The Register: “Kevin Mitnick, who spent five years is prison for alleged computer crime offences, is
to play a CIA computer expert in an episode of an American TV series to be aired
next Sunday.

Bringing a touch of credibility into the TV Haxploitation genre, Mitnick will plays the
agent in an episode of new ABC series Alias…”

The Register: “InterTrust is a tricky one for your average freedom fighter. On the one hand, you’d
like to see Microsoft’s OS monopoly broken, in which case InterTrust’s lawsuit
against the company is probably A Good Thing. But on the other, you’re against
companies who’re patented up to the gunwhales using them to bludgeon rivals into
submission – so which way do you turn? Last week, InterTrust MetaTrust Utility
president Ed Fish talked to The Register, told us why his company was going to win
the lawsuit, why sometimes patents might be good for you, and why InterTrust
winning might even be good for Open Source.”

From USA Today: “The Las Vegas conference, a mecca for high-tech heavyweights,
expects attendance at the Nov. 12-16 event to plunge 25%, to 150,000 –
its lowest figure in 9 years.

The tech downturn and dot-com implosion play a part – along with
concerns about travel, security and anthrax. The cost to the city? About
$65 million in lost revenue.” The report blames it on Sept. 11, but we’re betting the near-100% inflation rate during the week Comdex is playing might have a little something to do with it, too.

Reuters reports that Ford Motor Co. is cancelling its plans to equip all of its employees with free personal computers. Looks like “breakthrough achievements” are the first things under the cutting block when consumers stop buying cars.

PORTLAND, Ore. – October 22, 2001-The GNU Bayonne project and the Open Source Development Lab (OSDL), the premier facility for developing data center and telco-class enhancements for the GNU/Linux system, today announced the availability of large-scale development and testing for GNU Bayonne through OSDL.
The availability of these resources coincides with the 7th major release of GNU Bayonne. The facilities will be used to extend GNU Bayonne’s digital telephony capabilities to support large-scale commercial enterprises and carrier-class telco applications. OSDL will initially provide four dedicated high-end servers equipped with a variety of digital telephony hardware.

Initial development at this facility will not only focus on extending GNU Bayonne to support large API applications, but also to test and demonstrate the project’s clustering and distributed network call model. The Bayonne software will extend the use of Linux in high-end commercial voice telephony and provide GNU Bayonne services for the next-generation IP based telephony network.

“We’re very pleased with the progress that we’ve been able to make with the GNU Bayonne project to date,” said David Sugar, package maintainer of the GNU Bayonne project. “The hardware and infrastructure provided by OSDL will help tremendously to make Bayonne an attractive option for telco deployments.”

The 7th major release of GNU Bayonne provides improved support for building digital telephony services and applications as open source software by adding support for CAPI based BRI cards. A number of volunteer developers have contributed to the project, most notably, Kai Germaschewski, who is better known for his work related to ISDN4Linux and CAPI4Linux.

“OSDL is committed to enabling open source projects like GNU Bayonne,” Timothy Witham, OSDL lab director said. “Users of telco software and carrier-grade deployments will benefit from the choices offered by the GNU Bayonne Project, which include the cost-effectiveness, ease of customization and robustness that open source software is well-known for.”

Using a standard server running GNU/Linux and multi-line telephony hardware available from numerous vendors, GNU Bayonne has already been used successfully to create and deploy commercial voice applications that interface with the public telephone network. Such applications can include basic services like Voice Mail, as well as web integrated voice commerce (v-commerce) and customer relationship management. With the help of OSDL, GNU Bayonne will soon demonstrate scalability to support deployment of carrier grade enhanced services.

About the Open Source Development Lab
Supported by a global consortium of industry leaders, the Open Source Development Lab (OSDL) is an independent, vendor-neutral, non-profit organization dedicated to enabling Linux and Linux-based programming for enterprise and carrier-class functionality worldwide. Headquartered near Portland, Oregon, OSDL fulfills a critical need in the open source development community to have access to the high-end hardware for programming and testing. More information on OSDL is available at www.osdl.org.

About GNU Bayonne
GNU Bayonne is an open source telephony application server that can be used to create and deploy a variety of voice and telco applications. GNU Bayonne applications are scalable, ranging from individual user installations to carrier-class deployments. GNU Bayonne is an attractive option, providing all of the advantages of a free software project, including support from talented developers worldwide, customizability and cost effectiveness. Additional information on GNU Bayonne can be found at www.gnu.org/software/bayonne.

Kuro5hin: “Computer networks are an inherently insecure medium. Unless you are assured that your packets will never pass through a
router or computer which you do not have direct control over, your data is not safe. It may be viewed by an untrustworthy
sysadmin or script kiddie, it may be tampered with en route, or it may be intercepted and replaced with entirely different
data. With the new legislation which is being introduced to Congress in the name of fighting terrorism, the situation
becomes worse. Now, more than ever, strong encryption and authentication are of paramount importance. In this article I
will introduce the basics of cryptography and show the basic and advanced usage of OpenSSH, a free implementation of
SSH Communications’ Secure Shell tool.”

From DM News: “E-mail marketers may soon yearn for the days when Mail Abuse Prevention System LLC was their
biggest pain in the neck, according to sources from the anti-spam camp.

In the wake of the recent settlement between Experian eMarketing and MAPS, some Internet
service providers have begun subscribing to other so-called block lists, or lists of suspected
spammers that ISPs use to filter unwanted e-mail. And these other lists’ maintainers are not nearly
as friendly as the folks at MAPS, sources say.”

SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH, Oct. 22, 2001 – Camping Companies, the nation’s largest repossession and investigations company, has implemented an innovative new paperless system based on a Linux NetworX cluster computer system, leading to record profits and improved efficiencies. The paperless system has increased the company’s processing capacity by more than 50 percent without hiring any additional staff, and has cut time dedicated to account management in half. The success of the Linux-based paperless system is an indicator of how the Linux operating system and computer cluster technology is moving into enterprise business environments.
Clustering, also called parallel processing and distributed computing, has been widely adopted as a powerful high performance computing (HPC) platform because of its ability to match and outperform traditional supercomputers for a fraction of the cost. High availability (HA) clusters are configured to take advantage of the built-in redundancy and failover capability of the cluster architecture, creating a very reliable, non-stop server.

Camping Companies helps organizations recover loan payments and repossess property from individuals who refuse or are unable to pay their bills. The company receives up to 200 new assignments daily from its customers via fax, with each new request containing an average of five pages of information. A time and motion study conducted in Oct. 2000 showed its employees were spending 39 percent of all of their time looking for paper.

“In a labor industry, each time you need something done, you throw people at it. But we’ve decided to buck the trend and use technology to significantly improve our processes, and increase our efficiencies,” said David Cheng, vice president of technical operations for Camping Companies. “The Linux NetworX cluster solution helped us eliminate paperwork, lower our margin of error, while increasing efficiencies – leading to happier employees and customers, and ultimately greater profits.”

Working with Mobile Business Systems, Inc. (MBSi), a developer of remote and paperless business systems, Camping Companies incorporated a reliable high availability Linux NetworX Evolocity cluster system to serve as the platform for the new system. The cluster can handle up to 128,000 new client assignments each day, and records remote database updates in real-time. The cluster is completely redundant and has logged zero downtime during its first 10 months of operation.

The Evolocity cluster configuration consists of six nodes containing Intel Pentium® III 933 MHz processors, two 12 port 10/100 interconnect switches, and the Linux NetworX ClusterWorX® software and hardware management tool. Two of the nodes act as hosts, serving fax requests to the remaining four nodes. Linux NetworX manufactures turnkey cluster solutions using many standard hardware components, and then implements its award-winning Integrated Cluster Environment(ICE) cluster management tools.

The system also includes VoiceTablet mobile pen computers in company vehicles designed by Sarasota, Fla.-based Intelliworxx. The VoiceTablets allow investigators to update client files to the cluster remotely using pen, keyboard and voice inputs.

“This high availability cluster server is an excellent example of how Linux and clustering is helping businesses manage their mission critical data,” said Clark Roundy, vice president of Linux NetworX.

MBSi is working with Linux NetworX to build an identical cluster system to function as the company’s application service provider (ASP) business. The company is also considering licensing the system to customers, allowing other companies to own a system similar to what Camping Companies is using.

“The ultimate sign of success is the demand by others to use your technology. The Linux NetworX Evolocity cluster is an ideal platform to deliver a very reliable, scalable, and cost-effective solution,” said Cheng.

To read a complete case study about this, visit www.linuxnetworx.com/news/case_camping.pdf

For more information:
www.linuxnetworx.com
1-800-214-9100

Mobile Business Systems, Inc.

1-602-864-7849

www.campingcompanies.com
1-602-864-7860

www.intelliworxx.com
1-888-200-9999

Two of them, actually. Read the announcement from the Debian Security team announcing the appointment of Matt Zimmerman and Noah Meyerhans to the post.

– by Tina Gasperson –

The Disney Channel cartoon series The Proud Family (Flash plugin helpful), aired an episode on Oct. 5 entitled EZ Jackster. In the storyline, EZ Jackster is a Napster-like site, and the show’s little heroines get addicted to the service and play a part in the downfall of the music industry. Disney is one of the backers of the SSSCA proposed legislation that is scheduled for a hearing before Congress Oct. 25.The TV summary site, TV Tome, shows this synopsis of the episode in question:

“After Penny spends $125 on CDs with her five-cent salary, she meets a boy, Mega, who tells her about a napster-like website he made called EZ Jackster. All
weekend she was sitting at the computer, downloading music from EZ Jackster. Finally, Dijonay comes over and asks what she was doing over the weekend.
Penny asks Dijonay if she can keep a secret, knowing that she can’t. Penny tells Dijonay to tell everyone she knows about EZ Jackster. Her telling everybody about
EZ Jackster has a ripple-effect all around the world. From India to Africa to Suga Mama! But rap singer, Sir Paid-A-Lot is threatened by this because he got a
five-cents salary instead of his million-dollar salary. But suddenly, after wrestling, the news interrupted the next program telling about EZ Jackster. It shows a house
of where the EZ Jackster-spreader lives. Oscar comments how ugly the house is, not realizing it was their house. Trudy is mad at Penny for stealing music so she
takes away her computer. Later, Penny gets a call from Mega, asking if she is still using EZ Jackster. Will Penny listen to her parents?”

A post forwarded to the Linux-Elitists mailing list from one of the show’s viewers gave the rest of the details about the decidedly pro-SSSCA plot:

1. Girl working at her antiquated computer her dad gave her in
her
room.

2. Mystery guy (cool hip hop looking dude in black) shows up at
her
window and supplies her with an up to date computer, takes her
into
“the Matrix and shows her a web area called Free Jackster where
she
can get all the music she could ever want FOR FREE,

3. The girl asks if this is illegal and mystery guy explains it
is
our birthright to have free music, creativity should not have a
price

4. Girl gets addicted to collecting free music, her obsession
leads
to telling all her friends. soon the site is getting millions of
hits
from kids to grandmothers.

5. Next scene at the The Wizard Record Label board room where
“Sir
Paid Alot” enters to complain his royalty check was only five
cents.
This alerts The Wizard (head of the label) that there is a retail
problem he needs to look into.

6. Teen Girl’s house is surrounded that night by police and
press
and she is arrested for illegal downloads, gets a warning,. The
news
makes it clear that millions of people can’t be stopped, Parents
take
computer away from girl and explain why free downloads is
STEALING — kind of an abirdged explanation of how copyrights work.

7. Next scene, Asian Guy’s retail record store is empty, guy is
crying on the floor. Teen Girl who happens to work at the store
show
up to work, Asian guy fires her for supporting all the free
downloads

8. Next scene charts showing record sales are down down down to
nothing because people get the music for free

9. Mystery guy shows up at teen girl’s window again to try and
convince her to go back to downloading but she says NO

10. Guy: “You still downloading?” Teen Girl: “Downloading is
stealin’.” Mr. Guy from Free Jackster: “I know you are afraid I am
trying to show you a world without rules.” Teen girl says, “No, its
wrong.”