MacWeek reports: Some key Linux developers, encouraged by the announcement of GNOME as the standard desktop environment for Linux and Unix, believe that Linux is poised to overtake the Macintosh as the primary challenger to Microsoft Windows. One, open-source advocate Eric S. Raymond, went as far as to describe the Mac platform as “a noble but doomed cause.”

NTT is pushing very hard to impose I-mode, A proprietary standard for wireless data communications, as an alternative to WAP in Japan, reports Computerworld Hong Kong.

A key author of the Philippines’ E-Commerce Act of 2000 on Friday disputed a complaint by the nation’s chief prosecutor that the law is inadequate to prosecute future suspects in cases like the dissemination in May of the ILOVEYOU virus, reports IDG.net.

From an InfoWorld story: “There is a small but growing number of entrepreneurs creating new business-to-consumer and business-to-business models for monitoring and delivering wireless services to any industry that dispenses a product — from soda machines to copiers. What makes the technology especially appealing is that, in almost all cases, the wireless-commerce platform can be deployed without partnering with a telecommunications provider.”

Among the product annoucements at this week’s Intel Developer Forum: Red Hat announced the IA-64 JumpStart Program, which aims to provide software and hardware vendors with the software, tools, support, and training they need to develop products that will work with Red Hat’s version of Linux for Intel’s forthcoming 64-bit Itanium processor, reports InfoWorld.

ASL, Inc. has announced the release of the first 1U rackmount server, the Lancelot 1200. The
press release is at LinuxPR.

Hi-tech offenses like Internet fraud, e-mail abuse, computer hacking and virus spreading look set to increase during the next 20 years, according to a survey of British crime trends reported by Reuters.

The TradeClient Project and Bynari Inc. has announced releases of TradeServer for several platforms including FreeBSD and OpenBSD. Releases for commercial Unices such as Sun Microsystem’s Solaris and SCO’s UnixWare 7 were announced. Similar binaries for TradeClient have also become available. The TradeServer and TradeClient binaries are 100% interoperable. The press release is at LinuxPR.

From an InfoWorld story: “One of the bigger challenges Linux has faced in gaining acceptance as a platform for enterprise-class services is the lack of applications and support from big-name software vendors. Oracle recently released a complete Linux port of its Java-based Oracle Internet Application Server 8i (Oracle iAS),which represents the last piece of Oracle’s foundation technology to be ported to Linux.” InfoWorld interviewed Bob Shimp, senior director of Internet platform marketing at Oracle.

The VMouse is cross-platform and requires no driver installation, making the device compatible with systems as varied as iMacs and Linux boxes, reports PC World.