumvention,” a criminal
act created by the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act.”

CNET News.com: “An ambitious attempt by an international coalition of hackers to create a file-sharing
program that can defeat censorship has gone back to the drawing board, the project’s
leader said Wednesday.

Known as “Peekabooty”–and previously as Project X–the program could allow dissidents in
authoritarian countries to speak out online by hiding the identity of its users.

Although the program was expected to be released at Def Con, the well-known hacker to-do, the
group has decided to solve some sticky technical problems first.”

Online news sites weigh in with their coverage of today’s VA Linux announcement that the company will exit the hardware business, focus on software and services, and lay off 35% of its staff: Wired News, CNET News.com, and The Industry Standard.

ZDNet: “Simply called apt-get, this tool was developed to handle
installations of the Debian Linux distribution. Even for
normal functions, apt-get has always been superior to
the package management offerings that come with
non-Debian systems. On most Linux systems, if you want
to install a new application that requires other
“dependencies” to be installed first, you have to
manually install the dependencies yourself. Even
supposedly easier-to-use tools such as Kpackage don’t
automate the process of fetching dependencies, but
apt-get does so nicely.”

Posted at Linux Weekly News: “This is not an “official” stable Gimp release, but unless users
report problems with this release, the 1.2.2 release will follow
shortly.

This pre-release fixes a number of bugs that were found in the
1.2.2-pre1 release. I’d be happy if people could test it on a
variety of platforms.”