Linux in the news
Recommended Reading
Report: Attacks on ISP Nets Intensifying (Dark Reading)
Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks are growing more frequent and more potent according to a survey covered by Dark Reading. "Nearly 60 percent of the ISPs in the survey said less than 10 attacks on their infrastructure per month actually affect their customers, and nearly 20 percent say anywhere from 10- to 100 of attacks do. Arbor expects that number to increase as more ISPs offer managed DDOS mitigation services, where ISPs more actively track attacks that affect their customers rather than relying on them to report problems."
13 reasons why Linux won't make it to a desktop near you (DesktopLinux.com)
DesktopLinux.com has published a guest column by Australian technology marketing consultant Kim Brebach on the spread of Linux to the average user's desktop. "Linux is a beautiful woman of enormous intelligence. Linux is a precocious child with very bad manners. Linux is a teenager who needs patience and understanding. Linux is a sullen geek who refuses to speak to ordinary people. All these statements are true and explain why the messages Linux sends to the market tend to be as incoherent as the utterances of George Bush or Phillip Ruddock."
Trade Shows and Conferences
Windows Developers meet in Berlin (KDE.News)
KDE.News covers the recent KDE on Windows meeting. "On Friday evening, the participants were welcomed by the Berlin Trolls and introduced to the office. After a nice meal at a local restaurant, the group evaluated the main working areas of the participants and created a meeting roadmap. Saturday started with discussions about Ralf Habacker's installer, the autobuild system by Patrick Spendrin and Holger Schröder's emerge scripts. The KDE installer will be used by users to install KDE components and application on their computers."
Linux World China 2007 and Software Freedom Day preview (ZDNet)
Peter Junge covers Linux World China 2007 on ZDNet Asia. "First of all, on the sponsors' list was a big surprise: Microsoft. I asked myself what could be their intention? But that's a difficult question to answer, and looking at their booth in the exhibition hall did not help much. Their exhibits hardly had any relation to Linux, not even to open source in general, only showing a selection of well-known business software such as SQL Server. It seems like they wanted to reach customers wherever they could get them, obviously ignoring the purpose of the event."
The SCO Problem
Media coverage since the August 10th SCO ruling (Groklaw)
Groklaw presents a collection of links to recent media articles on the SCO case. "Part of what Groklaw is doing is making an historical record of the SCO litigation. Since the August 10th ruling by Judge Dale Kimball that found that Novell did not transfer the Unix and UnixWare copyrights to Santa Cruz Operation in the 1995 Asset Purchase Agreement, there has been a flurry of media coverage. For the record, then, I thought it might be useful to collect it all in one place and just for interest's sake put it in a table along with the stock price on the day the coverage appeared. Some of it is very good. Some of it is quite funny. My favorite is the headline, "Linux Users Uneasy at Ruling." Was that between the dancing and the whoops?"
SCO Group files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy (Reuters)
Reuters has a brief article stating that the SCO Group has filed for bankruptcy protection. It's a chapter 11 filing, meaning they want to reorganize and keep going. Update: here's the company's press release announcing the filing.[SCO] Bankruptcy Hearing on Tuesday (Lamlaw)
For those of us who are not deeply familiar with how U.S. bankruptcy law works, this Lamlaw article on the upcoming SCO bankruptcy hearing will make interesting reading. "Now is the time for IBM, Novell, Red Hat and anyone else who wants to speak up to petition the court to deny SCO motions to continue as normal and instead appoint a trustee that they can agree with rather than the current SCO management. In other words, IBM, Novell, Red Hat or all of them can petition the bankruptcy court to throw current SCO management out on their ear. Or, at least appoint a trustee in bankruptcy that will not eat the chickens."
Companies
iPod Linux lock-out defeated (PC Pro)
PC Pro reports on Apple's recent attempt to lock out iPod users who don't run iTunes. An SHA1 hash was added to the files stored on the device and if it didn't match, no songs were listed. The folks at ipodsminusitunes figured out the information needed to calculate the hash in just a few days. "'Let's all hope that (if they haven't already from the iPhone unlocking) Apple learn that fighting against us is pointless,' Will, the ipodminusitunes blogger, writes. 'It's a waste of their time if the open-source crowd is going to get past it in just a weekend.'"
Dell produces customized Ubuntu Linux for customers (DesktopLinux)
DesktopLinux reports that Dell is making remastered Ubuntu 7.04 CD and DVD ISOs available for download. "According to John Hull, Linux OS engineering manager for Dell, based in Round Rock, Texas, these images are intended to "help with installing the OS on the Inspiron 1420 and 530. This media includes the drivers and fixes necessary to get the OS up and running with supported hardware on those systems." In addition, the ISO images will work with the Dell Inspiron E1505n."
Ubuntu comes knocking on Oracle's door (vnunet)
vnunet reports on Canonical's courting of Oracle. "Canonical has stated that its Ubuntu Server needs increased support from independent software vendors and system builders. "The acid test for Ubuntu Server is Oracle," Canonical chief executive Mark Shuttleworth told vnunet.com in an interview at the VMworld 2007 conference in San Francisco. Ubuntu is best known for its desktop Linux distribution which Dell ships on its consumer Linux desktop PCs, but the group is seeing increasing interest in its server version that was launched in 2005. Certification for third-party applications such as Oracle's database is considered critical for the continued growth of Canonical's support services."
Legal
Microsoft Loses European Appeal (Wired)
Microsoft has lost its appeal of the European Union antitrust verdict, as this Wired article describes. They have two months to decide whether to appeal the decision, which requires them to pay a $613 million dollar fine, stop bundling windows media player, and open up their server protocols to others. The Free Software Foundation Europe has a press release hailing the decision as a boon for Samba. "The EU Court of First Instance ruled against Microsoft Corp. on both major parts of the case, saying the European Commission was correct in concluding that the company was guilty of monopoly abuse in trying to use its power over desktop computers to muscle into server software."
Resources
Loop-based Music Composition With Linux, Pt. 1 (Linux Journal)
Dave Phillips looks at Linux audio applications that include powerful tools for loop manipulation. "Loop-based music composition is the practice of sequencing audio samples to create the various parts of a musical work. A sample may contain only a single event such as a bass note or cymbal crash or it may contain a measured pattern of events such as a drum beat, a guitar chord progression, or even an entire piece of music. The former type is sometimes referred to as a "one-shot" sample, while a longer sampled pattern is often simply called a loop."
Miscellaneous
Maynor Releases Apple Wireless Bug Code (Dark Reading)
More than a year after the 'demonstration' at Black Hat 2006, David Maynor has released proof-of-concept code for an attack exploiting the vulnerability. Dark Reading covers the release. "David Maynor, CTO of Errata Security -- who with researcher Jon Ellch, a.k.a. johnnycache, faced a firestorm of criticism from Mac enthusiasts and some researchers for their demo last year -- today published a formal paper for the online researcher journal Uninformed in which he releases proof-of-concept code showing how the bug could be exploited. Maynor also explains in detail how he inadvertently found the heap buffer overflow bug in the OS X Atheros wireless device driver while fuzzing other wireless notebook machines."
Inspiration: Pass It On (O'ReillyNet)
Gabrielle Roth writes this Women in Technology article. "What I do know is that women will not stay involved when they are deliberately shoved aside, like a story I heard recently about a woman being approached at a conference booth and asked "Is there a guy around who can answer my question?" (My response to that would be "Why? Do you need a guy to tell you you're a jackass?" which I acknowledge is not conducive to continuing the dialogue.) Here's how to fix this, taken directly from my own experience at OSCON 2007: one of the guys at the booth asked me if I was answering my fair share of questions, and when I said, "Not really," we came up with the solution that the men at the booth would turn over certain questions to me and then walk away, leaving the questioner with no choice but to talk to me. This also required a bit of effort on my part to get over my shyness in social situations, but it worked fabulously."
From Princess to Goddess: Female Success in IT (O'ReillyNet)
Molly Holzschlag writes this article from O'Reilly's Women in Technology series. "Ridiculous as it may sound, my experiences as an emotional, sometimes hysterical, highly paid, and astonishingly well-liked female in IT are perhaps somewhat unique. Now, don't get me wrong, I've met my fair share of gender (and other) bias, but I am certain that strong, authentic voices that steer clear of power plays and agenda-wars can actually skyrocket a woman's career rather than harm it. It's common knowledge that the IT workforce has been male-dominated for most of its life. However, this is clearly beginning to change as more women start careers in some aspect of either computer science or in the larger, more integrated world of the Web."
Thanking our own heaven on OneWebDay (Linux Journal)
Doc Searls celebrates OneWebDay. "Today (22 September) is OneWebDay, a project I'm proud to have been a part of since Susan Crawford thought it up many months before the first one last year. OneWebDay is meant as a day on which we celebrate the Web and what it does for each of us. So I want to celebrate what the Web does, and continues to do, for me as a journalist."
Page editor: Forrest Cook
Next page:
Announcements>>