Posted at LWN.net: “Cda, a setuid commandline part of xmcd, a X11/Motif audio CD player by
Ti Kan , was found vulnerable by a link attack and some
bufferoverflows.
These bugs could be exploited by an adversary, who has access to the
system, to overwrite files or gain higher privileges.”

– By Dan Berkes–
MandrakeSoft completes its first day of public trading, Borland goes 15 rounds
with WebGain, and TiVo clarifies its private placement plans. In broader news,
the markets closed down (but up) on the latest unemployment numbers from the U.S.
Department of Labor, and Palm plans to double its pleasure.The Nasdaq market ended Friday at 2,066.33, down 21.05 from
Thursday but up from 2,029.07 at the close of business last week. The Dow Jones
Industrial Average slipped by 38.40 Friday, closing at 10,512.78, up from
10,416.67 at last Friday’s bell.

Many of the stocks in our handy little table at the end of this week’s
column made improvements over last week, but all were down from their mid-week
highs. Friday’s downturn came as the U.S. government ran the latest unemployment
numbers, causing investors to doubt just how quickly economic recovery will
happen.

According to the Department of Labor, employers cut 42,000 non-farm jobs during July.
That’s a significant number, but one that’s quite a bit smaller than the 93,000 lost jobs
reported in June. However, the United States’ unemployment rate continues at
levels not seen since 1998, a statistic which, of course, did very little to convince the
herd that stability would be found any time soon.

MandrakeSoft goes public
Paris Linux company MandrakeSoft
(4477.PA) concluded its first day of public trading on the
Euronext Marche Libre on Friday. During its initial public offering, MandrakeSoft
sold more than 688,000 shares to raise $3.76 million, representing just slightly more
than 20% of the company’s capital. On the first day of its public
trading, MandrakeSoft closed at 6.19 Euros, or USD $5.47.

Big Blue, the utility
Most people don’t own power generating plants, but purchase
their power from a remote plant operated by someone else. IBM thinks that
computing should be the same way, and is spending $4
billion to build 50 server farms that will allow users to buy only the
computing power they need from a global computer grid, instead of buying and
maintaining expensive computer systems. IBM has chosen Irving Wladawsky-Berger,
current head of its Linux and eLiza efforts, to lead the company’s new Grid
Computing Initiative.

In other Big Blue news, there’s word that IBM will
introduce new wireless-capable notebooks featuring Intel’s Pentium III-M
(the processor formerly known as Tualatin). The ThinkPad T23 will be the
company’s first commercially available portable computer with integrated
wireless capabilities. ZDNet’s reporter speculates that IBM is trying to play
catch-up with Apple Computer, who has offered wireless-capable notebooks since
1999.

Borland fires back
The tit-for-tat exchanges between Borland Software International and WebGain
continue. WebGain recently filed for a declarative judgment asking a U.S.
federal court to rule that its Visual Cafe and StructureBuilder
development products do not infringe upon Borland patents; Borland responded by
filing a lawsuit against
WebGain for violating those patents. WebGain
responded with a press release to say that Borland’s claims are without
merit, and on Thursday, Borland responded to what it
called a “somewhat bewildering press release,” disputing WebGain’s claims.

Sparcs fly from Sun
Sun Microsystems on Wednesday announced the latest version of its UltraSparc III
microprocessor. Designed by Sun and produced at Texas Instruments, the new
processor runs at 900MHz and uses copper instead of aluminum to boost chip
performance and slash manufacturing costs. Sun plans to roll out the chips in
workstations this November, and in servers during early 2002. This Ultrasparc is
the latest 64-bit chip from Sun, and most analysts predict that its release will
minimize adoption of Intel’s competing Itanium processor. Not that Sun should
sleep easy: Those same analysts expect Intel’s next-generation 64-bit McKinley
processor to radically change the server market when released next year.

Dell dumps desktop Linux
Citing a lack of customer demand, a Dell spokesman confirmed that the computer
maker has decided to stop installing Red
Hat Linux on desktop and notebook computers. The company hasn’t abandoned
Linux; it still offers workstations and server models with Red Hat, and will
likely continue to offer the distribution to its larger customers who can afford
custom factory configured desktop PCs. The move is merely regional. Other Dell
divisions, including Dell Australia, have announced that they have no intentions
to stop offering Linux on consumer desktops.

Red Hat unplugged
Red Hat Linux on Monday announced that it would work with Britain’s 3G Lab to
develop an Open Source operating system optimized for mobile phones and other
wireless communication devices. The companies believe that the Open Source
approach to a mobile OS will win over manufacturers because they will be allowed
to modify the software without having to seek approval from its author.
Presently, the mobile OS market is dominated by Microsoft and Psion’s Symbian,
who have the support of all major handheld makers.

Note that the Reuters
report incorrectly identifies Linux as the Open Source operating system to be
modified. LinuxDevices points
out that the new OS will actually be based on Red Hat’s embedded
Configurable operating system, a.k.a. eCos.

This paragraph does not exist
In a separate announcement, Red Hat this week denied that it had released a beta
version of its Linux distribution, code-named Roswell. Company executives were to comment on the release, but mysteriously vanished in a cloud of
swamp gas just minutes before they were scheduled to take the stage.

HP chills out
Hewlett-
Packard announced late last week that it would make a set of mobile computing
technologies available, aiming to encourage developers to flock to HP’s
vision of pervasive computing. The technologies are called Cooltown, and
highlight an HP protocol called eSquirt for communications between devices.

TiVo clarifies placement plans
TiVo this week clarified the stakes of its plans to raise between $50 million and $75
million in a private placement with accredited investors. In a statement released
Thursday, the company said the placement would consist of notes and warrants
convertible at any time before maturity, at a premium of 15% to 20% above the
closing price of TiVo’s common stock on the day the placement is priced.

Palm double feature
One constant in the short life of handheld maker Palm Inc. has been change,
lots of change. The company started out as a unit of modem maker US Robotics,
then was swallowed by 3COM, and later was spit out by that company to fend for itself.
Now, Palm is planning
to split its business in two, creating a new company focusing on handheld
hardware and another company concentrating on development and licensing of the Palm
OS. Carl Yankowsky, CEO of Palm’s present-day form, believes the split will give
the Palm OS a competitive edge in a market it currently leads, but may soon lose
to rival Compaq’s handheld offerings.

Heading for a safe harbor in a rough market
This week’s recommended reading comes in the form of a
bracing splash of reality from O’Reilly’s David Spector: “Anyone who has
spent a long time in the computer business knows that the only thing constant is
radical change. There has never been ‘stability’ — things are always ‘feast,
feast, feast’ or “famine, famine, famine.'” It’s up to you to ensure that you
remain employed, and Spector presents a few ideas on job retention for the Linux
professional.

Here’s how Open Source and related stocks did this week:

Company Name	Symbol	8/2 Close	7/27 Close
Apple	AAPL	19.50	18.96
Borland Software Int’l	BORL	12.49	13.86
Caldera International	CALD	0.75	0.80
EBIZ Enterprises	EBIZ.OB	0.14	0.25
Hewlett-Packard	HWP	25.29	24.36
IBM	IBM	108.18	104.70
MandrakeSoft	4477.PA	e6.19	N/A
Merlin Software Tech.	MLSW.OB	0.195	0.25
Red Hat	RHAT	4.04	4.01
Sun Microsystems	SUNW	17.72	16.29
TiVo	TIVO	7.00	7.03
VA Linux Systems	LNUX	2.20	1.80
Wind River Systems	WIND	15.72	14.62

Slashdotters talk about a column at Webmonkey suggesting the Open Source community is suffering from the lack of a unified direction in responding to issues such as Microsoft’s .Net.

Anonymous Reader writes, “This week, advisories were released for telnetd, windowmaker, apache-ssl, openssl,
the Linux kernel, and imp. The vendors include Caldera, Debian, and FreeBSD.” The

roundup is at Linuxsecurity.com.

IBM today announced that it was selected
to
provide key technologies in the “National Grid,” a massive network of
computers distributed throughout the United Kingdom. IBM is
collaborating
closely with a number of the Grid centers to leverage IBM’s
industry-leading
expertise in scalable servers and storage, open standards,
self-managing
technologies, services and e-business software.
A new open-source-based model of computing, Grids are clusters of
servers joined
together over the Internet, using standard protocols and other open
technologies, including Linux. Just as the World Wide Web allows people
to share
content via standard Internet protocols, Grid computing allows
widely-dispersed
organizations to share applications, data and resources using emerging
Grid
protocols.

The British government, through the Office of Science and Technology,
is
building the National Grid for collaborative scientific research in a
wide
spectrum of disciplines. It will also serve as a testbed for deploying
“e-utility computing” also known as “e-sourcing.” – – the delivery of
computing
resources including bandwidth, applications, storage as a utility-like
service
over the Internet.

Leading the way, IBM has been chosen to build a sophisticated data
storage
facility at Oxford University, one of nine Grid centers. The national
Grid
center is located in Edinburgh/Glasgow. The other regional centers are
located
at the universities of Newcastle, Belfast, Manchester, Cardiff,
Cambridge,
Southampton and Imperial College, London.

The IBM data store will be the primary source of high energy physics
data
generated at the US Particle Physics Laboratory in Chicago and
transferred
to the UK. The UK National Grid will also be used for experiments at
the new
Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the European particle physics laboratory
in Geneva, Switzerland. Once the Grid is complete, scientists all
around the
United Kingdom will be able to access data to collaborate remotely on
CERN
projects. For example, using the National Grid, scientists in a lab in
Cambridge
will be able to run sophisticated high-energy physics applications on
computers
in Belfast.

“I am delighted that IBM is collaborating with the UK to build the
next-generation Grid middleware, which will have implications far
beyond the
original scientific applications,” said Tony Hey, architect of the U.K.
National
Grid. “IBM brings a wide range of key technologies to the Grid agenda
and are
collaborating closely with several of our Grid centres.”

“The United Kingdom is clearly taking a leadership role in the
development of
Grid computing, which represents a significant market opportunity,”
said David
Turek, IBM vice president of emerging technologies. “IBM is proud to be
an
integral part of the National Grid project — a bold next step in the
evolution
of the Internet.”

IBM Grid Expertise

IBM is the industry-leading supplier of Grid systems as well as
services
expertise to the scientific and technical community. In addition to
working with
many of the world’s leading labs and research organizations, IBM
Research built
its own Grid — a geographically distributed supercomputer linking IBM
research
and development labs in the United States, Israel, Switzerland, Japan.
IBM’s
Global Services organization offers the complete range of IT skills
needed to
build, run and maintain Grids.

To help customers manage complex Grids, IBM offers scalable
supercomputing
systems and middleware with IBM eLiza self-management technologies.
Project
eLiza, announced by IBM earlier this year, is a company-wide program to
develop
systems that respond to the requirements of their environment in
order to optimize performance across a network, improve security and
survive
failures.

IBM also plans to Grid-enable key IBM systems and technologies,
allowing them to
be plugged into these growing worldwide networks quickly and easily.

In the same way it played a leadership role in the commercial adoption
of Linux,
IBM is working with open source groups, including the Globus
development
community and the Global Grid Forum.

Grids – enablers of e-sourcing

Grids — like Linux and the Internet itself — are poised to grow
beyond the
academic world and become an important business platform. Grid
protocols could
provide a key platform for e-sourcing — a major initiative within IBM
targeting
the sale and delivery of information technology as a utility-like
service over
the Internet. State-of-the-art IBM e-Utility Labs in the United States
are now
using Grids to develop and test e-sourcing services– and IBM is
already
working with a number of forward-thinking customers to enable
e-sourcing in
commercial grid environments.

Grid protocols could allow companies to work more closely and more
efficiently
with colleagues, partners and suppliers through:
Resource aggregation — allowing corporate users to treat a
company’s entire
IT infrastructure as one computer through more efficient management.

Database-sharing — allowing companies to access remote databases.
This is
particularly useful for life sciences research firms that need to
share human
genome data with other firms. Engineering and financial firms also
could
benefit significantly.

Collaboration — allowing widely dispersed organizations to work
together on
a project — sharing everything from engineering blueprints to
software
applications.

About the National Grid

The National Grid will be created as part of the e-Science Core
Programme, which
is overseen by the British Government’s Office of Science and
Technology. The
e-Science Core Programme was announced last year as part of a British
government
three-year funding package to develop e-Science — global scientific
collaboration and the next generation of infrastructure that will
enable it.

News & Observer (Raleigh, N.C.) via Newsalert: “Thursday, shareholders got a chance to look at the open-source software company from the inside. The view company officials presented was of an
operation with a strong balance sheet and the sales potential to make shareholders forget their Red Hat shares are trading 96 percent lower than they
were 18 months ago.

Red Hat Chief Executive Officer Matthew J. Szulik described a company focused on specific areas of the market: large corporate customers, and device
manufacturers looking for an inexpensive operating system. Though Microsoft is often singled out as Red Hat’s nemesis, Szulik said the company is aiming
at the Unix operating system market dominated by Sun Microsystems.”

The Register has posted the results from the most recent Netcraft Web survey. Around the Net: “Microsoft gains around five and a half per cent of Web hosts this month, and almost
two per cent of active sites. Primarily this is a result of two large US installations
converting from Solaris. The large free hosting company, Namezero, hosted on the
Exodus network, has migrated its front-end systems to Windows 2000, as has part
of the Network Solutions domain registration system. Network Solutions has moved
physically from Digex to Interland [where Microsoft held a minority interest, prior to
the sale to Micron] as part of the process.”

The Industry Standard: “Slowing economies in the
U.S. and Western Europe continued to hurt sales
of high-end, midrange servers, with the once
robust market seeing only minimal growth in the
second quarter, according to research released
Thursday by Dataquest Inc.

Preliminary figures from the San Jose,
California-based research company showed that
the worldwide server market grew only 0.7
percent during the quarter in terms of units
shipped.”

The Register: “Sony’s Music Entertainment division has been testing an anti-piracy technology
that at best renders illegally copied CDs unlistenable and at worse blows listeners’
speakers.”

CNET News.com
reports that several former high-profile Netscape employees have started a
new company. Called Kontiki, the new company features former Netscapers Mike
Homer as CEO and Wade Hennessey as CTO, and financial backing through former
Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale’s VC firm. Kontiki will offer a way to speed
downloads over the Internet, with an emphasis on multimedia content.