LinuxPlanet has a column about two guys laughing at the columnist as he tries to use Windows on his laptop.

From LinuxSecurity.com: “hanterm is a modified version of xterm which supports Korean language
entry and display. It is included in the FreeBSD ports collection in
two versions: ko-hanterm and ko-hanterm-xf.

The hanterm binary is installed with setuid root permissions, but
contains insecure code which allows unprivileged local users to obtain
root access on the local system.”

IDG News Service has a re-write and some additional information to the Free Software Foundation press release endorsing the DotGNU and Mono projects. More from eWeek.

The Register reports that Miguel de Icaza of Ximian’s Mono project expects to release code by the middle of next year. It includes “a
Linux C# compiler, a virtual machine, and the common language runtime, so Linux
developers will be able to create and deploy .NET apps on Linux in languages
other than C#. The work will be released under the GNU GPL or LGPL and
collaboration is encouraged.” More on the project from NewScientist.com.

Scientific Amercian has an article on the history of Beowulf supercomputers, including the role of Linux in these high-powered machines.

Anonymous Reader writes, “eWeek reports on the GNU-Darwin project’s move to bring the FreeBSD ports system to Darwin.”

TheStandard reports on Microsoft’s extended MSN Messenger chat service interuptions, and Microsoft’s lack of a message about the problems.

– By Jeff Field –

With the growing availability and popularity of cable modem service in many areas, a lot of people, Linux users included, are purchasing their own cable modems. This can save on monthly lease fees and other costs associated with leasing a cable modem from the provider. However, I recently picked up a leased 3Com 3CR29223 HomeConnect Cable Modem, and here are my experiences, including some curious behavior with Linux.
When the cable modem arrived, I was given instructions by my service provider, Comcast@Home. Comcast said it should be simple — I would just plug it in and everything would work. So, I disconnected the old Motorola cable modem that I have had for a couple years now; that one was not only huge, but capped out at a 15k upload speed. The procedure for installing the new modem was much like the old one — patch cable into my hub’s uplink port, coax into the back, power connection to my surge supressor. Comcast said it would take up to two hours for it to connect — it was actually around an hour and a half.

Once the modem had grabbed a connection, I tried to grab my IP, but no luck. So, I called Comcast, and customer service told me I would have to change the name on my PC and read the other four machines. (Yes, I pay for extra IPs, and I know a router would probably serve me better.) Comcast never said this would be necessary — my entire internal network was based off those particular addresses and IPs. So I ordered the new addresses and set everything up. This is when I ran into an interesting problem under Mandrake Linux; previously, I could just pick up the IP via DHCP, but something happened when the change occured, and I had to manually set up the network configuration. Once that happened, I brought up eth0 and noticed the packet light on my NIC going, a good sign indeed. I SSHed into a shell at one of my ISPs, which confirmed that everything was running properly.

The modem itself does everything I could want — it sits behind my desk, it blinks, and it stays connected. It has a number of status lights, something my previous modem did not have (beyond power and connection status), but they are of limited use. One is a transfer light, which is more annoying than useful, because it blinks almost constantly, the other is some sort of “programmable” light that your ISP can set to blink when certain things happen, such as when you get email.

We received the 3Com modem as a free upgrade because Comcast was phasing out the old Motorola we were leasing previously. Even if we had purchased our last modem, we would still have to upgrade now. The problem for early adopters of cable modems is that they may be forced to upgrade to these new DOCSIS-complaint modems. DOCSIS is a common protocol for cable modems to speak to cable providers. Earlier modems probably did not support DOCSIS. For people who bought a cable modem, this means shelling out another $200 for a modem. For people who leased, it simply means a call to your cable provider and a couple of hours downtime. In the end it seems worth it – many old modems had caps on upload speed (the cap on my modem was 15KB/second) and these caps have probably been removed, in my case increasing my upload speed to as much as 120KB/second. That is an 8-fold increase in speed.

So, the real decision comes down to this – should you lease, or should you buy your modem? For our service, it is an extra $8 a month if we lease the modem. One benefit to leasing is that if the modem breaks or becomes obsolete, the company will provide you with a new one, no matter how long after you begin leasing it. And in our case, leasing paid off. At $8 a month for a little over two years, the cost is a little less than buying this new modem — so, if I get another modem (via upgrade or broken modem) in the next two years, I will again at least “break even” on the deal. With a purchased modem, it would cost $32 a month, only slightly more than a dial-up ISP and a second line to run it on, but if the modem breaks I’m on my own.

Conclusion
The modem is excellent. It has yet to disconnect or have any service issues since I got it a few weeks ago. The service is also very nice. For those few dollars over what you’d pay for a standard ISP, you get 24/7 connections and all sorts of extra bandwidth, something many Linux users can appreciate, especially when updating all those nice large packages over the Internet.

If you are in the market for cable service, and have decided to purchase your own modem, check out the 3Com 3CR29223 HomeConnect; it is a relatively inexpensive model that has been very reliable for me. It can be found for around $250 on Pricewatch.

Exocore: “RedHat ships a highly tuned version of the Linux kernel which enables DMA (Direct Memory Access) or even Ultra DMA by
default for the IDE controller. DMA based transfers greatly reduces install time by providing faster file transfer speeds. DMA
also reduces CPU usage to a large extent for disk activity.

Because of the above mentioned benefits, DMA is a highly desirable feature and in most cases, the DMA enabled kernel works
like a charm.

For more on the benefits of using DMA transfers see http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/mini/Ultra-DMA.html.

However, DMA has its downside. It requires that all the components of your system are “healthy”. If there is a hardware
related problem in any one of the related system components, DMA will fail to function properly.”

Chicago Tribune: “In a cemetery outside Tel Aviv, Rabbi David Eliezrie chanted the
traditional prayer that begins a reinterment service. “Oh, God, full of
compassion …” he sang out in Hebrew in a service that was the final
wish of an Orange County, Calif., couple who wanted to be buried
together in the Holy Land.

Just then: Brrrrrrrrnnnngg.

A cell phone. An Israeli, who with one hand clutched a corner of the cot
that held the dead man, reached into his pocket with the other hand,
withdrew his cell phone, flipped it open and launched into conversation.”