Here's a collection of Microsoft items related to news regarding the court vacating Microsoft's breakup. The biggest development is, of course, that Microsoft may be willing to make a deal, and that the coalition of state attorneys general that drove much of the case may be willing to come to the table for resolution. Reactions to the ruling range from relief to angry defiance, as this sampling shows.

Thanks but no thanks. That's what I say to those anonymous crackers who had decided to "help" out by releasing the Cheese Worm last month.

Cheese is certainly a "c00l" hack, but that definitely doesn't make it acceptable or responsible behavior. Visions of bots floating around in the ether waging mighty, but invisible, battles belong in books such as Neal Stephenson's "The Diamond Age," not on production Internet servers.

The Cheese worm appears to be different. Dubbed the Cheese worm, the program is basically a self-spreading patch. It enters servers that have already been compromised by a previous bit of malicious code--the 3-month-old 1i0n worm--and closes the back door behind it, adding security to the system.

MozillaQuest Magazine reports thats "Caldera International has two new Linux products plus a new Linux-savvy UNIX product, OpenLinux Workstation 3.1, OpenLinux Secure Internet Server, and Open UNIX 8. OpenLinux Workstation 3.1 is a Linux desktop operating system (OS) based on the Linux 2.4.2 kernel. It is expected to start shipping on June 30, 2001. Open UNIX 8 brings a Linux "personality" to the UnixWare 7 kernel. The idea here is to better enable Linux programs to run on UNIX."

K12LTSP is an easy to install, Linux based terminal server package designed for schools. It comes ready to run with lots of programs for classroom use. It works with low maintenance, diskless workstations that are immune to viruses and mischievous student tampering. K12LTSP is based on RedHat 7.1, StarOffice from Sun microsystems and the Linux Terminal Server Project.

The cleaner meaner, grammaticaly correct Gnome Basic. It transpires lots of work has got done recently, so what better than a new release.

"Now incompatibilities are being introduced hand over fist, as distributions fight for a bigger and bigger piece of a diminishing pie, until oneday one will own all of nothing. Does this do anything useful for the distributions, users, Linux, anybody? Well, no. If Microsoft were to cook up a plan to cause Linux to disappear in a virtual Tower of Babel it could scarcely be more effective than that which has been adopted by distributions on their own, voluntarily," writes Dennis Powell

Is Microsoft preparing to port part of its .Net platform to Linux? Beta testers and developers think so, saying there is growing evidence that the Redmond-based software giant may well ship a smaller version of its .Net common language runtime on operating systems other than Windows, including Linux and Unix.

It's time to unearth another Linux hidden gem, overlooked open-source application that can help make Linux more useful once you get to know it. Simply called apt-get, this tool was developed to handle installations of the Debian Linux distribution. But, apt-get's capabilities go far beyond simplifying installation. Most notable is an option that updates your system by comparing the release levels of the software on your system to those of a remote benchmark site. This process can be automated as much or as little as you like.

IBM has announced two new eServer systems that offer small and medium-sized businesses access to mainframe and self-healing technologies. The new IBM eServer xSeries 232 and 342 include intelligent management features that support IBM's Project eLiza initiative, a multi-billion dollar program aimed at creating a world of self-managing servers requiring little or no human interaction with the goal of making computing networks as easy to manage as today's kitchen appliances.