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There's no doubt that Linux is a secure operating system. However, nothing is perfect. Millions of lines of code are churned through the kernel every second and it only takes a single programming mistake to open a door into the operating system. If that line of code happens to face the Internet, that's a backdoor to your server.

Earlier this year, your editor asked a high-profile kernel developer, in a public discussion at a conference, about the seemingly large number of kernel-related security bugs. Was the number of these vulnerabilities of concern, and what was being done about it? The answer that came back was that security issues aren't a huge concern, that most of the reported issues were obscure local exploits requiring the presence of specific hardware. Serious issues, like the vmsplice() vulnerability, are rare.

One of the many questions users who switch from Windows to Linux have is how to compile C/C++ sources and what IDEs (Integrated Development Environment) Linux has to offer. Most of them study C or C++ at school or home and are usually used from Windows with an IDE like Dev-C++ or Code::Blocks.

A video game is helping university students prepare for careers in business and information technology. At the San Mateo IBM Innovation Center on Thursday, San Francisco State University student Andrey Lyubimov played a simulation on a large screen in which he came across various"co-workers" at a call center.

What is the longest you have programmed for in one sitting? 36 hours. Though I work from home, I work more than in my old company. But this is ok, as it offers other advantages.

Finally, an answer you can give your kids when they get up the nerve to ask :) We made it to another weekend (somehow) by working, and/or sleeping and/or both for another 5 days ;) It's time for a joke or two to help us forget the fact that we're on-call all weekend :P

As some of you know, Google released a new browser recently, something calledChrome. The idea is/was to fix everything that is wrong with browsers and make the Web browsers a tool to run applications. As opposed to just viewing Web pages. I'm being a bit silly here, but Chrome is built to be more like an operating system than a plain old browser. There's more but it's all only for Windows users since a Linux version doesn't yet exist. Wait . . . What? Check out this screenhost (click it for a full screen view).

French software firm Mandriva has released a version of its Linux distribution designed for netbooks. Aimed at original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and original design manufacturers (ODMs), Mandriva Mini is a faster booting, smaller footprint version of the Mandriva desktop distribution, says Mandriva.

The nonprofit Linux Foundation (LF), which coordinates an assortment of Linux-oriented standardization efforts and employs key developers such as Linux creator Linus Torvalds, has added to its Web site a gateway toward individual -- as opposed to corporate -- membership. Individuals can join through the site by paying yearly dues, and will get a small voice in Foundation matters in exchange -- plus their choice of T-shirts.

Greg Kroah-Hartman's keynote address at the Linux Plumbers Convention 2008 was officially about the Linux Ecosystem, but started as a direct attack on Ubuntu developer Canonical. He claims that the company contributes next to nothing to kernel development. Ubuntu believes Hartman is being "objectionable" and that his statistical methods were not an "exact science."

Over the past month we have made some major progress on the BSD port of Bordeaux. Bordeaux for FreeBSD now has a .sh installer, the same one that we use on Linux, so you will need to have py-gtk installed for the installer to work properly.

Cisco and VMware announced their new collaboration at VMWorld. Is this a new romantic encounter or were they already secret lovers?

Day four at VMWorld was short for me due to poor planning on my part--my flight out of Las Vegas at noon. I entered the show early yesterday when it was mostly just the vendors hanging around waiting for the hoard to arrive. I walked through the floor with the goal of seeing a couple of vendors I hadn't seen earlier in the show. What I overheard while walking through was a gaggle of buzzwords: Cloud, VDI, Appliances, Infrastructure, Refresh, and numerous TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms).

After nine months, an open secret can finally be acknowledged: The OpenGL code that is responsible for 3-D acceleration on GNU/Linux, which was released by SGI in 1999, has been running on licenses that were accepted by neither the Free Software Foundation (FSF) nor the Open Source Initiative. Today, however, the FSF has announced that the licenses in question, the SGI Free License B and the GLX Public License, have been rewritten after months of negotiation between the FSF and SGI. The problem is now resolved, and the result is a code contribution that the FSF ranks as one of the greatest given to the community by a proprietary company.

After two years in development, VLC, the universal media player, has moved from the 0.8.x versions to version 0.9.2. The release, named "Grishenko", is available for Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and other operating systems, is available to download from the Videolan web site. The most visible new feature in the Windows and Linux versions is a new user interface. The new interface uses Qt4, replacing the previous wxWidgets-based interface as the default interface and allowing for better internationalisation and a richer set of graphical controls.

Since the Power Macintosh G4/466 has enough space for four hard drives, I decided to put a second one in the box. I set the second drive's jumpers to make it a "slave." Then I used an extra IDE cable as an "extension cable" so I could plug the second IDE input from the too-short motherboard cable into the second drive. I booted into Debian Etch, ran the GNOME Partition Editor to create an ext3 filesystem on the backup drive, then mounted it and did a few tests with rsync.

The Open Prosthetics Project (OPP) has applied the"open source" model-long used in developing "community-based" software to the design of inexpensive prosthetic hands and arms that a small demand can still support. The designs are free for anyone to use. A community of engineers, designers and innovators is collaborating online to make better prosthetic hands and arms for amputees. One of the lead engineers lost his own arm in Iraq.

Networking giant Cisco Systems said Friday that will acquire instant-messaging software maker Jabber. Terms of the pending deal were not disclosed. Denver-based Jabber makes an open source instant-messaging software that supports an assortment of devices across a business' IT network.

Digital media files are more useful and accessible when tagged with metadata -- that is, descriptive information about each photo that either can be embedded inside images themselves or stored in external databases. ExifTool is an efficient, flexible, and portable way to manage image, audio, and video metadata under Linux. In this article we'll see how to use ExifTool to manage EXIF data inside JPEG files.

T-Mobile USA has been beefing up its nascent 3G mobile wireless services network, announcing that 3G will be ready to run in 21 markets by the middle of next month and will reach 27 major markets by the end of this year. The company says the planned expansion will deliver T-Mobile 3G services to more than two-thirds of the company's current data customers -- but T-Mobile will continue to expand throughout 2009.