CNet asks if Battlebot is the future of geek sporting. Battlebots are bots designed for one purpose and one purpose only – to destroy the opponent’s robot.

The BBC reports that the Russian Mir space station’s burn up scheduled for February has been delayed until March due to bad weather. Solar flares are increasing atmospheric density forcing the 15 year old craft to live an extra month. Perhaps it will live long enough to be attached to the International Space Station?

Debian Planet interviews Wichert Akkerman, outgoing two-term Debian Project Leader about how he got into Debian, got to be leader of the project, and where he is going from here.

Linux PR reports that LinuxCertified.com is announcing its next Linux certification boot-camp, aimed at those who don’t otherwise have a lot of time to gain the knowledge necessary for Linux certification.

PC World reports that the US Congress is considering a law to help crack down on spam – unsolicited, generally commercial email. Among other things the law would make it illegal to continue sending spam to a user who has requested to be removed from a list.

CNN reports that Belgium is arresting some of its citizens for using Napster in spite of being warned. Acting on complaints from the music industry, the Belgian authorities are arresting repeat copyright-infringement offenders.

Brian Lloyd posts to ApacheToday that Zope 2.3.1 beta has been released.

From DebianPlanet: “It’s been weeks in the making, and for those of you
who reside on OpenProjects, you’ve known it’s been
coming (and delayed countless of times too). In an
exclusive interview with DebianPlanet, Wichert
Akkerman gives what could possibly be his last
interview as Debian Project Leader. After two years in
the top job at Debian, Wichert has decided to calls it
quits and not to rerun for election in a bid for third term.”

Alan Cox posts details of the latest Linux kernel, noting that this release should fix the non-booting CPU problem. Also, a typo in vfat changes is fixed, the SCSI blacklist table has been updated, the DSCC4 WAN driver has been updated, and clgenfb warning has been repaired.

From a press release at AllLinuxDevices.com: “Lineo, Inc, a leading innovator in embedded systems,
real-time and high availability solutions, today announced the availability of the uCdimm
microcontroller module for the DragonBall VZ microcontroller and uCevolution, a new
host platform which gives developers a quick way to cross port a variety of processors.
These two new products will be bundled in the Lineo uClinux Development Kit.”