From the humor site, Segfault: “In a shock report released today, market research giants Nielsens claimed that 88% of
people on the street who expressed an opinion found the operating system Linux ‘dull’.

‘It’s preposterous!’ exclaimed Alex Johnson, C programmer and heavily bearded Linux
user. ‘Where did they do these surveys, Microsoft HQ? How could anyone not enjoy tinkering with a well made .cshrc file, or carefully setting
environmental variables such as HOSTNAME, MANPATH or ENV_SET?

Dull? How could anyone call this dull?’ “

At LWN.net: Package: slrn; problem type: buffer overflow; Debian-specific: no.

Bill Nottingham reported a problem in the wrapping/unwrapping
functions of the slrn newsreader. A long header in a message
might overflow a buffer and which could result into executing
arbitraty code encoded in the message.

EET.com reports that “Windows’ migration to the factory floor gathered momentum
this past week, as exhibitors at National Manufacturing Week laid the
groundwork for a new era of automation equipment.” However, some manufacturers are interested in Linux, but they predict its adoption into factories will take time, just as Windows’ adoption has.

Wired.com reports on the winners and losers during he Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Pioneer awards presentation.

2001 USENIX Annual Technical Conference, June 25-30, 2001, at the Marriot Copley Place Hotel in Boston, Massachusetts USA.
http://www.usenix.org/events/usenix01/

Do you need cutting-edge information? Then you need the USENIX Annual Technical Conference, established 1983. USENIX, the Advanced Computing Systems Association, offers professional-level tutorials, three technical tracks, an information-laden vendor exhibition, BoFs, Work-in-Progress presentations, parties and get-togethers for senior researchers, developers, sysadmins, and security analysts.

The USENIX Annual Technical Conference Exhibition features nearly 100 companies, products and services. Browse through the latest technologies and product demos to find the right solution to your business needs.

For more information, please contact:
Dana Geffner, USENIX Exhibition Manager
Phone: 1.831.457.8649
Email: dana@usenix.org

The announcement is posted at LWN.net, and 2.4.2ac16 includes uniprocessor APIC fixes for misdetect; small ymf_pci fixes/updates ; a fix of break support on sx serial; and killing another dead config.in entry.

From a San Fransisco Chronicle column: “If a reporter is covering a story about shoplifting, is it all
right for that reporter to pilfer a pair of shoes from Nordstrom?
Of course not. Why, then, is it so common for reporters covering
the Napster case to download copyrighted music, an act the
recording industry contends is illegal?”

LWN.net has a post announcing that George Kraft will be taking over as the
chairman of the Linux Standard Base. “In June of last year, George Kraft became project manager of the LSB
specification working group. As chairman, George will continue to
coordinate the development of the LSB specification effort, working with
Stuart Anderson, the editor and architect of the LSB specification, and
the other LSB team leaders. Now, it’s also his job to make sure
everything gets done (and done right). George has been effectively
running the LSB for some months, so the real change is that he’s getting
the recognition that he deserves.”

LWN.net has an advisory covering several vulnerabilities in Zope that have been
addressed.

Patrick Mullen writes: “With Loki Games under some fire lately, one would think that there isn’t much on the horizon for this young company. That couldn’t be further from the truth, as they will be releasing Tribes 2 for Linux shortly after the Windows release hits the shelf. The Duke of URL took a look at the latest beta for Tribes 2 on Linux and found it to be extremely stable and graphically astounding.”