Anon. pointed us in the direction of the latest Linux kernel prepatch from Linus, available now from your favorite mirror site. Changelog:pre3:
– Al Viro: superblock cleanups, partition handling fixes and cleanups
– Ben Collins: firewire update
– Jeff Garzik: network driver updates
– Urban Widmark: smbfs updates
– Kai Mäkisara: SCSI tape driver update
– various: embarrassing lack of error checking in ELF loader
– Neil Brown: md formatting cleanup.

IDG: “Hoping to entice IBM and Sun Microsystems Inc. customers to switch to its high-end Superdome Unix server, Hewlett-Packard Co. is offering
to beat competitors’ trade-in deals by 10%.

Under the program, HP pledged it will pay 10% more than its competitors
offer to companies trading in IBM S80 or p680 and Sun UE10K servers,
HP said in a statement. The program is effective immediately and runs
through Jan. 25.”

CBSNews: “The Federal Trade
Commission, under a new
Republican-appointed chairman, plans
to reverse its earlier support for new
privacy legislation and instead
emphasize enforcement of existing
laws, government and industry sources
said Wednesday.”

MSNBC: “Only days after Sun Microsystems announced its new “Cadillac” of servers, designed to wean
major corporations off old mainframe systems, IBM Thursday fired back with a machine it’s calling the
fastest non-mainframe design ever.” This is interesting, considering the source.

Net-Security: “I wasn’t going to release this until the 8th in order to give AOL some time to
release a fix/workaround, but since exploit scripts have already been posted to
bugtraq…)”

Wired: “Microsoft’s pledge to offer easier user security is a step in the right direction, some experts say. But they still want more.”

MSNBC tells us: “The error “QBW32 caused an IPF in QBFORM32.DLL” may be cited in QuickBooks 2000 or 2001
(Windows versions) when attempting to scroll on the Time/Enter Single Activity screen. According to
Intuit, certain mouse drivers such as those for the Logitech Wheel and Microsoft Intellipoint may
conflict with QuickBooks. One way to resolve the problem is to remove the mouse driver. Another way
is to not use the scroll feature on the Single Activity screen.”

Wired: “The Terascale Computing System, installed this week, is the second most powerful computer in the world — and the most powerful dedicated to public, unclassified research.”

LinuxSecurity: “In March of 1999, Chris Wiest was dishonorably discharged from the United States
Air Force Academy after being convicted by a military court of “illegally accessing a
computer system and causing damage.”

Wiest’s court-martial and discharge stemmed from the fact that Wiest had been using
his Air Force computer to access Internet Relay Chat (IRC), an application that allows
multiple users to chat interactively with one another through a single server. But
because of security concerns, the Air Force Academy had prohibited the use of IRC
among its cadets.

Wiest admits he chose to do it anyway.”

Kelly McNeill writes: “As Microsoft integrates more applications into Windows, essentially giving them away for free, its competitors are forced to follow suit. The end result of these actions has caused many consumers to download competing applications, install them for free and enjoy the benefits of upgrading without paying Microsoft for the privilege. The PC sales slowdown also threatens Microsoft’s Windows revenue. Microsoft’s tying Windows to PC sales has caused the company to experience the same hardships that hardware manufacturers are currently experiencing.”