Ilan Rabinovitch@LUGFEST Public Relations writes: “The Simi-Conejo Linux Users Group will be holding LUGFest IV on April 21st and 22nd, 2001, in Simi Valley, California.

A LUGFest is an opportunity for Linux users to demo Linux (or other Open Source operating systems), Linux applications, attend seminars, and BOF (Birds Of a Feather) sessions. Additionally, Linux vendors may participate and show off their wares.

LUGFest III was held on October 28, 2000, and was a great success.
(See http://www.sclug.org/members/notes.cgi?date=10-28- 2000-LUGFest3).
Approximately 350 Linux enthusiasts and a number of vendors attended over the course of the afternoon.

We had people come from Orange County, Santa Barbara, Santa Clarita, the South Bay area, all points in between, and also from out-of-state. Many Linux vendors donated stuff for giveways and raffles. Vendors who came with their wares were VA Linux, SGI, LinuxCare, LinuxBoxen, Mandrake, Parasoft, VMware, Cobolt, LinuxSolve, Corel, Loki Games, Cosmo Engineering and Andern.org

If you have a special skill with Linux or a Linux application, or if you’re a Linux vendor who would like to show off his products, SCLUG would love to have you participate in LUGFest IV! SCLUG is also looking for speakers on Linux, Open Source, or other related subjects.

Due to the continually growing attendance from LUGFest to LUGFest, we’ve changed the LUGFest to a two-afternoon event so more people can attend.

For more info, to register for LFIV, or to volunteer to do a demo, contact gareth@wiked.org, or visit http://www.lugfest.org

“

ZDNet reports on the introduction of W95.Winux, the first know Windows and Linux virus.

– By Joab Jackson –

Cyberpunk –

I know a woman who disciplines her children with
PowerPoint briefing charts. Well, the stapled handouts themselves aren’t
the actual punishment; it’s the whole presentation that goes
along with
them. When things really go awry in the household — when the
garbage isn’t
taken out, when bedrooms go uncleaned, when there’s
horseplay at church — out
come those briefing charts. Claire’s husband and their two kids, aged 12
and 14, gather in the family room to sit in glassy-eyed
silence while Claire,
in her most professional singsong voice (she’s a
middle-management type
at work), plods her way through the “family
presentation” –bullet point
by bullet point, page by page — until all admit that their
misbehavior
is harmful.

The idea of using briefing charts at home might seem truly
perverse
if it didn’t also seem so darn wholesome. In the space of 45
minutes, Claire
delves deep into the psyche of her family, dissecting it as
if it was a
dysfunctional workplace. The cover page states the goal of
the briefing — namely,
to affect a “Positive Change to the Family Team” — and
features a picture
of two smiling children (a generic photo, not actual family
members).

Now, you may have thought about your family as a “team”
before, but probably
not in the sense of actually being out to win something. But
this family
is indeed out to win many things, as described in Claire’s
bulleted list:
harmony, happiness, love, etc. And what’s holding them back
from a winning streak?
Page 4 offers another list: negative behavior, “fighting and
squabbling at inappropriate
times,” lack of cooperation, disorganization.

You get the idea. What’s amazing here is how effective these
presentations
articulate how a smoothly family unit should run. How can a
teenager slack off when a chart clearly shows how
“disorganization
leads to inefficiencies that impact the entire family”?

This is odd because — as most everyone who uses Microsoft
PowerPoint,
the software used to make slides and briefing charts for
corporate meetings,
knows on some level — PowerPoint is not actually used to
communicate ideas,
but rather to not communicate ideas.

Forget the Microsoft Web site
ad copy about how PowerPoint helps one
“organize,
illustrate, and deliver your ideas professionally.” It’s not
used for anything of the sort. Here’s
how to use PowerPoint: You, Mr. or Ms. Middle Manager, are
assigned to
give a presentation about something that, in all likelihood,
you didn’t
have time to think through beforehand because you were out
late last night
getting drunk with the intern. So, hung over, you click some
meaningless
buzzwords onto some charts and, come meeting time, read off
the charts,
tossing in a few pointless asides to pad the show timewise.
A PowerPoint
slide presentation, with its neatly ordered bullets; generic
clip art;
bold, clear typefaces; and bright, unambiguous colors
effectively hides
the fact that you don’t have all that much to say.

Which is perfect, because your co-workers don’t want to
hear what you
have to say anyway. Much better to avoid trying to make
sense of what the
bozo in the front of the room is droning on about and
instead stare blandly
into a briefing chart while daydreaming about that hottie
back at your own office.

Truth is, nothing provides a patina of productivity
better than a PowerPoint
presentation. Demanding little raw data and no emotion, such
presentations
gloss over the messiness and pointlessness of much of
business life.

So people who take this stuff too seriously worry me. See, I
happen
to know that Claire, despite the respect she commands in her
profession,
enjoyed a wild youth, and that at least one of her offspring
is showing
signs of possessing that rebellion gene — at least if wearing
black is any indication.
So it concerned me that PowerMom might be using
her charts to sublimate that essential yet unseemly undertow
of her children’s
unconscious — the universal dark side of human behavior that
impels otherwise
productive people to get drunk, lust after interns, and
leave the garbage unemptied.
Was she really trying to gloss over her own progeny’s wanton
behavior? Mold them,
presentation by presentation, into two of those insufferable
“organization kids” described in this month’s Atlantic
Monthly — robo-youth whose lives are filled with
activities
and appointments aimed only at self-improvement and
resume-building?

Well, Claire may be a little too influenced by
business-speak, but she
holds no illusions that her point-packed presentation has
any value beyond
simple annoyance. “Oh, they absolutely can’t stand it,” she
confides, laughing
not a little at her brood’s reaction to the family
briefings. It’s not
like the kids actually learn anything from the charts and
bullet lists,
she says, but “all I have to do is mention them and they
calm down.” Her
youngest actually breaks out in tears when the charts are
handed out. Evidently,
lecturing on how to “streamline the family process” is more
painful than
revoking TV time or docking allowances.

But the charts do serve a higher purpose, Claire says. “I
figure when
[my kids] grow up and go out in the work force, they’ll be
so traumatized
by these presentations, they will refuse to use them,” she
says, maybe
weary of making a few too many herself.

Ah, the crazy wisdom of the corporate mom.

NewsForge editors read and respond to comments posted on our discussion page.

Salon.com has a column about Microsoft’s Hailstorm product, which will “put all your data in one convenient place — and leave Bill Gates with the keys.”

CNet reports that US president George W Bush is asking European regulators to reduce their privacy standards to allow US businesses to work more easily in Europe.

Computer World reports that the US Congress is conside.ring legislation that would severely punish professional spammers, with fines up to $500,000 and a year in prison.

– by Daniel Pearson –
This announcement, which has been quoted by at least one major news service, warns against an apparently new
virus that has the uncommon feature of infecting both Windows and Linux binary executables. A person who calls himself Benny claims to be its author. The original warning’s publisher is a
company that sells anti-virus software, and it is using this as an
opportunity to hawk its wares. An uninformed or unwary reader might be led to believe that the “W32.Winux” virus is the
beginning of the great avalanche of Linux viruses that has been predicted at
various times by various pundits. But it isn’t.
Examine the unadorned facts of the virus warning, and you’ll realize that this threat presents nothing
new from a technical viewpoint. The infection method described in the advisory
is very simplistic: an infected binary secretly searches in the “current”
directory and its parent directory and writes the virus code into all the other
binary executables that it finds. (I am not exactly sure if the “current”
directory mentioned in the advisory refers to the user’s current working directory at the time of execution or the directory in which the infected file
resides.)

There are several flaws in this infection mechanism when it is attempted under
a Unix-like operating system such as Linux. The first is that an infected
executable must be acquired. The standard advice (which should be hammered
into the head of anyone who installs software on a
Linux machine) is that you should never obtain binaries
from an untrusted source. If you only obtain programs from reliable
sources, then the chances that you will ever acquire a program that is infected
with a virus are very slim.

There are other barriers that stand in the way of viruses under
Unix, too. The most
important is the separation between the root user and normal users. Normally all programs installed on the system are
owned by the root user and can’t be modified by normal users. And
since any program run on a Unix-like operating system only has the permissions
of the user running that program, an infected program would be unable to spread
its infection unless it was run by root. This leads to another standard
piece of important advice: Avoid using the root account as much as possible,
and be very careful what you run when you must be root. This is a very
simple practice, but it offers a great deal of protection.

However, this form of protection will fail when a normal user owns executables.
Many users will never have ownership of the programs that run on a
system. They only run programs that were installed by root. But
some types of users will have good reasons to own executable programs. The type
of user that most prominently comes to my mind is anyone who writes his or her own
programs. It would not be uncommon such a user to have compiled instances of
previously written programs lying around in their user home
directory. These executables would be vulnerable to infection from a
program run by that user. This could be unfortunate for a single user,
but any and all damage would still be firewalled away within a single user
account. The system itself would not be compromised.

So you should consider the existence of this virus as evidence that those who
hand out the standard security tips really aren’t kidding. We should all
adhere to the customs of the Unix culture that we’ve developed over the decades,
and practice good security habits. But we hardly need to panic about an
infection method that Unix-like operating systems have been designed to guard
against for as long as anyone cares to remember.

Daniel Pearson is a freshmeat appindex editor.

NewsForge editors read and respond to comments posted on our discussion page.

From LWN.net: Previous releases of the sgml-tools package create temporary files
with poor permissions, tipically allowing world-read access.
It is recommended that all sgml-tools users update their packages.

The show floor at the upcoming
Embedded Systems Conference San Francisco, the world’s largest
exhibition
of the core technologies for intelligent electronics, will feature
hundreds
of products used by engineers, designing the latest in Internet
Appliances,
Systems-on-Chip and smart industrial machines. Critical tools and
technologies that enable communications and networking connectivity in
everyday devices will be among the many new products unveiled at this
industry-leading event, running from April 10-12 at the Moscone Center.

The show floor at the twelfth annual Embedded Systems Conference
features
341 exhibitors, including 118 San Francisco Bay Area companies. This
year,
the exhibit floor will also feature the “Innovation Showcase,” an
exhibition of the newest end-user products powered by embedded systems.

“It’s not that we’re all going to be browsing web-sites from our
toasters,
but we’re going to see an increasing number of products that
incorporate
the communications capability of the Internet in very interesting
ways,”
said Lindsey Vereen, Conference Director. “You can see some great
examples
of this at the Innovation Showcase and on the show floor, where there
will
be demonstrations of the chips and software that will enable next
generation functionality.”

A number of intelligent devices are featured in the event’s first
Innovation Showcase. These include:

• A Mobile Web Pad
• A Multimedia Electronic Book
• An Internet-Enabled Espresso Maker
• New Digital Music Players, including portable and home stereo devices
• A Network-Enabled Fingerprint Security System
• An Internet Appliance that allows small and remote offices to share
  Internet access, files, printers, and network services

Hundreds of the products that are used to create these types of devices
will be demonstrated on the show floor. Among the newest products, are
tools used to add connectivity to embedded devices, such as:

• Application specific Bluetooth front-end solutions
• Components for the implementation of voice over DSL
• CAN (Controller Area Network) products, which link electronic
  networks in
  automobiles and on manufacturing plant floors.
• An embedded Ethernet and storage module
  <.li> Middleware for deterministic IP data delivery without complex
  programming

The show floor will also feature a broad range of products to build
software applications including Linux and cross-platform development
tools. Examples include Linux-based PDA software, web browsers and a
real
time operating system; an integrated tool for programmers working with
Windows CE and Linux; and software to link Linux devices to
Windows-based
enterprise systems.

Another category of products featured on the show floor is
System-on-Chip
(SoC) devices and the tools used to create them, including a real-time,
low
power Java Processor; a streamlined processor core with low gate count
and
a single stage pipeline; a System-on-Chip device with integrated
Ethernet
controller; and a solution for multi-core SoC simulation and debugging.

“System-on-Chip is the natural result of the electronics industry’s
capability to shrink nearly every key component to smaller and smaller
sizes and put them on a single die,” said Vereen. “Consumer benefits
of
high integration and small size are more features in a smaller package,
higher reliability, and less power consumption. Integrating software
into
Systems-on-Chip is still a challenge, but exhibitors at ESC are
starting to
address this market.”

The ESC exhibition is held in conjunction with the world’s most
comprehensive educational program on embedded systems. With 186
courses
and 15-full day tutorials, including 95 entirely new sessions, the
conference program highlights topics such as design of wireless
devices,
development of distributed systems, and open-source design tools and
operating systems.

Special events include keynote addresses, a panel discussion and
exhibitor
workshops. Best-selling author of the “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the
Galaxy,”
Douglas Adams and Sun Microsystems Java technology inventor James
Gosling
and his colleague Greg Bollella present the keynotes. A panel
discussion
titled, “Object-Oriented Programming: Method or Madness,” is offered on
Monday, April 9 at 5:00 p.m. Additionally, Cadence Design Systems and
Microsoft Corporation are offering special exhibitor workshops on
Tuesday
through Thursday. Advance sign-up and payment is required for these
hands-on product-oriented classes.

More information on the Embedded Systems Conference San Francisco is
available at http://www.embedded.com/esc. Conference programs can also
be
obtained by calling 877-446-7799 or by e-mailing esc@cmp.com.

The Embedded Systems Conference is produced by CMP Media Inc. and is
sponsored by EMBEDDED SYSTEMS PROGRAMMING magazine and ELECTRONIC
ENGINEERING TIMES. Other conferences produced by CMP’s Electronics
Trade
Show Group include the Embedded Systems Conference-Chicago, the
Embedded
Systems Conference-Boston, the Embedded Systems Conference-Europe, the
Embedded Executive Summit, and the Communications Design Conference.

About CMP Media Inc.Z
CMP Media Inc. (Nasdaq: UNEWY) is a leading high-tech media company
providing essential information and marketing services to the entire
technology spectrum – the builders, sellers and users of technology
worldwide. Capitalizing on its editorial strength, CMP is uniquely
positioned to offer marketers comprehensive, integrated media solutions
tailored to meet their individual needs. Its diverse products and
services
include newspapers, magazines, Internet products, research, direct
marketing services, education and training, trade shows and
conferences,
custom publishing, testing and consulting. More information can be
found
at www.cmpnet.com.

Note: All trademarks used herein are the property of their respective
owners.

Attendee Contact: CMP Media Inc.
Toll free: 1/877-446-7799
E-mail: esc@cmp.com

A reader writes: “If you go to Napster’s Web site you will find Napster’s latest strategic move, a call to the populace to attend an organized rally on the steps of capital hill in support. The gathering will happen April 3rd, just before their hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Afterwards there is a after-hearing concert with several ‘unamed’ Napster supporting artists. Hmmmm …. Courtney Love or The Offsping anybody? The

story’s at mp3newswire.net.