Info World reports that Sun has released a major update to its Solaris 8 operating system.

Bill Henning writes “Fixes to minor annoyances in Mandrake 8 configuration for Apache / PHP / PostgreSQL
Mandrake 8.0: Running Apache / SSL / PHP / PostgreSQL” Mandrake 8.0 may have some errors in running some daemons, and this article explains them.

Business Week takes a moment to explain to us the history of that ever popular smiley face ( 🙂 ) from its origins at Carnegie Mellon University in 1982.

ZDNet reports that the FBI has caught two russian crackers accused of stealing credit card information and than selling their services to the companies they robbed as consultants to fix the security holes that let them in.

Yahoo! reports that Intel has introduced its latest Pentium 4 procesor running at 1.7GHz, and will shortly be slashing prices on older processors in the Pentium 4 line.

The Associated Press reports: “Ford Motor Co. has sued a company it says has combined an obscene
word with General Motors Corp.’s name in a Web site address that links to Ford’s Web site.
Ford’s trademark-infringement lawsuit, filed last week, asks a judge to order 2600 Enterprises Inc. to stop using
the questioned domain name, saying the redirection is ‘confusing the public into believing that somehow Ford has
approved (of the tactic) or is somehow involved.’ ” We couldn’t get to the site, supposed to be at F**kGeneralMotors.com.

tjhanson writes, “If NewsForge is feeling brave, The Register has posted a story on the SDMI hack, and of course linked the hack:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/8/18434.html.” Here’s a direct link to the findings of the SDMI hacking team, also at The Register.

Posted at LWN.net: Florian Wesch has discovered a problem (reported to bugtraq) with the
way how Netscape handles comments in GIF files. The Netscape browser
does not escape the GIF file comment in the image information page.
This allows javascript execution in the “about:” protocol and can for
example be used to upload the History (about:global) to a webserver,
thus leaking private information. This problem has been fixed
upstream in Netscape 4.77. Since we haven’t received sourcecode for
these packages they are not part of the Debian GNU/Linux distribution
but are packaged up as `.deb’ files for a convenient installation.

We recommend that you upgrade your Netscape packages immediately and
remove older versions.

ComputerWorld reports on a study by Evans Data Corp. saying that 30% of 521
developers surveyed plan to use Sun Microsystems Inc.’s Java 2 Micro Edition for mobile development projects, followed by Palm and Windows CE. “We want to run Java, as opposed to something proprietary like [Visual Basic],”
said Curtis Chambers, senior manager of architecture at Home Depot. “We’re
rolling out Linux-based clients, and you can’t just port VB over to Linux.”

From CNet: “A music industry group is seeking to block publication of research that describes
anti-piracy technology known as watermarking, saying a report stemming from an
industry-backed hacking challenge violates digital copyright law.

The academic team, led by Princeton University Professor Edward Felten, is preparing to explain
to an industry group this week how they cracked the code to four watermark schemes being
considered as a secure digital music standard.

But attorneys for the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI), a music industry-sponsored group
formed to protect digital songs from piracy, have sent letters to the team, hoping to deter them from
publishing the results of their research.”