The latest kernel release from Alan Cox includes a Raid5 corruption fix, support for Extrax ‘crisis’ architecture, APIC crash fixes, and a few dozen other goodies. LWN.net has all the details.

An advisory at LWN.net reveals problems with KDE2’s kdesu system administration tool: any user on the system can steal the passwords you enter at the kdesu prompt. There’s no workaround for this bug, but the advisory contains a few useful keystrokes that might help secure your system.

A post at LWN.net discloses several vulnerabilities of XFree86-3.3.6 when run on FreeBSD, and includes links to more information, upgrades, and newer versions.

In an effort to distance itself from an advocacy “holy war,” Tucows will soon discontinue its BSD channel. To quote the BSD Today report, “Tucows believes
that the individual demands of each BSD faction are so unique that it became impossible to satisfy each group.”

Leslie Proctor writes “New York, NY – January 23, 2001 – In a move that will make GNOME available to more that a billion people, RedFlag has joined the Advisory Board of the GNOME Foundation. As part of the membership, RedFlag will lead an effort to localize GNOME, the entirely free user environment for desktops, networked servers and portable Internet devices, into Simplified Chinese.”“With the localization of GNOME, businesses and individuals in China can enjoy the power, cost-effectiveness and ease of use of free software.” said Havoc Pennington, GNOME Foundation board chair. “In addition, talented programmers in China will be able to utilize the modern architecture and design of GNOME for application development.”

RedFlag will lead GNOME Foundation efforts in China, focusing on education, support and marketing. It will also join the volunteer efforts of more than 500 of the world?s most talented software designers and programmers who are currently working on GNOME or GNOME-compatible programs.

“We’re very committed to the GNOME Foundation and the localization of GNOME into Simplified Chinese,” said Bo Liu, president and CEO of RedFlag Software Co., Ltd. “GNOME is a robust and powerful environment that will be very beneficial to individuals, companies and educators here in China.”

GNOME is a free software project (also referred to as open source software) that is developing a complete, easy to use desktop for Linux (GNU/Linux), BSD and a variety of other Unix and Unix-like operating systems. The GNOME desktop is used by millions of people around the world. More than 500 computer developers, including over 100 full-time, paid developers, contribute their time and effort to the project.

About the GNOME Foundation
Comprised of hundreds of volunteer developers and industry-leading companies, the GNOME Foundation is an organization committed to supporting the advancement of GNOME. GNOME is an entirely free user environment for desktops, networked servers and portable Internet devices. The modern architecture and design of GNOME includes a technically advanced application development platform and a powerful end-user desktop environment. Major leading software industry and computer manufacturers support the GNOME development effort, which is led by a world-wide community of volunteers. More information on GNOME is available at www.gnome.org.

About RedFlag
RedFlag Software Co., Ltd. is a leading company of Linux distributions and applications in China, developing applications and operating systems for server, desktop and embedded platforms. RedFlag Software also provides applications to end-users for achieving system security and performance.

With over 20 years of experience in Unix and open source systems and over 18 years of Chinese localization experience, RedFlag devotes itself to empower any kind of CPU-based hardware from set-top boxes, mobile appliances, PDAs and mainframes. It offers a full line of services, including telephone support, on-site consulting, developer training, certification programs, e-business and ISV support. Located in Beijing, China, they can be found on the web at www.redflag-linux.com.

Kdb Gets Sub-second Response on Billion-Row Databases – Miami, Florida, January 24, 2001 – Kx Systems, a pioneer in high performance vector-based technology, announced today that it has built a multi-billion tick database application that gives traders and analysts a powerful new tool for making investment decisions. Based on Kdb, its ultra-high performance relational database, Kx has built a demonstration version of the solution in partnership with the Concorde Group Ltd., to show at the LinuxWorld Expo in NYC next week. This solution leverages the efficiency of Red Hat Linux and utilizes high performance, high-density compute servers.From the same “break the mold” philosophy that started Linux, Kdb from Kx Systems takes on industry icons like Oracle and IBM with Kdb. Kdb’s unique design optimizes data storage and retrieval, resulting in the ability to perform complex analyses at speeds 10 to 1000 times faster than traditional databases. This improvement in query speed makes it possible to analyze enormous amounts of data in real time.

The tick database application was built in response to requests from financial institutions who are under pressure to bring more powerful predictive tools to the trading floor, particularly tools that use time series analysis that is, look at a stock’s past series of trade and quote prices in consecutive order. Providing real time analysis of this data has become impossible for significant time horizons, because there is simply too much data accumulating too quickly. In this tick database system, Kx gets sub-second query response rates on 2 years of NYSE tick data for all publicly traded stocks – over 2.5 billion trades and quotes.

“Before Kdb, we were waiting 60 to 90 seconds for responses to queries on our system,” says an IT Manager for a large private hedge fund. “I decided to try to speed things up with Kdb, and was able to build a prototype trading system in Kdb in one week that ran 1,000 times faster than what we were running at the time. That convinced us to add a significant historical component to the real time system, and even with billions of rows of tick data our response rates are still out of this world.”

To demonstrate the power of Kdb in this application, Kx Systems (www.kx.com) has partnered with Concorde Group, Ltd. (www.concorde.com) a systems integration company based in Marlborough, Massachusetts to build a demonstration version of the tick database solution. This demo will be given at LinuxWorld Expo in New York City from January 31st through February 2nd at the Jacob K. Javits Center.

Concorde is hosting the Kx historical tick database solution on a loosely coupled Linux Cluster of 50 Pentium CPUs with 50 GB of available memory and up to 300 GB of database storage. The database Cluster is managed via a special Network Engines AdminEngine, which provides for direct out of band remote management of the individual Cluster nodes. The AdminEngine is uniquely suited for management and loading of the tick database demonstrated here, allowing the Cluster to be monitored, managed and viewed from anywhere in the world.

At its booth at LinuxWorld Expo Kx will also be offering demonstrations of other applications built in Kdb, including an eCRM application and a publish and subscribe system on VALinux servers.

About Kx Systems
Kx Systems is a software company that has been serving international firms in finance, insurance and telecom since 1993. Known for innovation and reliability, Kx has defined a new product category in the database world the ultra high-performance relational database system. The Kx customer list includes Zurich Financial Services Group, Telstra Corporation and CIBC-Oppenheimer.

Despite the existence of (and strictly enforced) privacy rules, a recent independent study of US and EU Internet sites and companies reports that consumers will experience somewhat less privacy when disclosing personal information on European sites. Full story on Network World Fusion.

Network World Fusion reports that the Scandanavian Airlines System (SAS) will test-market wireless Internet access on its aircraft by the end of next year.

ZDNet reports that Microsoft has told its army of testers to expect major changes in the second beta release of Whistler, the code that will eventually become the next version of Windows. Rumor has it the bulk of those major changes are cosmetic in nature, involving a new user interface. Microsoft isn’t saying a word, preferring to take “unusually high security precautions” to ensure no one sees the new design before the beta is released. If the beta security is anything like Microsoft’s recent site security, we should expect to see a screenshot or two within the next week.

A press release at PR Newswire announces SeraNova’s new association with Intel’s eBusiness Solutions Provider (EBSP) program. Along with joining the EBSP, SeraNova will establish an advanced technology lab to develop wireless and voice products for Windows and Linux. This will be the first such lab actually endorsed by Intel and privy to all of the proprietary technical information EBSP members enjoy.