Bernhard Reiter writes, “The FreeGIS-CD’s sixth edition (v1.1.0) adds geographic
information processing capabilities to major GNU/Linux distributions.
Intevation GmbH published the sixth edition of
its compiliation of Free Software and data for spatial data processing.
The FreeGIS-CD can be ordered for 25 Euros. Check Details at FreeGIS-Project.”

IDG.net: “The worm’s payload carries out a DoS (denial-of-service)
attack on http://www.microsoft.com/, and initiates an e-mail
bombing session that sends obscene e-mail messages to
gates@microsoft.com.”

ZDNET: “Although the Internet’s
openness has been the source
of its success, “this openness
also entails certain risks, and
that is why we need a strategy
at the European level to tackle
existing and emerging security
threats,” Erkki Liikanen,
European Commissioner for the
Enterprise and Information
Society, said in a statement.”

Wired: “Market-battered tech firms are increasingly doling out new stock option packages, but leaving executives out of the bounty. The practice alleviates some, but not all, of investors’ irritation with new stock option giveaways.”

CNET: “IBM says creating super-fast, power-efficient processors for handheld computers requires
only a small stretch.

The company’s microelectronics division on Friday will reveal a new chipmaking technique it
calls “strained silicon.” The technique adds a lattice-like layer of IBM’s silicon-germanium blend
to the chip, which helps to increase the efficiency of its transistors.”

CNET: “ISPs are stuck in an uncomfortable digital dragnet as record companies, Hollywood studios and
independent copyright bounty hunters target their subscribers as pirates. Increasingly, service
providers are even being asked to cut their subscribers’ connections, a last-ditch proposition that
these companies ordinarily avoid at all costs.”

MozillaQuest Magazine (mozillaquest.com) reports: “The Mozilla Organization released the Milestone Mozilla 0.9.1 edition of its Mozilla browser-suite . . .as it slowly moves ever closer to the elusive Mozilla 1.0. The Mozilla Milestone 0.9.1 browser-suite is cross-platform and open source. Builds are available for the BSD, Linux, Macintosh, Microsoft Windows, OS/2, Sun, and several UNIX platforms. Source code is available if you want to custom compile your own Mozilla Milestone 0.9.1 build.”

“Mostly, the changes in this pre-1.0 edition of the Mozilla browser-suite are behind-the-scenes improvements in performance and stability. The most noticeable change is an overhaul of the Mozilla Modern skin.”

PCWorld: “NetZero and Juno Online Services have announced plans to merge, creating what they say would be the United States’
second-largest Internet service provider, after America Online.

The combined company will have more than 7 million active users, based on figures for March 2001, the companies said in a
statement. However, only 1 million of those are paying subscribers, while the other 6 million use free Internet services offered by
the two firms.”

Salon: “ORBS’s main service was a blacklist of Internet mail
servers — computers capable of routing mail across the
Net — that the ORBS administrator, Alan Brown, had identified as potentially capable of forwarding spam.
Now that blacklist is no longer available to network administrators, and they want to know why. One popular
theory mooted on the Net is that Brown closed down the site rather than comply with a New Zealand court
order demanding that he remove two specific ISPs from the blacklist. But Brown, who lives in New Zealand,
is keeping silent. “I am unable to answer any of your questions,” he writes in an e-mail. “Sorry.”

“Linux has come a long way in the past few years, particularly at the server level. The open source operating
system is now widely considered enterprise-ready for applications such as E-mail, e-commerce and Web
servers. Some complain that Linux is not yet up to snuff for other mission-critical apps, such as ERP,
business intelligence, CRM and supply chain planning. Others want to see better security and proven
Symmetric MultiProcessing (SMP) scalability. But it is clear now that growing numbers of IT managers are
nursing budding relationships with the OS.” More at ADTMag.com.