From LinuxPR: theKompany.com is pleased to announce the long awaited second beta (version 0.9.2) of our Aethera Messaging and Groupware client for KDE. New releases will start to come much more frequently. Most of the details for the project roadmap can be found a www.thekompany.com/projects/aethera, but this is subject to change as we are constantly researching new features.

Bad news for those whe don’t like the existing DNS system, as Verisign gets its monopoly for another 6 years (thanks to TheRegister for reporting).

ZDNet news: “In addition to allowing Apple to rally programmers around the new desktop operating system, the conference offers the Mac maker the opportunity to announce a new version of OS X for servers.”

The Straits Times reports on a Russian firm which exists to sell wealthy tourists trips to space on Russian Soyuz capsules, after the success of the first paying space tourist, American Dennis Tito.

PC World reports that Sharp has added its name to the companies planning to make Transmeta Crusoe powered laptops.

sil writes “Staff at AntiOffline have created Deviation v.1, which is promises to educate those using Linux or BSD based systems on the subject of security. It is a work in progress document which will be kept updated on a quarterly basis to provide insights into cost effective methods, and alternatives to securing your workstation/server. Detailed with both underground and professional level based information, they hope to bring an in-your-face template for security, while giving readers a thorough understading and reasoning for comments, and recommendations, while keeping the document in tune with the average user to high end geek of Linux, and BSD based operating systems. Full articles“

ZDNet reports that Canada is using tax incentives, cheaper labour, and better infrastructure to influence US high-tech companies to the Great White North.

Gary Lawrence Murphy writes “The Labour Party’s reshuffling has left many government departments without the technical support they need to continue deploying Linux and other OpenSource initiatives started by gateway.gov.uk, leaving the government at the mercy of vendor support. If you know any penguinistas in the UK, maybe you should tell them to call Whitehall. Full story in Silicon.com“

MSNBC: “The “AIM” in Aimster violates America Online’s trademark and the company must relinquish several Internet domain names with that name in it to AOL, the National Arbitration Forum has decided.” Among the names Aimster will have to give up: aimster.com, a1mster.com, aimsertv.com, and aimstertv.net.

IBM developerWorks: “Judy DeMocker explains why it seems that Linux may win over the embedded market. She takes a look at the
conveniences of the open source license and what it means for embedded Linux, at maintaining embedded systems (and
their device drivers) with Linux, and being able to offer single-platform support.”