Martin Krzywinski writes, “An online rememberance campaign has been started to commemorate the victims of today’s terrorism acts. Webmasters are invited to participate in this observance, replacing their ad banners with the commemorative banner and/or placing ribbon thumbnails on their pages.”

Cox writes, “If you know any reason this should not be 2.2.20 final now is a very
very
good time to say. I intend to call this patch 2.2.20 in a week or so
barring
any last minute problems. Please save anything but actual bugfixes for
2.2.21.”

2.2.20pre10
o Update the gdth driver (Achim Leubner)
o Fix prelink elf loading in 2.2 (Jakub Jelinek)
o 2.2 lockd fixes when talking to HP/UX (Trond Myklebust)
o 3ware driver update (Adam Radford)
o hysdn driver update (Kai Germaschewski)
o Backport via rhine fixes (Dennis Bjorklund)
o NFS client fixes (Trond Myklebust, Ion Badulescu,
Jim Castleberry, Crag I Hagan.
Adrian Drzewiecki)
o Blacklist TEAC PD-1 to single lun (Wojtek Pilorz)
o Fix null request_mode return (David Woodhouse)
o Update credits entry (Fernando Fuganti)
o Fix sparc build with newer binutils (Andreas Jaeger)
o Starfire update (Ion Badulescu)
o Remove dead USB files (Greg Kroah-Hartmann)
o Fix isdn mppp crash case (Kai Germaschewski)
o Fix eicon driver (Kai Germaschewski)
o More pci idents (Andreas Tobler)
o Typo fix (Eli Carter)
o Remove ^M’s from some data files (Greg Kroah-Hartmann)
o 64bit cleanups for isdn (Kai Germaschewski)
o Update isdn certificates (Kai Germaschewski)
o Mac update for sysrq (Ben Herrenschmidt)

2.2.20pre9
o Document ip_always_defrag in proc.txt (Brett Eldrige)
o Update S/390 asm for newer gcc (Ulrich Weigand
o Update S/390 documentation Carsten Otte
o Update s390 dump too and co)
o Update s/390 dasd to match 2.4
o Backport s/390 tape driver from 2.4
o FDDI bits for s/390
o Updates for newer pmac laptops (Tom Rini)
o AMD760MP support (Johannes Erdfelt)
o Fix PPC oops on media change (Tom Rini)
o Fix some weird but valid input combinations
on PPC (Tom Rini)
o Add additional checks to irc dcc masquerade (Juanjo Ciarlante,
Michal Zalewski)
o Update 2.2 ISDN maintainer (Kai Germaschewski)
o Fix 3c505 with > 16Mb of RAM (Paul)
o Bring USB into sync with 2.4.7 (Greg Kroah-Hartmann)

From LinuxPR: Fnord Datacenter Systems
(http://www.fnordsystems.com) proudly announces the Fnord 90, a
breakthrough in high density rackmount server design. For the first time ever,
four independent 1GHz Pentium 3 servers can fit in only 1U of rack space. Each
Fnord 90 contains two seperate 1GHz servers in a single 1U, 15.75 inch deep
chassis. Two shallow-depth Fnord 90s can be mounted back-to-back in
standard 36″ depth colocation cabinets, racking four 1GHz servers in 1U.

Posted at LinuxSecurity.com: “Vulnerabilities in PAM and NSS modules using a PostgreSQL database

During investigating the problem described in RUS-CERT Advisory
2001-08:01, it became evident that a few PAM and NSS modules which use
PostgreSQL as database backend are vulnerable to SQL code injections
attacks, too.”

Slashdot has a list of good links to information on the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., today. A commentary at Slashdot calls the attacks “Our new Pearl Harbor.”

MSNBC.com reports that the major U.S. stock markets, including Nasdaq, were shut down after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., Tuesday.

September 11th, 2001 — Kevin Hill, Jeff Gerhardt, PJ Hyett, Doc Searls(Linux Journal), and Arne Flones have canceled tonight’s episode of The Linux Show. This was not an easy choice to make, and there was not 100% agreement on whether we should broadcast, and/or the content of any editorial comment we would make. Therefore, instead of the regular broadcast at 6pm pt, 7pm mt, 8pm ct, and 9pm et; Kevin will set up a music stream and we will open our IRC Chat(irc.thelinuxshow.com #linuxshow) for any who wish to talk. We ask that the flames for favorite targets of blame be kept civil, at least until firm evidence is developed. Tonight innocence died in America.

The following comments come from members of our panel that are representing themselves. They do not speak for all at TLS as a whole.

To the population of the Linux community:

Many people we know are dead. Many more are going to die.

This is a time to help, to grieve, to open our hearts, our wallets,
our homes and our minds.

What happened today may have been an act of war, but it was also an
act of insanity. If Linux stands for anything, it is sanity about
building Stuff that Matters.

We all have work to do. Let’s do it.

Doc Searls

Greeting on this day of sadness:
Today the United States was rocked with the worst terrorist attack in our history. The wide-spread and well organized nature of this attack was on the scale of Perl Harbor in 1941 and the English attacking Washington during the war of 1812. The infamy of such cowardly attacks is appalling to the basic fair-minded nature of Americans, we just do not relate to such a degree of evil. Although many people from around the world who look at us a “Satan”, the truth of it is we are for the largest part a good and peace loving people. And, that is what makes this all so sad, but for all practical purposes, the United States is now at war, we just do not know yet with who.

It is my personal feeling that in times as these such issues as the merits of one technology versus another are trivial. Now is the time for concern and prayer for others. Therefore, I have asked the other members of our broadcast team that there be no broadcast tonight. I suggest that your time will be better spent giving attention to the dead, and the injured, and indeed too our national leaders.

The prayers of my family go out to the families of all those who died in the four hijacked aircraft, in the World Trade Center, and those police and fire personnel who were killed in the desperate struggle to respond to this situation.

My prayers also go to our country, our President and our national leaders, that they will put aside the petty bickering of partisan politics for a time, and address the situation of the moment.

IN MY OPINION, there is NO QUESTION that such a well-organized attack as this was a declaration of war on the innocent by parties yet to be identified. We urge our national leaders to find the party responsible and any country or countries that have aided the parties of this attack, and respond in a quick and decisive way.

This is a controversial opinion here at the rather liberal crew of folks here at The Linux Show. But, I am of the firm opinion that it is important that this response be strong and swift. We have a history of dealing with suicide attacks that we learned during the Second World War with Japan. When the military members of the society you are at war with is ready and willing to throw away their lives (as was the case with the hijackers), it is almost pointless to respond in small measured ways. During the Second World War, this lesson was learned so well at the battles for Okinawa and Iwojima that it forced our leaders to consider the use of and then deploy the only use of the atomic bomb during a war in human history.

BE CLEAR, I am NOT advocating the use of a nuclear weapon, on the contrary I would never advocate that. However, it is essential in my opinion that we give our full support to all of our national leaders, be they Democrat, Republican or Independent; and urge them to respond to this situation with the strongest conventional means at their disposal. The parties responsible for this have to be shown clearly that the price they will have to pay for this attack is too painful a price to sustain in the future.

I advocate that you all contact your senator and congressman (even if you voted for the other guys), and urge them to enforce our constitution to its full extent, and get to the job of providing for the defense of this country.

These comments are my own and not those of my fellow geeks here at The Linux Show.

Jeff Gerhardt

– By Eric S. Raymond –
(Editor’s note: The following is a message sent by Eric S. Raymond to several news organizations. Here’s a response to ESR’s statements.)
Some friends have asked me to step outside my normal role as a technology
evangelist today, to point out in public that a political panic reaction
to the 9/11 terrorist attack could do a great deal more damage than the
attack itself.Today will not have been a victory for terrorism unless we make it
one. If we reward in any way the Palestinians who are now celebrating
this hideous crime in the streets of the West Bank, that wil have been
a victory for terrorism. If we accept “anti-terrorism” measures that do
further damage to our Constitutional freedoms, that will have been a victory
for terrorism. But if we learn the right lessons, if we make policies that
preserve freedom and offer terrorists no result but a rapid and futile
death, that will have been a victory for the rest of us.

We have learned today that airport security is not the answer. At
least four separate terror teams were able to sail right past all the
elaborate obstacles — the demand for IDs, the metal detectors, the
video cameras, the X-ray machines, the gunpowder sniffers, the gate
agents and security people trained to spot terrorists by profile.
There have been no reports that any other terror units were
successfully prevented from achieving their objectives by these
measures. In fact, the early evidence is that all these
police-state-like impositions on freedom were exactly useless — and
in the smoldering ruins of the World Trade Center lies the proof of
their failure.

We have learned today that increased surveillance is not the answer.
The FBI’s “Carnivore” tap on the U.S.’s Internet service providers
didn’t spot or prevent this disaster; nor did the NSA’s illegal
Echelon wiretaps on international telecommunications. Video
monitoring of public areas could have accomplished exactly nothing
against terrorists taking even elementary concealment measures. If we
could somehow extend airport-level security to the entire U.S., it
would be just as useless against any determined and even marginally
competent enemy.

We have learned today that trying to keep civilian weapons out of
airplanes and other areas vulnerable to terrorist attack is not the
answer either — indeed, it is arguable that the lawmakers who
disarmed all the non-terrorists on those four airplanes,
leaving them no chance to stop the hijackers, bear part of the moral
responsibility for this catastrophe.

I expect that in the next few months, far too many politicians and
pundits will press for draconian “anti-terrorist” laws and
regulations. Those who do so will be, whether intentionally or not,
cooperating with the terrorists in their attempt to destroy our way of
life — and we should all remember that fact come election time.

As an Internet technologist, I have learned that distributed problems
require distributed solutions — that centralization of power, the
first resort of politicians who feed on crisis, is actually worse than
useless, because centralizers regard the more effective coping
strategies as threats and act to thwart them.

Perhaps it is too much to hope that we will respond to this shattering
tragedy as well as the Israelis, who have a long history of preventing
similar atrocities by encouraging their civilians to carry concealed
weapons and to shoot back at criminals and terrorists. But it is in
that policy of a distributed response to a distributed threat, with
every single citizen taking personal responsibility for the defense of
life and freedom, that our best hope for preventing recurrences of
today’s mass murders almost certainly lies.

If we learn that lesson, perhaps today’s deaths will not have been in vain.
—
Eric S. Raymond

“The power to tax involves the power to destroy;…the power to
destroy may defeat and render useless the power to create….”
— Chief Justice John Marshall, 1819.

Reported at The Register: “Mathematician Phil Carmody, who in March of this year managed to encode the
DeCSS source in a prime number, has upped the ante by producing a prime number
which represents an executable version of the banned CSS descrambler… It’s a fine legal paradox for the recording industry to chew on. Is research illegal
because it could in some tiny degree weaken their monopoly over the production
and distribution of digital media? Or does the public’s right to be informed of
academic developments make a circumvention device legal when it also exhibits
academic value?”

“The first blast jolted me out of bed!!!! My apartment shook and I heard all these people on the street screaming. Dashed outside – Armageddon??? WTC on fire! Both towers! I watched
them burning from the Williamsburg Bridge. Unsure why – no one around me spoke english! Run back inside my apartment no phone – all TV stations static – cell doesn’t work – modem
does – weird – quickly listen to news on my little battery operated transistor alarm clock radio. Terrorists! Hear first tower COLLAPSED right outside my window – freak! On radio – radio
news people are freaking out. – run outside with my bike and camera. Everyone I see on the street is saying shit like “Oh my f***ing God!” – everyone is in weird shock. No one is not
effected.” Photos and more commentary at MarkAllenCam.com.