Showing all newswire headlines

Computerworld - Microsoft on Friday warned users that a critical bug in ASP.Net could be exploited by attackers to hijack encrypted Web sessions and pilfer usernames and passwords from Web sites. The vulnerability went public that same day when a pair of researchers outlined the bug and attack techniques at the Ekoparty Security Conference in Buenos Aires. According to Microsoft's advisory, the flaw exists in all versions of ASP.Net, the company's Web application framework used to craft millions of sites and applications. Microsoft will have to patch every supported version of Windows, from XP Service Pack 3 and Server 2003 to Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2, as well as other products, including its IIS and SharePoint server software.

A press release dated September 11 came to the community's attention Monday, September 13 of the renaming or, as some reported, a fork of sidux to aptosid. Due to conflicts with the commercial backer of the Debian-based distribution, sidux developers have separated themselves from the Sidux e.V. association to continue developing aptosid on their own.

It's a pity Luca Barbieri or any Mesa / Gallium3D developers are not at Oktoberfest as they are deserving of more than a few Maß of Augustiner. In fact, today a new Gallium3D state tracker was pushed into Mesa and it's perhaps the most interesting state tracker for this open-source graphics driver architecture yet. It's a state tracker that exposes Microsoft's DirectX 10/11 API on Linux! And it's already working and can be hooked into Wine!

Mozilla has released a JavaScript engine strictly for testing purposes to allow web developers to gain deeper access to – and better understanding of – the code underpinning its browser. The Narcissus engine and Zaphod script look-up tool have been added to Mozilla Labs to help the open source outfit develop new ideas for the JavaScript language.

GNU founder and free software mouthpiece Richard Stallman reportedly gatecrashed a European Patent Office meeting in Brisbane, Australia today. Stallman, who is in Oz to talk at the World Computer Congress, turned up with a placard that read: "Don't get caught in software patent thickets," reported iTnews. European patent officer Ralf Abbing, who during his presentation spoke about computer tech and how it relates to Intellectual Property issues, was briefly interrupted by Stallman.

Last week in Toulouse I learned just how much interest Intel has in Wayland and the active role they are playing in its development. Wayland and related work to bring it up is not limited to just Kristian Høgsberg, who switched from being a Red Hat employee to Intel during Wayland's development, but Jesse Barnes and other Intel OSTC X developers are also contributing to different areas. Jesse Barnes has been working on the Qt support within Wayland and that's hit a new milestone.

HP announced a multifunction inkjet printer that incorporates a seven-inch, detachable Android-based tablet. Based on the HP All-in-One printer, the HP Photosmart eStation All-in-One adds web browsing, Barnes & Noble eBookstore integration, and access to HP print apps and widgets via the integrated, removable Android touchscreen, all for only $399, says the company.

Procedure bellow fixes hidden issue in recently developed xen-4.0.1_21326_01-1.1.src.rpm. It removes error “xen be core: xen be core: can’t open gnttab device” in corresponding /var/log/xen log file during attempt to run virt-install for PV Guest in VNC mode or attempt to run python installation profile referencing VFB for domains of same kind.

This is a guide containing the most popular and useful ways of using the APT and DPKG commands, and it applies to both Ubuntu and Debian (and their derivatives). I mentioned where super user privileges are required, the ones without a mention can be executed as normal user. If you're using Ubuntu, precede a command with sudo in order to gain root privileges (and enter your user password); on Debian, type su, enter the root password, and then type in the commands as shown below.

Yesterday Julie Bort wrote in the NetworkWorld site an interesting post called “Cisco doesn’t contribute nearly enough to open source”, where she contends that “”[despite its] .. proclaims it responsible for a half percent of the contributions to the Linux kernel (0.5%). In reality, Cisco has been a near non-entity as an open source contributor”. Of course the author is right in its claims – the amount of contributed code to the Linux kernel is substantial but very “vertical”, and specific to the needs of Cisco as a Linux adopter.

Oracle has promised to continue developing the community edition of MySQL. But you'd better like the architecture and customers that Oracle is targeting. On Sunday, the database giant's chief architect, Edward Screven, committed Oracle to making not only the enterprise edition of MySQL better but also the community version licensed under the GPL. Backing Screven, Oracle announced the general availability of MySQL 5.5 with a raft of performance improvements on Linux as well as Window, saying that Windows support had been lagging. Final product is due before the end of the year.

Ever since Oracle introduced its Unbreakable Linux support program in late 2006 there have been doubts about whether the company could continue to maintain compatibility with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Doubts have increased recently following Red Hat’s decision to cut support for Xen in favour of the KVM virtualization technologies it acquired along with Qumranet, while Oracle remains committed to Xen.

Although the actual documentation you get with many open source applications and platforms can feel paltry compared to what you get with proprietary alternatives, many book authors have served up free, online books on open source topics. We round these up on a regular basis here at OStatic, and in this post you'll find seven online books that you can get comfortable with quickly. They introduce essential concepts for getting started with Linux, Firefox, Blender (3D graphics and animation), GIMP (graphics), the OpenOffice suite of productivity applications, and more.

One of the best thing about Gimp is that you can do a wide range of things with It. Today I’ve collected 10 useful GIMP video tutorials for Gimp users.

Enea announced the release of a Linux configuration and build environment integrated with NetLogic Microsystems' Linux software development kit (SDK). Billed as "an intuitive and extensible Linux jump start kit," and free to customers using NetLogic's MIPS-based XLP, XLR, and XLS processors, Enea’s offering is said to incorporate graphical configuration, build, and debug tools.

LXer Feature: 21-Sept-2010

Could things be more exciting in the the world of FOSS right now? Yes it could, but let's not be too hasty..

When it comes to music players, Linux evolved heavily during the last three or four years, and new players are announced on a regular basis. I remember that in 2006, when I was starting up with Linux, there were only a few applications to choose from, like Amarok, Rhythmbox, Listen or XMMS, and a few more less popular and not so full-featured. But times have changed and now the Linux platform benefits from players of all kinds: there are replacements for XMMS for both GNOME and KDE (Audacious and Qmmp), collection-oriented players like Amarok, Banshee, Exaile or Rhythmbox. There are less-known players like Quod Libet, Guayadeque or Jajuk, or the client-server oriented ones like MPD. And the ones I just listed are the only the ones which came to my mind at the moment. Some would say having so many players for a single task is a bad thing, but I say it's not. Having enough options to choose from is a great advantage. If you don't like one style, try the next player, if you don't like its approach either, try the next one, and so on.

RhythmArty plugin for Rhythmbox lets you browse your music collection via an 'Album Art Display', one of the things that has been missing from Rhythmbox for a long time.

As Microsoft slowly breaks old compatibility, and Wine continues to improve Windows compatibility. it seems only a matter of time before some Windows programs run better in Wine than in Windows. Last week, I found my own example.

Who doesn't like quotes especially if it's about Linux and Microsoft. Here are some fascinating, funny, intriguing and totally awesome quotes on technology, Linux and Microsoft.