It seems that Compaq and other PDA makers can’t keep up with can’t keep up with demand because parts (especially LCD screens) are in short supply. (Story at ZDnet.co.uk.)

Slashdot story (links to NetCraft survey) describes the difference between stats showing active Web sites being served by various operating systems and server software packages and the typical total sites hosted numbers usually cited.

It’s over for popular (but money-losing) APBNews . Wired.com says SafetyTips.com withdrew from an agreement to buy the company for $950,000, so APBNews is now up for auction (although not on eBay – yet).

There was some noise and
more traditional press back in April about Intel releasing their Common Data Security Architecture as
open source in May. That initial open sourced code built only on Windows. But now Intel has released an update to CDSA that includes a Linux port. CDSA provides cryptographic and security services through a
unified API while still allowing custom modules to provide those services. CDSA is an Open Group standard that was created by many companies and is freely available. –Patrick Ryan

Does household income determine the amount of time Internet
users spend online? asks this TechWeb story. And it answers, Yes, and it also indicates site genre and content preference, said
Media Metrix Inc., a New York-based Web research firm.

According to an exclusive Chicago Tribune piece, KACD-FM 103.1, an adult alternative rock station in Santa Monica, CA, is the first traditional radio station to give up over-the-air broadcasting and move 100% onto the ‘net.

(with many reader comments) A Slashdot story (with over 300 reader comments attached) links to an MPAA brief in one of the many lawsuits surrounding DeCSS. The opening lines of said brief attack the …so-called “open source” movement, which is dedicated to the proposition that material, copyrighted or not,
should be made available over the Internet for free.

News.com story says,

Yahoo plans to let its email account holders use data scrambling to protect the privacy of their
messages, marking a potentially significant advance for the mainstream use of encryption.

By Grant Gross

Can’t we all just get along?

After the flurry of press releases that came out of LinuxWorld the week of Aug. 14, you’d think the Open Source news cycle would slow down a bit this week. Maybe, but the NewsForge editors still posted more than 400 stories between Sunday morning, Aug. 19, and Friday evening, Aug. 25.

Media wars

Much of the news early in the week was leftovers from LinuxWorld, especially the much-hyped “war” between desktop interfaces KDE and GNOME. During LinuxWorld, GNOME announced that more than a dozen big-name companies had lined up to support the GNOME Foundation, and follow-up stories this week included ZDNet claiming, “Open Source gets bloody.” And no one at LinuxWorld reported seeing any splatter.

By mid-week, the KDE/GNOME blacklash had hit. An OSopinion columnist told both development teams to shut up, and LinuxPlanet’s attitude was, “Who cares?” By Thursday, Linux distributor Mandrakesoft stepped in and issued a press release asking for a cease fire.

Speaking of feuds, the gloves came off this week in a war of words between Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison and his former No. 2 man Ray Lane. The Wall Street Journal quoted Lane as saying that executives now reporting to Ellison “are not decision makers. They aren’t leaders. They just do what Larry says. They wouldn’t know how to make a decision without Larry making it for them.” It’s like that commercial for the dot-com employment site: “I want to grow up to be a yes man.”

Easy investment, tough to pawn without a root password

Everyone seemed to be talking about VA Linux’s quarterly earnings report this week. VA (full disclosure: They own NewsForge) beat Wall Street’s expectations, and a technology press that had been cool to Open Source investments suddenly started coming around. A ZDNet columnist said VA “delivered,” while ZDII pronounced the company was “showing signs of life,” and Worldly Investor considered VA Linux and Red Hat top prospects for investors.

Reason No. 359 to use Linux: London laptop thieves were apparently flustered when they couldn’t figure out how to get past the password prompt screen. The thief left the laptop on the train, The Register reported.

Noteworthy from the NewsForge staff

News Editor Tina Gasperson checked on two Open Source developers who went back to school. This time, they were in the popular crowd, with their homework Web site getting 2,900 hits a day.

Tony Granata, another of our news editors, described an Internet pioneer’s efforts to win a tax break for Open Source developers.

Columnist Emmett Plant takes readers through several scenarios that could be Linux’s future. Is world domination really in the future?

Finally, Editor in Chief Robin Miller chides some members of the Open Source “priesthood” for still looking down on new converts who want to be able to use a computer without knowing all about its inner workings.

The Register has interesting tidbit on an online bank robbery that was carried out a little too conventionally, resulting in the perpetrator’s capture.