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Call them strange -- but smart -- bedfellows in Microsoft's cloud. As part of the Microsoft Windows Azure initiative, Microsoft says the Azure cloud will support MySQL, the open source database. Frankly, The VAR Guy thinks it's a brilliant move. Here's why.

Specially crafted DHCP servers can take control of a PC if the PC is running the DHCP client supplied by the Internet Systems Consortium (ISC) (dhclient). This is the default set-up in Ubuntu, BSD and many other Linux distributions. According to an ISC advisory, the vulnerability is based on a buffer overflow that allows attackers to inject arbitrary code into a system and execute it at root level. The buffer overflow can be triggered in the script_write_params method using excessively long server-supplied subnet masks.

Microsoft is pressing ahead with plans to open retails stores in the fall in close proximity to Apple stores, an idea I find patently absurd. With more of their business headed to the cloud, it makes me wonder what's next. A Google Store? Makes about as much sense.

Back In Time – A Simple backup tool for ubuntu. Back In Time is a simple backup tool for Linux inspired from “flyback project” and “TimeVault”.The backup is done by taking snapshots of a specified set of directories.Keep in mind that Back In Time is just a GUI. The real magic is done by rsync (take snapshots and restore), diff (check if somethind changed) and cp (make hardlinks).

UbuntuOne's online storage drive is still in beta but shows lots of promise. With more and more users turning to the Internet to store and share documents, Linux developer Ubuntu has also entered the market with a beta version of its UbuntuOne service (http://www.ubuntuone.com). The platform is a competitor to the likes of Dropbox and allows users to synchronise files between computers as well as sharing them with friends and colleagues.

Have you ever wondered why you get the errors Execute permission denied or The parameter list is too long? These are just a few of the common errors UNIX and Linux novices receive that they may not know how to avoid. This article explains such errors and provides workarounds and resolutions to these and other errors that may crop up.

ULTILEX version 4.0.0 is available for download. ULTILEX stands for "Ultimate Linux Experience". This is a live Linux CD compilation which in turn contains several live Linux distributions. You can boot ULTILEX from CD/DVD and USB flash devices.

One of the GNOME projects that's in development that should premiere around the time of GNOME 3.0 is Zeitgeist, which is the system for tracking user activity and events and then logging it, so that later on the user can use the Zeitgeist tool to browse or find events and files on the computer. This project is described by the Zeitgeist developers as, "You worked on a file, but you cannot remember where you saved it? You visited a web page about basketball three days ago, but you cannot find the URL in your browser's history? No problem, this is where Zeitgeist enters the scene...

Google’s announcement last week concerning its plans to bring out a fully fledged operating system was inevitably going to put the cat amongst the twitterati. “Let’s see,” asked the pundits, “who else makes operating systems?” Of course the intention was to have the Microsoft marketing monster shaking in its boots, not least to stave off a similar intent by the latter as it launches a number of online services of its own.

There are a number of ways to extract a range of pages from a PDF file: there are PDF related toolkits for doing it, or you can use Ghostscript directly.

Mozilla has acknowledged that there is a critical JavaScript vulnerability in its Firefox 3.5 web browser and has confirmed that it's currently working on an update to address the problem. As a workaround, Mozilla advises users to disable the Just-in-time (JIT) JavaScript compiler. To do so, users must first enter about:config into the browsers location bar and then set the javascript.options.jit.content setting value to "false". When making changes to the about:config settings, users will first see a warning message stating that "This might void your warranty" and that changes to the advanced settings can be harmful to the stability, security and performance of Firefox. To continue users must click a button marked "I'll be careful I promise!".

In the past three months, Oracle's acquisition Sun lost over one billion dollars in revenue. The spring of 2008 had stood at $3.8 billion, while the figure for 2009 was $2.6 billion. The loss was about 10 cents per share, with the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) adjusting the loss to 30 cents per share. Sun's preliminary quarterly report falls short because the company wants to migrate its results into the annual report in August, their fiscal year having ended June 30.

In the past we have published OpenSolaris vs. Linux Kernel benchmarks and similar articles looking at the performance of Sun's OpenSolaris up against popular Linux distributions. We have looked at the performance on high-end AMD workstations, but we have never compared the OpenSolaris and Linux performance on netbooks. Well, not until today. In this article we have results comparing OpenSolaris 2009.06 and Ubuntu 9.04 on the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 netbook.

In this beginner article, Ben Mackie provides step-by-step instructions for installing Ubuntu Linux through VirtualBox on an Intel Mac running either Tiger or Leopard. Hopefully this article will encourage even the most cautious Mac user to enjoy the benefits of a dual boot Mac with Linux.

CodeWeavers has released the latest version of its CrossOver software for Mac and Linux users. If you want to try working without Windows but can't live without a must-have Windows app, CrossOver just might be the answer.

CodeWeavers CrossOver is a commercial product based on the open-source Wine project. Wine emulates key Windows software libraries, allowing Linux or Mac users to run Windows applications. And unlike virtualization tools like VMware or Parallels, Wine doesn't require users to install a licensed copy of Windows to get started.

If you use Wine on Linux, BSD or Solaris and your trying to render your native language fonts you might have noticed just how slow Wine renders far east fonts. This doesn't just happen to far east languages it can also apply to western languages as well. Below is four reasons why this happens and solutions.

I don't think you understand the scope of what The HeliOS Project does. This is no longer a guy puttering around in his workshop, casually piecing computers together for one or two kids a week. This has evolved into a full scale operation that takes 5-12 requests a day for computers. We have a staff of myself and 4 Directors coordinating this effort. It stopped being small a while ago. We have School Teachers, Child Protective Services Counselors, City and School Bus Drivers, State Assistance Employees, Radio Station Managers, State and Government Union Members and private individuals from every walk of life, coming to us with the names of kids or families of kids who qualify for a HeliOS Project computer. 64 percent of those requested will be built and delivered.

OpenSSH is a great means to protect your connection from being sniffed by others. However, this isn't always enough. Simply proving that you connected to a server is enough to get incriminated. Unfortunately, SSH doesn't provide a native way to obfuscate to whom it connects. Instead, a proxy server can be set up. And this is where TOR comes to play. This howto covers installing TOR on a Debian based system and setting up SSH to use TOR.

The race to fast boot times is on, with MontaVista making the latest headlines. The embedded Linux vendor announced in the United States Tuesday its latest system is able to boot in one second, and released a video demonstrating a vehicle dashboard system going from cold boot into a "fully operational" state in that time.

It's getting to where a fellow can't enjoy a nice relaxing boot time these days. The latest perpetrator of the conspiracy: Linux application tool vendor MontaVista, which said today that it is demonstrating an embedded Linux system that boots in just one second. MontaVista's Linux demo goes from a cold boot into a sample, "fully operational" vehicle dashboard application in a single second, the company said. It will be showing off the speedy boot performance at the Virtual Freescale Technology Forum this week.