TechWeb: “IBM on Monday is expected to unveil new versions
of its iSeries servers that allow partitioning at the
sub-CPU level and offer increased networking
capabilities with the company’s xSeries servers.”

Slashdotter chromatic reviews Data Munging with Perl by David Cross. Chromatic: “The book plots a natural course through topics ordered by complexity. It opens with a theoretical
overview of data processing. This introduces terminology and outlines the general types of data one
might encounger. Additionally, the author writes with the authority of experience when exploring the
basic approaches and best practices. While other books aimed at novice users shy away from
programs-as-filters and data structures, Cross prefers to instill good habits from the start.”

Wired.com reports on the SEC probe of Credit
Suisse First Boston and the possible connection with the placing of bankers John Schmidt and Mike Grunwald on administrative leave. “CSFB is being investigated by the U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan as well as the
Securities and Exchange Commission, and there have been reports that the two men’s
paid administrative leaves are related to the probes. The two agencies are said to be
looking at the possibility that CSFB traders demanded higher-than-usual commissions
from hedge funds and others hoping to get allocations of initial public offerings.

CSFB underwrote some of the hottest stock offerings during the Internet tech boom
including VA Linux, Razorfish, Handspring and MP3.com.” (VA Linux owns NewsForge.)

From ZDNet UK: “Officials at Sony’s UK offices confirmed on Thursday that the
company is to release an official version of Linux to run on the
PlayStation2. However, it will only be compatible with Japanese
versions of the console at this stage.

According to Sony, the move is in response to consumer pressure,
which has included online petitions. Users will receive a hard drive
with built-in 10Mbit Ethernet socket that will plug into the console’s
PCMCIA slot, a mouse and a keyboard, as well as a PS2-compatible
version of the popularopen source operating system.”

rom InternetWire: Based on
developer demand, IBM developerWorks, (www.ibm.com/developerWorks),
IBM’s free, online resource for developers, announced today it has made
several additions to its website content, including a new Web services zone
and a collection of code and components.

To reinforce IBM’s commitment to developers considering emerging open standards based technology, IBM
developerWorks has strengthened its focus on Web services by advancing its Web services special topic
area into a full-fledged zone. This change will mean that the newest zone appearing on developerWorks will
feature five monthly columns, with most content written by authors outside IBM, and will offer development
tools for complex code writing tasks. The Web services zone will offer the same level of detailed content as
the other zones which appear on developerWorks, including XML, Java Technology, Linux, Open
Source Projects and Components.

A ZDNet column addresses Linux’s battle for the desktop. A major complaint: The many font formats in Linux, and the fact that “every applications implements fonts in its own way.”

The Register reports on the fake review in which Bill Gates gives Red Hat 7.0 five stars out of five. A joke Linus Torvalds’ review, however, suggests users switch to Windows. The reviews are jokes but Amazon.com’s UK division has really refused to pull them.

CNet has a short item following up on the EFF’s proposal to create an Open Source music license.

A CNet story talks about the insecurity of IM services and the competition to provide IM services to businesses. Among those mentioned is the Open Source Jabber. “Jabber, a commercial product based on open-source development
organization Jabber.org, recently released Jabber 1.7 for the
Windows operating system, which lets its users encrypt messages
both when they’re in transit and when they’re logged on to the
sender’s or recipient’s computer. The updated version also adds
directory searching, a new interface, conferences, and support for
file transfers via server and peer-to-peer.”

– By Grant Gross –

We just know that many of you were secretly thinking about using Microsoft’s new Passport service. For those of you who don’t follow our favorite monopolist, Passport is Microsoft’s online wallet service, to which you’re supposed to sign in once and shop online feeling all secure forever after. Except, perhaps, in Maryland, where the local version of the UCITA law, which Microsoft itself worked to pass, conflicts with Passport’s terms of use so heavily that Maryland residents are apparently not eligible to use Passport.

Passport’s terms of use say, in small part:

This agreement is governed by the laws of the State of Washington, U.S.A. You hereby irrevocably consent to the exclusive jurisdiction and venue of courts in King County, Washington, U.S.A. in all
disputes arising out of or relating to the use of the Passport Web Site or service. Use of the Passport Web Site and service is unauthorized in any jurisdiction that does not give effect to all provisions of these terms and conditions, including without limitation this paragraph.

(The above passage is under “general” in Passport’s 2,212-word terms-of-use agreement, for those of you actually checking my accuracy.)

What’s that mean? Basically, if you want to sue Microsoft because its self-proclaimed “powerful online security technology” allowed some script kiddie in a formerly communist country to access your credit card number, or Microsoft wants to sue you for misusing the service, you have to play ball on Microsoft’s home turf. (You Passport fans in Australia or Luxembourg or south Florida, for that matter, may want to think about that scenario before you sign up.)

It also appears that Microsoft is attempting to bar residents of Maryland and, potentially, other states considering the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act from using Passport with this sentence in the terms-of-use agreement: “Use of the Passport Web Site and service is unauthorized in any jurisdiction that does not give effect to all provisions of these terms and conditions, including without limitation this paragraph.”

Maryland’s much-maligned UCITA, which is slightly different from the version originally proposed, gives its state courts jurisdiction over software licensing issues for Maryland residents and companies. (Here’s the text of Maryland’s UCITA, but it’s in rich text [rtf] format.)

Of course, UCITA also binds consumers to the software license agreements they sign, so it would seem that Maryland’s UCITA would contradict itself in this case — by giving Maryland courts jurisdiction over software disputes at the same time it ties the user to an agreement to use courts in King County, Wash.

Maryland Delegate Kumar Barve, a sponsor of UCITA and chairman of the House Subcommittee on Science and Technology, says Microsoft may be on the losing end in a fight between its terms of use and UCITA. When a state government creates consumer protection laws, that law trumps individual agreements such as Passport’s. Maryland’s UCITA doesn’t change that practice of which state’s law would be followed in such a case — what it does affect is the venue.

So in the case of a Marylander suing Microsoft over Passport, a Maryland judge would decide where the case was tried. If Microsoft was a tiny little company that didn’t have much of a business presence in Maryland, it might persuade a judge to allow it to defend itself back home in Redmond. But most judges, Barve says, are likely to decide that Microsoft does have a “significant business presence” in the state, and therefore, would likely make Microsoft’s lawyers take the long airplane ride into BWI.

Of course, Microsoft could always challenge Maryland’s UCITA. We wouldn’t dare to encourage frivilous lawsuits, but it might be kind of fun to observe a slugfest between the boys from Redmond and the folks that brought us the distasteful UCITA — including Microsoft itself.

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