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FlashMob I took place on a typically foggy April Saturday at the University of San Francisco's Koret Center gym. Exactly 700 computers of various shapes and sizes -- donated by individuals and several organizations -- were gathered in the auditorium and interconnected via a homegrown local area network to in effect try to become one of the world's 500 most powerful supercomputers. Surprisingly, it wasn't the huge tangle of wires many people thought it would be; all the networking hardware was kept well under control by all the event "hub captains."

If it had happened on 1st April nobody would have believed it - but Microsoft has posted its first piece of open source-approved software.

Let the flame wars begin, right? Before you get your fingers warmed up for another typical Linux vs. Microsoft debate, let's keep in mind what the survey focused on. First of all, it covered only 1,000 I.T. administrators and execs. Second, it did not say that Linux did not offer an improved total cost of ownership for everyone--small firms still realized some gains.

There is no lack of blockbuster headlines coming from Sun Microsystems these days. On Friday, Sun announced a news trifecta: 1) a new partnership deal with its longtime archenemy, Microsoft; 2) a new president, the ponytailed and bespectacled Jonathan Schwartz; and 3) a stunningly paltry quarterly earnings report.

Dell CEO Michael Dell and Oracle CEO Larry Ellison plan to host a joint press conference on Tuesday. Industry analysts speculated that Dell and Oracle will create a new bundle that includes Dell's two-processor servers and Oracle's database cluster software. About a year ago, the two companies announced a deal to install Oracle's 9i database cluster software on Dell's two-processor PowerEdge 2650 servers, which run Linux.

The Gentoo website is having trouble, the newsletter link is returning intermitten 404's, so I've mirrored it here.

A remotely exploitable buffer overflow vulnerability was found in MPlayer. A malicious host can craft a harmful HTTP header ("Location:"), and trick MPlayer into executing arbitrary code upon parsing that header.

Sun Microsystems Inc. has promoted John Loiacono to replace Jonathan Schwartz as the new head if its software business. Schwartz was elevated to president and chief operating officer Friday, when Sun announced a broad technology-sharing agreement with its erstwhile nemesis, Microsoft Corp. Sun also said Monday that Rich Green, the head of its Java tools division, has decided to leave Sun after 14 years with the company. He will be replaced temporarily by Chris Atwood, a director of engineering with Sun's tools group, until a permanent replacement is found, the company said.

...there are some pretty big differences between Linux and Unix. The biggest difference, by far, is the Linux kernel itself. When Unix forked, each variant had a different kernel. In other words, the core code of each Unix system was unique, which often resulted in incompatibilities and difficult cross-platform application integrations.

Hewlett-Packard (HP) Indonesia says that it is prepared to support the recent plan of its parent company to globally expand its line of desktop personal computers (PC) based on the GNU/Linux operating system (OS).

MySQL AB today provided a preview of the news announcements and top attractions expected at next week's MySQL Users Conference & Expo. The annual conference brings together MySQL users, partners and industry leaders for an in-depth look at the technology and business behind the MySQL database and open source software. This year's event is April 14-16 at the Peabody Hotel in Orlando, Florida.

...beyond the public relations benefit that comes from embracing open source, IBM also wants to push the spread of Linux on commodity x86-based hardware. That would shaft both Microsoft and Sun, and open the door to more sales of expensive IBM applications like WebSphere, not to mention any attendant service contracts down the road. Can Big Blue pull it off? Keep in mind that this is an infinitely more capable company than the Keystone Cop outfit that introduced OS/2 and PS/2 on this date in 1987.

The world's single largest official open source organization is headquartered not in Japan or Silicon Valley but in Beaverton, Oregon. It makes sense that open source would do well in the Portland area, which is liberal, socially and environmentally conscious, and serious about world trade. Yet when Stuart Cohen, chief executive officer of the Open Source Development Labs, mentions it to the locals, he often gets a double-take.

A behind the scenes focus on GNU/Linux at this year's Embedded Systems Conference in San Francisco... Looking at the various embedded GNU/Linux vendors it was difficult for me to see a clear winner -- all of them offer an IDE (many using eclipse), with integrated source level debuggers and kernel debuggers. Is there really that much difference between one vendor's IDE and another? Read what's happening in the worlds of embedded Linux development, progressive silicon art, robots for science and entertainment, public transportation and the relentless drive of the economy.

Migrating to open-source software may cost some companies more than simply upgrading their Unix or Windows systems, according to a study research company The Yankee Group released Monday.

Demand from customers has pushed Linux software publisher Red Hat to perform a U-turn and offer a full commercial Linux desktop from this summer.

There is so much controversy surrounding the Open Source General Public License (GPL) - especially with regard to the SCO v IBM case - that it makes a sense to review the simple basic legal points involved, writes Bloor Research president Robin Bloor.

The Program Augments Yosemite's Reach in the Linux Market and Reinforces Its position as a Backup Software Market Leader

According to a message from Ilya Teterin posted on Bugtraq [0], the Midnight Commander application [1] uses a uninitialized buffer to handle symlinks in VFS. This allows attackers to execute arbitrary code during symlink conversion. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) project assigned the id CAN-2003-1023 [2] to the problem.

In a hard-hitting analysis of the Sun-Microsoft settlement, David Mohring argues that - aside from the monetary payoff - the gains for Sun from the terms and conditions "do not make any sense for Sun in the long term."