The Register: “Windows XP beta code has been leaking gently for practically the whole process,
but on Friday Microsoft fell victim to the Big One. A beta tester’s login leaked, was
broadcast across IRC and via instant message, and the Great Escape ensued.”

– By Grant Gross –

Mobile communications giant Nokia is jumping head first into Open Source development by launching a Web site to host home entertainment software projects based on open standards.This week Nokia, working with Open Source project-hosting company CollabNet, will launch the OSTdev.net Web site where developers can come together to create a wide range of home entertainment software for Nokia’s Open Standards Terminal software platform, based on Linux, Xfree and Mozilla. The Nokia Open Source License is based on the Mozilla license.

The development at OSTdev.net will be open to Nokia and its competitors alike. Nokia and CollabNet officials say their goal of a worldwide open standard for home entertainment architecture will benefit the industry as a whole.

Romulo Pinheiro, product marketing manager with Nokia Home Communications, says an open standard will allow companies to concentrate on making good home-entertainment products instead of building proprietary software.

“The proprietary business model is not advantageous to anyone,” Pinheiro says. “By using Open Source tools, we have an opportunity to have worldwide contributions from many developers. They will help set the standards.”

An Open Source development model for new home entertainment devices will jump start a stagnant industry, he adds. “We believe this is the only way to create standards, and at the end of the day, everyone is better off,” he says. “The end user has access to more diversity of applications and services, applications developers have a common platform with which they can work, and hardware manufacturers reduce costs because the technology is cheaper.”

Nokia will benefit from the OSTdev.net development through hardware sales. This summer, the Finnish company plans to start selling its Nokia Media Terminal, an Internet/digital TV/video recorder/gaming device that runs on Linux, in Europe. The terminal will have USB connections to plug in other devices such as cameras.

Pinheiro says the OST platform is another way for developers to show the versatility of Linux. The project, says Linda Stone, senior marketing manager for strategic accounts at CollabNet, also gives developers the opportunity to work on a project that has nearly unlimited potential.

“This is a huge win for the developer community,” Stone says. “It provides a complete environment with the tools, the code, applications, and the support for collaborative software development for any hardware-independent home entertainment device. It provides the opportunity for developers to showcase their work in every home of the future.”

The OSTdev site will be launched at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles May 16 to 19. There, developers will be able to sign up and get the tools necessary to start developing.

Stone declined to say how many developers the project needs for it to be judged successul by Nokia and CollabNet, which has previously launched projects for Hewlett-Packard, Oracle and Sun Microsystems. “It’s really about collaboration and about the development of applications and extending this platform,” she adds. “The more collaboration, the more projects, the more applications, the interest in utilizing this platform is to the benefit of Nokia.”

Pinheiro, asked about the failed attempt by Indrema to create a Linux-based gaming/Internet console, says Nokia is in this project for the long haul.

“This is an emerging industry, and when you are the first one, you have to make sure you have enough resources … until you see results,” he says. “We are not expecting results in the short, short run. You have to be patient because people have to see the power of this tool. We are committed, and we have the resources.”

Computer News Daily: “A rural Texas man has been charged with hacking into
computers at a NASA research facility and stealing passwords from the space
agency.

Ruben Candelario, 18, who lives near the town of New Braunfels, was
arraigned in U.S. District Court here last Thursday and later released on
$25,000 bond.”

LinuxSecurity: “Businesses, schools, and home users need more secure network services now more than ever. As online business increases, more people continue to access
critical company information over insecure networks. Companies are using the Internet as a primary means to communicate with travelling employees in their
country and abroad, sending documents to various field offices around the world, and sending unencrypted email; this communication can contain a wealth of
information that any malicious person can potentially intercept and sell or give to a rival company. Good security policies for both users and network
administrators can help to minimize the problems associated with a malicious person intercepting or stealing critical information within their organization. This
paper will discuss using Secure Shell (SSH) and MindTerm to secure organizational communication across the Internet.”

ABCNews: “Celebrities and Hollywood stars have had to cope for several years with the problem of faked nude pictures circulating online. But now ordinary individuals are falling prey to the problem. Could you be one of them?”

2600: “Our legal team has filed a Protective Order Motion in the Ford lawsuit, which is designed to protect us from any
funny business that Ford or their friends in Michigan may be planning.”

PCWorld: “Any standard PC with a sound card can record and archive almost anything that you can play through a
stereo system. That includes old 33, 45, and 78 RPM records; reel-to-reel and cassette audio tapes; FM
radio broadcasts; and soundtracks or live concerts recorded from a telecast onto VHS videocassettes. With
one of a number of free or shareware software packages, you can organize your favorite songs on your hard
disk and then put them into easily accessible music libraries or onto custom discs.”

Computer News Daily: “Remember Charley Pride? He’s the country crooner who broke
through racial barriers in the 1960s to become country music’s only black
superstar.

Now the Country Music Hall of Famer is poised to become a pioneer of a
different type. His new compact disc being released Tuesday (May 15), “A
Tribute to Jim Reeves,” is the first in the United States to carry a digital code
designed to keeps the music from being copied or uploaded to the Internet.”

LinuxSecurity: “This week, the most interesting articles include “Tutorial: How to Set Up a Linux-Based Firewall for a SOHO,” “The Practical
Intrusion Detection Handbook,” and “Setting Up a VPN: a Tutorial.” Also, an interesting privacy related article brings up the
ongoing Carnivore issue, “Groups urge Ashcroft to act on Carnivore.”

It’s at ftp://ftp.linux.org.uk/pub/linux/alan/2.4-ac/. Intermediate diffs are available from http://www.bzimage.org.

Cox writes, “Ok we are back on kernel.org.”

2.4.4-ac9
o Clean up x86isms from the UML code (Chris Emerson)
o Remove un-needed UML flag,fix hang under load (Jeff Dike)
o Fix attach race in UML (Jeff Dike)
o Fix warnings, clean up cpp abuses in UML (Roman Zippel)
o Remove -D__KERNEL__ from user space of UML (Roman Zippel)
o Add NCR53c700 and 53c700/66 driver (James Bottomley)
|For NCR Dual 700 microchannel card
o Alpha semaphore updates (Ivan Kokshaysky)
p Fix ibmtr build a bit (Andrzej Krzysztofowicz)
o Tidy sysrq-t output (Russell King)
o Fix miata halt to SRM (Tom Vier)
o Fix aging on buffer cache pages (Marcelo Tosatti)
o Fix looping behaviour on failing memory
allocations (Marcelo Tosatti)
o Handle the PIIX4 on the new intel 82801BAM (Tim Raymond)
o Fix user visible -ENOIOCTLCMD returns (Shane Wegner)
o Fix startech uart detection problem (Val Henson)
o Further tulip updates (Jeff Garzik)
o Revert hpt366 patch

2.4.4-ac8
o Prefetch constant copy_to_user data (Arjan van de Ven)
o Update cpqarray driver – use pci dma api (Charles White)
o Update cciss driver – use pci dma api (Charles White)
o Enable compiled in synclink driver (Paul Fulghum)
o Fix plip section conflict (Keith Owens)
o Tulip driver updates (Jeff Garzik)
o Frame buffer logo updates (Geert Uytterhoeven)
o Update __initdata documentation (Ingo Oeser)
o Linearize sunrpc buffers using GFP_KERNEL (Trond Myklebust)
o C Scott Ananian has moved (C Scott Ananian)
o Update get_unaligned docs (John Levon)
o Fix pci pool handling on boxes that have non
irq safe map create/destroy (Pete Zaitcev)
o Update m68k semaphores (Geert Uytterhoeven)
o Update NLS Configure.help (Nerijus Baliunas)
o Clean up cyclom driver (Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo)
o Further serial driver update (Jeff Garzik)
o Fix typo in sched.c (Jim Freeman)
o Do prefetches on wake_up_common walk (Arjan van de Ven)
o Fix bootmem init problems (Andrea Arcangeli)
o Fix pops on cs46xx power management (Thomas Woller)
o Fix reference of freed memory in cs46xx (Christopher Kanaan)
o Hopefully fix i2o scsi reset crash (me)