MozillaQuest Magazine (MozillaQuest.com) reports: “Upgrade or repair a Linux or Microsoft Windows PC easily and economically. Use the PowerLeap Renaissance PC kit to upgrade to Pentium III or Celeron GHz performance. It’s a complete, fully integrated motherboard on an AT expansion card without edge contacts. Drop the Renaissance board into a PC, reconnect the power and signal cables, and you are set to go. It’s a slick concept. By making the upgrade yourself you avoid labor charges. If you are in charge of computers for a business, organization, school, or large-scale enterprise, save lots of labor costs by using the Renaissance/370S to upgrade its computers.The concept of upgrading or repairing a computer by dropping essentially a new PC into an expansion slot is interesting, innovative, works well, and installs easily.” Check this MozillaQuest.com story for pictures and details.

Posted on LinuxSecurity.com: “ucd-snmp is an implementation and a set of tools to deal with the
Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), which is responsible for
enabling remote administration and monitoring of network devices.

There are several vulnerabilities[1,2] in the ucd-snmp implementation
of SNMP which could lead to DoS attacks and even remote intrusion.”

This may be old news to many readers, but the ZDNet/C|Net coalition has a story about Linus Torvalds using software to “automatically apply patches and updates to the open-source OS after receiving complaints that the process was too slow. Addressing concern that tweaks to the operating system aren’t being pushed through fast enough, Torvalds has taken steps to formalise control over the project’s underlying source code.”

A San Fransisco Chronicle story says that Hewlett-Packard Co. reported quarterly profits Wednesday that surged nearly 250 percent. The maker of printers and computers based in Palo Alto, Calif., reported net income of $484 million (25 cents per share) in its first quarter, which ended Jan. 31, compared with $141 million (7 cents) in the same quarter last year.

Anonymous Reader writes, “An article just went up over at at the developerWorks Linux Zone that test the management of threads and processes on Linux and Windows systems. It walks you through the differences between processes and threads on each OS and test which system OS does better. The result of the testing clearly shows a big Linux performance advantage over both Winbdows 2000 and Windows XP. The scripts can be downloaded, tested and performance results confirmed on your own system.”

–
By Andrew Orlowski of The Register –

BSD is now three times as popular on the desktop as Linux, Apple’s Ernest Parbakar told attendees at the annual USENIX BSD Conference in San Francisco Wednesday.

That’s thanks to Mac OS X, of course, which is a BSD-based Unix (although much of this remains hidden).

Parkabar was summing up Darwin developments for a BSD State of the Nation panel, at which the five major tribes summarised what’s been happening, and what to expect in the near future. Two of the panelists were Apple staffers: Jordan Hubbard, who talked about FreeBSD, and Parbakar himself.

According to Parbakar, Apple has acquired “a lot of talent” from Bay Area companies: “We have Eazel and Sun refugees, and even a few freaks from FreeBSD.”

Apple has one of the biggest gcc compiler design teams in the world, he reckons; he is working to get optimizations developed at Apple integrated into the main code tree.

It sounds like Hubbard has had an influence on the Darwin development. Parbakar says that synchronization between Darwin and FreeBSD is still really important. The goal is to bring it up to FreeBSD 4.0 status, although this task is like porcupines mating — “you have to be careful.”

Future Apple development would focus on looking for a better threading mode, and more Kerberos work including interoperability with Microsoft’s Active Directory.

Speaking of which, Parbakar reminded attendees that Microsoft now has Office running on a Berkeley UNIX.

The relationship between Darwin and the rich NeXTish layers isn’t easy, he acknowledges: There are two namespaces and two forms of package management. But it is a unique adventure, for sure.

“The Macintosh has always been very fascist, but we’re now starting to embrace the diversity of BSD. We’d love you to bring your X11 application to Mac OS X.” He cites XFree86 4.2 as a model of a Mac-friendly BSD app.

All Content copyright 2002 The Register

Wired.com reports that Slashdot founder Rob “CmdrTaco” Malda has proposed to his girlfriend on the site on Valentine’s Day. Here’s the proposal at Slashdot. Wired.com notes one reader comment: “If you two get married, will you be all proprietary towards her, or will she be open source?” (Slashdot, like NewsForge and Linux.com, is part of OSDN.)

Digi International*, Inc.
(Nasdaq: DGII), the leader in Connectware, has introduced the new
PortServer CM*, a product line focused on the demanding requirements
of data center managers.

The PortServer CM enables system administrators to monitor and control
IT equipment such as Unix and Linux servers, routers, network
switches, intelligent power supplies and telephone switches, through
industry standard serial console ports. Administrators can securely
monitor and control any mix of connected devices from anywhere on the
corporate network, including standard TCP/IP connections over Ethernet
LANs or dial-up modem connections.

The PortServer CM provides the highest level of security available for
serial console connections. Using Secure Shell (SSH v2), a robust,
standards-based security interface, PortServer CM protects against
unauthorized data monitoring (also known as “sniffing”) and provides
access to approved users on a per port basis. PortServer CM’s Sun
Safe feature protects against any unintentional break signals
affecting Sun servers.

The PortServer CM also provides a detailed Console History Log that
tracks minute-by-minute audit trails and can be used by network
managers as a diagnostic tool to avoid potential loss of
mission-critical data.

Packaged in a slim 1U, 32 port design, the PortServer CM is designed
to be rack-mounted with servers for better co-location with network
hardware. PortServer CM comes with Digi International’s
industry-leading service and support.

“PortServer CM addresses a rapidly-growing market for secure, reliable
console management solutions,” said Burk Murray, vice president of
marketing for Digi International. “As new technologies emerge and
network infrastructures rapidly expand, we’ll continue to enhance the
functionality and flexibility of our console management product line
to meet evolving market demands.”

Joe Dunsmore, president and CEO of Digi International, said, “The new
PortServer CM is consistent with our Connectware strategy, and one
more example of how we are helping customers reduce costs and more
efficiently manage their business through advanced connectivity
solutions.”

According to a recent report entitled ” Connectware: Network-Enabling
the Next Generation of Intelligent Devices” by William R. Becklean, an
analyst at Commerce Capital Markets, “We estimate the market for
‘connectware’… will increase to approximately $1.0 billion by the
middle of this decade…. Terminal servers historically represented
about 25% of the total [connectware] market but this figure appears to
be increasing rapidly as a result of growth in the console server
market.”

About Digi International
Digi International, based in Minneapolis, is the leader in
Connectware, wired and wireless, hardware and software connectivity
solutions that businesses use to create, customize and control retail
operations, industrial automation and other applications. Digi markets
its products through a global network of distributors and resellers,
systems integrators and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).

Slashdot readers discuss this observation: “I was just checking out the Linux 2.5 changeset and noticed that Linus has just merged ALSA into his tree. Its about time.”

LinuxSecurity Contributors write, “Although SafeWeb’s Web anonymizing service has been shut down since December, they claimed it was
the ‘most widely used online privacy service in the world’ … Andrew Schulman and I have just finished a
technical report detailing SafeWeb’s catastrophic failures under the simplest of JavaScript attacks by Web
sites or firewalls (e.g., by redirecting to a page containing the exploit).”

http://www.linuxsecurity.com/articles/privacy_arti cle-4444.html