IT Management Linux News for May 23, 2007

• The Political Hoopla Between Intel and OLPC (May 23, 2007, 23:15)
  CoolTechZone: "Intel being the corporate powerhouse is obviously going after an unproven market in a sadistic effort to beat AMD. Negroponte, on the opposite end, is trying to make a difference in the world, although it doesn’t seem that way."


• RT Scratches a Trouble-Ticketing Itch (May 23, 2007, 22:30)
  Enterprise Networking Planet: "Much available help desk software is quite bland, with two exceptions: open source RT and the more corporate Remedy Help Desk. The two have quite different goals, but they both do one common thing: track trouble tickets. The question is, which one will meet your needs?"


• How to secure VNC remote access with two-factor authentication (May 23, 2007, 21:45)
  HowToForge: "VNC is the most popular remote access solution today. However, it was developed to provide remote access, not to provide secure remote access."


• News: Philipine govt dept adopts PCLinuxOS (May 23, 2007, 20:15)
  Philippine Information Agency: "The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) has successfully completed User's Training on Free open Source System (FOSS) and PC Linux to equip its staff and employees in Bicol the basic features of PCLinuxOS."


• Fyodor on Nmap and Sourcefire collaboration (May 23, 2007, 19:30)
  Linux.com: "Fyodor denies that this news will serve to make him even richer and more famous, saying "The Nmap project already had our 5 seconds of fame when Trinity used Nmap to hack the Matrix. So for NSE we're trying to make the Internet a little bit more secure rather than shooting for fame and glory.""


• Hone Your Scripting With a Regexp Toolbox (May 23, 2007, 18:00)
  Enterprise Networking Planet: "Regular expressions are the magic incantations that let you find and replace mass quantities of text with a single command, pluck specific text or files out of gigabytes of stuff with precision, and string commands together to perform amazing feats of computing wizardry."


• KDE 3.5.7 Improves PIM and More (May 23, 2007, 17:15)
  KDE.News: "This release brings a renewed focus to KDE-PIM applications. KAddressBook, KOrganizer and KAlarm received attention with bugfixes, while KMail additionally witnessed the addition of new features and improvements with both interface work and IMAP handling: it can manage IMAP quotas, and copy and move all folders."


• Puppy Linux targets sub-$100 mini-PCs (May 23, 2007, 16:30)
  Desktop Linux: "a group of enthusiasts offering Puppy customization and support services has revealed plans for "Minipup," a project aimed at ultra-low-cost diskless hardware such as sub-$100 PCs."


• Freenode and OFTC IRC networks buddy up (May 23, 2007, 15:45)
  Linux.com: "Two Internet Relay Chat (IRC) networks that are used heavily by free and open source software projects, freenode and the Open and Free Technology Community (OFTC), are building bridges by swapping staff and observing each other's operations. The rapprochement brings together two organizations that sprang from a single project, and may be a precursor for more intimate ties."


• Schwartz Admits Sun Let Down Developers (May 23, 2007, 15:00)
  ZDNet Australia: "Schwartz is bringing his software imprint to the company, aggressively embracing the free and open-source programming movement, preferably with the upcoming version 3 of the General Public License (GPL)."


• Howto Setup Dual Monitors with NVidia in Ubuntu (May 23, 2007, 14:15)
  Ubuntu Geek: "The first step towards dual monitors involves installing the NVidia 3D drivers. Luckily, NVidia has great Linux support and the drivers can easily be downloaded from the Ubuntu repository."


• Microsoft's Patent on a Pile of Baloney (May 23, 2007, 13:30)
  Enterprise Networking Planet: "Do you have to be a legal or patent expert to identify a basket of road apples?"


• GNU/Linux Horizons: How OLPC May Impact the Future (May 23, 2007, 12:15)
  Really Linux: "I propose that we are beginning a new phase of the Open-Source saga, a particularly bright phase, with the hardware development of the OLPC project."


• Security information management: OSSIM (May 23, 2007, 11:30)
  Search Enterprise Linux: "OSSIM incorporates tools such as Arpwatch (MAC address anomaly detection), p0f (operating system profiling and analysis), Nessus (vulnerability scanning), the Snort IDS, NTOP (network information tool), the enterprise-monitoring tool Nagios and the Osiris host intrusion detection tool."


• Alcatel-Lucent Goes With Linux to Secure Windows Notebooks (May 23, 2007, 10:00)
  InternetNews: "Less than a week after admitting that a disk with sensitive employee information was lost or stolen, Alcatel-Lucent today introduced a networking card designed to lock in data on laptops."


• Szulik: Software Patents Retard Innovation (May 23, 2007, 08:30)
  ZDNet Australia: "In an interview after the speech, Szulik said software patents "absolutely" retard the pace of innovation. But he stopped short of calling for their abolition..."


• All Your Rights Are Belong to Us (May 23, 2007, 07:00)
  Bytesfree: "we were shocked and dismayed by the unveiling today of a new lobbyist group comprised of “backers of stronger copyright laws.” This group is led by the usual suspects: RIAA, MPAA, Microsoft, Viacom and Disney."


• LAMP Bottleneck Solutions: Apache and PHP (May 23, 2007, 05:30)
  DeveloperWorks: "This series of three articles discusses many of the server configuration items that can make or break an application's performance. This second article focuses on steps you can take to optimize Apache and PHP."


• Improving Snort performance with Barnyard (May 23, 2007, 04:00)
  Enterprise Linux Tips: "Barnyard improves Snort's speed and efficiency processing outputted data off-loaded by Snort. Barnyard leaves Snort more capacity to perform its key function: scanning and analyzing traffic for anomalies and attacks."


• Howto Change Default text editor in Debian Etch (May 23, 2007, 02:30)
  DebianAdmin: "By Default Debian Etch Provides the nano editor you need to follow this procedure.In this example i want to use vi editor as my default editor


• New Economics of IT (May 23, 2007, 01:00)
  Navica: "Fourth, just say no to proprietary sales reps. They dream up reasons why you need to buy their latest and greatest. And then you’re locked into their framework, their roadmap, their need to meet quarterly estimates, their agenda. Just look at Vista."