From Slashdot: “An AC sends us this interesting piece – “I recently came across this not-so-new interview with Ted Hoff, the inventor of the first CPU in the world – Intel4004. It’s fascinating reading: the birth of the chip, the dispute over credibility, patent filing and his later life with Atari.””

New vixie-cron packages are available that fix a buffer overflow in the ‘crontab’ command; this could allow certain users to gain elevated privileges. It is recommended that all users update to the fixed packages. Full details at Help Net Security.

From ZDNet eWEEK: “Microsoft Corp. representatives assert that Platforms Group Vice President Jim Allchin was “misunderstood” when he expressed concerns last week about the long-term industry effects of open-source software. “Jim was not misquoted,” a company official said, referring to an interview in which Allchin was said to have warned that “open source is an intellectual-property destroyer.””

From LinuxPlanet: “Sometimes the Linux community is too cute by half. This manifests itself in various ways. One
is when we rise in righteous indignation anytime someone has the temerity to develop and
actually sell software. Another is the righteous indignation expressed this week when a Microsoft droid came out with
the mostly ridiculous notion that free and open-source software somehow stifle innovation,
and maybe ought to be prohibited. All over the place came the angry denunciations. The free
and open-source communities were beside themselves.”

From a press release at PR Newswire: “Metro Link, Inc., the leader in graphical display software for
embedded systems, announced today that they have shipped their first copies of
Micro-X Complete!(TM) for VxWorks(R) real-time operating system from Wind
River Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: WIND). Micro-X
Complete!, provides X Window System servers, libraries, and clients for the
VxWorks 5.4 operating system — bringing the flexibility and scalability of
X to real-time embedded applications.”

From a press release at PR Newswire: “hode Island-based Internet
appliance infrastructure company WebMachines today announced the addition of a
new Unified Messaging Server to its iaNetwork server family. ” This new service enables clients of varied IM services to chat with each other, and will be available for Linux users via the company’s embedded iaClient software.

LinuxWorld has posted an interview with C++ Bjarne Stroustrup. In this interview, Stroustrup talks about the “object oriented revolution,” software development in the real world, and what he’d like to see changed in the current C++ standard.

Is that a Shockwave applet in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me? PC Week reports on today’s Macromedia announcement, in which the multimedia company announced plans for a new version of its Flash Player for Microsoft’s Pocket PC platform. The new application will extend the Flash Player to popular handheld devices like Compaq’s iPaq, Casio’s Cassiopeia, and the HP Jornada. The portable version will lack a few features found in its desktop versions, with the most noticeable exclusion likely the lack of MP3 support.

Slashdot reviews Steven Holzner’s Inside XML, summarzing it as “a detailed but uneven treatment of XML and related topics,” but taking care to point out that “most of the information is solid and usable.”

From a press release at Apache Today: “AbriaSoft(TM), an Open Source software
solutions provider, announced today the release of its Apache powered Lancelot
server for Windows and Linux platforms. With this release, AbriaSoft achieved
another landmark by becoming the first company to launch a commercial grade
Apache-based web server solution for the Microsoft Windows platform.”