Mandrake Linux Community Newsletter – Issue #15

This Week’s Summary: Mandrake 8.1 Pre-orders being taken; Mandrake
Cooker Weekly News Highlights; Financial Corner; Spotlight on the
SSSCA; Business Case of the Week; Security-related Software Updates;
Top Headlines from MandrakeForum

Product News
----------------------------------------
Pre-orders are now being accepted for Mandrake 8.1.
There's no need to wait several weeks to enjoy the freshest Mandrake
Linux products! Pre-order your Mandrake Linux pack right now and be
among the first to receive the core version of the product as well as
the full packaged version!

Four special offers are available now at
http://mandrakestore.com.


What's Cooking at MandrakeSoft?
----------------------------------------
According to the September 17th edition of the Mandrake Cooker Weekly 
News, Mandrake 8.1 will be the first "mainstream" distribution to use 
"devfs" for dynamically handling desktop peripherals. The package 
"dynamic" allows the dynamic creation of desktop icons in the GNOME and 
KDE desktops for hotplug hardware (mainly USB devices). It's 
particularly useful for ZIP and LS-120 drives because icons appear 
automagically when a floppy is inserted in the drive.

Read the current online version of the Mandrake Cooker Weekly News at 
http://mt.mandrake.org/mcwn/ or subscribe by sending an email to 
sympa@linux-mandrake.com with the words "subscribe cooker-mcwn" (no 
quotes) in the subject line.


Financial Corner
----------------------------------------
People who use Yahoo to track MandrakeSoft stock prices could have had 
a heart attack recently: http://quote.yahoo.com/q?s=MAKE.PA&d=5d 
According to Yahoo, the last trade was on September 13 with a variation 
of -6.17 (99.84%). Does this mean trouble? No! It's just an error in 
Yahoo's system. If you go to Boursorama you will see another picture: 
http://www.boursorama.com/cours33.phtml?code=4477&choix_bourse=pays%3D33
The market price is still 6.18.

The problem with the current market is that there have been very few 
trades lately so it's easy to manipulate the numbers. It appears that 
someone had placed an order to buy a number of shares at 0.01 euros; 
however, the market forbids more than 10% of variation so it locks the 
quotation. How to solve this? The Euronext regulation authorities are 
investigating the person(s) who do this, but the best solution is to 
have more shareholders exchanging shares:
http://www.mandrakesoft.com/company/investors/trade


Spotlight on the SSSCA
----------------------------------------
Security Systems Standards and Certification Act.
A new proposal is being introduced by U.S. Senator Hollings that can 
make it a civil offense to create or sell any type of computer 
equipment that "does not include and utilize certified security 
technologies" approved by the federal government.

As reported by Wired Magazine: "It also creates new federal felonies, 
punishable by five years in prison and fines of up to $500,000. Anyone
who distributes copyrighted material with "security measures" disabled
or has a network-attached computer that disables copy protection is
covered."

The term "certified security technology" means a security technology
that is certified by the United States Secretary of Commerce. If this
law is passed, many Open Source applications could become illegal.
MandrakeSoft asks that all American Linux users please contact your
representative and let them know how you feel about this dangerous
proposal.
http://www.eff.org/congress.html

It's already illegal to view DVDs in Linux; it's another matter to 
outlaw an entire operating system.

For additional information, please see:
http://lwn.net/2001/0913/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/21830.html


Business Case of the Week
----------------------------------------
Linux-Mandrake saved us money and gave us early warning of network
problems.
A system administrator took an old 133Mhz with 32meg of RAM and a 1.2
Gig HD, installed Linux-Mandrake 8.0 on it, added NetSaint and now for
next to nothing has a machine that monitors and warns/emails him if
there are any problems on the network:
"We are 300-400 user, Windows network (except this machine), with
around 19 remote location(s), and lots of routers, switches, etc that
we need to ensure are up and running. Linux-Mandrake allowed our
company to do that at a huge savings. The same thing for Windows would
have cost us money for a new Server machine, license fees for software,
and who know how stable (or lack there of) it would have been."
http://www.mandrakebizcases.com/article.php?thold=0&mode=nested&order=0&sid=124

Read many more examples of Mandrake Linux in the workplace at:
http://www.MandrakeBizCases.com/. If you use MandrakeSoft products in
your business, please share your story by submitting your own personal
"Bizcase".


Software Updates
----------------------------------------
Security-related software updates have been released for:
uucp -- fixes local vulnerability
apache -- fixes path discovery vulnerability
iptables -- fixes problem saving/restoring firewall rules
View the entire list at:
http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/security/


Top Stories of the Week from MandrakeForum
----------------------------------------
Addictive Games.
Denis describes two computer games that he can't put down, and many
readers talk about some of their favorite games.
http://www.mandrakeforum.com/article.php?sid=1209

Using Squid To Block The Nimda-Worm.
Another destructive worm has hit Microsoft applications; Tom describes
how Squid can be used to protect a network of MSIE clients.
http://www.mandrakeforum.com/article.php?sid=1205

NTFS mounting?
A reader inquires about how to mount Windows NTFS partitions in Linux.
http://www.mandrakeforum.com/article.php?sid=1198

NT ACLs with Samba and XFS.
Deno writes: "From now on (samba-2.2.1-15mdk + kernel-2.4.8-21mdk), it
is possible to use NT ACLs on a Mandrake Linux box. From a NT or 2K
machine, you can define ACLs on a per user/group machine on a samba
share, if the share is on an XFS file system. This new feature, long
awaited, was made possible thanks to the integration of new XFS/ACLS
patches in the kernel and in samba."
http://www.mandrakeforum.com/article.php?sid=1195


Read these and other stories at:
http://www.mandrakeforum.com/