Your tax dollars at work
...a former worker in Diebold's Georgia warehouse says the company installed patches on its machines before the state's 2002 gubernatorial election that were never certified by independent testing authorities or cleared with Georgia election officials.
If the charges are true, Diebold could be in violation of federal and state election-certification rules. The charges also raise questions about the integrity of the Georgia election results and any other election that uses patched Diebold systems that have not been re-certified.


rest of article at Wired

Microsoft Adds New Desktop Technician Cert
Microsoft Adds New Desktop Technician Cert
Microsoft introduces new certification, MCDST, and two new exams
aimed at help desk and desktop support experts.

details at MCP Magazine

UK tests open source waters
The decision by the UK Government to pilot the use of open source software is likely to worry Microsoft, as technology analyst Bill Thompson explains.

Over the next day or two, somewhere in one of Microsoft's European offices, a group of worried people will be sitting down to try to figure out what the UK's Office of Government Commerce is up to, and how to stop them.

The decision by the UK Government to pilot the use of open source software is likely to worry Microsoft, as technology analyst Bill Thompson explains. The trials will cover a range of departments

The OGC has just announced a deal with IBM to trial open source software - programs where the source code is available to users to read, change and even give away to other people - in nine different areas of government.

The trials, under the supervision of the Office of the E-envoy, are intended to measure the effectiveness and cost-benefits of open source software compared with the more usual proprietary systems sold by companies like Microsoft or - as in the recent NHS booking system - SchlumbergerSema.

rest of article at BBC News

Supercomputers - 1100 brand new Apple G5 towers
Supercomputers - everyone would love one but with a price tag of around $100 million each they're not easy to come by. But in the United States staff and students at Virginia Tech have built one of the world's most powerful Supercomputers for a cool 5 million dollars. It's all to do with plugging together smaller machines. Ian Hardy went to Virginia to see the supermachine for himself.

This is the project that has caused heads to turn in the world of Supercomputing. It is, in fact, 1100 brand new Apple G5 towers placed side by side making it the world's most powerful homebuilt system, capable of 17.6 trillion floating point operations per second, with a combined storage capacity of 176 terabytes.

Pat Arvin, Project Coordinator, Virginia Tech: "Each individual G5 is a dual processor, 2GHZ machine with 4GB of memory. So it's extremely fast."

rest of article at BBC World

Microsoft Reacts to Security Stings with Tools, Promises, and Mea Culpas
Microsoft Reacts to Security Stings with Tools, Promises, and Mea Culpas
by Doug Barney
10/9/03 — NEW ORLEANS -- Stung by relentless viruses and hacker attacks, and a patch cycle that is spinning completely out of control, Microsoft on Thursday unveiled a wide-ranging plan to mitigate, but unfortunately not eliminate, the crisis.

The approach includes:

A new rev of Software Update Services (SUS).
More consistent patching.
Higher quality patches and patch rollback to resolve conflicts.
More secure versions of XP and Windows Server 2003 delivered via service packs next year.
More security defaults for desktop and server OSes.
Laptop and remote PC security inspection technologies.

rest of article at ENT Magazine

Red Hat wants answers and code
SCO Files 2nd Motion Asking the Red Hat Judge for a Delay on Discovery

Thursday, October 09 2003 @ 04:25 AM EDT
There has been quite a lot of activity in the Red Hat case. SCO filed a Motion to Dismiss the action in its entirety, as you know, and Red Hat filed its answering brief. But since we last reported on this case, Red Hat initiated discovery. They asked SCO for documents and for answers to some pointed questions. IBM is forcing SCO into a corner in Utah, and Red Hat is forcefully and aggressively trying to do the same in Delaware. You'll see,

I think, that we haven't been wasting our time telling the world the details of this story. The big picture is that Red Hat is telling SCO to prove their allegations with specificity. They also want all their source code, and I'm sure you can figure out what they want to do with it, when I tell you that they asked for the complete Linux Kernel Personality source code, among the other products for which they have requested source code.
They also want to hear some details about the relationship between Canopy and SCO, including any stock or intellectual property transfers. They want SCO to "identify by title, version, module(s) and line(s)" what they think is misappropriated in any way or in violation of any of its rights. They ask for the details of Microsoft and Sun's licensing arrangement with SCO.

They want to know who those 1500 companies were that got the letter, and what happened next. They want to know exactly what SCO has filed a copyright on. They want all the details of SCOsource, including all the folks who have seen the code SCO has been showing under the NDA and what they saw, and any other contact with any Linux users about supposed liability. They want to know how they compared the UNIX and Linux code to determine infringement. They want to know if they've done any comparisons of the two and what the results were. They want to know all the stock or industry analysts SCO has met with or talked to and what was said. In short, it's like the kind of fantasy a guy might have about a bully getting his at last, because they asked them everything we wanted somebody to finally ask SCO and make them answer.

rest of article at Groklaw

How To File A Telemarketing Complaint
How To File A Telemarketing Complaint
The Federal Communication Commission has released detailed information outlining specific steps consumer should take if they have put their names on the National Do-Not-Call Registry and are called by telemarketers on or after October 1, 2003. It provides information about when there is a violation of the FCC do-not-call rules, and specifics about how to file a complaint.

For detailed info visit
USInfo @ about.com

Microsoft, Sun Reach Agreement on JVM Support
Microsoft, Sun Reach Agreement on JVM Support
by Scott Bekker
10/7/03
Microsoft will offer technical support for its Java Virtual Machine until October 2004 under a legal agreement announced Tuesday with Sun Microsystems.

The deal gives customers an additional nine months of support for the Microsoft JVM (MSJVM). The companies say they reached the deal to give developers extra time to remove support for the MSJVM from their products.

rest of article at ENT Magazine

Microsoft faces lawsuit on security breaches
Thursday October 2, 07:40 PM



Microsoft faces lawsuit on security breaches
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Microsoft faces a proposed class-action lawsuit in California based on the claim that its market-dominant software is vulnerable to viruses capable of triggering "massive, cascading failures" in global computer networks.

The lawsuit, which was filed on Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court, also claims that Microsoft's security warnings are too complex to be understood by the general public and serve instead to tip off "fast-moving" hackers on how to exploit flaws in its operating system.

rest of article at Yahoo News

Critics Pile on Microsoft Over Security
Critics Pile on Microsoft Over Security
by Scott Bekker
10/2/03 — Critics continue to pile on Microsoft after damaging worms and viruses slammed Windows operating systems worldwide in August and September. Two massive security sideswipes hit Windows in August: the extremely successful mass-mailing worm Sobig.F and the Blaster worm that exploited a security flaw in DCOM RPC, affecting most supported versions of Windows. In early September, Microsoft warned that the underlying flaw that allowed Blaster could also permit other attacks even on machines that had already been patched. A new patch was issued.

Shortly after Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer admitted that his company was "embarrassed" by the flaws that Blaster took advantage of, a group of seven security experts released a report asserting that the ubiquity of Microsoft's software worldwide has created a major security risk, similar to the dangers in agriculture of planting only one strain of crop.

rest of article at ENT Magazine