Anonymous Reader writes, “According to a study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, downloading MP3 files is the fastest growing Internet activity over the past half-year. Between July-August 2000 and February 2001, over 30 million Americans have gathered their music this way.” The story’s at mp3newswire.net.

ZDNET.co.uk: “Cobalt clarifies comments made at its developer conference
last year over plans to sue Apple for infringement of the Cube
trademark.”

Tridia Corporation today announced that its “Alien” mascot now goes by the name of “Remo”. During the Name the “Alien” Contest, thousands of remote control users downloaded TridiaVNC the latest open-source, remote control, eSupport solution, from Tridia Corporation. More than 30,624 TridiaVNC software downloads took place since the contest launch at NetWorld+Interop’s LI UX Business Expo Atlanta 2000.Ms. Carrie Alderfer of ITC^DeltaCom was the first to submit the winning name, “Remo”. Alderfer received her grand prize of $5,000 from Vince Frese, Tridia Corporation’s chief executive officer and Paul Frese, vice president of sales. Alderfer said she had no immediate plans for the prize money, however, after lunch she was last seen approaching a local mall.

“Our Name the TridiaVNC Alien Contest has been a great success,” says Vince Frese, chief executive officer at Tridia Corporation. “Throughout NetWorld+Interop in Atlanta, we had long lines of contestants waiting to enter the contest. This enthusiasm spilled over to substantial downloads of our TridiaVNC remote-control eSupport software. We are confident that “Remo” will serve as an excellent remote control ambassador for our eSupport products.” In the future, “Remo” will represent Tridia Corporation’s leadership role in producing value priced, open-source hybrid software products that improve and make eSupport possible.

Tridia’s Name the “Alien” Contest provided a single grand prize of $5000, plus thousands of “Alien” t-shirts were randomly awarded throughout the contest. Many thanks go out to all who participated.

About Tridia Corporation

Tridia Corporation has long been a leading developer of Unix-based eSupport technologies. Tridia brings this experience to the Open Source and Microsoft Windows communities where it provides value priced eSupport solutions for live support, remote system administration, collaboration, and training. Founded in 1987, Tridia Corporation is a privately owned, Atlanta-based software development company.

For more information on TridiaVNC telephone Charlotte Canup at (770) 428-5000 ext. 105 or visit the Tridia Web site at http://www.tridiavnc.com. For TridiaVNC developer information please visit http://www.developvnc.org.

# # #

Tridia and TridiaVNC are trademarks of Tridia Corporation. All other referenced product names are trademarks of their respective companies.

“Dell, which had a JP Morgan moment earlier this month when it came to New York and stuck to its guidance for its current quarter, becoming for the moment the sole support of the US stock market, is reported to be contemplating a second round of layoffs for all its bully talk.” More at LinuxGram.

– by Tina Gasperson –
The first full release of Red Carpet, bundled with Ximian’s Gnome 1.4, is playing temperamental at installation time, refusing to proceed without having its many dependencies satisfied. It’s RPM-hell.Since the release date, the mailing list has been inundated with error reports worded like this:

"Red Carpet has encountered an error while trying to process your request:

An error has occurred while Red Carpet was processing this transaction. 
This may be caused by an improperly built or corrupted package. You may 
want to try the transaction again with fewer packages. You should report 
this problem to red-carpet@ximian.com as soon as possible."

This message is usually followed by a list of unsatisfied RPM dependencies, and sometimes a request to remove packages.

Reports of this nature, posted by beta-testers of the software, were also showing up on the Red Carpet mailing list right up to the release date. It is clear that Ximian knew about the dependency errors before releasing Red Carpet 1.0 on April 24, but decided to go ahead with the schedule and ask for forgiveness later.

“It was our intention to release another beta version in the last few days, but unfortunately, we’ve run out of time,” said Ian Peters of Ximian in an April 21 post to the Red Carpet mailing list. “Unfortunately, all of us at Ximian got caught up in working on the next version of the Ximian GNOME Desktop, and were unable to make another beta release (of Red Carpet).”

NewsForge editors read and respond to comments posted on our discussion page.

ZDNET.co.uk: “Two pending browser upgrades — one from Microsoft and one from
Mozilla — have fallen behind schedule.

Mozilla.org’s Mozilla 1.0 browser, which until last week was expected
to go gold in May, is now expected sometime in the third calendar
quarter of this year.”

The Register: “For a limited time only, Oracle says, special financial incentives will be awarded to
the lucky few who want better security and less downtime than IBM customers get
by availing themselves of the company’s SafeSwitch Program.

“IBM bought Informix. The question is whether they can buy you,” a provocative
marketing slogan reads.”

Bjarne Stroustrup, author of C++, will speak at 7:30 pm
in 501 Schermerhorn Hall of Columbia University in the City of New York. This meeting of the Association for Computing Machinery, Columbia chapter,
is free and open to the public.

ACM @ Columbia Univeristy welcomes all ACM members and interested persons:
Thursday, April 26th, 2001

JAVA BYTES

OK, maybe not, but there are certainly alternatives.  Far and away the
most popular programming language in the world today is C++.  Unlike many
modern inventions, C++ has one clear creator: Bjarne Stroustrup.

On April 26th, he's coming to speak at Columbia, thanks to Columbia's ACM
chapter with the support of the Department of Computer Science.  This is a
rare chance to hear one of the major figures in both computer science and
the information economy speak about his creation.

The topic will be C++ itself, and thus should be of particular interest to
dedicated Java types, as C++ is the primary programming language of the
"real world."  Used a Microsoft product lately, either operating system or
application? Written in C++.  Played a computer game?  Used any retail
software whatsoever?  Ditto.  Tens of billions of dollars worth of
software written in C++ are sold every year.

So anyway, come and listen to the guy who wrote the world's main
programming language talk about programming.  The talk will be aimed at
intermediate-level computer science undergraduates.  We promise that your
mind will be stretched.

Please go to our site: http://www.cs.columbia.edu/acm for directions to
the lecture hall at Columbia U. where the talk will be taking place.
Columbia U. itself is located at 116th and Broadway.

-- ACM @ Columbia U.




Distributed poC TINC:

Jay Sulzberger 
Corresponding Secretary LXNY
LXNY is New York's Free Computing Organization.
http://www.lxny.org

BBC: “A series of computer problems on the international space station could delay space tourist Dennis Tito’s mission.”

The Register: “In a brief SEC filing Linux distributor has announced that it will lay off 32 of its 188
staff ahead of closing its acquisition of SCO’s Server and Services businesses.
Caldera will take a one-time charge of $450,000, about half of its quarterly income.”