In this week’s issue.: Election updates, bug squashing party report, unstable trackers, and new dates for the Debian Conference.

“When eperl is installed setuid root, it can switch to the UID/GID of
the scripts owner. Although Debian doesn’t ship the program setuid
root, this is a useful feature which people may have activated
locally. When the program is used as /usr/lib/cgi-bin/nph-eperl the
bugs could lead into a remote vulnerability as well.” Updates and more information at LWN.net.

Virus protection is the hottest new software category for Palm handheld devices. ZDNet eWEEK takes a quick look at handheld anti-virus programs offered by F-Secure, Norton, Symantec, and McAfee.

If we had Slashdot-like department listings, this item might be filed under “beating-the-stain-that-used-to-be-a-dead-horse” — Napster is being sued by two new companies — the producer of the annual Grammy Awards and EMI Music. Full story at IDG.

From ZDNet: “Some analyst wonder if Apple(Nasdaq: AAPL) isn’t rushing Mac OS X out the door solely to meet the official March 24 launch date. Missing features, such as DVD support and notebook sleep functions, could mean the new operating system needs more time to ripen on the tree.”

ZDNet Interactive Week analyzes NTT DoCoMo’s recent $9 billion investment in AT&T’s wireless subsidiary. The writer notes that “AT&T has a history of making moves that alter the course of the wireless marketplace,” and some of those moves backed with NTT DoCoMo’s cash might ultimately mean that WAP won’t be the wireless standard of the future.

From Linux Journal: Bruce Perens gives the community an update on plans to bring HP’s discontinued OpenMail program into the realm of Open Source. Have patience, says Perens, and please stop writing HP management about taking the Open Source path.

You’ve probably heard of a ‘honeypot’ — a single computer system set up to catch crackers in the act of a system break-in. The latest security concept, known as ‘decoy nets’ — an entire network of honeypots, complete with simulated network traffic, designed to keep crackers busy doing no harm for as long as possible. Mentioned in the “this is why you, yes you, should be concerned” area of the story is a root exploit that wreaks havoc on Linux systems. Read the story at CNN.

Linux Programming posts the announcement of Qt’s latest version. The message says, in part: ”

The main reason for this Qt release is the latest development on the
Unix/X11 platform. The newly-developed Xft extension included in
XFree 4.0.2 finally enables applications to render antialiased fonts
on X11. We feel that Qt users should get access to this feature as
soon as possible, so we offer a new Qt release supporting it.” Also included: lyrics to a spiffy version release song.

How do you present computing to someone who has never used a computer? Federico Pellegrin approached the subject the Open Source way in a 26-hour basic computing course he offered in Italy last year. Take a peek at Pellegrin’s course outline and commentary at