Showing all newswire headlines

May 2006 (#126):
# The Mailbag, by Kat Tanaka Okopnik
# News Bytes, by Howard Dyckoff
# Preventing DDoS attacks, by Blessen Cherian and Ben Okopnik
# Away Mission -- SDWest 2006, by Howard Dyckoff
# From Assembler to COBOL with the Aid of Open Source, by Edgar Howell
# Plotting time series data with Gnuplot, by Ron Peterson
# Digging More Secure Tunnels with IPsec, by René Pfeiffer
# Column: IT's Enough To Drive You Crazy, by Pete Savage
# HelpDex, by Shane Collinge
# The Linux Launderette

[ Sorry, I messed up the layout. Fixed it! - hkwint ]

<i>VOIP for Dummies</i> gets down to the nuts and bolts of VoIP, the hottest thing since the telephone. It is a good introduction for IT professonals and business people but don't expect too much for end-users.

Community has always played a central role in the Open Source landscape, and the term 'community' is bandied around almost as much as 'Web 2.0'. Unfortunately, as with 'Web 2.0', the term 'community' has become a vague descriptor for a collection of principles that represent similar things. As more and more disparate groups and organisations make use of any definition, meaning tends to be blurred by the exceptions to the rule.

"If you don't program, you may end up wondering why you should use free-software. Why not just buy Mac OSX and Microsoft word? Well, let us look at the potential negative consequences for choosing proprietary software. If you have used proprietary software at all, you have probably run into one or more of these problems that free software eliminates for you."

In a low-key announcement last week Microsoft South Africa launched Windows XP Starter Edition into the African market. Billed as a low-cost, "full-featured" alternative to XP, Starter Edition is little more than a stripped down version of XP with a smattering of marketing gloss. Alastair Otter suggests African-style wallpapers and bigger icons hardly make up for not being able to open more than three applications at once or the lack of networking capabilities.

[All I can say is, we don't treat people that way here (in the FOSS community). - dcparris]

A recent report by Russian cyber security outfit Kaspersky Labs says Linux saw the largest gains in malware, viruses and other malicious software targeting the operating system, compared to other non-Windows, Unix-based operating systems. Statistics from the report - titled "2005: *nix Malware Evolution" - show that there were 863 malicious programs targeting Linux in 2005, a jump from 422 in 2004.

Xandros Inc., a leading Linux desktop distributor, took its time but after almost two years, the company finally launched its server operating system, Xandros Server, on April 25 at the LinuxWorld Toronto. Rather than try to take on the likes of Red Hat's RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) or Novell's SLES (SUSE Linux Enterprise Server) head-on, Xandros is positioning its new server for SMBs (small-to-medium businesses) that want to cut down their Windows server management costs.

The six month voting window for ISO/IEC adoption of the OASIS OpenDocument Format (ODF) standard closed on May 1, and at midnight (Geneva time) last night it was announced internally that ODF had been approved by the ISO members eligible and interested in casting a vote.

eWeek Labs tested the latest version of Gentoo Linux, 2006.0, which was released in late February. We were impressed by the steps the Gentoo team has taken toward making the system accessible to a broader group of potential users-—principally through the addition of a graphical installer that graces the distribution's new LiveCD installer.

Tonight on The Linux Link Tech Show, episode 138:
We talk to Eli Tomlinson of Gamix.org, an open videogame platform specification
More on Linspire's big announcement and the recent Desktop Linux Summit
Debate on binary drivers in Linux
Typing tutor applications
Kturtle
And much, much more

Be sure to check us out live every Wednesday night at 8:30 PM, EDT
Just point your favorite media player to any of the following streams:
http://www.binrev.com:8000/main
http://media.sysop.ca:8000/techshow
http://wdsmn.com:8000/techshow


You can also check out previous episodes from the download section of our home page

Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.3 has been released. This update fixes a publicly disclosed denial of service weakness. All users are encouraged to upgrade to this version.

The bugfixes previously planned for Firefox 1.5.0.3 were shifted to 1.5.0.4, and a quick update was released shortly after the recent 1.5.0.2 release to address the publicly reported issue.

Coverity, Inc., makers of the world's most advanced and scalable source code analysis solution, today announced that as a result of their contract with US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the biggest X Window System security vulnerability of the last six years was identified and fixed.

Gartner has said Windows Vista is unlikely to ship before the second quarter of 2007, pegging it for launch in April next year, with "broad availability" not expected until at least the second quarter. For good measure, Gartner noted that Microsoft "consistently misses target dates for major operating system releases."

Virtual Open Source Open-Xchange For Debian On VMware Can Lead To Fast And Easy Deployment

Almost everyone has heard about wardriving, the geek sport in which you drive around and see what wireless access points (WAP) you can find and access. Because of the ink wardriving has received over the years, many home and business users have wised up and added security to their WAPs. But how about the busy traveler, the exec at Marriott, or the slacker at Starbucks? Do they take that same level of care with wireless security while they're on the road and seduced by the easy availability of Wi-Fi hotspots? Probably not, but they should. Here are three simple assumptions you should make before taking your wireless laptop on the road.

The final release of Vim 7 is just around the corner, and it brings a number of new features to the venerable editor, including spell checking, omni completion for several programming and markup languages, tab pages, undo branches, and several other features that are worth upgrading for.

[Gee, why use Vim when you can have a complete OS (EMACS)? - just kidding. This sounds really nice. Time to ditch v6. - dcparris]

New Napster.com Allows Free, Legal Listening to Over Two Million Tracks; Offers Exclusive New Ways to Discover, Share and Experience Music Anywhere on the Web

[You knew there would be a catch, didn't you? - dcparris]

Open source software, and particularly Linux, is becoming a fundamental aspect of services portfolios for IBM Global Services, HP Services, Unisys, Novell and other major services providers.

Some say open source software is not worth using. Some say it will save the world. Setting aside the religious hype, open source software raises a serious technical question: Is it appropriate for enterprise use?