CNET News.com: “The Association for Competitive Technology (ACT) released a report estimating that
U.S. businesses could pay between $9 billion and $36 billion to modify Web sites in
compliance with proposed privacy bills. In a separate study, Privacilla.org, an
industry-backed privacy group, issued a report that disavowed the importance of
public opinion polls in deciding privacy regulations.”

EE Times: “Looking to narrow the gap in features between Windows- and
Linux-based platforms, CodeWeavers Inc. has developed a series of browser plug-ins
such as Shockwave and QuickTime for Linux-based Internet appliances.”

CNET News.com: “Magnequench, a privately held firm in Anderson, Ind., alleges that Sony and other
companies violated a total of four patents on magnets used in PlayStation consoles,
CD-ROM drives, automotive parts, and other consumer electronics products.”

EE Times: “Acknowledging that its prodigal robot pet did little more than talk back and eat
batteries every couple of hours, Sony Corp. on Monday (May 7) unveiled software that will
enable its Aibo robots to read e-mail messages and Web pages.”

Linux kernel 2.4.4-ac6 is now available; read the changelog below.ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/alan/2.4/

Intermediate diffs are available from

http://www.bzimage.org

2.4.4-ac6
o       Revert dead swap patch pending fixes            (Dave Miller)
o       Allow arch specific writeproc/DMA for IDE       (Bjorn Wesen)
o       Move to aic7xxx 6.1.13                          (Justin Gibbs)
o       Use pci_set_master on eni.c                     (Jeff Garzik)
o       Update wireless drivers, add airport            (Jean Tourrihles,
                                                        Benjamin Herrenschmidt)
o       Add new pci ids, clean up dup defines in eicon  (Jeff Garzik)
o       Add module loader to kernel docs                (Erik Mouw)
o       Fix wanrouter makefile bug              (Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo)
o       Add another pair of idents to the yenta driver  (Alexandr Kanevskiy)
o       Parport fixes for 1284 mode                     (Fred Barnes)
o       Update 8139too driver to handle wakeup bug      (Jeff Garzik)
o       Add koi8-ru locale                              (Andrzej
Krzysztofowicz)
o       Add ICH3 to the i810 audio driver               (Tom Woller)
o       Improve (hopefully) the confusing I82365 help   (me)
o       Fix a bug in koi8-u tables                      (Andrzej
Krzysztofowicz)
o       Fix a bug in UTF8->CP1255                       (Andrzej
Krzysztofowicz)
o       Fix a bug in iso8859-13 tables                  (Andrzej
Krzysztofowicz)
o       Update gdth driver to current vendor release    (Achim Leubner)
o       Kill cpia_write_proc (its insecure)             (Al Viro, me)
o       Fix unterminated array strtoul() in comx        (Al Viro)
o       Fix TCP send path leak                          (Dave Miller)
o       Restore older skb_cow() headroom behaviour      (Dave Miller)
o       Fix ipv6 oops                                   (Dave Miller)
o       Small ipx tidy up                       (Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo)
o       Fix unprotected userspace reference in trident  (Al Viro)
        audio
o       Fix expand stack locking                        (Manfred Spraul)
o       Fix offslab_limit calculation                   (Manfred Spraul)
o       EATA and U14F updates                           (Dario Ballabio)
o       Update scsi generic to 3.1.18                   (Doug Gilbert)
o       Clean up abs()                                  (Kai Germaschewski)
        | This needs further checking
o       ymfpci update                                   (Pete Zaitcev)
o       Quota code updates                              (Jan Kara)
o       Clean up eicon include abuse                    (me)    

InfoWorld reports: “A new Internet worm that can infect Web servers running Sun Microsystems’ Solaris operating system and Microsoft’s Internet Information Server (IIS) has been discovered. The worm first attacks the Solaris server and then sets it up to attack the systems running IIS, the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) said Tuesday.”

jeff writes “Tuesday, May 8th, 2001 — Tonight LIVE on www.thelinuxshow.com —
At 6pm pt, 7pm mt, 8pm ct, and 9pm et…. Among those participating on the Panel tonight talking about Craig Mundie are: Richard Stallman, Eric Raymond, Tom Adelstein, Lyle Ball and Doc Searls to talk about Mundie generated FUD.
PLEASE NOTE: we have contacted Microsoft and have invited Craig Mundie to join us on the show. At the time of this posting we have not heard back from him.

Other opinions are welcome at GeekCast. If you would like to join
uson the show, check our IRC Chat
(irc.thelinuxshow.com #linuxshow). Pass a question or comment along.

Remember tune in at 6pm pt, 7pm mt, 8pm ct, and 9pm et.
Catch the Linux show at www.thelinuxshow.com
“

From LinuxPR: “nux NetworX, a leading
provider of powerful and easy-to-manage Linux cluster computing
solutions, announced today an international partner/distributor
agreement with France-based Athena Global Services.”

PCWorld: “Get ready for a hefty price increase in CD-Recordable media, possibly as much as 350 percent
over the lowest CD-R media prices seen this past year.

This summer, discs are expected to cost 30 to 35 cents on average, after being “down as low as
10 cents a disc” on a spindle, says Peter Brown, removable-storage analyst at IDC.” A mixture of merging manufacturers, higher demands, and patent royalties are driving up prices.

From LinuxPR: “A Linux InstallFest provides an opportunity for individuals to bring a PC
and get
assistance with installing Linuxat no charge. The Stockton InstallFest
will provide
copies of various recent distributions (similar to versions) of Linux. At
press time
it is confirmed that SuSE, a major Linux vendor, will be present. VA
Linux and
Linux Mandrake have both indicated they will provide materials in
support of the
InstallFest. There will be drawings during the event. The first 100
persons in
attendance will each receive a CD of Linux Mandrake.”