The ruling has come down in the SCO/Novell case regarding Unix copyrights, but the decision is likely to leave observers divided over the results.

The decision from U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball awarded $2.55 million to Novell, a nominal victory, but a far cry from the millions the company had sought.

As a result, the ruling, which could be appealed by Novell, means that SCO could continue to survive as a going concern -- and that its delayed case against IBM is likely to go ahead as well.

The software update mechanisms used by most BSD and Linux operating systems can be tricked into installing buggy or known-to-be-compromised software on users' systems, creating serious security risks, according to new research.

The study Package Management Security, to be published in a forthcoming issue of the University of Arizona Tech Report, analysed 10 package managers and found that all were vulnerable to exploits, allowing attackers to install unsafe software on target systems.

Read the whole article here: http://news.zdnet.co.uk/security/0,1000000189,39446765,00.htm

For three health care centers, the challenge was clear: Find a way to improve internal communications by expanding e-mail accounts to all employees, including doctors, nurses, security staffers and dietary workers, without breaking their IT budgets.

To do it, the hospitals needed to look at alternatives to traditional ways of creating and administering e-mail accounts.

Read the whole story here: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&...

They’re tiny, they’re portable, and they’ve rewritten the rules in the traditionally feature-heavy notebook market. Despite years in which Linux has been ignored by mainstream notebook makers, Linux-based mini-notebook PCs drove a spike in sales during 2007 that suggest the operating system could finally be hitting the mainstream.

Or could it?

Read the whole article here: http://apcmag.com/linux_not_essential_to_eee_pc_success_asus.htm

Description:
A vulnerability has been reported in the Linux Kernel, which potentially can be exploited by malicious people to cause a DoS (Denial of Service).

The vulnerability is caused due to a boundary error in the "pppol2tp_recvmsg()" function and can potentially be exploited to corrupt kernel memory via a specially crafted PPP over L2TP packet.

The vulnerability is reported in 2.6.x versions prior to 2.6.26-rc6.

Solution:
Use PPP over L2TP in trusted networks only.

Fixed in version 2.6.26-rc6.

The efforts being pursued by LiMo Foundation, developer of the Linux platform, received a boost with Verizon Wireless, the builder and operator of wireless network in the US, announcing its decision on Wednesday, May 14, 2008 to concentrate its future operating system on the Linux Platform. Verizon Wireless, thus becomes the first carrier in the US to patronize the Linux Platform after its rival, AT&T (T) decided to go with the Android platform being developed by Google.

Sun Microsystems, which purchased MySQL this year for over $1 billion, ephasizes that the database will remain open source despite what critics say.

Ask average computer users what FOSS is about, and, if they've even heard of it, they'll probably say something about the source code being publicly available.

A 2006 research study caused an uproar when it reported that Windows Server 2003 was more reliable than Linux. This year's results tell a somewhat different story -- at least in terms of which side wins the bragging rights.

The Yankee Group Server Reliability Survey polled over 700 enterprise IT users worldwide. As with most studies of this sort, the firm's research methodology is far from transparent, although it took pains to note that it employed "intrusion detection and authentication mechanisms" to prevent vote-tampering.