Flexbeta has a story basically about knoppix and how a computer even without a hard drive can still be useful. Knoppix, of course, is a linux live cd that boots into a full desktop operating system. It has many uses, but flexbeta focuses in on some of the basics: web browsing, checking web based email, streaming audio, playing games, editing office documents and downloading files (to a memory stick or some other usb media.)
Author: Avery
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Zotob.b may be affecting some XP SP2/2003 installs
As I noted yesterday, virii typically get updated and improved. Yesterdays reports about the zotob virus noted that Windows Xp service pack 2 and Windows 2003 were not affected by the new worm. Today however, the sans institute is reporting that zotob may be affecting some XP sp2 and 2003 installs. It appears that it uses something called NULL sessions.
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Qemu revisited
I mentioned Qemu a short while back. I’ve used it in the past for testing linux livecds. After doing the writeup though I was encouraged to look at it again and see if/how much it’s improved since I last got an update. Wow….
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DesktopBSD
A few days ago I wrote about linux alternatives. Along those lines comes DesktopBSD. Based on Freebsd, this project released a second release canditate for their 1.0 release on August 10.
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Federal Government funding research into VOIP wiretapping
I can’t say I’m surprised, it makes sense. Plain old telephone service (POTS) can be tapped, and now that VOIP is coming into it’s own, the FBI and others need new ways of tapping the conversations. CNET is reporting on one such initiative that seems to be proving successful at the first step towards tapping a conversation taking place over Skype. Even one that uses an anonymizing proxy server.
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New office suite release
Desktop Linux reported Friday that Thinkfree office has promoted their $49.95 office suite at LinuxWorld (last week.) This is Thinkfree Office 3. It’s available for Windows, Mac and Linux. Supports Microsoft office file formats, has a Microsoft-Office-like interface and “critical feature compatibility”.
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DHS/US-CERT/NIST launches NVD
Wow – alphabet soup…. The National Instititute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has launched a National Vulnerability Database (NVD) sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Divison US-CERT (US Computer Emergency Response Team). It looks like it will be a nice one place stop to find a good deal of current info.
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The sunbeltblog id theft saga continues…
It looks as though CoolWebSearch has issued a release about the massive identity theft ring that their product name has featured so prominently in. They are 1) denying that it is related to their tool and asking for evidence that it does so they may pursue the issue (fire employees/contact FBI), 2) considering lawsuits against all outlets that said they were responsible. 3)They try to clarify how to determine what traffic is related to CoolWebSearch.
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Mozilla Firefox passes 80 million downloads
According to the counter at spreadfirefox.com, Firefox has now surpassed 80 million downloads. (Well 80.1 million when I looked.) Version 1.0 of Mozilla Firefox was released ~9 months ago.