ZDNet reports on the existence of a secret chatroom within the CIA under investigation. The channel was in existence for at least five years before the agency noticed it.

Scientific American online has a feature on a team of elite “hackers” matching wits with undefeated autonomous defenders at a nuclear weapons lab.

From PR Newswire: Inprise Corporation has announced the
immediate availability of Borland JBuilder 4 Foundation. JBuilder 4
Foundation is a pure Java development environment supporting the latest
Java 2 platform standards and cross-platform development. The product is
available for free download at Borland’s Web site,
http://www.borland.com/jbuilder/foundation/.

CNet reports on the battle between Transmeta and Intel, as both companies plan to introduce a slew of low-powered chips for
notebooks next year.

In the first quarter, Transmeta says, it will release version 4.2 of its
“code-morphing software that significantly reduces processor power consumption.”

EE Times reports that “Aldec Inc., a longtime provider of
FPGA design tools, will make its first foray into the ASIC
market this week with Riviera, a Linux-based
mixed-language simulator. Riviera simulates VHDL, Verilog
and EDIF and comes with an HDL editor and source-level
debugger.”

A press release is at LWN.net: REDSonic, Inc., a provider of real-time and embedded Linux solutions, today
announced the release of RED-Probe, a real-time system event viewer and
monitoring tool for REDICE-Linux.

RED-Probe is a graphical, real-time, monitoring and profiling tool and an
integral component of the REDICE-Linux development system.

ZD Net reports: Linux is still fighting its way into e-marketplaces, both as a platform and as a commodity. But at Comdex this week, software vendor Exterprise and marketing startup PartnerAxis will show off a Linux-based e-marketplace for Linux vendors and users.

Reuters reports that the world’s first cybercrime treaty is being hastily redrafted after Internet lobby groups assailed it as
a threat to human rights that could have “a chilling effect on the free flow of information and ideas.” The Council of Europe plans to issue a
new draft late this week to clarify passages that led to what it sees as “serious misunderstandings.” Slashdot readers discuss the new draft.

From LinuxPR: NuSphere, provider of NuSphere MySQL,
apackaged software product for the open source database marketplace, has
announced the addition of Paul DuBois to the NuSphere team. DuBois will work closely with
development to ensure that NuSphere code contributions, such as the upcoming project
Gemini, are presented to MySQL end users in an effective and compelling fashion.

EE Times previews the Linux Business Expo that’s part of Comdex Fall 2000, featuring recent announcements by IBM, SuSE, and Red Hat.