Kelly McNeill writes “There has been discussion lately about the failure of Linux to make it in the desktop market. For all the work going on, things are still a mess for the average user, and there are only a few good usable applications. In the last five years, the desktop has made technical progress, yet still fails on a basic level — the level of the average new user. Why is this happening, and what can be done about it?”

From a Reuters story at CNET: “Silicon Valley’s technology industry has a billion-dollar image problem, and some who work
within it think Hollywood may have the answer. Give us, they say, a geek hero–a nerd we
can love.”

Starting next month, Circuit City will start asking its younger customers to show identification proving they’re 17 or older, when buying violent video games. This, apparently, will cause school shootings and all other anti-social behavior from anyone under the age of 18 to cease immediately. Read the AP story at News.com.

News.com: “After 18 months of work, the
1394 Trade Association said
this week it has approved the
specifications for the new
FireWire, which will be called
IEEE 1394b. The standard still
requires final approval by
member companies.

The new 1394b standard is
expected deliver data at up to
800 megabits per second…”

From a Bloomberg item posted at News.com: “Sharp will demonstrate prototypes of handheld computers running on the Linux operating system
next month in the United States in a challenge to Palm and Microsoft on their home turf. Hiroshi
Uno, general manager for Sharp’s handhelds, said the prototypes will be displayed at the
JavaOne Conference, which takes place June 4 to 8 in San Francisco.”

PC World: “File-sharing service Aimster says it is appealing a National Arbitration Forum panel decision
ordering it to give up its domain names to AOL Time Warner.

“I’m going to appeal this decision. It’s prejudiced and causes us irreparable damage,” says
Johnny Deep, chief executive officer Aimster, a Napster-like program that piggybacks on
America Online’s instant messaging service.”

Linux Weekly News: “We first interviewed MandrakeSoft co-founder Gaël Duval back in August, 1999. Things have changed since then,
and the discussion this time around, of course, was centered on the management changes and layoffs at
MandrakeSoft. Mr. Duval paints an interesting and encouraging picture of where things are going; MandrakeSoft
looks like it is in reasonably good shape.”

Saint writes “I finally broke down and shelled out some dollars for a scanner, an Epson Perfection 1240U Photo in order to add a few pics to LinuxMedNews.com. Having plunked down my money I thought I might as well do a side by side test of the scanner on Linux and Windows. I was prepared to be disappointed in Linux due to previous experience with sound card and video configuration. Read on to see what happened here.”

Sebastopol, CA–Python expert Fredrik Lundh has spent hundreds of hours
in recent years answering questions posted by programmers on the
popular Python newsgroup, comp.lang.python. Python, known for its clean
syntax and object orientation, is a modular language that imports most
useful functions from the extensive library of programming modules that
is distributed with the language. These modules are a collection of
commonly used procedures that can be pasted into a Python script rather
than written from scratch. In his just-released book, “Python Standard
Library,” (O’Reilly, US $29.95), Lundh provides tested, accurate
documentation of all the modules in the Python Standard Library, along
with more than 300 annotated example scripts using the modules, based
on the author’s work with thousands of questions and answers from the
Python newsgroup.

"Python Standard Library" distills the best parts from over 3,000
newsgroup messages. As Lundh explains in the preface of his book,
"Maybe someone found a module that might be exactly what he wanted, but
he couldn't really figure out how to use it. Maybe someone had picked
the wrong module for the task. Or maybe someone tried to reinvent the
wheel. Often, a short sample script could be much more helpful than a
pointer to the reference documentation."

Lundh's specialty is providing short sample scripts that demonstrate
the use of a module in a way that programmers can understand. Lundh
explains, "I've worked hard to make the scripts both understandable and
adaptable. I've intentionally kept the annotations as short as
possible. If you want more background, there's plenty of reference
material shipped with most Python distributions. In this book, the
emphasis is on the code."

Lundh's book is a no-nonsense, no-fluff reference work for the serious
Python programmer. "Python Standard Library" documents all the new
modules and related information for Python 2.0, the first new major
release of Python in four years, including:

--All major forms of data representation
--Support for threads and pipes
--All important file formats, including XML and HTML
--Support for major Internet applications like mail (MIME) and news
--Database and persistent storage

Fredrik Lundh, an active member of the Python community and a frequent
contributor to the Python newsgroups, is an expert on the use of Python
with images and graphics and is the creator of the Python Imaging
Library (PIL). Lundh is a principal of Secret Labs, Inc. the creators
of PythonWorks, and integrated development environment (IDE) for
Python.


Chapter 5, "File Formats," is available free online at:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/pythonsl/chapter/ch05.html

For more information about the book, including Table of Contents,
index, author bio, and samples, see:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/pythonsl/index.html

For a cover graphic in jpeg format, go to:
ftp://ftp.ora.com/pub/graphics/book_covers/hi-res/0596000960.jpg

Registration has opened for O'Reilly's Open Source Convention 
in San Diego, July 23-27, 2001. For more information, see:
http://conferences.oreilly.com/oscon/

Python Standard Library
By Fredrik Lundh
May 2001
ISBN 0-596-00096-0, 281 pages, $29.95 (US)
order@oreilly.com
1-800-998-9938
http://www.oreilly.com

# # #

O'Reilly is a registered trademark of O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. All
other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

ZDNet News: “Microsoft on Wednesday will announce that a long-awaited high-end version of its
Windows XP operating system, intended to compete with Unix, is entering customer
testing.

The 64-bit operating system will be made available on a limited basis bundled with servers using
Intel’s Itanium processor, said sources familiar with the announcement.”