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The critical Java vulnerability that is currently under attack was made possible by an incomplete patch Oracle developers issued last year to fix an earlier security bug, a researcher said.

According to Gowdiak, the latest vulnerability is a holdover from a bug (referred to here as Issue 32) that Security Explorations researchers reported to Oracle in late August. Oracle released a patch for the issue in October but it was incomplete, he said in an e-mail to Ars that was later published to the Bugtraq mailing list.

NetBSD developers have announced the release of pkgsrc-2012Q4, the latest quarterly release of the package management system used by many BSD operating systems and other Unix-like platforms. This latest release also marks fifteen years that this open-source "package source" program has been around...

Last year UBO and TBO for the Radeon R600 Gallium3D driver was talked about and early patches proposed, but merged on Friday was finally this support for Uniform Buffer Objects and Texture Buffer Objects. With the OpenGL UBO/TBO support, the Radeon R600g driver is now advertising GLSL 1.40 as needed for OpenGL 3.1 compliance...

Here is a small tip on how to determine OS of the remote computer using nmap command. This can be quite handy if you are trying to create inventory list of your LAN hosts or you simply do not know what is running behind certain local or remote IP address and you need some hints. Using nmap for this kind of job does not mean that you will be able to identify remote OS with 100% accuracy but nmap will certainly provide you with some quite solid educated guess.

Back in June last year, Techdirt reported on the warning from the World Health Organization's Director-General that we risked entering a "post-antibiotic era". That was in part because the current patent system was not encouraging the right kind of research by pharma companies in order to develop the new antibiotics that we desperately need.

Stephan Kinsella points out that the World Economic Forum's 8th Global Risks Report (pdf), based on a survey of over 1,000 experts worldwide, has singled out precisely the same issue as one of the most serious facing humanity today: Those experts also offered their views on why they thought this worrying situation had come about. Their answer turned out to be the same as the key problem outlined in the earlier Techdirt story -- the failure of patents to encourage the development of drugs that maximized public health rather than private profits:

Of course, the reason for doing this was not to make their subscribers happier but rather to attempt to force Google to pay them more money for carrying their traffic. It was related to the story we just had about France Telecom degrading YouTube performance. Both were examples of these French companies effectively seeking to break basic end-to-end principles of the internet, in an effort to get Google to pay more, since Google is so popular. As we've noted, some European telcos have been desperately trying to make the argument that successful internet companies should pay them more money to carry their traffic.

In the week ending 12 January - Systemd 197, Open webOS ported to the Nexus 7, NASA open source project slowed by commercial vendor, VMware stakes IP claim on Vert.x and Compiz lead developer sees no future under Wayland

Microsoft's Open Technologies company has put together a "VM Depot" of preprepared virtual machines for the Microsoft Azure cloud, composed of free and open source software

OUYA and Kill Screen have announced a programming competition with prizes totalling $45,000; they are hoping it will interest game developers in the new console

Many old-school IT guys scoff that consumerization is the flavor of the month, but in truth, the way we use computers has fundamentally changed -- and IT needs to embrace that or get left behind.

Watson, IBM's Jeopardy-contestant supercomputer, showed the world that, with the right programming, any puny human could be bested in a mildly snooty game show that handed out answers and asked for questions. However, the quest for true artificial intelligence is still ongoing.

So, in the interest of science, the whole of human knowledge (Internet Edition™) was dropped into Watson's brain and then... the problems began.

The specs say it’s packed with power, but has CompuLab truly delivered an intense product in such a small package?

So far from being a full review I decided to talk to you a little about Organ Trail a recently release Indie Game from Hats Productions now that I have been able to get some hands on time with it.

Is a Linux-powered rifle the first step to developing truly safer firearms?

The week we look at the ABCs of enterprise SaaS, why open source documentation sucks and top 10 IT influencers.

The year started with an exciting and technically sophisticated title - Oil Rush. Unigine, a Russian software company behind the game, has been a big supporter of the Linux platform for a long time now. With Oil Rush the company has published the first game based on its own cross-platform engine. Originally, the company was specialized in complex 3D benchmark software. Maybe the most comprehensive Unigine's benchmark is Heaven - a beautiful and very demanding graphics benchmark that supports OpenGL 4.0.

It looks like just about everyone is seeing the light (and the return on investment) when it comes to OpenStack, the open source cloud platform. Mirantis, one of the largest systems integrators focused on OpenStack, just announced it has raised $10 million in growth capital financing from Dell Ventures, Intel Capital and WestSummit Capital. The influx of cash is intended to help Mirantis accelerate its growth in its OpenStack cloud business.

Amid the virtualization war between VMware and Microsoft, The VAR Guy continues to wonder: Can Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, based on the KVM open source platform, battle its way into a leadership position? The question is especially timely as Red Hat partners gather in San Diego for a major conference.

There is more interest in Linux than ever, and it's not always obvious to new users where to get started. Using Linux is just like using Mac or Windows-- with a pointy-clicky graphical interface. No big deal there, and Linux supplies the added bonus of an extremely powerful command-line interface, which is far more sophisticated and capable than the CLI in Max OS X and Microsoft Windows. You don't have to use it, it's there for anyone who wants it, and it isn't a big deal to learn it.

Earlier this week, reports surfaced that the Windows RT operating system had been jailbroken to allow for the execution of unsigned ARM desktop applications. Microsoft quickly issued a statement saying it does not consider the findings to be part of a security vulnerability, and applauded the hacker for his ingenuity. Now, an enthusiast over at XDA Developers by the name of netham45 has released a Windows RT Jailbreak tool.