From LinuxPR: “Linux enthusiasts need wait no more as once again Linux fever strikes the region with the third Singapore Linux Conference. Entering its third iteration in the annual series that started in 1999, the show promises to be bigger and better to satisfy and sate the appetites of the thousands of Linux fanatics out there.”

Promotion by osmosis. InternetWire has a press release about VDSL
Systems Inc. lauching its U.S. operations to
enable telecommunications carriers and service providers to deliver
voice, data and video content to businesses and consumers at speeds
up to 30 times faster over traditional copper telephone lines. “VDSL Systems was established in Finland, home of Linux creator Linus Torvalds, and a hot bed for
telecommunications companies such as Nokia.”

From the humor site Segfault: “Tux the Linux Penguin and Beastie the BSD Demon have been killed as part of the effort to prevent the
spread of Hoof-and-Mouth disease across England.

Tux and Beastie were on a walking tour of the English countryside yesterday when the farm they were
passing through was quarantined upon finding Hoof-and-Mouth present in several of the pigs. The
English Minister of Agriculture ordered all animals on the farm destroyed and burned.”

Reuters reports that file-sharing firm Aimster, acting on a request from Napster, has removed from its Web site a
program based on pig Latin that enabled Napster users to get around
court-ordered restrictions on the popular song-swap service. More from TheStandard.com.

Wired.com reports on Apple planning to discontinue the Cube. Apple has apparently disbanded its Cube development team and bought back $3.5 million worth of the
high-design machine from CompUSA.

The San Fransisco Chronicle reports that Napster’s Wednesday court-ordered deadline to block 135,000 songs has passed, and the songs are still there. Another version of the story from CBSnews.com.

From TheStandard.com: “During the past five months, dozens of intellectual property
sleuths have been trying to find enough evidence to debunk
one controversial patent: the patent that Amazon.com
(AMZN) has on the process of using just one mouse click to
place an online order.

The reward for finding such evidence? Ten thousand dollars
and the undying gratitude of Amazon’s e-retailing competitors.

But every detective failed. While many came close, no one
qualified for the reward that had been offered by technology
guru Tim O’Reilly.” Here’s another story from the same site reporting on some of the reporting about the contest.

From Mozillaquest.com: Look for a new Milestone release of the Mozilla browser suite, Mozilla 0.8.1, next week if all goes well. The March revision of the Mozilla Project Development Roadmap lists Mozilla 0.8.1 release for 19 March 2001 — that’s Monday, next week.

The Mozilla development tree was frozen yesterday right on the newly revised Roadmap schedule. Earlier this month, the Mozilla Organization added Milestone 0.8.1 as an additional release to its Mozilla Development Roadmap and release schedule.

Milestone 0.8.1 was added in between the recent 0.8 release and the upcoming 0.9 Milestone. It replaces and pushes-back the Mozilla 0.9 release date in the Roadmap schedule. That in turn pushes back the Mozilla 1.0 release date.

–
By John Leyden –
– The Register –

Development charity ActionAid is developing plans to switch all its desktop
computers to Linux, as a way of avoiding the viruses that continuously assault its
Windows PCs.

The poverty relief organisation, which operates in 30 countries, is on the brink of
the move after becoming increasing fed up with the effort needed to deal with
recent virus outbreaks, and suffering infection from the Emmanuel bug.

Kerry Scott, IT director at Action Aid, said the effect of viruses on the charity had
pushed him to consider using Linux far more seriously after initial reservations
about the availability of suitable applications, particularly word processing
packages.

“We’re seeing an increasingly large number of viruses from a number of sources
which are causing a great deal of problems and inconvenience. Linux might be a
way around that and also of reducing the cost of operating a desktop,” said Scott.

Dealing with viruses has hit the charity in the operation of its email system, which is
its most important communications method, and left it unable to contact some remote
offices over the Internet. Staff resources have also been wasted mopping up from
the effects of virus outbreaks.

As well as promising “virus free” computing, adopting the open source operating
system might also save the charity much needed funds particularly with the
increasing cost of Microsoft’s software.

“Is paying software licensing fees the best use of supporters funds? If we run our IT
more efficiently, and pay less on software licenses, we’ll have more money to give
the poor,” said Scott. “Dealing with viruses is very much a hidden cost and if it gets
worse we’ll push harder on the Linux side.”

ActionAid has 1,000 desktops scattered around the world and many of them are in
locations with poor Internet connectivity, which makes it difficult for the charity to
update the antivirus software it uses with the latest virus definition files.

Desktop software licenses cost the charity £60,000 a year but this might be offset
by the costs of making the move to Linux, and Scott wants to establish by the end
of the year if there’s a business case for embracing the open source operating
system.

All Content copyright 2001 The Register

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

From BusinessWire: Applix, Inc. (NASDAQ:APLX), a global provider of customer analytics
and business planning software, announced today that Parallax Capital Partners, LLC (Parallax), of Irvine, California, has agreed to purchase
substantially all of the assets of VistaSource, Inc., Applix’s wholly-owned subsidiary, for an undisclosed amount of cash. Parallax Capital
Partners intends to retain all of the VistaSource employees and will continue the VistaSource business. The transaction is expected to close by
March 31, 2001. Upon completion of the transaction, Applix will retain a minority equity position in Parallax’s new subsidiary.