The Register reports on Australia’s pending Intenet censorship bill: “In what is clearly politicians gone barking mad, fines of up to $10,000 can be levied against any individual that posts material seen as unsuitable for minors. The country’s film certification system will be used to rate how strong material is – but the police will NOT have to go through an independent adjudicator, they can decide themselves whether the posting breaks the law.”

“When Intel debuted the Pentium 4 on Nov. 20, 2000, the computer site tüplay.com commemorated the occasion by posting a list of Intel’s top 10 sneakiest moves and greatest screw-ups of the Pentium era. And in the intervening months, a small cabal of geek-oriented Web sites have kept their sights focused on Intel, documenting every slip-up and deconstructing every piece of marketing jargon the company disgorges.” Full story at Salon.com.

From LWN.net: “Integrated Computer Solutions has released an updated
version of Open Motif Everywhere. This new release officially incorporates
Open Group Patch 3 and Patch 4 into the Open Motif release. These patches
include numerous bug fixes and updates to the Motif libraries, clients and
the demo source code. RPM (version 4) are also provided for both Red Hat
Linux 7, SuSE Linux 7.1 and other distributions using glibc 2.2. An RPM for
the latest Red Hat Itanium beta is also provided.”

By: Jeff Field
NewsForge Reporter

For Linux to break into the desktop market, it has to become something
people understand. Most people “understand” Windows, in that they know
what Windows is and have a rough idea how it works it’s “magic”. When you
tell the average PC user that you don’t run Windows, they will be quite
amazed that there is anything but Windows you can use. One of the ways to
combat that ignorance is by exposing people to Linux.At the University I attend, three of the computer labs we use have Linux
installed on them. Mostly, this is targetted towards computer science
students, but it raises an interesting point – isn’t perhaps the best way
to get Linux into the real world by exposing it to the programmers, IT
managers and business exectives of tommorow?

Many people who I have talked to, once they learn that Linux does not
have to be used like DOS, but rather has a fully capable GUI, are very
interested in learning Linux. I think if perhaps universities deployed
Linux on a larger scale, which would save them money and time as they
would not have to worry about students messing with the Windows machines
and breaking them, which is a big problem, and they would no longer have
to pay Microsoft exhorbitant fees for their software.

If Linux is to take the desktop, people have to see it. Joe User, for
the most part, is never going to go out and get Linux. This is because
Joe does not know what Linux is, or how to use it. And that makes perfect
sense. You would not buy a car without first test driving it, so why
would you change your operating system without first sitting down and
using it?

This is why I think that the best way in for Linux is through
education. Perhaps colleges could offer transitional courses that teach
people how to use AbiWord and Gnumeric instead of Word and Excel, and
that teach the basic functions of GNOME or KDE. This doesn’t just have to
apply to colleges and universities either, it could happen in elementary
schools. If taught to use Linux and the Internet at a young age, these
skills will stick. I’m not saying abandon Windows in schools – obviously,
despite the dreams of many a Linux user, Windows skills are still very
needed in todays world. But perhaps if Linux gets a little time in the
spotlight where people can see it, it will help it catch on.

As a side note, I’m interested in hearing about how Linux is being used
in your schools, be they colleges, elementary schools, or anything
else. Drop me a line at jfield@newsforge.com.

“The Zope authors have released a new hotfix that addresses a vulnerability with ZClasses. A user with through-the-web scripting capabilities on a Zope site can view and assign class attributes to ZClasses, possibly allowing them to make inappropriate changes to ZClass instances.” Get the full details at LWN.net.

From ZDNet: “Sources familiar with the first ground-up rewrite of Apple Computer’s (Nasdaq: AAPL) operating system since the Mac’s debut in 1984 said the initial version will not be able to play or write DVDs. Other gaps, such as sleep problems with Mac laptops, also will limit the new OS’ usefulness to certain users–although none rise to the level of aggravation that the lack of DVD support is likely to cause. According to sources, some problems will not be addressed until summer, when a revised version of Mac OS X–code-named Puma–begins shipping preloaded on new Macs.”

From a Wall Street Journal article at ZDNet: “Microsoft has reason to feel a little cocky these days. Proceedings before a federal appeals court here this week suggest the company won’t be split in half after all. Microsoft is moving ahead with a new wave of Internet-based products. And it is relishing the dot-com implosion that it says has sent some employees scurrying back to their old jobs in Redmond, Wash.”

Angelsun at Advogato asks: “Are lite window managers popular anymore? With the rise of GNOME and KDE
must these environments be supported to make a lite window manager
successful? What do users expect to get out of there window managers in
the way of features and customization?”

Russ Foster writes “Like most things, Microsoft’s Exchange mail server has its advocates and
its critics. For those who fall into the latter category, one alternative is
to run a Linux/Open Source mailserver. The most obvious advantage of doing
this is the cost savings involved; an Exchange server software with 5 Client
Access Licences (CALs) will cost £879.35 + hardware costs, whereas the cost
of an Open Source mailserver solution amounts to the value of the hardware
upon which it runs.
Current users of Exchange may concede the point when the cost argument is raised, but their next questions will invariably be “Can Open Source mailservers do what Exchange can?” and “Are they scalable?” Full story at: SlashTCO.com

An Anonymous Reader writes in with news of an OSFAQ.com article: “When installing Linux how should I layout my partitions? Which layout is the best? Well in this article we are going to cover the topic of partitioning. Most of the new distributions automatically partition your system, so a lot of thought sometimes is not put into this area. We have found that most distributions do a pretty good job, but there is room for improvement.”