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Advanced Micro Devices has quietly trotted out a version of its Athlon 64 chip that provides a little less performance than earlier models but only costs about half as much. The new Athlon 64 3000+ runs at 2GHz, the same as the existing Athlon 64 3200+, but it only comes with a 512KB secondary cache, according to an AMD spokesman. The 3200+ features a 1MB cache. A cache is a pool of memory integrated into the processor for rapid data access. In general, large caches lead to better performance. AMD, however, prices the Athlon 64 3000+ at $218 in quantities...

Revenge Of The Nerds Daniel Lyons, 12.16.03, 12:30 PM ET NEW YORK - In the real world, Brenda Banks is a 54-year-old grandmother in Greer, S.C., a former warehouse supervisor who teaches rubber-stamping arts and crafts classes. But online she transforms into "br3n," a passionate user of Linux software who cruises Web sites posting smash-mouth messages about SCO Group. So far Banks has posted more than 1,500 messages on SCO's Yahoo! message board alone--including five on Thanksgiving. "I feel very strongly about it," says Banks, who runs Linux on a six-year-old Acer home computer. "They want to come and stab...

The code at the heart of SCO's legal action against IBM will be revealed only in a closed court When the SCO Group finally lays its cards on the table in its upcoming lawsuit against IBM, the open-source community won't be given the opportunity to see them. IBM last week successfully persuaded the judge presiding over the case to give SCO 30 days to reveal the code that forms the basis for its $3bn (£1.72bn) lawsuit against Big Blue for alleged copyright infringements. The judge originally placed no restrictions on public disclosure of the disputed code, and it's understood IBM's...

SCO attacks keep coming back December 15, 2003, 11:57 AM PST By Robert Lemos Staff Writer, CNET News.com More Internet attacks cut off access to the SCO Group's servers this past weekend and again on Monday, as the Unix software company struggled to stop the hackers. After the attacks largely abated Friday, they restarted at 3 a.m. PST Saturday until 11 p.m. Sunday, said Blake Stowell, a spokesman for SCO. The deluge of data, known as a denial-of-service attack, restarted Monday morning, and the company's Web site continues to be inaccessible. "At this point, we are continuing to use the...

December 12, 2003Linux in the Security Crosshairs By Jim Wagner Compared to Windows, Linux has enjoyed a reputation as a stable and secure operating systems (define), thanks in large part to an enthusiastic open source community that plugs holes before they create problems. But Linux's growing popularity is attracting unwanted attention from virus writers, script kiddies (define) and other criminal elements. In response, Linux advocates are putting a new emphasis on security measures and working to reassure companies that the OS is ready for important business networks. "There has been a lot of change in the attractiveness of Linux as...

I'm sure that back in late winter, Darl McBride felt confident that SCO would be quickly bought out or some sort of settlement would be reached with IBM. Back then, their catch phrase was 'Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.' Now, after a very large torpedo was fired by a Utah Court, we're seeing rats abandoning a ship that is surely destined to sink. What a difference two winters make. This one is shaping up to be the winter of SCO's discontent. Monday, The Royal Bank of Canada, to avoid getting royally chiseled, (for lack of a more descriptive word)...

SCO Hit By Another DDoS Attack By Jim Wagner The SCO Group (Quote, Chart), which is embroiled in a legal battle over copyright claims over some code in the Linux open source operating system, confirmed Wednesday a massive distributed denial of service attack (DdoS) on its corporate Web site. Officials at the SCO Group (Quote, Chart) said a Denial of Service (define) attack took down its Web site at 4:20 a.m. Wednesday, and will remain inaccessible for at least the next 12 hours. The breach also took out its customer support and e-mail service. Blake Stowell, SCO spokesperson, said this...

GPL is no hippie dream IDG News Service 12/8/03 Linus Torvalds, IDG News Service Last Thursday, The SCO Group Inc. Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Darl McBride posted an open letter on SCO's Web site arguing that Linux backers were threatening to undermine the copyright protections provided in U.S. and European law. McBride's posting was the latest in a series of public statements by SCO portraying the open-source operating system as a threat to the commercial software industry and an enemy of intellectual property. "There is a group of software developers in the United States, and other parts of the world,...

Bad day at the Office for Microsoft...One in four small companies are testing Linux, and half of them hope to use it as their core operating system in place of Windows, according to a survey by IBM. The companies surveyed believe the open-source operating system will not only save them money, but will be more secure, stable and flexible. However, the move away from Microsoft is also being assessed by both medium-sized and large organisations. Microsoft has enjoyed absolute dominance in the desktop market for more than two decades, but there are signs that the company's stranglehold may have peaked,...

Kevin Mack has captured Torvalds ten most potent comments, and ranked them in order of merit. December 7, 2003 Summary Our "Linux Quote of the Week" - chosen yesterday - may be vintage Torvalds, but isn't the best thing Linus has ever said about SCO. So says Kevin Mack, whose has his own Top Ten. LinuxWorld brings it to you here. Mack's Top 10 Linus SCO quotes (in reverse order): 10. Not About IP "None of the SCO accusations have anything to do with IP rights; they're all about contracts between IBM and SCO. All the IP rights blathering by...

The mysterious people designing open-source software are the same people who are working for you right now Worried about trusting your infrastructure to a bunch of shaggy college kids who might bolt at any moment for a yearlong backpacking trip to Switzerland? Don't worry. Even if every one of them left for the Alps tomorrow, 90 percent of the open-source community would still be checking in to one of the community's Internet hangouts (SourceForge.net and Freshmeat.net are the most popular) to see what's new. Turns out these people have real jobs—58 percent of the open-source community is made up of...

Lindon-based SCO Group Inc. took a hit Friday in its federal lawsuit against International Business Machines Corp.       SCO and IBM are locked in suits and countersuits about whether IBM violated its license with SCO by placing parts of SCO's Unix computer operating system source code into Linux, a freely distributed operating system that is developed and enhanced by contributors worldwide.       U.S. Magistrate Brooke Wells on Friday ruled for IBM in its motion to force SCO to provide answers to IBM's questions. SCO will have 30 days, likely starting next week, "to identify with specificity...

SCO Group Chief Executive Darl McBride is invoking the Founding Fathers in his company's battle over Unix intellectual property rights. In an open letter posted on the SCO Web site Thursday, McBride argues that the General Public License (GPL) that underlies distribution of Linux, a Unix-derived operating system, is unconstitutional because it violates copyright and patent laws established by Congress. He also sharply criticizes two of SCO's most aggressive adversaries who, he says, do not believe in federally mandated copyright protection. "In the past 20 years, the Free Software Foundation and others in the open source software movement have set...

First Report from Grokker Inside Hearing: IBM Wins Both Motions to Compel Friday, December 05 2003 @ 02:30 PM EST Our first report from a Groklaw volunteer, sam, who attended the court hearing is that IBM won both of its motions to compel and SCO's motion was set for a later date. Here is what sam is telling us, and it's subject to further information and confirmation as more news arrives. We have several attending and I'll do a followup, but this is the first word. Here is what sam is telling us: "Just returned from the hearing. "Needless to...

Linux Reality Doesn't Match Hype By Ronna Abramson Staff Reporter 12/04/2003 07:11 AM EST Almost every week, it seems, another government is jumping on the Linux bandwagon, badmouthing Microsoft (MSFT:Nasdaq - commentary - research) all the way. But for all the headlines, the open-source software movement remains very much a fringe business, raising troubling questions for investors who've plowed into publicly traded Linux providers in the past year. And plowed they have: As of Tuesday's close, Red Hat (RHAT:Nasdaq - commentary - research) shares were up 110% in the past 12 months, while shares of Novell (NOVL:Nasdaq - commentary -...

22nd Edition of TOP500 List of World’s Fastest Supercomputers Released MANNHEIM, Germany; KNOXVILLE, Tenn.; & BERKELEY, Calif. – In what has become a much-anticipated event in the world of high-performance computing, the 22nd edition of the “TOP500” list of the world’s fastest supercomputers was released today (November 16, 2003). The Earth Simulator supercomputer retains the number one position with its Linpack benchmark performance of 35.86 Tflop/s (“teraflops” or trillions of calculations per second). It was built by NEC and installed last year at the Earth Simulator Center in Yokohama, Japan. The list of cluster systems in the TOP10 has grown...

The Debian Project warned on Monday that a flaw in the Linux kernel helped attackers compromise four of the open-software project's development servers. During several intrusions on Nov. 19, the flaw allowed an attacker who already had access to a server to remove the limitations that protected the system from everyday users. The technique is known as a privilege escalation. The flaw had been found in September by members of the development team and had been fixed in the latest version of the core Linux software, or kernel. The fix came a bit late, however. The latest version of the...

Package : kernel-image-2.4.18-1-alpha, kernel-image-2.4.18-1-i386, kernel-source-2.4.18 Vulnerability : userland can access full kernel memory Problem type : local Debian-specific: no CVE Id(s) : CAN-2003-0961 Recently multiple servers of the Debian project were compromised using a Debian developers account and an unknown root exploit. Forensics revealed a burneye encrypted exploit. Robert van der Meulen managed to decrypt the binary which revealed a kernel exploit. Study of the exploit by the RedHat and SuSE kernel and security teams quickly revealed that the exploit used an integer overflow in the brk system call. Using this bug it is possible for a userland program to...

Hi, *NB* bear in mind that: a) the information on the break-in in comes from compromised machines and thus has to be taken with appropriate skepticism. b) the investigation is still ongoing - as I was writing this draft further information came to light which may invalidate a lot of it. [Or not - as it turns out]. Detection --------- On November 20 it was noticed that master was kernel oops-ing lots. While investigating this it was discovered that murphy was showing the exact same oops, which was an overly suspicious coincidence. Also klecker, murphy and gluck have aide installed...

Source Claims SCO Will Sue Google Industry wags are saying that God invented SCO to give people a company to hate more than Microsoft November 26, 2003 Summary A source claiming to be in the know says that the SCO Group is going to sue Google for not paying its Linux taxes. By Maureen O'Gara Page 1 of 1 A source claiming to be in the know says that the SCO Group is going to sue Google for not paying its Linux taxes. Last week SCO threatened to make an example of a big-time Linux user that hadn't paid SCO...