This morning on the NPR shuffle podcast, they included a segment about Penny Arcade. Seems only fair since NPR did Achewood a few months ago. If they just get XKCD on there, then the universe can rest.

gadgetopia writes "An article has come out claiming (yet again) that 2009 will be the year of Linux, and bases this prediction on the fact that low-power ARM processors will be in netbooks which won't have enough power to run Windows, but then says these new netbooks will be geared to 'web only' applications which suits Linux perfectly. And, oh yeah, Palm might save Linux, too." The article goes on to skewer the year of Linux thing that seems to show up on pretty much every tech news site throughout December and January as lazy editors round out their year with softball trolling stories and "Year End Lists." We should compile a year-end list about this :)

coondoggie writes in to let us know about a fraud alert issued by the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center, warning that an unspecified bug in unspecified versions of Asterisk IP PBX software could allow criminals to generate "thousands of vishing telephone calls to consumers within one hour." PC World checked with Digium, developer of Asterisk, and found some puzzlement as to what bug the FBI had in mind. "In March, researchers at Mu Security reported a bug that could allow an attacker to take control of an Asterisk system. Digium wasn't certain what vulnerability the FBI was referencing in its advisory. However John Todd, the company's Asterisk open-source community director, believes that it was probably this March bug. That vulnerability 'basically allowed you to take over the account of one individual,' he said. ... However, the attack described by the FBI would be extremely hard to pull off, Todd said." Update: 12/09 02:54 GMT by KD : Digium has put out a statement on the IC3 warning (further details), confirming that what the FBI had in mind was an old bug and difficult in the extreme to exploit.