Kelly McNeill writes: “If Microsoft keeps screwing around with this post-PC nonsense, it is going to become a self-fulfilling prophecy — which leads me to the reasons why the Xbox is such good news for Linux. If Microsoft takes its eye off the PC ball and the post-PC world happens, then Microsoft will become so overwhelmed trying to dominate all the various platforms, that the whole creaking heap will slide down the hill into Lake Sammamish.”

CNET: “Microsoft will not add support for Bluetooth to its next version of the Windows operating
system, XP. The company is one of the lead members of the trade group that is developing the
Bluetooth standard.

The lack of support from the Redmond, Wash.-based software giant isn’t fatal, but it will likely
slow the technology’s once strong momentum. Without Microsoft, Bluetooth adoption becomes
slightly more onerous for hardware manufacturers and software developers as the software
giant won’t deliver a family of device drivers or other software to simplify how the technology
gets incorporated.”

MSNBC: “Now it’s all about survival. In the next few months tens of
thousands of businesses will send consumers billions of
so-called “privacy notices.” Disguised as garden-variety junk
mail, these notices – required by a new law – hold the keys to
stopping the wholesale flood of your personal information onto
the free market.”

WideOpen.com: “In recent years, Wind River has seen the popularity of its
VxWorks OS diminish, while that of Linux has mushroomed.
According to the Embedded Systems Programming Magazine 2000
Subscriber Study, interest in using Wind River’s VxWorks
operating system in embedded system applications grew from
45% to 56% between 1998 and 1999, but diminished to 47% in
2000. During that same period, interest in Embedded Linux
exploded — jumping from virtually nil in 1998 and 1999, to
the number two spot (38%) in 2000, second only to Wind
River’s VxWorks.”

BSDToday: “Because BSD user utilities are maintained by the same projects maintaining the kernels, new releases of the BSDs all properly support v6 in their user code. For example, a user of NetBSD 1.5 can telnet or ssh over v6, traceroute v6 networks, send e-mail over v6, or even do NFS mounts over v6.”

DallasNews: “Internet giant Yahoo! Inc. has struck an alliance with Duet, an online music distribution company backed by Sony Corp. and French media conglomerate Vivendi Universal. In doing so, Yahoo has become the latest in a string of companies that plan to offer paid music download services as the recording industry attempts to curtail the free music-swapping enabled by such companies as Napster Inc.”

A brand new edition of the Embedded Linux newsletter is online at LinuxDevices.com.

PCWorld: “A 17-year veteran of the ‘hacking’ world talks about ethics, the dangers of ‘hacking,’ and
the security of government information.”

From LWN: ” Some time ago, a vulnerability was discovered that allowed for root
access through ptrace call in the linux kernel. This was
originally considered fixed in a previous patch, but as it turns
out, it wasn’t. This is fixed in kernel version 2.2.19.”

At BSDtoday.com: “Wind River’s purchase of BSDi’s software assets is a major endorsement of embedded BSD, and we are excited that BSD now has such a well-funded spokesman … we see Wind River’s open source offerings as complementary, rather than competitive in nature.”