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The new Red Hat Linux beta (codename Severn) is now available. According to the schedule, the beta 1 testing period will last from July 21 to mid-August. Everyone is encouraged to download it and participate by either submitting bugs or submitting fixes. All bugs, requests for enhancements, and patches should be submitted via Bugzilla.

With this release, the Red Hat Linux product is becoming the Red Hat Linux Project — an openly-developed project designed by Red Hat, open for general participation, led by a meritocracy, following a set of project objectives.

The goal of the Red Hat Linux project is to work with the Linux community to build a complete, general purpose operating system exclusively from free software. Development will be done in a public forum. The project will produce time-based releases of Red Hat Linux approximately every 4 to 6 months with a public release schedule. The Red Hat engineering team will continue to participate in the building of Red Hat Linux and will invite and encourage more outside participation than in past releases. By using this more open process, we hope to provide an operating system more in line with the ideals of free software and more appealing to the open source community.


News source: Red Hat Linux Project
Download: Red Hat linux beta (Severn)
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Sexual thrills

Chat rooms are the fastest rising cause of relationship breakdowns, according to counselling groups in the US. The problem would get worse as the number of people online continued to rise, said Ms Mileham. For the study, the researcher interviewed men and women who used chat rooms specifically aimed at married couples. She found that most people said they loved their partner. But the anonymity of the net provided an outlet for those seeking an erotic encounter.

"All I have to do is turn on my computer and I have thousands of women to choose from," said one of the men questioned for the study. "It can't get any easier than that."

Most people ventured into the chat rooms because of boredom, a partner's lack of sexual interest, or a desire for variety and fun.

"The number one complaint from men was lack of sex in the marriage," said Ms Mileham. "Many of them said their wife was so involved in child-rearing that she wasn't interested in having sex."

From virtual to real

The study found that what often started out as just friendly chat turned into something much more serious. Almost a third of people taking part in the study went on to meet the person with whom they had made contact. All but two ended up having a real-life affair. In one case, a man had 13 affairs with women he had met over the internet.

"We are hearing from therapists around the country reporting online sexual activity to be a major cause of marital problems," said Al Cooper, author of the book, Sex And The Internet: A Guidebook For Clinicians.

"We need to better understand the contributing factors if we are going to be able to warn people about the slippery slope that starts with online flirting and too often ends in divorce."

For the study, Ms Mileham interviewed with 76 men and 10 women, aged between 25 and 66, who used Yahoo's Married And Flirting or Microsoft's Married But Flirting internet chat rooms.