Cox News Service reports that Americans are embracing the Internet like no other technology before it, with nine million new users online in the first half of 2000.

NewsWeek (on MSNBC.com) reports on what’s next for the music industry following the latest Napster court ruling. “at the same time they’re trying to shut
down Napster, the giant entertainment conglomerates are
frantically trying to come up with their own business models to
somehow combine Napster’s selection and ease with a big, fat
cash register on the other end. ‘They’re engaged in Tarzan
economics,’ says Jim Griffin, CEO of Cherry Lane Digital.
‘Desperately holding on to one vine — their old business
model — until they can grab firm hold of the next one.’ “

From PR Newswire: Macromedia, Inc. (Nasdaq: MACR) today announced the availability of the
Macromedia Flash Player 5 for the Linux and Solaris platforms, in
addition to the existing Windows and Macintosh versions. Macromedia Flash 5
is the standard for producing high-impact Web experiences.

LinuxPlanet reviews Kapital, the new personal finance software from KDE developers at theKompany.com. “With its announcement today of Kapital, theKompany.com hopes to give would-be Linux users a new object of fiscal
affection. An early beta suggests that the effort might just succeed.

Even in its earliest form, the application offers a variety of account options, stock management, payment scheduling,
and check printing. Shawn Gordon, president of theKompany.com, says that during the coming months users will
determine what additional features are included.”

ActiveState is delighted to kick off the first annual Programmers’ Choice and Activators’ Choice Awards. We’d like to honor those unnamed heroes who’ve *actively* contributed to making Perl and Python the most popular open source programming languages.

Accordingly we’d like your input for the Programmers’ Choice for Perl and Python. Know someone whose code design rocks? We’d like to hear from you!

We’re also acknowledging those we deem worthy for their accomplishments with Perl and Python in an Activators’ Choice award. Following a month long discussion period of late caffeine-filled nights, our dev team will through a rigorous evaluation process cast their votes for one deserving Perl and Python programmer.

Here’s how it works:

• Fill out the nomination form to make your nominations NOW.
• Check back on Feb. 20, 2001 to see the list of the top nominees.
• Vote for one of the finalists from Feb. 21 to March 5, 2001.

Get out the vote and stay tuned?Winners will receive a cool trophy and will be announced March 6, 2001.

Nominations end at midnight on February 20th!!!!
(But then voting begins for the finalists)”

Horsham, PA. – ASPRE, Inc., the leading eBusiness Application Service Provider (ASP) on the East Coast, is demonstrating its commitment to the Linux community in a special dedicated hosting program of instantly provisioned Cobalt servers for Linux Experts. Through this offer, ASPRE will make available, from time to time, “Best-of-Breed” dedicated hosting at Linux Expert pricing.

Currently, Cobalt RaQ3 servers with 128MB RAM/13GB disk and RaQ4 GUI installed are available for only $125 a month. Linux experts should visit http://ebusiness.aspre.net/linuxexpert to take advantage of the offer.

Administrators will have full control over their Cobalt RaQ3s servers to add, delete and modify as they wish. ASPRE will keep the servers up and running at one of its Tier-1 data facilities. ASPRE hosts and manages over 2,100 Linux-based servers.

In support of the Linux community, ASPRE is not currently making this offer commercially available via its main web site. Linux experts should visit http://ebusiness.aspre.net/linuxexpert periodically for new sales offers.

About ASPRE, Inc.

ASPRE is the leading pure-play e-Business Application Service Provider (ASP) on the East Coast. ASPRE’s ideal mix of managed e-Business application development, high availability hosting, business process integration, and 24x7x365 live support services deliver measurable results for hundreds of ASPRE customers and resellers. ASPRE ASP services are scalable and customizable enough to meet the needs of early stage startups as well as Fortune 100 companies. ASPRE, Inc. is a privately held company located in Horsham, PA. For additional information, please visit www.aspre.net .

# # #

CONTACT:

Chris Neppes

215-957-2266 x2160
cneppes@aspre.net

Submitted by Chris Neppes.

NorthernJourney.com provides an introduction to Linux document processing with an overview of LaTeX: “The philosophy behind LaTeX is that it’s better to concentrate on structure than on looks. Don’t worry, LaTeX will make
the output look highly professional and you can tweak the looks considerably once you gain experience, but the emphasis
is on getting the structure right.”

From Gamesmania: “Dusk is an open source title and unlike most recent massively multiplayer
titles, there aren’t any subscription fees to play. Starting up a game is as easy as opening your web browser and pointing
it to the Dusk homepage. There are a number of different Dusk worlds to
choose from including Original Dusk, Sluggy Dusk and New Dusk, plus
several others that are hosted on other servers.”

The Register reports on the ongoing controversy surrounding CPRM — the format that would introduce copy protection (among other items) as standard features in all ATA/ATAPI disk drives. When computer users reacted with outrage, the organization in charge reacted with surprise, claiming that it never once proposed that CPRM be included in the new ATA/ATAPI standard, honest! Evidence to the contrary can be found on the T.13 committee’s official Web site.

Linux Weekly News posts a summary of a proposed amendment to Italian copyright law. The article, written by the Associazione Software Libero, says “… in addition to going against a subsequent European Community recommendation (February, 2001), (the amendment) poses a potentially serious threat to the activities of independent software developers and makes it difficult to legally distribute free software in Italy.”