Slackware reports that it will be dropped by Wind River in an upcoming corporate merger. Slackware promises to continue on its own. There’s a discussion on Slashdot.

PC World reports that a Bulgarian bug hunter has found a potentially dangerous bug in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer file viewer, allowing files to disguise themselves as innocuous files.

Reuters reports that Intel’s IA-64 processor development is ahead of schedule, causing Hewlett-Packard to cancel plans to resell Unisys systems with IA-64’s 32 bit predecessor because the processor is expected so soon.

Originally it was supported, but after ammendments, Computer World reports that privacy advocates no longer support a proposed American anti-spam law.

Tempest Brazil warns of a security hole in the IP masq module for FTP in the 2.4 series kernel, potentially allowing an unauthutenticated user to connect to any port through a firewall.

VNUnet.com: “There’s been a long-standing belief throughout the Linux community that
hackers and virus writers had better things to do than target them with
malicious attacks – a belief that is beginning to erode.

As Linux increasingly becomes a target for malicious attacks, the question
arises as to how vendors and users should deal with the problem. Is it a
case of developing antivirus defences specifically for Linux or is it the age
old problem of increasing awareness of the threats within the open source
community?”

Alan Cox posts the changelog for the latest Linux kernel release. In 2.4.3-ac9: “Fix ac8 pnpbios build bug” … “Fix ac8 sysrq build bug” … “Fix uml for new semaphores” … “attempt to flush low memory buffers when short of bounce space on highmem machines” … “Kill old filesystem_setup function” … “Small pnp bios tidy up.” Thanks to LinuxToday for the link.

From The Register: “Customers of computer components supplier Accubyte have been
encouraged to check their credit card records for fraudulent misuse after
it admitted that its previously lax security left confidential information
exposed.”

Cracking happens, and now there’s at least one insurance policy that will cover any damage done to a corporate server. If you’re running Windows NT, however, be prepared to pay a premium that’s 25% higher than the ones paid by policy holders who don’t use Microsoft products. More at The Register.

India is bridging its digital divide the common sense way: The Simputer. Short for Simple, Inexpensive, and Multilingual, the Simputer will sell for around $200. Part of the low cost of the unit can be attributed to the fact that it uses Open Source software — including Linux — eliminating the inexpensive licensing deals that enslave most PC manufacturers. Full story at CNET News.com.