This is PC World’s take on Microsoft vision for its Windows XP. “Taking the first steps in an ambitious attempt to
gradually shift the entire computer industry over
to a single, unified operating system, Microsoft
Tuesday released a beta 2 version of its Windows
XP operating system.”

From LWN.net: licq is a very popular ICQ graphical client.
Previous versions have two vulnerabilities that could be exploited by
a remote attacker to execute arbitrary commands on the client host.
The first vulnerability is a buffer overflow in a log function.
The second vulnerability consists in the use of the system() function
to invoke an external browser when an URL is received. This function
will expand and interpret shell characters and this could be used to
execute commands on behalf of the user running licq.

From LinuxPR: Three members of the PHP development
project’s core steering group have joined the elite Great Bridge advisory
committee, Great Bridge announced today. Rasmus Lerdorf, creator of the PHP
server-side scripting language; Thies Arntzen, an expert in PHP-database
connectivity; and Sascha Schumann, co-author of a leading PHP book,
Professional PHP Programming, will join the group of developers advising the
company best known for its support of the PostgreSQL database. The move
demonstrates Great Bridge’s commitment to full integration of open source PHP
and PostgreSQL to create powerful building blocks for dynamic,
database-driven Web sites.

From LWN.net: Users could embed malicious VIM control codes into a file, and as soon
as any user opened that file in vim-enhanced or vim-X11 with the status
line option enabled in .vimrc, the commands would be executed as that
user.

From The Register: “There is indeed more than meets the eye to Blade, the WinXP server edition
Microsoft introduced as a ‘possibility’ at WinHEC yesterday … It’s what they’re designed to kill that’s most interesting though — it’s Linux. And
maybe they’re supposed to screw Intel over as well, but we’ll get back to that.
Blade servers are intended to be cheap, slam-in-and-go boxes that Web hosting
operations can just peel off the roll (almost) and shove in whenever they need more
server capacity. Now, think about where Linux is really strong, and at the same time
think (fairly, mind) about how good Microsoft is at observing, defining and
analysing the competition.”

ZDNet reports on Caldera’s unveiling of its Linux-Unix hybrid Open Unix 8, which allows Linux applications to run on the Unix kernel Caldera is inheriting with its purchase of SCO.

From LinuxPR: Dr. Larry M. Augustin, founder and CEO of VA Linux Systems (which owns NewsForge, by the way) will deliver a keynote address, “The SourceForge Effect and Other
Tales from the Open Source Enterprise,” which will discuss how Open Source
infrastructure is expanding market share in the enterprise.

From LinuxPR: Ximian is currently conducting a brief survey of end users to find out how they
are using Linux and what changes they think will make Linux more usable. The
survey also addresses how Linux compares with Windows and which changes
to Linux might enhance its appeal to a wider audience.

The survey is accessible at survey.ximian.com (Ed: actually, it’s at http://infopoll.net/Live/surveys/s11518.htm?6), and results will be published by
May 1st on the Ximian web site(www.ximian.com). Additionally, Ximian will
award a DVD player to a lucky respondent. The survey requires JavaScript.

LinuxPR has this: REDSonic, Inc., continuing its
efforts to establish a major foothold in the diversified embedded system
marketplace, announced today its successful porting to Rise Technology’s
iDragon System-On-Chip.

The centerpiece of the REDSonic portfolio is the flexible Real-Time Linux
kernel, REDICE-LinuxTM. REDSonic has established itself as the leader in the
embedded space by providing comprehensive and innovative software tool-set
for embedded system developers.

ZDNet UK’s Archordesk has a column about Linux’s chances in an office setting. “No, Linux is not going to move into the office any time
soon. And the reason has nothing to do with the release of Windows XP. It is: you can’t get the staff for Linux operations.”