Free Republic

<p>The Bulls and the Bears may soon be standing on the unemployment line.</p> <p>Tux the penguin, Linux's beloved mascot, is rapidly becoming the financial services industry's totem animal of choice. In fact, it seems that the only steadily rising statistic on Wall Street these days is the number of companies moving to open-source systems.</p>

When Keith Lerner saw University of Miami running back Willis McGahee go down in the fourth quarter of the National Championship game, he bolted from his couch, went into his home office and immediately began rifling through the papers. Only five hours before, Lerner, an insurance agent based in Gainesville, Fla., had completed the paperwork on a $2.5 million insurance policy for the sophomore stud who was projected to be a top NFL draft pick in April. "I faxed his physical information to Lloyd's of London at 3 o'clock on Friday," Lerner said. "The ink wasn't even dry on the...

Lead Windows developer bugged by security By Matt Berger September 5, 2002 1:46 pm PT SEATTLE -- BRIAN Valentine says he's not proud. The senior vice president in charge of Microsoft's Windows development team has reason not to be. One of his most notable works, the Windows 2000 operating system, has a security record that is nothing to boast about. In fact, it's downright dismal, many experts say. Security bulletins warning of holes and vulnerabilities in Microsoft operating systems are a regular occurrence. Late Wednesday, the company released a bulletin warning of a flaw in its digital certificate technology that...

People often ask me if they should trust Open Source Software (OSS). This question predates the emergence of Linux and the various Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) OSs, as popular security software for Unix systems, such as COPS (www.fish.com/cops/) and Tripwire (www.tripwire.com), began showing up in the early 1990s. Organizations accustomed to paying big bucks for any software they planned to use were understandably cautious about free software that didn't come from well-known vendors. And recent events have added a scary twist to OSS. Several sites, one with a program designed for stress-testing Intrusion Detection Systems (IDSs), had backdoors added to...