LinuxSecurity: “This week, advisories were released for xntp3, ntpd, vim, mailx, kernel, pine, netscape, and mc. The vendors include
Conectiva, Caldera, Debian, EnGarde, Immunix, Mandrake, NetBSD, Progeny, Red Hat, Slackware, SuSE, and Trustix.”

eet.com: “Microsoft is considering a number of options for getting the USB 2.0 software on the market in
tandem with the Windows XP release, said Carl Stork, general manager of Microsoft’s Windows
Division. “How that USB 2.0 software is shipped in the final version of XP, we don’t know,” he
said. “It could be shipped and turned on by default if suddenly a wave of hardware hits Redmond. It
could be that we ship it but turn it off by default. Or it could be that we choose to distribute it
through Windows later.”

The current snapshots are at ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/unstable/CVS/snapshots/current/. Here’s the note to the developers from W. Bastian last night:

KDE 2.2alpha1
From: Waldo Bastian 
To: kde-core-devel@kde.org,  kde-devel@kde.org,  kmail@kde.org,  kde-i18n-doc@kde.org
Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2001 18:16:52 -0700


Message for european developers: Hey you, go to bed!

I am about to tag KDE 2.2alpha1 in about an hour or so. If you still need to 
fix that last _very_ important bug, now is a good time to tell me about it. 
Please mail me if you put fixes in CVS after the thing has been tagged that 
need to go into 2.2alpha1 so that I can move the tag.

Navindra: Can you submit this configure patch?

Note to translators: Translations will _not_ be a part of this release.

Now is a good time to do a clean compile to see if we don't forget to install 
some header file. (Don't forget to delete $KDEDIR/include before you do that 
:-)

Cheers,
Waldo
-- 
bastian@kde.org | SuSE Labs KDE Developer | bastian@suse.com
 
>> Visit http://master.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-devel#unsub to unsubscribe 

An anonymous reader writes: “Linux users say once they started using the free source operating system they were hooked. Stability, reliability, the absence of software licenses and being able to view and change the source code are some of the reasons. It has been embraced by a range of businesses, from a company that checks term papers for plagiarism, a provider of business and technology solutions to the retail industry and Web developers. Read the full story here at searchenterpriselinux.com.”

– by Tina Gasperson –
IBM put up a KDE tutorial earlier this week, and on April 10 they launched a KDE theme creation contest. If you were watching closely, you may have noticed a few interesting twists to this contest.The interest in IBM’s developerWorks tutorial on creating KDE themes has been running high since the story broke on April 10. But there were a few snags in the contest rules. For one thing, the contest was limited to U.S. residents only — rather impolite considering there are KDE users all over the world. Not only that, but the rules stated that contestants must develop themes for KDE 1.1 or 1.2 only, not the latest versions, 2.0 and 2.1. And last but certainly not least, according to IBM’s director of Linux technology, Dr. Daniel Frye, the rules did not make a provision for submissions being Open Source. Instead, they mandated that all submissions became the property of IBM.

Frye says, “We screwed up in a couple of different ways that we are fixing.” The contest is being extended to include citizens of all countries. The only limitation is that awards to winners in countries other than the United States will be given as donations to the victors’ favorite Open Source project.

IBM is fixing the version restrictions and the wording of the rules as well. “Our heart is in the right place,” says Frye. It’s simply a case of inexperience with the Open Source way of doing things. Frye says that IBM contest designers received several emails pointing out the unintential gaffes. “They (the contest designers) are much more familiar with Open Source today than they were yesterday.”

Frye and Lisa Lanspery, IBM’s Linux media relations representative, said that the site is fully updated. You can take a look at the fresh contest rules at this URL.

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

“Linux newcomers are becoming part of the mainstream effort to create software for
non-PC “embedded” computing devices, as indicated by a host of trade show
announcements. Linux, a clone of the Unix operating system that competes with Windows, got its start in
servers. A number of companies, such as TimeSys, Red Hat, Lineo, LynuxWorks and
MontaVista Software have been working to squeeze it into smaller embedded devices such as
network routers, handheld computers and set-top boxes.” Full story at ZDNet.

From SecurityFocus.com: “The head of Microsoft’s security response team argued here Thursday that closed source
software is more secure than open source projects, in part because nobody’s reviewing open source code for
security flaws.”

Patrick Mullen writes: “The Duke of URL has just posted the second part to their wireless LAN overview, which focuses on devices. The review includes benchmarks, some technical overview, installation
experiences and much more. This is a great article for anyone
interested in how the new 802.11b devices run on both Linux and Windows
systems.”

Changes to the latest version of the 2.4.3 Linux kernel include: “Merge Linus 2.4.4pre1; New rwsem implementation; Fix rwsem compile problem; Fix bust_spinlocks build fail if !CONFIG_VT; Merge Linus 2.4.4pre2 except for ipv6; Fix the corner case non zeroing bug in; copy_from_user for x86.” More at LWN.net.

FreeBSDZine has an article on configuring Bochs, an Open Source x86 PC emulator. The program “ncludes emulation of the Intel x86 CPU, common IO devices, and a custom BIOS. Like
VMware, Bochs is a kind of virtual machine that can run Windows95, MS-DOS, Linux, etc.”