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As open source, especially Linux, makes its way into nearly every sector of the economy, one of the final frontiers is the military and aerospace market, where new applications must clear hurdles such as the FAA's rigorous DO-178B certification for aviation software. California-based LynuxWorks, developer of the LynxOS real time operating system and BlueCat Linux embedded distribution, has staked its future on the idea that open source and the military/aerospace market can not only coexist, but thrive together.

Computer code that demonstrates how a known flaw in an older version of the Firefox or Mozilla web browsers can be exploited in a potentially crippling attack was published on the web over the weekend.

The vulnerability was fixed in Firefox 1.0.5, released in July, and in Mozilla Suite 1.7.9, according to Mozilla.

The code was published by Aviv Raff, a developer in Israel. Writing in his blog on Sunday he said: "I think it's been enough time for people to upgrade from v1.0.4 of Firefox." Raff's code doesn't do much harm but he notes that it would be easy to turn it into malicious code that commandeers a vulnerable system.

No matter which Linux distribution you choose, there are at least 10 things you do to properly prepare the operating system for connection to the Internet.

[Ed: Not a bad tutorial, especially if you're coming over from the Windows world. - dcparris]

This is the fourth and final set of my observations based on IBM's recent analyst conference from its Software Group. As I have discussed in my previous articles, SOA (service-oriented architecture) now pervades all of IBM's software offerings. Is this a good thing? Yes. Are there unanswered problems? Yes. I have discussed the former in my previous articles; I will now highlight the latter.

It's been a long, bad year for politicians, petrol prices and proprietary software. But 2005 was an exceptional year for open source software. It really found its feet this year, and I think it also started to cement a new façade that will serve it well for years to come.

[Ed: Interesting insight into what's going on 'Down South' - dcparris]

I recently wrote an article about my new laptop. In that article, I mentioned that suspend to RAM just doesn't seem to work. I had seen this website before about Ubuntu on an Inspiron 9300 and tried the suggestions for getting suspend to work...to no avail. Recently, though, I tried it again and it worked. I don't know what has changed, but suspend works for me now. I did revert back to the xorg ATI drivers rather than the ATI proprietary fglrx drivers, but I tried that before, so I guess the xorg ATI drivers were maybe updated.

  LXer TechMinistry: 13-Dec-05

LXer editor Don Parris considers how ministries of all faiths can help computer users and others through the use of technology.

Digg Story

Internet Explorer users are at least four times as likely to click on Web ads than Firefox users, a German advertising technology company said last week. The company, Adtech, found that during October and November, only 0.11 percent of Firefox users ever clicked on an ad, compared with around 0.5 percent of IE users. The percentage of IE users clicking on ads varied depending on which version of the browser was being used, the company said: from 0.44 percent of version 6.x users to 0.53 percent of version 5.5 users. The survey was based on 1,000 Web sites in Europe that use Adtech's ad server.

[Ed: The interesting story here is the reasoning behind the differences. Oh, and watch out for those pop-up ads that redirect you to a malicious site! - dcparris]

Hi! Here's our latest newsletter for consideration for your publications. Thanks :)

Sample code that exploits a hole in Firefox and could allow a hacker to take control of your machine has been released on the Net. The code targets a known hole in the way the open -source browser processes Javascript. Versions 1.0.4 or earlier are affected - so users are advised the upgrade to the latest version of Firefox, released last month.

New Introscope(R) PowerPack(TM) for Oracle Database Adds Database Performance to End-to-End View of Web Application Transactions

Virtualisation software vendor VMware made two announcements today: the release of its VMware Player and a partnering deal with Mozilla on another free product, Browser Appliance, a virtual machine powered by Mozilla's Firefox web browser.

VMware Player enables users to run, assess and share software in a virtual machine on a PC running Microsoft's Windows OS or Linux.

Invest Northern Ireland, an agency of the UK government, recently funded a whirlwind trip to Northern Ireland by a half dozen journalists in order to show and tell them about Northern Ireland's high-tech industry. In exchange for footing the bill, they hope to see stories favorable to the area to attract not only new high-tech investment, but offshoring work as well. I took advantage of the opportunity to get a better understanding of the state of Linux and free and open source software in Northern Ireland.

Design patterns help users to abstract details at a higher level and better understand architecture. If you are familiar with Gang of Four design patterns and the JavaServer Faces (JSF)framework in general, this article will help you gain insight about the design patterns used in JSF framework, and how they work in-depth.

Probably can't blame this on Microsoft, since it's Fujitsu's design. So here is how it begins: "What exactly is going on at the Tokyo Stock Exchange?

Last month, a computer glitch shut down trading on the exchange, the world's second-largest after the New York Stock Exchange, for almost an entire day. Then last week, a typographical error by the Mizuho Securities brokerage generated a $330 million loss. On Friday, the prime minister demanded corrective steps, and regulators began an investigation. "

We all would love to blow our next paycheck to get the latest hardware. Yet there are ways we can be frugal with our money and get the most out of our Linux box. I decided to explore some of the ways SuSE users can really get the most bang out of their system. These tips can really be used on most any system but I am going to show them in reference to SuSE 10.0 with KDE.

Four months ago a debate on thelkml suggested that support for GCC 2.95 would be around for a long time [story], but a more recent thread suggests otherwise. 2.6 maintainer Andrew Morton put together a small patch to remove support for 2.95, and discussion continued to explore which versions of GCC 3.x should be supported. Andrew explained:

"2.95.x is basically buggered at present. There's one scsi driver which doesn't compile due to weird __VA_ARGS__ tricks and the rather useful scsi/sd.c is currently getting an ICE. None of the new SAS code compiles, due to extensive use of anonymous unions. The V4L guys are very good at exploiting the gcc-2.95.x macro expansion bug (_why_ does each driver need to implement its own debug macros?) and various people keep on sneaking in anonymous unions.

"It's time to give up on it and just drink more coffee or play more tetris or something, I'm afraid."

The Ubuntu Server Team is established to pursue short term, high impact goals for the Ubuntu 6.04 release, such as server hardware testing and kernel quality assurance. Plans are laid for future developments in "Just Works" server setup and operation.

SALT LAKE CITY, Dec. 12 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Altiris, Inc. (Nasdaq: ATRS), a pioneer of IT lifecycle management solutions that reduce the total cost of owning IT resources, today announced that it has been selected by Red Herring magazine as one of the inaugural Red Herring Small Cap 100.

As the release of KDE 3.5 draws near, work is already underway at the Appeal project to integrate 3.5's major changes into the 4.0 series. Subprojects beneath Appeal's umbrella target simplified usability and progressive adjustments to the graphical user interface: The Tenor and Plasma projects will add functionality, while Oxygen and Coolness will enhance visual freshness.