Todd R. Weiss

A security vulnerability in the Linux kernel that could have allowed a hacker to gain control of the operating system on user machines has been patched by the open-source community and Linux vendors.

Linux Networx Inc. is building a new, high-performance 2,132-CPU Linux cluster supercomputer for the U.S. Department of Defense as part of an IT modernization program being undertaken by the agency.

A new employment study of 21,000 IT workers concludes that after several years in the doldrums, high-tech salaries went up by two per cent in 2003 and that things may be finally improving in the tech job marketplace.

Lotus Notes and Domino users and administrators are slated to get the latest product road map and hear about upcoming features in the collaboration products at the annual Lotusphere user conference in Orlando, Fla., that gets under way Monday.

Although Novell Inc., SUSE Linux AG, Sun Microsystems Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co. and Red Hat Inc. are all offering protection or indemnification programs to protect customers from possible legal threats stemming from their use of Linux, industry leader IBM Corp. has quietly remained on the sidelines.

With competitors Novell Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co. and Sun Microsystems Inc. all offering legal indemnity for users of their Linux products, Linux vendor Red Hat Inc. on Tuesday hopped on the bandwagon and unveiled a program to guarantee that its Linux code is free of intellectual property infringement issues.

A new Desktop Linux Working Group is being created by the nonprofit Open Source Development Labs Inc. (OSDL) to explore and develop the use of Linux on the desktop for business users.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's decision last August to award an US$860 million IT services contract to Electronic Data Systems Corp. (EDS) was unreasonable and the contract should be revoked, according to an audit by the General Accounting Office.