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You're putting out system management fires, with five SSH sessions open on your desktop. The mail server needs a restart after that kernel patch, so you su to root and type reboot. Just as the connection closes, your brain catches up with your fingertips. The mail server's still up -- the system you rebooted was the firewall at the site 200 miles away. The firewall on which 50 users rely. The firewall that refuses to reboot without a cold reset. What do you do?

Microsoft is getting an earful from Open Source developers in the wake of the Windows' giant's first 100% Open Source release to SourceForge.

A Linux desktop should play to its strengths and not try to be a Windows clone in an attempt to replace Microsoft, according to Novell's Linux business strategist.

The usually simmering debate about open-source versus closed-source recently boiled over, following the leak of Microsoft Windows source code on the Internet. And it boiled over here too. After I wrote a column for one of PC Magazine's sister sites about the Windows source code leak and what it might reveal about the value of closed-source code as a security technique, 95 percent of the responses said that I didn't get the point: Open-source, being open, gets a better code review. Anyone can get the source, look at it, and find problems in it.

Applied Micro Circuits Corporation (AMCC) [NASDAQ: AMCC], today announced the availability of the new 3ware 9000 Series of hardware RAID controllers. The 3ware 9000 Series enables a completely new class of SATA RAID storage solutions for all mid-range to high-end Linux servers. The new controllers are available to OEMs, VARs, and system integrators in 12, 8, and 4-port configurations worldwide. The controllers will be on display at Real World Linux 2004 April 14-15 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre in booth 409.

Greuff of VOID.AT discovered various format string vulnerabilities in the error output handling routines of the Neon HTTP and WebDAV client library. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) project assigned the id CAN-2004-0179 to the problem.

According to a vendor security advisory based on hints from Stefan Esser and Jonathan Heussser, several vulnerabilities of various types exist in the Ethereal network protocol analyzer. Namely, it may be possible to make Ethereal crash or run arbitrary code by injecting a purposefully malformed packet onto the wire, by convincing someone to read a malformed packet trace file, or by creating a malformed color filter file.

If you've a yen to take the new SuSE Desktop exams, or to win a trip for two to LinuxWorld Expo in San Francisco, then you might want to consider heading on down to the French Quarter of New Orleans at the end of next month, and attending the First Annual Club LUG Conference, being hosted by Linux Professional Institute – US.

The government and military, said Dr. Inder Sing, chairman and CEO of LynuxWorks, are "employing prevention and 'defense in depth' to ensure the highest level of security." In other words, he argued, exploitable flaws are eliminated at each stage of the system design process.

Corel has finally shipped a Linux-native WordPerfect for Linux proof-of-concept. My understanding of this event is that if enough people show interest in the WordPerfect on Linux product, Corel will develop it further and we might see a full-scale commercial-grade word processor competing with the only 'real' choice we have at the moment - OpenOffice.org.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux v.3 has been certified by the Free Standards Group as meeting the specifications for the internationalised runtime environment set down by the Linux Standard Base project. The LSB is a community effort to standardise the elements of Linux-based operating systems so that independent software vendors can support all Linux-based operating systems.

Editor's note:: Because Sun Microsystems and Microsoft are making news as newfound "partners" and both will be embracing scripting languages in Web services run by Java and .NET, the open source Python suddenly takes on added strategic significance. Our colleague at Open Enterprise Trends spoke with Alex Martelli, author of two O'Reilly Associates books on Python in the enterprise -- "Python in a Nutshell" and "Python Cookbook."

Every IT trade show needs a theme, and it's usually not the one advertised in the brochure. It's reflected either in the kinds of products in the exhibit hall or the buzz you hear in the conference tracks. Comdex Fall 1998, for example, was all about biometric security devices. By 2002, it was the year of the tablet PC. This year's Real World Linux show in Toronto confirmed open source on the desktop as the industry's latest Holy Grail, and boy, are the hopes high.

zen-parse discovered a buffer overflow vulnerability in the ISO9660 filesystem component of Linux kernel which could be abused by an attacker to gain unauthorised root access. Sebastian Krahmer and Ernie Petrides developed a correction for this.

The third and final day of the Real World Linux 2004 conference saw a number of valuable technical sessions and two interesting keynote speeches, one from IBM Canada president Ed Kilroy and the other from Linux International director Jon 'maddog' Hall.

Home appliances giant Samsung Electronics is leaning towards using Linux as the major operating system in its products. A Samsung official on Friday said the company will increase the number of Linux-based items and developers to adopt Linux as a strategic operating system.

Embed the open source Linux operating system within a microprocessor and what do you get? For IST project ACEOS it led to demonstration applications for standard Linux networking and voice telecommunications.

Arizona-based Carefx Corporation today announced a strategic deal with Linux software provider Novell that aims to help healthcare organizations simplify and improve caregivers' access to clinical information, according to a company statement. Novell teams their 'single sign-on' Linux platform with Carefx's standards-based healthcare solution.

Sun Microsystems, still smarting from yet another poor financial quarter -- a $760 million loss in fiscal Q3 -- Friday announced some good news: the general availability of the first J2EE 1.4-compliant standard application server. The new server follows two key Sun development product releases in the last two weeks: the open source NetBeans 3.6 and the graphical Java Studio Creator IDE.

Advice for installing and choosing fonts in OpenOffice.org.