Cody Taylor

darthcamaro and several other readers have noted that the Linux Foundation has bought Linux.com from Sourceforge Inc. (Slashdot’s corporate parent). The Linux Foundation (employer of Linus Torvalds) will take over the editorial and community stewardship for the site; Sourceforge will continue to supply advertising on it. “[Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim] Zemlin says the Linux Foundation wants to build a collaborative forum where Linux users can share ideas and get information on the Linux operating system. A beta of the site will be released in the next few months. … Linux.com is being redesigned as a central source for Linux software, documentation and answers regardless of platforms, including server, desktop/netbook, mobile and embedded areas.” What do you think should be on Linux.com?

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**$tarDu$t** recommends a Washington Post Security Fix blog post dissecting the Tigger.A trojan, which has been keeping a low profile while exploiting the MS08-66 vulnerability to steal data quietly from online stock brokerages and their customers. An estimated quarter million victims have been infected. The trojan uses a key code to extract its rootkit on host systems that is almost identical to the key used by the Srizbi botnet. The rootkit loads even in Safe Mode. “Among the unusually short list of institutions specifically targeted by Tigger are E-Trade, ING Direct ShareBuilder, Vanguard, Options XPress, TD Ameritrade, and Scottrade. … Tigger removes a long list of other malicious software titles, including the malware most commonly associated with Antivirus 2009 and other rogue security software titles… this is most likely done because the in-your-face ‘hey, your-computer-is-infected-go-buy-our-software!’ type alerts generated by such programs just might… lead to all invaders getting booted from the host PC.”

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igrigorik writes “The generality and simplicity of Google’s Map-Reduce is what makes it such a powerful tool. However, what if instead of using proprietary protocols we could crowd-source the CPU power of millions of users online every day? Javascript is the most widely deployed language — every browser can run it — and we could use it to push the job to the client. Then, all we would need is a browser and an HTTP server to power our self-assembling supercomputer (proof of concept + code). Imagine if all it took to join a compute job was to open a URL.”

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“Free software helps prevent software monopolies, which destroy the free market and result in high prices and shoddy quality. It does this by fostering competition among products and companies based on quality, features and service”

The Pirate Bay trial wrapped up Tuesday in Sweden as the defendants claimed that their site is nothing more than a piece of Internet infrastructure. The verdict comes down in April, but for now, the defendants are off to “party.”

Yes, that’s right. Mozilla. For those who wonder how software could have anything to do with politics, well, you haven’t been around open-source software long enough.

Talk of a new name for Microsoft’s Live search engine is gaining fresh momentum, thanks to two messages posted on Twitter and observed by an unofficial Microsoft Live blog. The messages suggest a rebranded Live is already in prebeta testing, and that some form of Live search news will be formally revealed this week.

After all that excitement in the run-up, Apple’s done just about the bare minimum that was expected in a Mac mini update. The new SKUs both run 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo processors and are backed up by the same NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics that’ve done wonders for the MacBook. For 0 you get 1GB of RAM and a 120GB hard drive, 0 nabs 2GB of RAM and a

Classified information about the communications, navigation and management electronics on Marine One, the helicopter now used by President Barack Obama, were reportedly discovered in a publicly available shared folder on a computer in Tehran, Iran, after apparently being accidentally leaked over a peer-to-peer file-sharing network.

An anonymous reader writes “Companies using software other than Microsoft’s are unable to bid at many Portuguese public tenders. This is due to the use of Silverlight 2.0 technology by the company, Vortal, contracted to build the e-procurement portal. This situation has triggered a complaint to the European Commission by the Portuguese Open Source Business Association; the case is unofficially known in Portugal as ‘Vortalgate.'”

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