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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.

When the Homeland Security folks get into the mix and urge all computer users to disable Java in their browsers, you know it’s serious. Indeed, the exploit announced yesterday seems to affect all operating systems, including Linux, and it’s already being exploited. According to Trend Micro the flaw is already being used by blackhat toolkits mainly to distribute ransomware. In a blog posted yesterday, the company advises all users to disable or uninstall Java:

A Google Chromebook has arrived at my doorstep. Starting now, I will live on the cloud-centric notebook (running Google’s Chrome OS) for 30 days. Why should Google partners, businesses and consumers care about this niche (but promising) form factor? Here are 10 points I hope to cover during his real-world, month-long review.

Rather, it’s main purpose is as a control and informational device, kinda like a modern-day remote control, aside from also being a traditional, but cooler wrist watch. I said “cooler,” because Pebble is a thing of beauty, both from a geek’s and end-user’s standpoint.

I was at LISA to present a paper I had written as part of my Ph.D. studies, but LISA is not really what one would consider an "academic" conference. In fact, many of the folks representing universities were from their IT departments, not their faculty. The main focus of the conference is instead on the training sessions and workshops held throughout the week. I was rather concerned that I would have a hard time connecting with anyone at the conference, since I am most definitely an academic, and even lean more towards the developer side than a system administrator.

For years, Jeremy Allison has been one of the better known names in free software development. The lead developer of Samba's implementation of the SMB file server protocol, he is also generally credited as the project's co-creator. True, he jokes that description means that "Tridg [Andrew Tridgell] did all the hard bits, but I was there," and claims not to be current with all aspects of the project -- yet, all the same, few have more of an overview of Samba. Recently, Allison took time to give his personal view of the challenges involved in the recent Samba 4.0 release, and of the directions in which Samba might be heading next.

New year and new challenges. One of them I just realized :) SparkyLinux 2.1 rc “Eris” Ultra Edition has been released. It’s well known SparkyLinux 2.0 “Eris” but with new, ultra lightweight two desktops: Fluxbox and Openbox. SparkyLinux e17/LXDE is light for sure, but the “Ultra” Edition is even lighter.

This tutorial will demonstrate how to create your first Android application, setup Android development environment and it is based on Eclipse 4.2 (Juno), Java 1.6 and Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean). All examples run on Ubuntu 12.04 but the steps are the same on any environment.

I've got good news and bad news for developers. The good news is you're going to be in greater demand than ever. The bad news is you're going to need learn to develop apps for everything from refrigerators to automobiles -- and in some cases, a lack of standards is going to complicate things, at least for awhile.

Quo Vadis Ubuntu? Is Ubuntu following the same steps that Microsoft and Apple?

And if that is true, is that really an issue?

Veterans Affairs holding contest to upgrade systems The US Department of Veterans Affairs is looking to upgrade the 25-year-old software that powers its nationwide health care system, and it's betting real money that open source is the way to do it.…

Another pre-release for the upcoming CRUX 3.0 is available now. If no serious bugs came up, this image will be released as the final CRUX 3.0.

Elgg v1.8.12, a free PHP based social networking engine, has been released with numerous bugfixes and improvements. Keep your Elgg site running smoothly by upgrading to new version.

Critical Java zero-day bug is being “massively exploited in the wild” (Updated) ( Dan Goodin, Ars Technica) According to researchers at Alienvault Labs, the exploits work against fully patched installations of Java. Attack files are highly obfuscated and are most likely succeeding by bypassing security checks built in to the program. KrebsOnSecurity said the malware authors say the exploits work against all versions of Java 7.

Dangerous vulnerability in latest Java version (sno, The H Security/Heise online) The latest Java version, Java 7 Update 10 contains a critical security vulnerability which is reportedly already being used for large scale cyberattacks. Users who have Java installed on their computers should deactivate the Java plugin in their browsers without delay.

CES is about technology of all kinds; while we're busy covering cameras, TVs, and CPUs, there's a huge number of products that fall outside our normal coverage. Austin-based startup TrackingPoint isn't typical Ars fare, but its use of technology to enable getting just the perfect shot was intriguing enough to get me to stop by and take a look at the company's products.

TrackingPoint makes "Precision Guided Firearms, or "PGFs," which are a series of three heavily customized hunting rifles, ranging from a .300 Winchester Magnum with a 22-inch barrel up to a .338 Lapua Magnum with 27-inch barrel, all fitted with advanced computerized scopes that look like something directly out of The Terminator. Indeed, the comparison to that movie is somewhat apt, because looking through the scope of a Precision Guided Firearm presents you with a collection of data points and numbers, all designed to get a bullet directly from point A to point B.

This howto will show you how to install and set up Rsnapshot, enable archiving of snapshots and how to back up MySQL databases on Debian. Rsnapshot is a filesystem snapshot utility for making backups of local and remote systems. Using rsync and hard links, it is possible to keep multiple, full backups instantly available. The disk space required is just a little more than the space of one full backup, plus incrementals.

Since my mythtv set-up was, for some crazy reason, not allowing me to do a direct download of recorded programming through the mythweb interface, I needed to find an alternate way of snagging those files. I have an ssh server running on my home LAN, so using scp for this seemed like it should work, though I knew it would take a bit of tinkering. Read on to see what sort of tinkering I did and, just as importantly, a way I discovered of resuming the disrupted download.

Michael Creel has announced the release of PelicanHPC 2.9, a Debian-based live DVD that makes it possible to set up high-performance computing clusters in minutes: "PelicanHPC version 2.9 is available. Octave 3.6.3, dynare 4.3.1, some updates to the econometrics stuff, and also the usual sync to Debian. This release is mainly to incorporate package updates from Debian.