The H Week
This week, The H published a new 2.6.31 Kernel Log as the release of the latest version of the Linux kernel approaches, more SCO vs. Linux news as the Unix copyright dispute enters a new phase as SCO is now in Chapter 11 under a trustees control and even more Linux distributions released updates to patch previously reported critical kernel critical vulnerabilities.
The H also featured the Young Rewired State event for 15 to 18 year olds to show what they could do with government data, part two of Open Source Stars for Mac OS X continued its look at the best open source applications on the Apple platform and we rounded up all the latest news from the various Linux distributions.
Open Source News
Its been a busy week for Google as it wrapped up its 5th Summer of Code, announced that the more than one million public domain books in Google Books are now available in the open EPUB standard and kicked off its second Android Developer Challenge. Google's Android mobile operating system also learned to speak Perl; the Perl language itself was also updated to version 5.10.1 this week.
Yet another development milestone was released for openSUSE 11.2 and Slackware Linux 13 arrived. JBoss gave birth to a new Java messaging system called HornetQ and Red Hat released paravirtualised network and storage drivers for Windows when running with KVM virtualisation. Over two years since its last major update, a new beta version of Skype for Linux was improving audio and video quality.
Several companies and open source organisations also made important announcements this week, including Wikimedia which received a $2 million grant. Tuxera, the company formed by the NTFS-3G developers, signed an Intellectual Property Agreement with Microsoft and the OpenStreetMap Foundation elected a new board. Novell announced its third quarter financial results and registration for this years GNU Hackers Meeting began.
Sony explained why it removed the option to install Linux on the PS3 Slim and Sharp launched a new Linux-based Netwalker hand-held computer in Japan. Contrary to rumours of a Maemo or Moblin powered netbook, Nokia announced that it's first laptop would be Windows-based, yet it still managed to appease Linux fans by releasing its Maemo 5 based N900 mobile computer Internet tablet and smartphone.
Security news
This week Google closed three vulnerabilities in its Chrome 2 web browser, IBM and Symantec patched critical holes in their products and SecurityReason advised of a DoS vulnerability in several Kaspersky products, which the company later confirmed and closed.
A bug in the Firewall Services Module (FWSM) software allows Cisco routers and switches to be disabled and a vulnerability in Cisco's WLAN technology gives attackers access to corporate networks. Twitter failed to block another Cross Site Scripting flaw and the Apache.org website went offline on Friday due to a compromised SSH key.
The H Security also reported on phishing emails going out of style, baddies preferring Firefox and Opera web browsers and four out of five users using browsers with vulnerable versions of Flash. There was news about how Apple's new Snow Leopard Mac OS X upgrade includes built-in malware protection and Symantec published a list of the top 100 Dirtiest Web Sites of Summer 2009.
To see all last week's news see The H's last seven days of news and to keep up with The H, subscribe to the RSS feed, or follow honlinenews on Twitter. You can follow The H's own tweeting on Twitter as honline.
(crve)
