It's official, boys and girls: it's easier to kick in a door when it's open. "A test has revealed that a Linux server is far less likely to be compromised. In fact, unpatched Red Hat and SuSE servers were not breached at all during a six-week trial, while the equivalent Windows systems were compromised within hours. However, patching does make a difference. Patched versions of Windows fared far better, remaining untouched throughout the test, as did the Red Hat and Suse deployments."

"Fans of open source software have been buzzing since Linus Torvalds, creator of the popular Linux operating system, indicated he wouldn't adopt a new version of the license under which Linux is distributed. Torvalds' opinion matters because his program is by far the most popular open source program in the world. In an interview via e-mail with Forbes, Torvalds discusses GPLv3, digital rights management and sharks with laser beams. "From where I'm standing, says that you suddenly can't use the software in certain 'evil ways' (where evil is defined by the FSF--it doesn't actually cover the James Bond kind of evil, but if you can see Richard Stallman as a less dashing James Bond, it would be that kind of evil)."

"Real Interfaces Visualizer technology is an easy-to-use GUI multi-platform system for Java programmers to assemble and manage complex, interaction-enabled, three-dimensional user interfaces. Version 1.1 includes addition of support for nested matrices along with the capability of cell spanning in all three directions."

Yellow Dog Linux version 4.1, which has been available directly from Terrasoft Solutions since early January, is now available for free download from their various mirrors. This is essentially a recompile of Fedora Core 4 specifically for PowerPC's, with extra polished support for Apple's Macs.

"Hard disks tend to be one of the weakest points in today's machines. If you can afford it, RAID setups will address the problem. And if you cannot afford it, you probably cannot afford a NAS or a SAN either. The poor man's solution is to regularly back up the information from one disk to another. Of course if your disk dies between two backups, you lose. der Mouse is a Canadian open source developer who produced a bunch of valuable software ranging from anti-spam tools to a PPPoE implementation. At the BSDCan 2005 conference, he presented an innovative solution to hard disk replication. In this interview, der Mouse explains his idea and how he implemented it to us."

"Technology professionals have loosely used the term 'UNIX' since the first person had to explain the difference between the Berkeley and AT&T flavors, so it's not surprising to find as many UNIX standards as there are versions of the operating system. Peter Seebach wades through the wellspring of UNIX standards and sorts them out for you, concluding that the rumors of the death of UNIX are (as usual) greatly exaggerated."