An anonymous reader writes "LinuxDevices.com is reporting that SnapGear has released a free (as in beer) 'commercial grade' embedded Linux distribution that targets secure Internet-enabled products. The distribution supports a range of processors, both with and without memory management units (MMUs), and includes toolchains and library support. Supported non-MMU processors are said include Motorola ColdFire, ARM, and LEON SPARC, while supported processors having MMUs include Hitachi SuperH, Intel XScale IXP425, Intel x86, and other ARM cores."

bcrowell asks: "Here's a moral conundrum for you. The much-hated DMCA can be a tool to enforce copyleft licenses, and in my case, it may be the only effective tool. I'm the author of some free physics textbooks (all free as in beer, some free as in speech) that are available under the GFDL and OPL copyleft licenses. I've learned that there's a guy on eBay who is selling my books on CD and violating the license. (Selling is allowed, since they're free-as-in-speech, but he's violating the license in various ways, such as not informing his buyers about the license, and selling them under a different title and using the tables of contents in his ads without showing the license or listing me as the author.) It's not just me. He's doing the same thing with other copylefted books, such as this one." The submitter is worried about the ethics behind using the recent misuses we've seen so far. Those interested in this question might also be interested in Prof. Felten's answers from his recent Slashdot interview.

joshmccormack writes "An article in Sunday's New York Times (Free Reg, mah peeps) tells of how Japanese scientists have found a way to make fresh water and energy from temperature differences in ocean water. This may change the rules of what land is considered habitable, and the value of energy." Fascinating stuff, next step is rumored to be beer and power.

These are LinuxWorld columnist Nick Petreley's answers to your questions about the (somewhat controversial) Evans Data Survey he helped analyze that shows Linux is taking more market share from Windows than from Unix.

juxter writes "The BBC is reporting on a London bar which has installed a Bluetooth and WiFi access point. Owners of camera phones can wirelessly send their pictures to an overhead screen and web based gallery - The system runs the LocustWorld Linux based MeshAP which has been extended to drive bluetooth devices as well. Hopefully this will encourage more UK premises to deploy free hot spots."

Noodleroni writes "The First Maybe-Annual 99-Bottles-of-Beer-on-the-Wall-Proggie Contest is now under way! We are looking for your most compact, obfuscated, or other wise cool code to print out the entire lyrics of the aforementioned, very long, song. Maybe we'll even get some submissions written in Malbolge?"

e8johan asks: "I have been thinking about trying to sell a Linux based thin client solution to different markets, like schools. One of the big problems with migrating to Linux is the loss of old applications such as Microsoft Office. Has anyone tried to combine Wine and the LTSP? Does it work? If so, it would enable me (and anyone else) to sell services based on a free (as in libre and beer) server running both open office and their proprietary equivalents in a Windows-like environment, thus reducing the migration costs and making the offer more attractive." While this would be an interesting to tackle, would the licensing terms on some proprietary packages complicate such a system?

Here you go, direct from the keyboard of Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Dave Barry. You asked, he answered. Why, we do not know. We didn't pay him $127,000 to do this, no matter what anyone says. It must be a slow news week in Miami. Or worse -- and this is a scary thought -- maybe Dave likes Slashdot readers and wants you all to like him, too.

jojor writes "It seems that icculus.org has gotten America's Army to run under Linux, as this screenshot will attest. America's Army is UT based and free (as in beer). More games for Linux, yippeh!" Awesome. I consider America's Army to be one of the best things my government has funded within recent history.

It's time to crank up the Slashdot Interviews for 2003, starting with answers to your questions for Nagios developer Ethan Galstad. He went far beyond and above the call of duty here to give you what amounts to a veritable "Free Software Project Leader's FAQ" that anyone who has ever thought about starting his or her own project ought to read. Thanks, Ethan!

Fembot asks: "The Samba team are doing a great job, but I can't help but feel that making Unix machines serve Windows-based protocols is the wrong approach. Back in the days of Windows95 it shipped with an NFS client on the CD which could be installed optionaly. Are there open source (or even just free as in beer) NFS clients for Windows 2000/XP, and is it possible to authenticate users on Windows desktops via NIS?"

Screaming Lunatic writes "Here are some benchmarks comparing Intel's compiler and gcc on Linux. Gcc holds it own in a lot of cases. But Intel, not surprisingly, excels on their own hardware. With Intel offering a free (as in beer) non-commercial license for their compiler, how many people are using Intel's compiler on a regular basis?"

Fiscus asks: "Alcohol is a part of most peoples lives, and I'm sure many Slashdot readers rely on a couple of 'cleansing ales' as the week draws to an end. While most of us drink alcohol, not many decide to start brewing their own - now is your chance! And if you already homebrew, a new forum has been setup to speak with fellow brewers. Homebrewing can open up a whole variety of benefits; brew your favourite beer, experiment, make rocket fuel, as well as impressing friends. The new forum, is Australian based, however everyone is welcome and I would love to see some Slashdot readers down there sharing advise/tips/recipes for the christmas homebrewing season! Happy Homebrewing!"

candiman asks: "I am involved in developing a peer-reviewed journal to serve a large group of researchers who currently have no publication that suits their needs. To keep costs (both production and subscription) down we are looking to do it online, with one or two printed editions each year. We are a not-for-profit organization - we aim to break even, not make money. As the most web savvy person involved I am charged with developing the actual system. To save on wheel development time I have been looking for existing, free (beer and speech), management systems. We need something that is (relatively) easy to use for tech (but not web) savvy people. It must be easily extendable as the journal grows in size. It must be standards based (we don't want to be locked into any sort of proprietary formats). The ability to support subscribers and the ability to maintain both free and subscriber sections would also be useful (we are planning to charge a low annual subscription to access the journal's most recent edition - after three months the papers will be released to the free area). Does the Slashdot community have an suggestions or experience in this area?"

Slashback tonight brings you quick updates on the stolen copy of Newton's Principia, Linux at Wal-Mart (dot com), Free software vs. free software in India, and food for the desperate computerist. Read on!

EyesWideOpen writes "Wired News is running two articles about numerous case mods to Macs. The first article is about Japanese mods that include painted PowerBook lids, a black iMac and a 'Beer Server G3' among others. The other article features mods such as the Philco radio Mac, a Mac writing tablet and an awesome G4 tower that lights up with fluorescent blue neon and has a LCD screen mounted in the front panel that can mirror the desktop or display other visualizations."

Slashback is back, with a largish handful of updates and new information about previously run stories. Topics this go-round include Xbox sales in Australia, the Novell / MySQL connection, Adam Smith (no, not that Adam Smith)'s bizarre anti-GPL statement mentioned yesterday, and more. Read on for the details.

ackthpt writes "Code named Red Storm, Cray and Sandia National Laboratories (US Dept. of Energy) to build a 100 Teraflop super computer employing AMD's Opteron (Hammer) processors. Alluded to in the WSJ (non-free-as-in-beer subscription required), also in Infoworld, and Reuters."

Spike and others wrote in about this ongoing saga: subsidiary of Vivendi claims that a subsidiary of News Corporation cracked their satellite TV smart cards and posted for public download. (See our previous stories.) Two new stories from the Associated Press and Yahoo note that although the two companies are apparently dropping the original lawsuit (since News Corp. is making a large investment in Vivendi), Echostar is now claiming they were hacked too and the U.S. Justice Department is investigating possible criminal charges.

An anonymous reader writes "Just submitted on the XBox developers list, a new Xbox game (iso) is available. 'The battle for world dominance is raging. And now, you can play the game on your xbox(tm). Choose alliance with either Tux or Clippy, and finish the mother of all disputes right here and right now. This game is free (as in beer), and will run on any xbox that has been modified for use with the GNU/Linux operating system. The game runs on top of xbox-linux from Sourceforge's xbox-linux project.' The game features include: Industry heroes like CLIPPY, TUX, BIL, STV, RMS, LNS; Battle cries, each unique to the in-game characters, ranging from "Developers! Developers! Developers!" to "GNU!"; Anti aliased alpha-transparency graphics; Explosions." I have no idea if they're serious, and it doesn't matter.