In Search of New Media will be streaming a live interview with JD “Illiad” Frazer and WebDiva of UserFriendly on Sept 20 at 8pm PST. The interview with Frazer, recently named one of the 50 most influential people in the
open source community by Linux Magazine and Wired Magazine, and WebDiva
will take place at the VFS Web Cafe.

Frazer and WebDiva will be on hand to answer questions on the comic that
has become the leading entertainment and cultural destination for IT
professionals worldwide. They will be discussing UserFriendly’s first
animated (flash) release of their comic and the Quake III skin contest.

Viewers can tune in via the VFS Live website (www.vfslive.com) and
participate in the interview via our chat room. Questions are also
being taken in advance and can be sent to ebin@vfs.com. Local
viewers are encouraged to watch on set at the Web Cafe (Homer and
Hastings), doors open at 5pm.

In Search of New Media is VFS Live production that airs every Wednesday
night from the VFS Web Cafe at 8pm PST. The show interviews a wide
variety of guests from the technology field, previous guests have
included IBM, TotallyHip, BlastRadius, Bitmovers and GlobalMedia. For
more information please visit our website at www.vfslive.com or
email us at vfslive@vfs.com

Claudio Matsuoka asks (via freshmeat), “Is it time to change RPM?” Slashdot has its own discussion of the issue.

The Duke of URL has a review of Helix Gnome 1.2 with a detailed look at the installation process, added features over regular Gnome, and a comparison to KDE.

CNet reports on Olympics reporting, and how people are turning to the internet for scores over the US television networks.

Austrlian IT revies the PC Chips deluxe Book PC, including how it differs from the regular Book PC. “Appearance aside, this is not another misconceived try-hard lounge room PC. It’s a real computer, with standard components and no bizarre extras you won’t be able to upgrade or replace.“

By Grant Gross
Managing Editor
And the medal goes to …

It’s time to go for the gold, give your best effort, beat the competition in a mano a mano struggle, all that jazz. Yes, the summer Olympics are happening as we speak, but I’m talking about the spin about a couple of new projects coming out of the tech world this week.

Apple has finally released a beta version of OS X (those cool Roman numerals make it look all Olympic-like), and some developers claimed it was the “holy grail.” How’s that for claiming the gold medal? Open Sourcers were mostly concerned about how OS X would use Unix; one review at MacWorld said OS X “provides all the power of Unix with very few compromises.”

Another company getting its horn tooted this week (some of the hype by the company itself) was Hewlett-Packard, which along with competitor IBM, introduced new Unix servers. HP’s Superdome garnered good reviews, and the company received a good stock rating following the Superdome release. An HP bigwig went so far as to say, the Superdome was the “mother of all computers.” No settling for silver for these guys.

Red Hat, MontaVista earn the bronze?

Linux distributor Red Hat may have thought it struck gold with its earnings report this week, but the street seemed to think otherwise. Red Hat announced an adjusted net loss of $1.9 million, or 1 cent a share, which was better than Wall Street predictions, but that didn’t stop ABM AMRO from downgrading the stock, and shares from falling 8 percent Friday.

An unresolved competition this week: Who’s the “first” company to deliver “hard real-time Linux,” which MontaVista Software has claimed. A chorus of other software companies stepped up this week to dispute that claim, and LinuxDevices put together a story for those of us asking, “what the heck is this real-time Linux stuff anyway?”

For those whose idea of fun is watching a penguin compete with a dinosaur (small and scrappy beats extinct any day), Australian IT talked with one Mr. Bill Gates, who made this statement: “Linux can’t compete.” The Linux community fired back, of course.

New in NewsForge reports

Among the original reporting at NewsForge this past week:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is asking Linux users for help after using a large chunk of its budget defending two DVD-sharing cases. NewsForge freelancer Nathan L. Walls reports from a California LUG meeting.

Columnist Jack Bryar examines whether Open Source companies are any different than the tech-company pack on age discrimination.

A bunch of policy wonks in Washington talked about ways to protect personal privacy online. Some prefer more laws, some prefer that corporations have free rein, Editor-in-Chief Robin Miller reported.

NewsForge posted about 410 stories this past week, from Sunday evening to Sunday evening. Maybe I’m the only person who’s still counting.

The recent change of Metalab to iBiblio is discussed on Slashdot. “The iBiblio.org domain name is so new that Google still doesn’t show it, but a search for the site’s previous name, MetaLab.unc.edu, turns up over 600,000 responses.“

The Paul Nervy Notes are e-books that, in several ways, show themselves to be something new, different and geek friendly. The Paul Nervy Notes are now available for reading online at www.paulnervy.com. The softcover paperback versions are available at xlibris.com.Some people define an e-book as any book in digital form. In my view, a more refined definition of an e-book is a book that not only exists in digital form, but also exists in a markedly different, computer influenced style (a different animal) than the
paper books we read. The Paul Nervy Notes are new in this respect because the traditional linear prose style of paragraph and chapter gives way to a more database-like entity that yet retains a human feel.

A second point is that more important than the medium of the books we read (digital or paper) is the content of the books we read. To my mind, if most Americans continues to read only potboilers, even if they do so on e-book readers, then the progress made is questionable. The Paul Nervy Notes are
different from many of the traditional best-selling genres found on most bookstore shelves. The Notes are global in scope and contain less fluff ‘n puff, and more useful stuff.

Thirdly, Paul Nervy has put the Notes online for reading. A small yet
increasing number of authors have wrested control from the publishing houses and taken this step. Wendy Grossman, author of “Net Wars”, and Seth Godin, author of “Ideavirus” are two authors that come to mind. One could argue that an important point distinguishing e-books from paper books is the power-structure of each publishing model. Another recent example of this
point is Stephen King deciding to self-publish “The Plant” by-passing his previous e-book publisher Simon and Schuster.

To sum up, by adhering to the criteria of new style, new content, and new business model, the Paul Nervy Notes helps exemplify what is different and good in e-books today.

awareness and desire,
Paul Nervy

Copyright 2000 by Paul Nervy.

–Paul Nervy

The U.S. president’s information technology committee has submitted its recommendations on Open Source Software (as reported by Slashdot).

SiliconValley.com examines the real and virtual links provided by the Digital:Convergence :CueCat bar code reader.