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Operating Systems

Submission + - Judge Kimball rules; Novell owns Unix copyrights (groklaw.net)

Submitted by
Eggplant62
Eggplant62 writes: "In his most damaging ruling yet, Judge Kimball today released his ruling in the SCO v. Novell case, saying that it is his belief that after examining the all the documentation and motion practice and after the hearings earlier this year on various summary judgment motions, the jist is: "[T]he court concludes that Novell is the owner of the UNIX and UnixWare Copyrights." Of course, Groklaw is covering the story and broke the news just over a half hour prior to this submission.

There is also a ruling in SCO v IBM on summary judgment motions but the actual rulings are yet to become available. Keep your eyes peeled."
Education

OLPC Project Rollout Begins In Uruguay 248

Posted by Zonk from the go-get-em-kids dept.
Acer500 writes "The One Laptop Per Child project became a reality Thursday in Uruguay, as the 160 children of school number 24 in the humble town of Cardal received their XO computers. The learning tools came directly from the hands of president Tabaré Vazquez. It has become a matter of national pride that Uruguay is the first country to realize the project's goal. The target is that by 2009, every school-age child in Uruguay will have one, and an initial 15 million dollars have already been allocated to the project. From the newspaper articles: 'The happiness of having a PC in their hands, some of them for the first time, had the kids in ecstasy, which didn't wait to turn on their computers, introduce their personal information (required the first time they're turned on), choose the screen colors, and start experimenting with them. What initially made them more enthusiastic was the possibility of taking photographs and filming each others with the included webcams.'" More information below.
Security

Submission + - Debian remote vulnerability, 35 days & running

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: About a month ago, Lighttpd version 1.4.15 was officially released with two important security patches (1, 2). Debian was initially quick to pick up on this version, in fact they did so more than 35 days ago for their work-in-progress "unstable" project. But the official stable distribution of Debian is STILL vulnerable. A bug report tagged "remote root" has been left unanswered for more than a week.
Networking

Submission + - the mistery of "DNS server registration"

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "I have recently been burned by the mystical (at least to me) "DNS server registration". I changed the DNS server for a domain I own to new ones. After the update period passed I was horrified to see that only one of the two new servers has been accepted and my domain left in an "INACTIVE" state. After conversations with the support team they told me the second DNS server FQDN I have entered is "not a registered DNS server" and thus was "not accepted by the system". Despite of it being a completely valid and resolvable FQDN, on which there is a server running BIND authoritative for the domain.

They couldn't give any details about what is this thing, except for "DNS servers need to be registered, just as domain names".

My research wasn't very fruitful too, so you are my only hope!

I still can't accept that there is such a thing and there is not single easy to find clear document explaining it. All I could find was this http://www.hps.com/howtodns.html and some links to "Register a DNS server" at sites of registrars like Enom and network solutions accesible to resellers only.

Who is responsible for "registering DNS servers" — the registries or the registrars? What happens if the FQDN of the DNS server is in one TLD and the domain I'm trying to use it for is in another from a different registry/registrar? How do I as a domain owner "register a DNS server"? Where is this info stored — in DNS, in whois database, else? How can I check if an FQDN is already a "registered DNS server"? How do I unregister a DNS server? Can one IP be registered under multiple domains? What is the point of life, universe and everything?!

Please HELP!"
The Internet

Submission + - Golfer sues over vandalized Wikipedia site

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "Pro golfer Fuzzy Zoeller is suing to track down the author of what Zoeller says is a defamatory paragraph about him on the Wikipedia site. In an Associated Press story Zoeller's attorney, Scott Sheftall, said he filed a lawsuit against a Miami firm last week because the law won't allow him to sue Wikipedia. http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/1176 9"
Space

Submission + - 'Dead' Rocket Explodes In Orbit

Submitted by
Jacob
Jacob writes: "A rocket which malfunctioned during launch a year ago recently exploded in orbit over Australia, and a number of amateur astronomers, including Rob McNaught (discoverer of Comet McNaught) were able to photograph the explosion and the resulting debris. NASA are now tracking over 1000 fragments, meaning that this has produced more space junk than China's recent ASAT test, it's possible that the fire and explosion were triggered by an encounter with space junk in orbit, and it's also possible the new junk cloud could impact other satellites in the future."
Data Storage

Submission + - Everything You Know About Disks Is Wrong

Submitted by
modapi
modapi writes: "Google's wasn't the best storage paper at FAST '07. Another, more provocative paper looking at real world results from 100,000 disk drives got the "Best Paper" award. Bianca Schroeder of CMU's Parallel Data Lab paper Disk failures in the real world: What does an MTTF of 1,000,000 hours mean to you? (pdf) crushes a number of (what we now know to be) myths about disks such as:
  • vendor MTBF validity
  • "consumer" vs "enterprise" drive reliability (spoiler: no difference)
  • RAID 5 assumptions
A good summary of the paper's key point is at StorageMojo."
Movies

Submission + - Blu-ray set to win format war in Australia

Submitted by
curmi
curmi writes: "According to The Age, Blu-ray looks set to win the format wars in Australia. One major retailer has decided to stock Blu-ray titles exclusively, and with HD-DVD stand-alone players almost non-existent in the country, HD-DVD looks set to lose out. With the PS3 set to launch next month down under, it is expected that blu-ray movies sales will improve still further."
The Courts

Submission + - Julie Amero wrongly convicted? The spyware defense

Submitted by Anonymous Howard
Anonymous Howard writes: Substitute teacher Julie Amero faces up to 40 years in prison for exposing kids to porn using a classroom computer, but the facts strongly suggest that she was wrongfully convicted. Many issues remain, from the need for an independent computer forensics investigation and the presence of spyware and adware on the Windows 98 machine, to bad or incomplete legal work on both sides of this criminal case. It appears that spyware caused Julie Amero's conviction. She will be sentenced on March 2, 2007. This is a new development from the previously story on Slashdot.
Nintendo

Submission + - First Wii mod chip that plays imports

Submitted by
Zeno McDohl
Zeno McDohl writes: "Previous mod chips for the Wii would not boot games from other regions, but the WiiKey is claiming to do just that. Various sites have started shipping the mod chip today, and it seems that this mod chip is also upgradeable via a disc. It remains to be seen if Nintendo will release new firmware in attempt to hinder this, though."
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - NZ copyright bill submissions close on Friday!

Submitted by
Clarke
Clarke writes: "Thanks to the lobbying efforts of the RIANZ (our local RIAA clone) New Zealand is about to get a DMCA-style copyright law. This will emasculate Fair Use and turns DRM removal into a criminal act — so removing the infamous Sony rootkit from your PC will get you a criminal record, 5 years in jail and a $150,000 fine.

For the first time, the parliamentary committee considering the bill is allowing online submissions from anyone in the world: http://www.clerk.parliament.govt.nz.clients.interg en.net.nz/OnlineSubmission/Submission.aspx?id={A23 4B182-C669-4F08-BFD6-4C4BF4F495E1}

Can you please please please let people know it's not too late to kill or amend this stupid piece of legislation by making a submission. The full text of the bill can be found here: http://www.knowledge-basket.co.nz/gpprint/docs/bil ls/20061021.txt"
Sun Microsystems

Submission + - Trivial Remote Exploit on Sun Solaris 10

Submitted by
Jeremy Kister
Jeremy Kister writes: "Errata Security reports about a bug found in the telnet daemon of Solaris 10. From the article:

Basically if you pass a "-fusername" as an argument to the -l option you get full access to the OS as the user specified. In my example I do it as bin but it worked for regular users, just not for root. This combined with a reliable local privilege escalation exploit would be devastating. Expect mass scanning and possibly the widespread exploitation of this vulnerability.
"

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