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There is currently a very bad security problem in Internet Explorer that is actively being exploited by the bad guys and that threatens to make the Internet even more infested with compromised machines that the bad guys can then use for their nefarious purposes. With that in mind, I thought that this may be a good opportunity to help our friends and family members that are Internet Explorer users try out some of the alternatives.

All good things must come to an end. It is with great sadness that the editors and I have decided, at least for the time being, to cease my monthly columns for Linux Magazine, due to my extremely busy schedule and other commitments. I have enjoyed and been enriched by my relationship and friendship with Adam Goodman, who as Publisher gave me a wide berth to write about whatever I wanted and to “Loom Large” at trade shows and intimidate vendors — as long as I handed in my articles on time and didn’t give the editors who had the pleasure of reading through my ramblings too much grief and work at cleaning it up.

Like Firefox, the open source media player Songbird is a pretty neat alternative to a big-name competitor on its own, but the ability to extend it through add-ons is what really makes it boss. We considered the release candidate of the potential "iTunes killer"—Songbird a sloppy mess, then backed up a bit when it's 1.0 release was official. Now we're geeked to show you a few add-ons that make Songbird a great place to organize your MP3s, iTunes purchases, iPods, and whatever else you listen to.

Those with doctorates in artificial intelligence are never the best stewards of houseplants. Programmer Bryan Horling says he's killed whole swaths of greenery inside and outside his rural western Massachusetts home. But at least one plant will survive, thanks to a computer-controlled plant watering system -- a simple network of plastic tubing and an aquarium pump to keep the Wandering Jew plant in his living room alive.

Users of all current versions of Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer browser might be vulnerable to having their computers hijacked because of a serious security hole in the software that had yet to be fixed Monday. The flaw lets criminals commandeer victims' machines merely by tricking them into visiting Web sites tainted with malicious programming code. As many as 10,000 sites have been compromised since last week to exploit the browser flaw, according to antivirus software maker Trend Micro Inc.

openSUSE 11.1, the next major version of the company's community-driven Linux distribution, is scheduled for release on December 18. The new version will include updated software and some important new features that enhance the quality of the distribution. OpenSUSE 11.1 installation media is available in several different formats. There are installable Live CD images for both GNOME and KDE. Each one provides a complete stack with the major components of its respective desktop environment. There is also a conventional DVD installer image that includes packages for both desktop environments and a significant number of other popular programs.

You don't need to debug Java applications on just your local desktop. Learn how to spread around your debugging using different connection types that make up remote debugging. This article explains the features and examples that show how to set up remote application debugging.

The nonprofit LinuxFund.org is providing financial support for Gnash, the Flash alternative, to accelerate development of the Real Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP).

Jeremy Allison's contributions to the free software world are legion, and yet the project he's best known for continues to be Samba, the open implementation of some of Microsoft's most important networking protocols. Linux Format magazine asked him about KDE, NAS, LSB, DCs and other acronyms, and now his answers are here for your TLA titillation…

According to Wikipedia, a dojo is "a Japanese term which literally means "place of the Tao". Initially, dojo were adjunct to temples. The term can refer to a formal training place for any of the Japanese do arts but typically it is considered the formal gathering place for students of any martial arts style to conduct training, examinations and...", oh wait! Wrong dojo. Dojo, in this context, is a JavaScript toolkit, somewhat similar to jQuery, Mochikit, and Prototype. I previously reviewed a book largely oriented towards jQuery and was favorably impressed. How will the Pragmatic book on Dojo compare in presenting Dojo, especially in terms of being a teacher?

Originally begun to investigate the possibility of extending the useful life of legacy IT equipment, the Linux Terminal Server Project is now a comprehensive collection of tools for running driveless thin clients with a Linux server. Certainly in its current version 5, if not before, it has blossomed into an useful – and free – terminal/server solution.

Red Hat on Monday is giving away 5,000 JBoss Developer Studio subscriptions to Java developers in six territories in the Asia-Pacific region. The program will run in China, India, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia and Hong Kong, targeted at independent Java developers and those from small and midsize businesses (SMBs), said the open source vendor, in an e-mailed response to ZDNet Asia.

If you've ever wondered whether there is a SCO case for open standards, many people would say that the answer is "yes." And the stand in for SCO that they would pick is a company called Rambus incorporated.

HP said last week that it will offer Novell's Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop to business and education customers. Suse's desktop software will be carried on the HP Compaq dc5850. The desktop will be available in the United States from 15 December, for US$519. A spokeperson for HP said that the OS is only being pre-loaded in the US and "there are no current plans to introduce this in the Unite Kingdom".

All WordPress site owners have their own list of "must have" plugins. Is one or more of these administration and security add-ons among yours? Each adds valuable functions to WordPress, and is simple to configure and use.

A series of punctuation marks used to convey a wink in text messages - known as an emoticon - has been trademarked in Russia, says a local businessman. Entrepreneur Oleg Teterin said the trademark for the ;-) emoticon was granted to him by Russia's federal patent agency.

In this interview we talk with Warren. In specific, we talk about: The origins of SimplyMEPIS, Ubuntu’s role in the larger community, differences among distros from a developer perspective, corporate use of free versus for-fee Linux, the Linux desktop and the future of client-side Linux and future directions of note: IPv6 and DNSSEC

Web frontend for changing your Unix or Linux user password

LXer Feature: 14-Dec-2008

Hello everyone, It seems that in the search to bring the infections under control, the USB drive ban I told you about last week has been expanded to the entire military now. AbiWord 2.6.5 just hit the streets and it boasts better compatibility with Word 2007 and OpenOffice Writer and Amarok 2.0 with a host of cool new stuff was released earlier in the week as well.

On the kernel page a few weeks ago, we took a look at KSM, a technique to reduce memory usage by sharing identical pages. Currently proposed for inclusion in the mainline kernel, KSM implements a potentially useful—but not particularly new—mechanism. Unfortunately, before it can be examined on its technical merits, it may run afoul of what is essentially a political problem: software patents. The basic idea behind KSM is to find memory pages that have the same contents, then arrange for one copy to be shared amongst the various users. The kernel does some of this already for things like shared libraries, but there are numerous ways for identical pages to get created that the kernel does not know about directly, thus cannot coalesce. Examples include initialized memory (at startup or in caches) from multiple copies of the same program and virtualized guests that are running the same operating system and application programs.