– by Tina Gasperson –
When it comes to swag, the T-shirts are the prize. Everybody knows that.
Open Source journalist Emmett Plant wrote about T-shirt and other swag protocol last year. T-shirts definitely
top the list of good stuff to get. But this year, vendors are making show
attendees jump through hoops to get their shirts. Funny thing is, the swag
hunters don’t seem to mind.Who would have ever thought that seemingly rational people would be idiots about
getting their hands on a yard of cotton jersey with some pretty pictures on it?
Want a shirt from Chilliware? Gotta let the booth babe put a temporary tattoo on your face
advertising the company. Maybe that’s not such a bad thing. Most other places
are putting price tags of the monetary kind on their cloth goods. I’ll never
pay! Give me free shirts or give me… uh, free bumper stickers or something.

Microsoft infiltrating Linux World?

I don’t make this stuff up. Perusing the show floor, I didn’t have to go far
before making several close encounters of the Windows kind. For example, a
company called Metrolink, self-described
as “the leader in X Window system software for embedded, Linux and Unix systems,” in partnership
with Coventive here at Linux World, was making presentations using Powerpoint.
So was Zelerate, “the leading provider of Open Source e-commerce
applications.”

The award for the boldest display of Microsoft usage, though, goes to Veritas.
This “data availability” company’s floor area featured about 10 big-screen
setups running on Windows and using Internet Explorer. I wonder if the
salespeople manning the booth were unsure about why no one was visiting them?
Another company unafraid to show up at a Linux event and run Gates-ware was
Nevrona, a Borland programming tools supplier. Like Veritas, their space was
full-blown Microsoft compliant. At least they don’t claim to be an Open Source
company, like some of the previously mentioned enterprises do.

Where’s that masseuse again, boss?

My editor clued me in to the fact that there was a fifty-ish woman giving
massages somewhere in the rear quadrant of the show floor. After an intense
search, I’ve turned up nothing so far. Where did you say that lady was, Grant?
After a couple of sleepless nights on the wonder mattress at the Ameritania Hotel, I
could use an expert backrub.

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

Info World reports on the Linux World Expo taking place in New York, and how it is more business oriented this year than last over community oriented.

CNet reports that MP3.com is starting a music licensing unit to help artists maintain control over their music.

TechWeb reports that Linux distributions now come in 188 flavours, of which 28 are derivatives of Red Hat.

An anonymous reader clues us to this one: “A slew of partnerships and investments announced at the LinuxWorld Expo, which opened Wednesday in New York and runs through Friday, prove that Linux has not simply arrived — it is now part of computing’s mainstream. The Expo’s first day has been marked by a number of announcements from major high-tech firms including IBM, Compaq Computer and Hewlett Packard, each of which has pledged sizeable investments in the Open Source operating system.” OS Opinion has the article.

From PR Newswire: Despite more than 5.25 million
attack attempts, eWeek’s OpenHack III survived a major test of Web security in
its public challenge to penetrate and corrupt an Internet service provider
(ISP) and a fictitious e-commerce site established by Argus Systems Group.
The test was part of the newsweekly’s attempt to minimize real-world Web
disasters.
An estimated 100,000 to 200,000 individual hackers failed to penetrate
three market-leading platforms — Sun Solaris 7, IBM AIX 4.3.3 and Red Hat
Linux — each of which was secured by Argus’s proprietary PitBull
intrusion-prevention system.

CNet reports that Caldera Systems has inked a deal with Acrylis, a Linux
services company, to “give it features comparable to those of the rival
Red Hat Network.”

The companies signed the deal earlier this week, and the new service will be available in the second quarter of this year.

Is there such a thing? According to this ZDNet story the National Security Agency (that’s your U.S. tax dollars at work) and software emulation firm VMware say they’ve created a “nearly crack-proof” computer that can put senstive date in things called virtual vaults.

Is there such a thing? According to this ZDNet story the National Security Agency (that’s your U.S. tax dollars at work) and software emulation firm VMware say they’ve created a “nearly crack-proof” computer that can put senstive date in things called virtual vaults.

LinuxWorld.com’s Ask the Geek fields questions like, “I have been attempting to transfer a 4 GB QuickTime movie file to Linux over FTP
from an NT (or Solaris) box to a Red Hat Linux 7.0 box. However, it stopped after 2 GB of data
was transferred. Is there a size limitation on FTP file transfers with Redhat 7.0? Please help me to
figure out this issue.”