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Software developers are racing to patch a recently discovered vulnerability that allows attackers to recover the plaintext of authentication cookies and other encrypted data as they travel over the Internet and other unsecured networks.

The discovery is significant because in many cases it makes it possible for attackers to completely subvert the protection provided by the secure sockets layer and transport layer protocols. Together, SSL, TLS, and a close TLS relative known as Datagram Transport Layer Security are the sole cryptographic means for websites to prove their authenticity and to encrypt data as it travels between end users and Web servers. The so-called "Lucky Thirteen" attacks devised by computer scientists to exploit the weaknesses work against virtually all open-source TLS implementations, and possibly implementations supported by Apple, Microsoft, and Cisco Systems as well.

Dell’s (NASDAQ: DELL) board of directors will reportedly meet this evening (Monday, Feb. 4) to vote on a leverage buyout that may take the company private, Bloomberg reported. Indeed, Silver Lake Management, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) and Michael Dell are expected to to be among Dell’s key investors. Among the potential concerns for channel partners: Will Microsoft’s potential stake in Dell allow the software giant to dictate the types of software Dell offers to mobile, desktop, server and cloud partners?

Wait a minutes, did I just write that the patch addressed 50 security holes? I’ve got a five pound block of Swiss cheese in the fridge that has fewer holes than that. I think if I was Larry Ellison I would be ashamed to admit I’d allowed that many security vulnerabilities to accrue unfixed while any project was under my care. I think I’d fix ten a day or something in five separate patches and try to make it look like I had my security eagles working overtime finding new holes ahead of the bad guys.

PCLinuxOS is an "old standard" Linux distribution. Although it doesn't seem to have been getting as much attention recently it still seems to have a significant number of very loyal followers.

All the cool kids are already doing it … even Microsoft The GNOME project, developers of the GNOME desktop for Linux, has decided JavaScript will be the only “first class” language it will recommend for developers cooking up new apps for the platform.…

Over the past few months there's been several Phoronix articles about Wine-Mono, a fork of Mono and a Win32 build of this open-source Microsoft .NET implementation for Wine. Wine-Mono can be used in place of Microsoft's official .NET framework when it's needed as a dependency for Windows programs running within Wine. Unfortunately, Wine-Mono doesn't always work out well...

At the GNOME Developer Experience Hackfest last week in Brussels, GNOME developers decided to recommend JavaScript as the new language for writing GNOME applications...

It's been a long time coming, but the Btrfs file-system now finally supports RAID 5 and RAID 6 configurations for the next-generation Linux file-system...

The AArch64 back-end to LLVM that provides support for the compiler infrastructure to target ARMv8 64-bit hardware, is now enabled within the default build...

Like Acer's C7, HP's Chromebook is a lightly modified version of one of its low-end Windows laptops, the HP Pavilion Sleekbook 14-b010us. That laptop includes a Windows license and several upgraded components, but the body and build quality of both should be more or less identical. Despite this similarity, don't expect to be able to buy the Chromebook version and put your own Windows license on it—while a version of Ubuntu has been made that is compatible with Chromebooks' locked-down bootloaders, installing alternate operating systems on the computers is a non-trivial undertaking.

The polls are closed and the results for the 2012 LinuxQuestions.org Members Choice Awards are in. Debian, Android, Raspberry Pi and LibreOffice are among the winners. The Members Choice Awards allow members of the Linux community to choose their favorite products in a variety of categories including Mobile Distribution of the Year, Server Distribution of the Year, Database of the Year, NoSQL Database of the Year and Desktop Environment of the Year. The total number of categories this year was 30.

It was in September of 2010 that the formation of the Document Foundation was announced. It's now two and a half years later, and with the release of LibreOffice 4.0, its not only flourishing, but forging a path independent of its predecessor.

Munich's City Council has criticised the HP study, commissioned by Microsoft, that claims to have identified high costs for Munich's Linux migration. There is no reason to adjust its own, significantly lower figures, said the Council

It's clear iOS and Android rule the roost among developers today, but there are number of promising alternatives on the way or already here including a maturing HTML5 standard and several open source offerings. I run down the options with Telerik's Todd Anglin.

The Free Software Foundation's licensing team has explained what it achieved in 2012 and its plans for 2013 as the FSF's 2013 fundraiser comes to a successful end

The following tutorial will teach Linux users how to jailbreak their Apple iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4/4S, iPad 2/3/4 and iPod Touch 4G/5G devices that run iOS 6 or later.

“Change is inevitable in a progressive society. Change is constant” Benjamin Disraeli 1867. Quite a fitting quote if I say so myself. When I started in systems administration back in the mid 90’s everything was done either remoted in from your desktop, a server, or you plugged a terminal into the back of the server.

Imagine There’s no IDEs. It’s Difficult if You Try.

There was a time when programs were written in text editors. And when competition between C++ vendors was actually fierce. Step into the time travel machine with us in The History of Visual Development Environments as we revisit the evolution and impact of the visual development metaphor.

No one who understands the attitude of broadcasters in general or the history of the corporate culture at CBS in particular should have been in the least surprised by the brouhaha over this year’s Consumer Electronic Show’s (CES) “Best of Show” award.

With Windows 8 stumbling out of the gate and Google's Linux-powered Chromebooks gaining steam, Microsoft needs to dump Windows 8 for Windows 7 on PCs and the sooner the better.