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SuSE releases critical patches by Derek Sooman on Mon 07 Feb 2005, 12:11 PM Novell owned SuSE has released a number of patches, which they claim to be "highly critical". The patches in question are to address several vulnerabilities that have been found to exist in SuSE' eMail Server 3.x, Linux Database Server, Linux Enterprise Server 9 and Linux Office Server. Resultant exploits include cross-site scripting attacks, remote system access, exposure of sensitive information, spoofing and denial-of-service attacks, so if you are a SuSE user, you should get downloading and patching right away. However, there have been some concerns over...

I've reported in Windows IT Pro UPDATE several times over the years about Linux and its potential to unseat Windows Server as the most used enterprise OS. As a general rule, each January seems to bring a collection of "This Will Be the Year of Linux" stories, typically from analysts who've been bowled over by the Linux hype. To be fair, I've always assumed that Linux and Windows would some day run neck-and-neck in the server world, with Linux's perceived security, cost, and reliability advantages as the major reasons. Also, the past few years have been tough on Microsoft, as...

Microsoft to release bumper Windows patch February 04 2005 by Karen Said February's release to fix 'critical' flaws... "A bumper crop of Microsoft patches will be released next week, including nine fixes for Windows flaws. At least one of the updates for the Windows operating system is rated "critical", its highest rating, Microsoft said on Thursday in a posting to its TechNet site. The forewarning is part of the company's programme to give regular computer users notice of monthly security bulletins before the patches themselves are released. There will be 13 updates in total, Microsoft said. That includes a critical...

Hey genealogy lovers: The far left foreign loonies with a bad translator have hacked a non-political site, CYNDISLIST.COM...a genealogy site. What is this world coming to when a site for genealogy lovers needs to be defaced?

A pint-sized linux guru who installed her first Debian server before her tenth birthday is to speak at this year's linux.conf.au Thirteen-year-old Elizabeth Garbee may not know as much about Linux as her father Bdale Garbee, Linux CTO for HP and former Debian Project Leader, but that won't stop her from presenting at linux.conf.au 2005. Elizabeth, who has had a computer since she turned two, has been running Debian since the time she was nine. According to her bio on the conference speaker’s list, her installation of Debian GNU/Linux on a server before she had reached 10 years of age...

IBM goes silent on Linux desktop effort Big Blue mum about progress of the company's move to open source clients By Robert McMillan, IDG News Service January 25, 2005 More than a year after IBM's (Profile, Products, Articles) Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Sam Palmisano challenged his company to move to the Linux desktop by the end of 2005, IBM has significantly toned down its rhetoric on the subject of open-source clients. "We don't have anything we want to say that's definitive," said Nancy Kaplan, an IBM spokeswoman, as she declined to comment on specifics of the roll-out. "There are...

Pols attack IBM-Lenovo deal Three key lawmakers are pressing federal regulators to expand their probe into Lenovo Group Ltd.'s $1.7 billion acquisition of IBM Corp.'s PC division. In a letter Tuesday, Jan. 25, to Treasury Secretary John Snow, House International Relations Committee Chairman Henry J. Hyde, R-Ill., House Small Business Committee Chairman Donald Manzullo, R-Ill., and House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., requested an agency briefing on the merger and urged him to withhold approval until they can confer. Hyde's panel poses a particular threat to the deal because it oversees export control issues. "Given the relationship between...

Sun Microsystems (Profile, Products, Articles) on Tuesday launched its OpenSolaris program, which provides access to the Solaris operating system via an open source format, and also announced the release of 1,670 patents to the open source community. The initial piece of Solaris being made available now is DTrace performance analysis technology. Other Solaris source code, such as file system and security technologies, will be offered in the second quarter of this year. Sun Chairman and CEO Scott McNealy, a surprise participant on Tuesday’s conference call pertaining to the announcements, declared Sun as likely the largest donor of code anywhere on...

What goes around, comes around, they say. And we now have the hilarious opportunity to watch SCO tell the court how burdensome it would be for SCO to have to produce to IBM every product Caldera distributed for the past 6 years. These are the same folks who whined until they got not only every released version of AIX and Dynix going back to the '80s but every *unreleased* one also, in their own discovery demands.Here, for your enjoyment, are SCO's objections to IBM's discovery efforts related to IBM's patent counterclaims: Objections to International Business Machine Corporation's Rule 30(b)(6) Notice...

kforeman (aka Kevin Foreman, GM of Helix RealNetworks, Inc.) writes "As part of the free RealPlayer 10 for Linux, Real has paid Thomson for a legal MP3 playback license and then includes it at no cost as part of the newly released RealPlayer 10. As I speak to people, many are under the false impression that MP3 playback patent and royalty rights are free, since there are open source implementations of MP3 playback available. Not true. Nonetheless, we are glad to do our part of making the Linux desktop a first class citizen by legally providing MP3 playback to users...

IBM-Lenovo (Chinese front) deal faces US security challenge SAN FRANCISCO, Jan 23 (Reuters) - IBM's proposed $1.25 billion sale of its personal computer business to Lenovo Group of China may be held up by U.S. regulators over national security concerns, Bloomberg reported on Sunday. The report, citing unnamed sources "familiar with the matter" said members of the Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States, or CFIUS, are concerned that Lenovo employees might be used to conduct industrial espionage.

Linus Torvalds once led a ragtag band of software geeks. Not anymore. Here's an inside look at how the unusual Linux business model increasingly threatens Microsoft Five years ago, Linus Torvalds faced a mutiny. The reclusive Finn had taken the lead in creating the Linux computer operating system, with help from thousands of volunteer programmers, and the open-source software had become wildly popular for running Web sites during the dot-com boom. But just as Linux was taking off, some programmers rebelled. Torvalds' insistence on manually reviewing everything that went into the software was creating a logjam, they warned. Unless he...

A federal magistrate has handed a partial victory to Utah's SCO Group, ordering computer giant IBM to turn over more of its Linux operating system-related program codes. U.S. Magistrate Brooke Wells' ruling, released just minutes after Salt Lake City's federal courthouse closed Wednesday, came in the Lindon software company's contractual suit stemming from Big Blue's alleged distribution of Linux applications purportedly tainted with SCO's proprietary Unix code. In a lawsuit tentatively set for trial next fall, SCO is seeking damages ranging from $5 billion to $50 billion from IBM. The Utah company also is in Linux-related litigation with Novell, Linux...

Leading Chinese Linux software maker RedFlag Software Co Ltd expects to achieve a 50 per cent growth in sales revenues this year, pinning hopes on Asianux 2.0, a new product to be jointly launched in July with Japanese and Korean partners. "We expect our sales revenues to increase by 50 per cent," said Bai Ke, RedFlag's marketing supervisor. "Asianux 2.0 will be a great impetus." The company's board has not approved this year's sales target, "but they will probably raise that figure," he added. According to Bai, the company made a profit last year for the first time since its...

Open Source Development Labs has reportedly rejected reports it is leading a revision of the Linux Kernel to remove code that might infringe software patents Open Source Development Labs (OSDL), which promotes the adoption of the Linux operating system, has denied that it plans to rewrite the Linux kernel to combat claims that it infringes some software patents. Linux Business Week reported last week that, according to "informed sources", the OSDL, Intel, IBM, the state of Oregon and the city of Beaverton are part of a consortium that will rewrite the parts of the Linux kernel that allegedly infringe patents....

A study by not-for-profit IT security testing organisation Honeynet Project has shown that, on average, Linux systems today take three months to fall prey to hackers, up from 72 hours in equivalent tests conducted between 2001 and 2002. The 2004 results came after a team of researchers set up 19 Linux and four Solaris 'honeypots' in eight countries including the UK. Honeypots are unpatched internet-connected computers designed to be targets for hackers. "Default installations of Linux distributions are getting harder to compromise," said the report. "New versions are more secure by default, with fewer services automatically enabled, privileged separation in...

We are delirious with joy, or maybe it is just that we've spent too long staring at the screen. . . . Whatever, we just found the coolest hack that you just have to check out! We're playing with Debian Linux running cooperatively with Windows. Yes, you might go back and re-read that sentence. This fascinating system is called coLinux and it allows the Linux kernel to run as a program or service under Windows 2000 or XP without using a commercial PC virtualization system such as User Mode Linux or VMware. Specifically, coLinux - a port of the 2.6 kernel - is "special...

IBM, Intel, the Open Source Development Labs, where Linux creator Linus Torvalds works, and other industry lights are planning to rob Microsoft of the ability to scare customers off of Linux by saying that the operating system is a patent infringer, informed sources say. On January 25 they are supposed to announce that a consortium has been created that will rewrite the components in the Linux kernel that allegedly tread on other people's IP - or at least the 27 Microsoft patents that Linux is supposed to infringe. The consortium will reportedly be underwritten by the state of Oregon and...

Bill Gates, Microsoft's chairman and chief software architect, has been talking about the digital future. The other Bill, technology critic Bill Thompson, has been reading between the lines.Bill Gates thinks I'm a communist. Not the old-fashioned state socialist concerned with five-year plans for boot production in the eastern provinces, but a "new modern-day sort of communist", the sort who "want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and movie-makers and software makers". Admittedly, Mr Gates probably does not know who I am and I doubt if he spends a lot of time reading the BBC news site. But he...

December is always a tough month for us collectors of evil. Something else is out there, something bigger than us all. In the cold snow and the dark, it is stronger, swifter to find out who is naughty and who is ... not so naughty. They fear it, the humans. They work hard to hide their corruption from Father Christmas's all-seeing-eyes. Of course, in the open source world, privacy-conscious evildoers conduct their naughtiness using anonymizing sneakiness proxies and onion-routed nastiness networks, and write angry letters to their local Privacy Czars about Santa's data-retention policies. Slim pickings remain for us amateur...