The Associated Press (via ABC News.com) profiles Jon Lech Johansen, who wrote the code that allows DVDs to be played on Linux and has prompted the Motion Picture Association of America to go after Web sites distributing the code. “At 57 kilobytes, the tiny program is no more than
the computer equivalent of a heartbeat. But what it
does is frightening to anyone with a financial stake
in the entertainment industry.

It enables you to copy movies off a DVD disc onto
your computer, obviating the need to buy a DVD
player. It also means you can send the movies
onto the Internet. As bandwidth increases it will
become easier and faster to download these
movies.”

LinuxPlanet reviews Links “a text-only browser that provides just the textual information of a given Web
page. Also like Lynx, Links is also available on several platforms, including Linux and FreeBSD.

Unlike Lynx, Links provides quite a few extras with its display–the most noticeable being the multicolumn
screen. When Links displays BrowserWatch, it does not list the contents of the left column first, followed by the
content of this column, as Lynx does. Text is shown on the Links screen with a fair approximation.”

EE Times reports on Texas Instruments lauching a “single family of digital subscriber line solutions for
routers and voice-over-DSL gateways.
All three chip sets leverage either Linux turnkey communications processor software or a VxWorks
board support package – both developed by TI.”

From a Red Hat mailing list message: “This hotfix addresses and [sic] important security issue that affects Zope
versions up to and including Zope 2.3.1 b1.

We *highly* recommend that any Zope site running versions of Zope up to
and including 2.3.1 b1 have this hotfix product installed to mitigate
these issues if the site is accessible by untrusted users who have
through-the-web scripting privileges.”

Rumor control from Caldera Systems: “Several comments have been made on this list regarding Caldera’s
commitment to Linux. These comments have mostly stemmed from a recent
article and certain statements made by one anonymous Caldera
employee. Unfortunately, these statements may have led some to believe
that Caldera’s decision to stop selling it’s products through retail
channels means that Caldera is no longer going to be selling Linux
products at all. Nothing could be farther from the truth.”

The latest People Behind KDE feature introduces us to Harri Porten of Olso, Norway. Harri says his claim to fame (for KDE) is the JavaScript support in Konqueror.

Microsoft told a U.S. appeals court Monday that it did not illegally stifle competitors; the court told Microsoft that it didn’t see how the company could get a reversal on the lower court decision; and everyone wonders what will ultimately happen now that there’s a Republican in the Oval Office. Read the AP story on CNET News.com.

Linux.com’s Matt Michie writes “Even though everyone knows the Linux kernel is “free software”, and that
the source is open, most beginner and even mid-level Linux users
usually don’t take time to read the source. This article will give a
couple tips and interesting high points to check out, as well as give you a
small taste of the wealth of information embedded in the kernel, even
if you aren’t a C or ASM programmer.”

“For a long time, the headline on the KDE organization’s home page was,
“Is Unix ready for the desktop?”

With today’s release of KDE 2.1, KDE’s developers are no longer asking questions. Nor are they limiting themselves to the desktop. KDE, they now say, is ready for the enterprise.” Story at LinuxPlanet.

From IDG: “In its typically quiet yet productive fashion, IBM is readying its next-generation Unix, AIX 5L, for an April release. The name alone indicates that the new version marks a radical departure from the current AIX 4.3.3: The L stands for Linux.”