From SecurityFocus: “An insecurely call to the open() function leads to a failure to properly filter shell metacharacters from user supplied input. As a result, it is possible for an attacker to cause this script to execute arbitrary shell commands with the privilege of the webserver.”

“A week after banning Microsoft from a popular security mailing list, the moderator of the BugTraq list has refused to post advisories from a second company, @Stake.” Full story at ZDNet UK.

ZDNet UK reports: “The world’s online youth is apparently ignoring the controversy surrounding file-sharing services like Napster, with nearly half of young Internet users having downloaded music from the Internet, according to an international study released last week.”

MSNBC has a report on anonymous Internet postings, noting that trend of revealing unnamed critics’ identities may be reversing itself: “In November a Pennsylvania state court judge fired a waterline broadside at this nefarious unmasking trend. In a case defended by the America Civil Liberties Union (Melvin v. Doe), the judge said that public officials and others couldn’t use ginned up defamation suits to rip the veil of anonymity from their online critics.”

Salon has an article about Popular Power’s P2P plan: “Users who agree to let their computers join the start-up’s peer-to-peer network have a choice: They can earn about $5 per month by selling their CPU power to businesses; or they can donate their shiny new Apple G4 Cube to nonprofit tasks, receiving nothing but the warm fuzzies that result from doing good deeds.”

The Standard reports on Deja.com selling its shopping service and returning to its Usenet roots. Old-school users like the move.

From CNET: “The Federal Trade Commission on Thursday voted unanimously to clear the $109
billion merger of America Online and Time Warner, paving the way for final government
approval of one of the largest deals in corporate history.”

From BusinessWire: MSC.Software Corp. (NYSE:MNS), an established information technology
software and services provider helping companies worldwide develop better products faster, today announced the beta availability of MSC.Linux.
MSC.Linux, a version of the Linux operating system from MSC.Software, combines PCs into clusters, enabling them to address engineering problems
once only solved by expensive supercomputers. The operating system delivers many industrial-strength capabilities including substantial memory, large
files, high-performance data transfer and cluster tools in an easy-to-use, Web-based distribution.

From BusinessWire: Turbolinux, Inc., a leader in high-performance Linux for Internet infrastructure solutions, today announced at Oracle OpenWorld in Japan a global
OEM distribution agreement with Compaq Computer Corp. (NYSE: CPQ) to provide Turbolinux as a bundled or factory-installed option with certain
models of Compaq ProLiant industry-standard servers. The agreement also permits Compaq to bundle and pre-install TurboLinux software on
AlphaServer and AlphaStation systems. More from The Register.

ZDNet reports on a Wall Street Journal report (confusing, eh?) saying America Online and Time-Warner signed an agreement Wednesday night with federal antitrust enforcers. The bottom line: The feds could approve the merger today.