A diverse group of privacy activists including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Eagle Forum gathered together on Monday to ask members of the US Congress to sign a privacy pledge. As MSNBC reports, the pledge “outlines the foundation for strong privacy legislation favoring consumers over industry concerns.” So far, Congress has been all talk and no action on privacy-related issues.

“President Bush will likely return Charles A. James to his former position as the Department of Justice’s antitrust chief, according to press reports Tuesday.” So reports Network World Fusion, noting that James last year remarked that “consumers have benefited by there being a common software platform and that a break-up of Microsoft would cause a “divergence” of that common platform.”

ZDNet Interactive Week’s Matt Carolan addresses what appears to be a wee bit of hypocrisy in certain online vigilantism circles: “If a major business such as Amazon.com releases private data about its customers, privacy groups
go ballistic, and there are days of hand-wringing in the technology press about Net security and the
rights of individuals. But if Bill Gates, Bill Clinton
or Kofi Annan gets his
credit-card numbers stolen
by “hacktivists,” there’s not
much of a dustup.”

Anonymous Reader writes “Linuxlookup.com: Part of the pleasure of participating in Open Source is that you can actually look at the code that makes something work. Unfortunately, that can also be part of the pain, if you’re a programmer trying to understand or modify someone else’s code. In Linux, that generally means C code, a language not known for it clarity and verbosity…”

From Network World Fusion: “Microsoft on Monday completed development on a
key server designed to help enterprise customers
manage distributed Web applications.

The company’s Application Center 2000 server was
released to manufacturing, which means the code is
complete and CD-ROMs are being pressed for
distribution. General availability is likely in four to six
weeks. The server, first introduced in September
1999, was expected to ship before the end of last
year.”

– by Tina Gasperson –
– updated – 2/14/1 – 9:20 a.m. EST
According to reports early this morning, Ximian ads were showing up when KDE-related search terms were entered at the Google search engine. As of 10:30 a.m. EST, the Ximian advertisements were no longer appearing with the results of searches on terms like “KDE,” “Kapps,” and others. Ads for Ximian, a company affiliated with KDE’s rival desktop Gnome, still appeared on search results for the term “Gnome.”
No Ximian officials were available for comment, and we have been unable to reach Google for confirmation. The ads appear next to the search results on the popular search engine.

However, a post on Ximian’s Web site states, “Pour and Ximian have taken the
following steps to resolve the conflict.

Ximian will revise its advertisements on Google to eliminate the
possibility of confusion, and will not create new advertising campaigns
based on KDE-related keyword searches.
Pour and Granroth will post a update to their letter, describing the
resolution and linking to Ximian’s statement of resolution.”

Originally, headlines at NewsForge linked to an open letter at KDE developer Kurt Granroth’s Web site that detailed his objections to Ximian’s ad campaign. The letter has since been updated to reflect the morning’s developments.

In the letter, Granroth urged Gnome developers to “vote with their feet” — to leave the Gnome project if Ximian refused to change its advertising strategy.

Gnome developer Jim Cape thinks that is an unreasonable request. “Would Lesstif hackers stop hacking because someone connected to Lesstif bought ads on search results for GTK+? Of course not.”

Though Granroth’s revelation caused a stir when reported at LinuxToday, the consensus from sources at Slashdot is that the latest KDE/Gnome skirmish is a “tempest in a teapot.”

Gnome developer Julian Missig says he doesn’t see a problem with Ximian’s advertising strategy. “Ximian is a company, and it is in their interest to switch people to Gnome, so they attempt to do so. Would it be so wrong if Honda place ads on keywords related to Toyota cars? I thought it was fairly well accepted in our society that the purpose of ads is to try to get people to start using that product.”

NewsForge editors read and respond to comments posted on our discussion page.

“Platform Computing — a global
leader in Distributed Resource Management for distributed computing
environments — today introduced LSF (Load Sharing Facility) version 4.1 with
new features that incorporate support for all Linux versions and expanded
capabilities for parallel processing.
LSF 4.1 is the first solution of its kind to incorporate full Linux
support (including RedHat Linux 6.2, SuSE Linux 6.4, OpenLinux 2.4, TurboLinux
6.0.4 and Debian Linux 2.2.) with other computing platforms (ranging from
inexpensive x86-based workstations to powerful Cray or NEC supercomputers).” Full press release at PR Newswire.

The O’Reilly Peer to Peer conference in San Francisco bows this week, and InfoWorld looks at Red Hat’s plans for the show. Red Hat CTO Michael Tiemann will present a white paper at the conference outlining a peer to peer network application developed by Japanese retail giant Lawson. Lawson, you might recall, recently purchase 15,000 IBM Linux servers to run its chain of convenience stores.

From ZDNet News: “Compaq Computer released a new version of its Alpha processor for servers on Monday amid
signs that the outlook for the chip is improving.

The new Alpha 21264 runs at 833MHz and will be included in Compaq’s (NYSE: CPQ) AlphaServer
ES 40 line of servers, machines that sell for tens of thousands of dollars and up. Some customers,
including biotechnology companies, already had access to early versions of the server. Today’s
announcement, however, signals the beginning of general commercial availability.”

From a press release at Businesswire: “Caldera Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CALD), Tuesday announced the immediate availability of
its OpenLinux eServer 2.3.1 preloaded on Compaq ProLiant(TM) ML330, DL320 and DL360 servers.
Caldera’s updated OpenLinux eServer provides advanced directory service and security features and provides the ability to support new hardware
as it becomes available.
This feature, combined with the inherent power and stability of Linux, makes eServer an ideal platform for Web- and directory-based solutions,
such as Caldera Volution — Caldera’s innovative Linux systems management and deployment system.”