highlander of CIOL writes: “Information systems are vital for any organization and the first step to address that is to understand the risks in relation to an organization’s mission and its key assets. By following the OCTAVE method, an organization can make information-protection decisions based on risks to the availability of critical information technology assets.”

“The Suncoast Linux Users group is going to be at the Computer and
Technologies Showcase on May 30th and 31st In Clearwater Florida at the
Harbor View Center. This our second appearance with the promoter
of the Computer and Technologies Showcase. Last year was a huge success
and we were the hit of the show. The promoter has invited us back to top this
feat. Come out and show your support for the Linux community.”

 Come out and show your support: 

 We have a great line up of speakers for the 30th: 

 Jon `maddog' Hall of Linux International and VA-Linux Systems,
 11:00am Keynote in the Special Event Auditorium 

 Robin `roblimo' Miller of Slashdot Presentation 1:30 pm 

 Ralph Cooley of IBM Corporation Americas Linux Sales `Covering
 IBM's Linux Initiative' 2:30 pm 

 Buck Carhart of Caldera Systems 

 Dexter Morgan of NeTraverse Makers of Win4Lin

 We also have lots of cool items as well: shirts, hats, stickers,
 flyers, distros, and lots of software, including some boxed sets from
 from S.u.S.E. and Caldera. The first 2000 visitors to our booth will
 receive a free issue of Linux Journal. Rumor has it that there will
 be a few free Tux penquins hanging around as well. 

 While you're there, check our our Networking demos, all done with
 PC's loaded with Linux. And that's not all! If you're coming, please
 register for free admission at Techshows.com. 
 You can also visit our web site,
 click on the CTS link page, and print out your
 ticket good for 2 people. As long as you pre-register, however, your
 admission is free. 

 If you have a Linux company and would like to be part of this show,
 there are booths available at a discount in the Linux Pavilion. We
 encourage you to take advantage of this opportunity, and help us
 build our numbers, working toward a future Southeastern Linux
 showcase. To check rates and availability contact 

   P. Scott Stemple
   Executive Director
   Computer & Technology Showcase
   sstemple@techshows.comwww.techshows.com
   800-422-0251 ext. 3021

   As you may remember, the Suncoast Linux Users Group (SLUG) invited all
   Florida LUGs to come to our booth at the last CTS show last October, and lend
   their support. That first show was a tremendous success. We gave out
   approximately 2000+ free GNU/Linux distribution disks. Official numbers
   showed we were visited by the almost 2/3 of the total 6000 attendees. Even with
   an all volunteer crew and makeshift banners, we were the most successful booth
   at the show, beating even Microsoft's booth attendance by a 5 to 1 ratio. 

   Join us at the show! If you can answer questions, make presentations, donate
   distros to give out, or just help promote the cause of GNU/Linux and Open
   Source in Florida, join us. There is strength in numbers.

   Remember the Atlanta Linux Showcase (ALS)? They started like this.

   When: May 30-31, 10:00 am-4:00 pm

   Where: Clearwater, Florida

   Q: How do I get there? And where can I get more info?
   A: See the map and additional info at this link:

   http://www.techshows.com/Clearwater.html

   Q: Is this free? Are there tickets?
   A: Yes, but only if you pre-register, Go to our web site at:

   http://www.suncoastlug.org and follow the steps.

   Q: What is the meaning of life?
   A: Wrong booth.

   If you have any further questions, please contact myself the CTS Coordinator Bill
   Preece at bpreece1@tampabay.rr.com or Diana Lenko dazie@mindspring.com
   or
   Norbert Cartagena at niccademous@yahoo.com.

   Sincerely,
   Bill Preece

   Suncoast Linux Users Group
   http://www.suncoastlug.org

Ed.note: Newsforge is part of OSDN, a subsidiary of VA Linux.
   

“The Register: “A technology working group of the SIIA’s ebusiness division has come up with an
concept called the Electronic Citadel. Sensitive data is encrypted so that it can be
validated at any time in the future but the original information may only be recovered
during a defined period of time. This is described as the final barrier to protect
sensitive data when other defences have been breached.”

NetworkWorldFusion: “There is little doubt that
you have a grueling job when your business
card reads “senior abuse administrator.”
Scores of computer programmers and techies
— many of whom hold similar job titles —
gathered in San Francisco Thursday at
SpamCon 2001 to vouch for the difficulties of
their labors.”

Upside: “Tim Bray, the outspoken, colorful co-creator of the revolutionary new Internet software
standard XML, did not disappoint his fans at the XML Europe 2001 conference taking place here this
week.

XML, as anyone who knows anything about technology will tell you, is the intelligent way of
transferring data and presenting information on websites and also, by the way, making billions for a
somewhat economically challenged IT market.”

LinuxSecurity: “This week, advisories were released for samba, minicom, xemacs, kernel (TurboLinux), man, mktemp, openssh, pine, and
vixie-cron. The vendors include Caldera, EnGarde, Mandrake, Red Hat, and TurboLinux. It is critical that you update all
insecure packages.”

highlander writes: “The safety of an encryption mechanism depends largely upon the level of difficulty in ‘finding’ the decryption key. Here CIOL gives you a detailed account of the various kinds of encryption algorithms and decryption keys that help in keeping the data ‘secure’.”

– By Grant Gross –

You don’t have to read a lot of technology news before you run into a story about handhelds and wireless devices being a potentially hot platform for Open Source development. A handful of companies, including Sharp, are planning Linux-based handhelds, and tech research firms are acknowledging a potential for growth.

Wireless industry heavyweights Motorola and Nokia are also embracing Open Source development.

But does Open Source development offer any special advantages to coders and companies creating applications for handheld and wireless devices? People working in the field say most of the advantages for Open Source handheld development are the same as those for any Open Source project — a worldwide group of developers contributing ideas that improve your code.

So what makes the handheld and wireless markets ripe for Open Source development?

Tony Fader, vice president of sales for Transvirtual Technologies, the company responsible for the PocketLinux handheld development platform, says part of the reason for optimism is the overall potential of the handheld market. Fader quotes a study from Digitrends.net saying that revenues from “wireless intelligent terminals,” including everything from email-enabled cell phones to Web-connected PDAs, were nearly $600 million in 1999, and are expected to jump more than six fold to $4 billion in 2003. (Although other business prognosticators are questioning the viability of the handheld market.)

“The embedded markets are entering a time of explosive growth without
any single market leader,” Fader says. “As more hardware and content manufacturers
enter these markets, leveraging open standards and open source software is of obvious advantage. The Linux kernel, especially, is well suited to work on new embedded hardware platforms.”

Fader and others argue that low-bloat Linux, with its ability to run on old computers, is also a natural for handhelds, with less RAM and hard-drive space than desktops. “Linux can have a very small footprint, and … any Open Source solution is a natural for the economies of scale apparent in the electronics mass markets,” Fader adds.

Others say Open Source development does provide distinct advantages for the wireless device sector, where each device may have unique needs. “I would argue that without source code, you can’t tailor the OS the way you want, to support the new
devices/communications styles you want, etc.,” says Keith Bigelow, director of product management for Lutris Technologies, maker of the Enhydra wireless server. “Additionally, with closed source … I still have to pay per unit fees, I have no control if they kill it, and so on. Further, Linux was architected
as a clean kernel with many services [very plug and play in nature], so
removing from the platform certain behaviors doesn’t destroy the product itself,
as a monolithic code base would.”

Bigelow’s taking a shot at Microsoft’s frequent changes of direction in its wireless operating system plans. But what of the supposed disadvantages that companies like Microsoft warn of, this giving your code away for free issue?

David Young, chief evangelist for Lutris Technologies, says that code sharing is an advantage, because it helps create standards and define best practices in the young wireless industry. With developers everywhere looking at high quality code, it’s easy for the best standards to emerge, Young says.

While working for a tech company in the ’80s, Young and other coders would get nervous when their bosses called for a code review. “All of us engineers would absolutely freak out about someone looking at our code, but that’s a natural way of being in the Open Source arena — it’s 24 by seven by worldwide code review,” he says. “[Open Source] tends to streamline the dissemination of information, so that a kid in a garage in South Africa knows exactly what an engineer at Nokia knows … They can participate as peers in the Open Source arena.”

Young also thinks the wireless space has an advantage because the Open Source development model has matured, and “people understand how to play in the Open Source sandbox.”

Young can’t bring himself to think of a disadvantage, although he and officials from other Open Source companies say the scores of coders who contribute to their products can sometimes throw them a curve ball.

In Lutris’ case, the curve ball came from developers in Sweden and Taiwan, Young says, who recognized the company’s XML feed would work with wireless devices. “Literally, overnight, all of the sudden we were in the wireless space,” he says. “If you can view that as a downside, basically we had a technology which was evolving in a direction we weren’t totally prepared for. The counterbalance to that is we knew we had a technology that was relevant. Basically, the folks around the world said, ‘This is what we need in an application server.’ “

Seungchae Cheong, sales manager for America and Europe at Yopy handheld maker G.Mate, says the only disadvantage for Open Source development right now is that the Linux-run handheld has few applications, compared to larger competitors in the handheld operating system space. But that’s not an Open Source issue, Cheong says, just one of timing.

But Cheong expects “great things” from the community of developers working on the Yopy project. “One [advantage] is the possibility that all developers
in the world can create the various applications with free Open Source.”

Dallas News reports that Transmeta Corp. will announce its cooperation with Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) to share technology AMD has developed, in an effort not to reinvent the wheel.

Linux Today reports that there is a GNU licensed IPv6 web server downloadable at Microsoft.