An Ask Slashdot posted today asks the question of why [Free|Open|Net]BSD are not considered valid desktop operating systems.

The Register has a nice review and link of the last Linuxworld.com article to be posted by Joe Barr. The article itself deals with a certain Mr. Allchin and his comment about un-American software.

From oreillynet: “Daniel Solin uses a game analogy to show how PHP can be used to exchange data between two computers using network sockets.”

SeattleTimes: “Microsoft, a key participant in the conference,
devotes a large portion of its $3 billion annual
research budget to making computers and software
easier to use and accessible to everyone. Chairman
Bill Gates is scheduled to speak Tuesday on his vision
of how software will affect the interfaces on
computers, phones and consumer electronics as they
increasingly work together over the Internet.”

And Slashdot readers dicusss their discussion. LWN.net has notes on the first day of a kernel summit, including making Linux more capable on high-performance machines and more
user-friendly with hot pluggable devices.

The Associated Press reports that on Monday, ICANN will consider how the domain
names that end in .com, .net and .org are managed. “The proposal includes a vaguely worded goal
that could eventually restrict .org to nonprofit groups,” which could affect several .orgs, including Slashdot and many personal sites.

Anonymous Reader writes: “It seems Microsoft has released a new licensing scheme for their Passport, Hotmail and MSN services. It basically says, Anything you send through this service we own. Since we seem to be just a couple years off from 1984 becoming a reality, sooner or later this had to happen. Read it yourself at Microsoft’s Passport.com.“

Slashdotters debateLinuxHardware.org’s preview of the new Agenda VR3 handheld, to be released soon. “Linux on handhelds and other embedded systems has been largely regarded as vaporware.
Agenda has proven that it certainly is not, and that useful work can be done, today, with Linux on
your PDA,” says the article at LinuxHardware.

Oreillynet.com has a story on that very topic. “Since PHP is most commonly used as an Apache module, it
derives its security model to a large degree from Apache,
which, if configured properly, is a very secure environment.
In cases where PHP is used as a CGI, this benefit is lost.”

Interactive Week follows up on reports that some Linux servers are vulnerable to the “Lion” worm because it exploits BIND. Not exactly new news, but the story gives a backgrounder on what happens when the Lion worm attacks.