At DebianPlanet.org: “Four days ago, the 2nd public release of the NSA’s
‘security-enhanced’ (http://www.nsa.gov/selinux/) version of
Linux (it’s not an entire distribution) came out. The NSA
describes it as having ‘a strong, flexible mandatory access control
architecture incorporated into the major subsystems of the
kernel’.

I know that this works with Red Hat, but what about Debian?
Can somebody know if this will be include in a new release of
Debian?”

From ZDNet AnchorDesk: “OS X is the nicest operating system I’ve ever seen. It works like an OS should work, but is very
different from all previous Mac operating systems. Mostly, this is a good thing for average users,
though people used to troubleshooting Mac problems must begin their education pretty much
from scratch.”

From Net-Security.org: “The Sendmail mail delivery subsystem is vulnerable to
multiple local attacks that lead to information loss,
information leaks and mail system compromise.”

DeviceForge LLC today announced that it will acquire the
LinuxDevices.com “Embedded Linux Portal” website from CNET
Networks, Inc. The two companies have also formed a strategic
relationship through which they will continue to share content
and provide links to each others’ sites. Terms were not disclosed.

Full story: http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS3278546305.html. Editor’s note: DeviceForge is not affiliated with NewsForge or SourceForge.)

Alan Cox sends word of the latest kernel release. Read on below for links and the changelog.

ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/alan/linux-2.4/

                 Intermediate diffs are available from
                         http://www.bzimage.org


This should clean up the loose ends, and adds the big pending updates for
all the flash stuff, and some S/390 stuff

2.4.10-ac3
o        Fix page_kills_ppro call                        (Peter Blomgren)
o        mtd jffs and jffs2 updates                      (David Woodhouse)
o        Partition handling updates                      (Al Viro)
o        S/390 documentation updates                     (Martin Schwidefsky)
o        S/390 code updates                              (Martin Schwidefsky)
o        Add clean config for bust_spinlock generics     (Martin Schwidefsky)
o        Correct EXPORT_MODULE_GPL                       (Keith Owens)
o        NFSv3 mkdir fix                                         (Glen Serre)
o        Clean up NFS yielding                           (Trond Myklebust)

2.4.10-ac2
o        Merge Configure.help changes from 2.4.10
o        Fix the spin_unlock oostore to maybe work       (me)
o        Fix for pentium pro errata #50                  (me)
o        initio driver type cleanups                     (Arjan van de Ven)
o        rpc_queue_lock needs to be non static           (Frank Davies)
o        Fix a potential crash in ldm partition code     (Al Viro)
o        Acenic updates                                  (Jes Sorensen)
o        Fix scsi tur direction info                     (James Bottomley)
o        Further natsemi updates                                 (Manfred Spraul)
o        Add license tags to jffs/jffs2                  (Frank Davies)
o        Console driver optimisations                    (Geert Uytterhoeven)
o        Add belkin F5U120 serial to belkin_sa           (Amy Fong)
o        Big endian fixes for console drivers            (Geert Uytterhoeven)
o        Add module tags to the mwave driver             (Thomas Hood)
o        i2o header file cleanups                        (Russell King)
o        Fix C2 power state in ACPI                      (Martin Röder)
o        Deadlock and error handling fixes for 8139too   (Manfred Spraul)
o        Update NR_DEAD in keyboard driver               (Arnaldo Carvalho
                                                                 de Melo)
o        Fix race in processor init sequence             (Martin Bligh)
o        Check procfs returns in acpi                    (Pavel Machek)
o        Add DMI handles for problem K7V-RM and          (Pavel Machek)
         Tosh 4030cdt
o        Fix analog joystick breakage from 2.4.10        (Vojtech Pavlik)
o        Work around vaio weird pnpbios happenings       (Thomas Hood)
o        Update ninja scsi driver                        (YOKOTA Hiroshi)
o        Adbmouse typo fix                               (Paul Mackerras)

2.4.10-ac1
o        Merge with Linux 2.4.10 tree
         - Drop VM changes
         - Drop raw/block I/O changes
         - Drop out O_DIRECT
         - Basically remove the seriously unsafe stuff and
          keep the -ac VM
         - I've not applied the obvious fixes so ACPI and joysticks
          are still icky - that is for ac2
o        Fix the noncompile of SMP OOSTORE kernels       (me)

From Australian IT: “Businesses may be aware of what application service providers offer, but few are rushing to sign up.

Research has found that while 78 per cent of businesses are aware of ASPs, only 6 per cent are using them.

The research, conducted by the ASP Industry Consortium (ASPIC), finds more than 50 per cent of companies have found no case for using ASPs.”

Graphics chipmaker Nvidia today announced the launch of its high-end Titanium GPU product line. That’s nice, writes The Register, noting that no pricing details or shipping dates for the processors were given in that announcement. The first add-in cards with the new Titanium chips are expected to reach store shelves sometime in late November and early December, just in time for the holiday shopping rush. So why would Nvidia announce this now, instead of next week when the chips are supposedly going to ship? We’re sure it had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that competing chipmaker ATI is expected to announce its new Radeon 7500 and 8500 series tomorrow.

The ongoing saga of struggling broadband companies is creating anxiety for quite a few users these days, none of them anxious to return to dialup Internet service. Thanks to Excite@Home’s bankruptcy filing late last week, that feeling of anxiety is higher than ever. While cable Internet service will most likely continue, users can expect to pay higher monthly rates for that high-speed access. DSL users are starting to see those rate hikes, thanks in part to a diminshing number of companies offering the service. Some say that lower rates could make a reappearance if the FCC would take a more active role in fostering competition. Full story at CNET News.com.

The prices AMD has set for its Athlon XP processors seems to have had the opposite effect of attracting sales. The Register says it has received e-mail from a source at a “decent sized” computer system builder calling the prices “over the top” for what the chipmaker is offering. Another builder, however, has gone on the record as saying that AMD’s pricing is competitive and that he really, really likes the company’s new practice of using model numbers instead of clock speeds in marketing the new processors.

Byte.com’s Moshe Bar has written an article about using spare Linux boxes and wireless LAN equipment to create a free neighborhood wireless data network. There’s also a fair portion of well-written commentary about the state of the Open Source business model. Bar: ”
There is little doubt by now that the Open Source business model
(and with it Linux in large part) is becoming a liability for many
companies. Let’s face it, with VA Linux going into proprietary
technology, Great Bridge (a company built around the GNU Postgres
database) going out of business, and SuSE needing an emergency
capital infusion from IBM to survive, it has become clear that
companies cannot make money (real money) from selling software
that you can download for free from the Internet. Especially not in
today’s moribund high-tech market.” VA Linux is the parent company of OSDN and NewsForge.