An eWeek column talks about how Microsoft is supposedly taking security more seriously these days. “Granted, Microsoft hasn’t turned around solely for its customers’ well-being. But the Redmondites
did see the writing on the wall: Get your security shop in order, or Linus Torvalds and Steve
Jobs will be eating your lunch.”

EcommerceTimes.com has a column about BeOS and its future. “While BeOS is generally seen as a few steps away from an open-source
system that allows individual programming, Be Inc. head Jean-Louis
Gassée told news sources that may not be the company’s best move.
Potts told NewsFactor Network that the system is open enough
already to allow customization without requiring too much programming
expertise.”

MSNBC has a story (yes the MS stands for Microsoft last time we checked) about IBM’s decision to embrace Linux. “You might call it high-tech’s odd couple – IBM’s
white shirts, ties and pocket protectors paired with the ripped
T-shirts of Birkenstock-wearing, free-software-loving Linux
programmers. But IBM has embraced the open-source
movement, and there’s evidence it’s more than just a mid-life
crisis.”

eWeek has a review of Red Hat 7.1. “In eWeek Labs’ tests, we were impressed with Red Hat 7.1’s server configuration tools. The BIND
tool provided a nice graphical editor that let us create forward and reverse lookup zones, and
the Apache configuration editor let us quickly edit what port the Apache Web server used, set
up document root directories and enable Secure Sockets Layer support. It was a pleasure to use
and a welcome addition because Apache doesn’t ship with any administration tools.”

JM writes, “The SourceForge Storage Foundry has a news item discussing integration of SAMBA 2.2.0 and XFS ACLs (Access Control Lists). Also, SGI has announced availablility of new XFS RPM’s for Red Hat 7.1. Read about it here:

http://sourceforge.net/foundry/storage/.”

LinuxProgramming.com posts Dr. Dobb’s Python-URL, the latest roundup of news and links of interest to the Python community.

The Register reports “Infineon will attempt to prove that Rambus has not only tried to hoodwink
the chip industry’s standards body, JEDEC, but used similar tactics on
the US Patent and Trademark Office.

The case finally comes to court later today after various delays.”

EE Times: “As it prepares to ward off a legal attack from rival MIPS
Technologies Inc., scrappy processor-core vendor Lexra Inc. is mounting its own
offensive in the 32-bit processor arena.

Lexra is so confident of its forthcoming third-generation 32-bit processor that it is
planning to charge a premium over comparable 32-bit cores from MIPS, an
unusual tactic for a company that still considers itself an underdog.”

LinuxProgramming.com posts the latest edition of Dr. Dobb’s Tcl-URL, a weekly roundup of news and resources for the Tcl developer community.

A new release candidate of WWW gateway to LDAP server web2ldap has been released. According to Michael Stroder’s post at LinuxProgramming, “If there are no real showstoppers found in 0.9.0rc1 this will be
almost the final release 0.9.0 which is scheduled for 2001-05-10.”