“Netcraft has released its Web server survey for September 2001, calling it a “very mixed month for Microsoft.” While survey results indicate a steady rate of adoption for Microsoft’s IIS, the unwelcome appearance of Code Red also resulted in at least 150,000 IIS sites on 80,000 IP addresses vanishing from the Internet. From the survey: “However, the implications for Microsoft are better than one might initially expect. Of the 80,000 ip addresses no longer running Microsoft-IIS, only around 2,000 are
now running a competing web server. Notwithstanding the fact that when a web server is replaced, the replacement will not necessarily be on the same ip address,
it does seem that in most cases sites have been taken down, or port filtered as part of a general tightening of security in the wake of Code Red, rather than the
Windows disks being formatted and replaced with Linux/Apache.”

The Register weighs in with its first impressions of Apple’s OS X 10.1 update, saying the company’s new operating system is “becoming a contender.” Users should immediately notice that applications launch much more quickly than before, especially native OS X applications, reported to now “zip along.” The speed of file operations have been bumped up a notch, too — on the lower-end machine used by the reporter, the time needed to display and copy a directory with over 19,000 items was cut almost in half.

Reported at The Register: “A belated storm of protest has greeted a move by the World Wide Web Consortium
to bless fee-bearing patents as official web standards.

The proposal would allow patents, such as the notorious GIF image format, to
become web standards, thus giving the patent owners the right to exploit them
commercially.

Since so much information is stored and transmitted using web standards, the
implications are far-reaching.”

Apple has officially added a new iMac to its product line. Priced at $799, the new unit features 64MB RAM and a CD-ROM drive filling in where a CD-RW drive resides on higher-priced iMacs. Retailers are hoping the new low-cost hardware from Apple will attract more computer buyers, but most aren’t expecting high demand for the new machine. Read the short item at CNET News.com.

An anonymous reader kindly pointed out that we had overlooked yesterday’s release of the latest prepatch version of the Linux kernel. The short changelog for 2.4.11-pre1 is below, download from your favorite mirror site.

pre1:
 - Chris Mason: fix ppp race conditions
 - me: buffers-in-pagecache coherency, buffer.c cleanups
 - Al Viro: block device cleanups/fixes
 - Anton Altaparmakov: NTFS 1.1.20 update
 - Andrea Arcangeli: VM tweaks

Anonymous Reader writes “San Francisco, CA — (press release) — 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. Read about it, here.”

ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/alan/linux-2.4/;
Intermediate diffs are available from http://www.bzimage.org.

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)

Zack Brown posts the latest edition of the linux-kernel mailing list summary. The most-discussed subject on the list surrounded issues and performance testing of the 2.4 kernel virtual memory subsystem. Not surprisingly, then, the second-most popular conversation also revolved around that subsystem, with Linus announcing that he would incorporate Andrea Arcangeli’s VM changes to introduce better memory performance. Finally, list members weigh in with their experiences with the kernel pre-emption patch. All this and more, hot off the presses at kt.zork.net.

Hong Kong, October 1, 2001 Messaging software developer International Messaging Associates (IMA) has just released the latest in its top Messaging Solution – Internet Exchange Messaging Server (IEMS) 5.1. In an effort to introduce IEMS to a wider range of customers, while providing a high-end messaging solution that addresses the reliability needs of the global mainstream market, IMA is giving away 15-user licenses for free. By offering free licenses, IEMS5.1 clearly brings the choice of platforms to the users themselves. IEMS5.1 is interoperable in Linux and Windows and will add support for Solaris and HP-UX by late-October. In fact, IMA officials have announced that IEMS5.2 due within the next 90 days will carry migration tools from Windows-based Microsoft Exchange to IEMS as well as Calendaring and Scheduling capabilities. These features will be made available as free upgrades for all users with current support contracts.

This means that government and enterprises planning to shift their messaging platform from Windows to Linux will be able to simply auto-migrate their MS Exchange mailboxes to IEMS. IMA developers say auto-migration will be a simple exercise, with sites experiencing minimal disruption in email services.

With the 15-user free license, IEMS5.1 provides cost-free access to premium functionality unmatched for messaging software that run across multi-platforms. Only 2,000 licenses for the IEMS 5.1 15-user version will be available for copies downloaded from the IMA site until the end of November.

IEMS 5.1 is an enhancement of IEMS5 released early June this year. IEMS 5.1 has enhanced virus and spam detection control, adds an Attachment Removal Filter Module, and data encryption module to protect from unauthorized monitoring by third parties of messages passing through its system. Filter and gateway modules can be built and customized further according to customers needs through its Open Message Queue API. The Attachment Removal Filter Module, which makes use of the new MQ API is being released as an open source module to help promote third party development of IEMS modules.

IMA will be sponsoring a USENET group dedicated to IEMS, where IMA customers can discuss support issues. Initially following the 5.1 release, IMA Technical Support staff will regularly monitor and contribute to this forum. The newsgroup name will be announced in the coming days on the IMA web site, and will be linked with the existing Internet Exchange Open Email Discussion forum. Full 24×7 Technical Support is accessible to customers who purchase standard IMA support contracts.

IEMS5.1 is a complete, stand-alone, open architecture-messaging server with components that can be run on a single machine or in a distributed environment. Having these features IEMS 5.1 can be scaled to fit the different needs of SOHOs, SMEs, and large enterprises and allow for a phased expansion of the system according to the organizations needs.

For more information regarding this offer, please visit the IMA website at http://www.ima.com. IEMS 5.1 can be downloaded from http://www.ima.com/download/v5eval.html.
– End –Sales and Marketing Contacts:
Lanie Silerio (lanie@ima.com)
Website: http://www.ima.com

The New York Stock Exchange will lower the breakers and trigger points that cause the market to halt trading for various lengths of time. Under the new conditions, a 900-point drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average before 2:00PM will halt trading for one hour, 1,800 points lost before 1:00PM will shutter the market for two hours, and losing 2,700 points at any time will close the Big Board for the rest of the day. Previous levels were 1,100, 2,150, and 3,250 points, respectively. The levels, which are revised every quarter by the NYSE, went into effect today. From a Reuters report at BusinessWeek Online.