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Firewall Builder GUI has a built-in revision control system that can be used to keep track of changes in the objects and policy rules. If data file has been added to the revision control system, every time it is saved, the system asks the user to enter a comment that describes changes done in the file in this session and stores it along with the data. The program also assigns new revision number to the data file using standard software versioning system whith major and minor version numbers separated by a dot. When you open this data file next time, the program presents a list of revisions alongside with dates and comments, letting you choose which revision you want to use. You can open the latest revision and continue working with the file from the point where you left off last time, or open one of the older revisions to inspect how the configuration looked like in the past and possibly create a branch in the revision control system. Here we take a closer look at the built-in revision control system.

The Mandriva development team today announced a release candidate for its 2009 Spring release, codenamed Pomerol. Release candidate 1 includes KDE 4.2.1, GNOME 2.25.92, Xfce 4.6, X.org server 1.6, OpenOffice.Org 3.0.1 and the brand-new qt 4.5.0. In addition to features such as Speedboot, included in the beta release last month, 2009 Spring RC1 includes the experimental hybrid ISO technology. Hybrid ISO allows users to dump an ISO image to USB storage devices which can be used to boot additional devices such as netbooks.

Linpus - known from their Linpus Linux pre-installed onto Acer Aspire One Netbooks - announced at the CEBIT they've entered into a strategic partnership with Insyde Software - provider of UEFI firmware -, to improve the boot speed & access to the applications of the Linpus Linux version for netbooks.

Where is a location-based application for the Android platform that gives you information on shopping, travel, gas prices, weather and news, just to name a few. It's a well engineered app that has already existed for other platforms and now has been ported to Android.

Featured guest poster - a depressed Henny Youngman: Take my life. Please. :) Yesterday we took a look at the basics of using Veritas/Symantec NetBackup to add a new TLD and drives to your existing machine. Today, we're going to go just one step beyond and assume a fairly commonplace situation, which has somehow, inexplicably arisen from THE SITUATION we found ourselves in yesterday

Georg Greve is the founder of the Free Software Foundation Europe and has served as its president since the beginning in 2001. Marking the eight birthday of the FSFE I asked him some questions on his own background and the history of the FSFE for a special birthday edition of the Fellowship interview series.

Patent and copyright law are stifling innovation and threatening the global economy according to two economists at Washington University in St. Louis in a new book, Against Intellectual Monopoly. Professors Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine call for abolishing the current patent and copyright system in order to unleash innovations necessary to reverse the current recession and rescue the economy. The professors discuss their stand against intellectual property protections in a video and news release linked here.

Tainted Object Propagation is the term defined for using incorrect or invalid inputs to get more than required information from the system and in some cases, taking control of the system. Although this technique is much widely used to misuse web applications and database oriented applications, but this holds true for any API publisher who exposes his API’s to third party application writers.

Microsoft who is already suffering from Netbook makers using the older Windows XP & custom-made distros of Linux, probably won ’t find a remedy with their upcoming Windows 7.

Microsoft is trying to prevent people using and distributing software under the GNU General Public License, a free software license, by forcing cross-patent licensing deals, according to Samba project leader Jeremy Allison. Allison told ZDNet UK that through lawsuits such as the one launched against TomTom, Microsoft was attempting to encourage licensing deals which are proscribed under the GPL.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 was released on February 15th, 2005. This report takes a look at the state of security for the first four years from release. We look at key metrics, specific vulnerabilities, and the most common ways users were affected by security issues. We will show some best practices that could have been used to minimise the impact of the issues, and also take a look at how the included security innovations helped. This report is an update to the three-year risk report published in Red Hat Magazine in February 2007.

Sometimes, a problem can be a good thing and lead you to something that is even better than what is currently taking place. Thus it is that a laptop that wouldn't work with a live CD of sidux did work with SimplyMepis 8 and convinced me to try it on my desktop. This is one problem I am glad I had because it led me to begin using SimplyMepis 8, a Debian based Linux distro that is a joy to use.

Both your money and your medical privacy are going to be gone unless a single sentence law is enacted. No less a source than the Congressional Budget Office (page 16 and 17) is saying that the recent Health Information Technology parts of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 will drive the taxpayer into a $17 billion ditch even after 10 years. That's right, the taxpayer will be paying $30 billion to LOSE $17 billion after 10 years with no break-even point even mentioned. Remember that national 'investment' in Health Information Technology is going to catapult us into Health care nirvana in which your data and privacy are secure and the health care system in the United States hums along like a well oiled Internet resulting with all of these great cost reductions and efficiencies? All we really have to do is just spend money on the problem and it will be solved. We need to 'incentivize adoption' of health care technology and all will be well. The law as written will achieve anything but that. A single sentence could change that.

VirtualBox is a family of powerful x86 virtualization products for enterprise as well as home use. Not only is VirtualBox an extremely feature rich, high performance product for enterprise customers, it is also the only professional solution that is freely available as Open Source Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL).

One thing common among all these modems is that they do not provide secure access like Secure Shell (ssh) as all they provide is ftp/telnet/http etc which are all clear text protocols. Hence, it is a huge security risk to expose these interfaces to the internet and then access them from outside.

This article describes Puppy Linux, a flexible, fast distribution that's always a favorite among DesktopLinux readers. Author Dave Dibble briefly reviews MiPup2, one of many ready-made Puppy "puplets," and updates us on Puppy's current state and planned new features. As background, "puplets" are custom builds of Puppy that are shared with the Puppy community. Some, like "TeenPup," apparently take hundreds of hours to create. Others, like Muppy, have been years in the making!

Benjamin Franklin: scientist, scholar, statesman, and . . . systems administrator? Yes, 200 years or so before the birth of UNIX®, Franklin scribed sage advice to keep systems humming. Here are 10 of Franklin's more notable tips.

The vast majority of Linux users would never be satisfied without access to a graphical user interface. However, even in 2009 there remain many reasons why console based applications can be extremely desirable. Although console applications are very useful for updating, configuring, and repairing a system, their benefits are not only confined to system administration. Console based applications are light on system resources (very useful on low spec machines), can be faster and more efficient than their graphical counterparts, they do not stop working when X needs to be restarted, and are great for scripting purposes. So what can users do with the command-line? There is a wide range of console based software which performs the same or similar functions to their graphical equivalents, even in the field of multimedia.

One of the intriguing battles I have been watching over the past couple of months is a silent battle between Sun Microsystems and Red Hat. I say silent because it is being played out deep inside the New York Stock Exchange and, unless you're actively watching, you'll have missed the tussle. At the same time it is an fascinating battle that represents many things: the old versus the new, Linux versus Unix and investor sentiment.

Have you seen the Debian XFCE-LXDE distribution? Well, you should, it's awesome!