ZDNET: “Technology standards-makers on Monday voted against adding
copy-protection support directly into computer hardware, a
controversial proposal aiming to smooth adoption of strong antipiracy
safeguards.”

Anonymous Reader writes: “Today Senator Orin Hatch will open the latest hearings on the digital music industry. Called “Online Entertainment and Copyright Law: Coming Soon to a Digital Device Near You,” Early highlights include a rally by 1,000 Napster supporters lead by Shawn Fanning and Chuck D and testimony by Alanis Morissette and Ted Nugent. More at MP3Newswire.net.“

Russ Foster writes “Europe’s fastest growing Open Source product now contains features on a par with proprietary security solutions.

Version 0.9.8 of SmoothWall – Britain’s most successful Open Source project to date, has been released. The latest version of the acclaimed security device software attacks the traditional marketplace of the SoHO and SME security marketplace at a price that gives it a major advantage – it is available for free download under the GNU General Public Licence.

Full press release“

The Register: “It appears that VeriSign is going to control the .com registry for all eternity following
a decision by ICANN Monday which guarantees it ownership until November 2007,
and sweetens the pot with an option to renew for four years thereafter.”

Debian.org: “Recently, the Debian Project has lost two members of its ‘family’. Chris Rutter was killed in a tragic car accident and Fabrizio Polacco passed away after a long illness.
Chris was maintaining the ARM port of Debian, and the next ARM release will be dedicated to him. Fabrizio maintained several important packages within the Debian
Project and had become upstream maintainer for man-db.”

Wired: “As CEO of wireless resource Cellmania, Ronjon Nag is optimistic about the future of the industry, including the publicly maligned WAP. Despite poor connectivity, bandwidth, memory and user-interface problems, the founder of the annual Wappy Awards defends the notion that some day your phone will be your link to people, stores and entertainment around the world.”

Slashdotters: “mansoft was one of several to send us a followup to last week’s story about the massive
MSIE/Outlook security hole. He points us to this Wired news article: ‘Your computer may not be
protected against a recently discovered and dangerous security hole — despite all claims to the
contrary from Microsoft.’ Ack! If you tried the patch and got the message, ‘This update does not
need to be installed on this system,’ you need to upgrade your IE and re-patch. I’m amazed at how poorly this has been
handled. I’ll be even more amazed if there is no fallout. If Melissa or ILOVEYOU had been able to install backdoors as
they spread, that would have really, really sucked.”

“Linux Expo Madrid is one of the biggest exhibitions in Madrid regarding Linux. Last year’s event was attended by over 3,500 visitores. In this occasion more than 60
different companies related to Linux. Linux Expo Madrid will have a place for the community, a professional exhibition and a conference program.” More information at Debian.org.

MSNBC tells us: “If the Headlight GetRight utility is installed on a Windows
Me-based computer running Internet Explorer 5.5 Service Pack
1, accessing some Web pages may cause the computer or
browser to hang. According to Microsoft, the best bet to correct
the problem is to remove the GetRight utility.” Hah!

ZDNET: “During a seminar last week at the CanSecWest conference in Vancouver, British Columbia, a
hacker named “K2″ revealed a program he created that can camouflage the tiny programs that
hackers generally use to crack through system security.”