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Source: LinuxTracker.org

Category: Linux Live CDs Size: 220.06 MB Status: no seeders and no leecher Added: 2007-01-01 21:45:25

Source: LinuxTracker.org

Category: SME Server Size: 475.13 MB Status: 3 seeders and 3 leechers Added: 2007-01-01 21:24:48

Source: LinuxTracker.org

Category: PC-BSD Size: 685.22 MB Status: 2 seeders and 2 leechers Added: 2007-01-01 19:40:41

Source: LinuxTracker.org

Category: PC-BSD Size: 1.18 GB Status: 6 seeders and 8 leechers Added: 2007-01-01 02:29:33

Source: sabayon

SabayonLinux 3.25 has been released, now with the latest X.Org 7.2, the new Kernel Virtual Machine, Beryl 0.1.4 and other enhancements. From the changelog: "Linux kernel 2.6.19.1; the first live implementation of the new Kernel Virtual Machine (KVM) supporting both Intel and AMD architectures; X.Org 7.2 RC3 with .

Source: endian

A new community release of Red Hat-based Endian Firewall is now available. What's new in version 2.1? "GUI: check boxes instead of multi-select select boxes within network wizard, SSL certificate will only be generated if the host or domain name is changed; VPN: OpenVPN server displays CA certificate, .

Source: systemrescue

An updated stable version of SystemRescueCd has been released. From the changelog: "Updated the kernel to Linux 2.6.18.6 with Reiser4; updated ntfs-3g to 20061218 (full NTFS read and write support); optimized space usage to reduce the size of the disc; added option 'dodhcp' to get a dynamic IP .

Source: weekly

This week in DistroWatch Weekly: Statistics: DistroWatch in 2006 News: SimplyMEPIS, Fedora and Debian release updates, Ulteo and SabayonLinux interviews, openSUSE repositories, MagDriva Released last week: Fedora Core 6 Live CD, KNOPPIX 5.1 Upcoming releases: FreeBSD 6.2, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Donations: SabayonLinux receives US$450 New additions: .

Source: Slashdot: Linux

firenurse writes to point out a story in The Inquirer about how one small business switched to Ubuntu. It describes a maddening comedy of errors, a series of circular screw-ups among Microsoft, HP, and a RAID vendor. From the article: "You never quite wrap your head around how anti-consumer Microsoft's policies are until they bite you in the bum. Add in the customer antagonistic policies of its patsies, HP in this case, and vendors like Promise, and you have quite a recipe for pain. Guess what I did today?"

Source: Slashdot: Linux

An anonymous reader writes "The Council of the EU has a streaming service so that we can watch its meetings — but the service can only be accessed by Mac or MS Windows users. This is because they employ WMV format for the videos. In the FAQ they express a really strange opinion about this: 'The live streaming media service of the Council of the European Union can be viewed on Microsoft Windows and Macintosh platforms. We cannot support Linux in a legal way. So the answer is: No support for Linux.' An online petition has been set up to create pressure to convince the EU council to change its service to one that is platform independent."

Source: ONLamp.com

If you are logged into GMail or any other Google service (such as Orkut), your GMail contact list can be stolen by a malicious website.

As a demonstration, if you are logged into a Google service, your contact list should appear below (unless Google patches this). Of-course, this demonstration is only done using JavaScript, so your contact list is not being sent to me, but a malicious website owner may not be as nice as me.

This is possible because a request to http://docs.google.com/data/contacts?out=js&show=ALL&psort=Affinity&callback=google&max=99999 results in a JavaScript file containing your contact list. Sensitive data embedded in JavaScript is a bad idea, along with no checks by Google to ensure if the originating request referer is from one of Google’s own domains. Here is a similar finding by Jeremiah Grossman almost a year ago.

Discussion of this vulnerability here and here [this is where I got the demo JavaScript source code used to display the contact information below].

Lets hope Google fixes this soon.

Source: ONLamp.com

A colleague told me an amusing story about an oddball design decision that puzzled him and three tech service representatives for days. Norton Antivirus told him his antivirus software was out of date, so he updated it. The next time he booted, the program told him it was still out of date–and it continued to do so on every boot even though it had claimed the previous time to have updated successfully.

The first responses naturally focused on whether the database was corrupt or otherwise failing to update. But eventually a savvy technician figured out the real problem.

It seems that my colleague had checked his calendar for a date in the following month and had left his calendar on the month of October while in fact it was still September. Norton Antivirus relied on his personal calendar to determine what date it was. The software had been updated for September, but the program thought the month was October.

I am curious as to why a programmer would take such an unrobust decision to use a user’s calendar setting to determine the date. I’m wondering whether the programmers discovered that to get the date from the operating system would require a variety of different calls on different systems, and found it simpler to consult a calendar. Obviously, this backfired. A program that installs automated updates should use an external authority to find the date, and not depend on any settings on a user’s PC at all.

The bug was particularly amusing because the program was promising to have an update it couldn’t possibly have for the upcoming month.