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INTEREST: ICANN surveys proposed Net domains, "Net is moving into Iron Age"
by billing 21 Jun '04

21 Jun '04

...from: http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5176438.html?tag=default By Declan McCullagh CNET News.com March 19, 2004, 3:42 PM PT The Internet's real estate may soon be expanding, with the proposed addition of up to nine new top-level domains, including .jobs, .xxx, .travel and .mail. Ten organizations have submitted detailed proposals to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) for the rights to sell the potentially lucrative domain-name suffixes. ICANN, which made the list public on Friday afternoon, has not approved any new top-level domains since adding .biz, .info, and .aero and four others in 2000. The other proposed suffixes include .cat, .post, .asia, .mobi, and .tel. Two groups, New York-based Pulver.com and the U.K's Telname Limited London, are vying for .tel, which places ICANN in the uncomfortable position of judging which company is better qualified to run it. It is unclear how long it will take for ICANN to consider the new top-level domains, and how many will be approved. In a recent interview with CNET News.com, ICANN Chairman Vint Cerf said he has no upper limit in mind. "There is no specific number that has been set for acceptance," Cerf said. "My understanding is that we have not put any limits on the number of applications, and that as applications are qualified, that they would presumably be approved." ICANN plans a public comment period for the proposals over the month of April, followed by submission to an independent evaluation panel in May. The criteria for judging the proposals require that there be broad support for a top-level domain, that it not negatively affect the domain name system (DNS), and that it be financially viable. Each applicant paid $45,000 to ICANN, and proposals were due by March 16. Stuart Lawley, the president of Toronto-based ICM Registry, said he hopes ICANN will approve his request for .xxx so "responsible adult entertainment businesses can go about their business in a less restricted way." ========================================================== ...from: (requires the ability to play Microsoft streaming video) http://zdnet.com.com/1606-2-5239781.html ICANN chairman and MCI Senior Vice President Vint Cerf contends that the Net is still early in its evolution, in the process of moving from a figurative stone age to an iron age. In his Face to Face interview with ZDNet Editor in Chief Dan Farber, Cerf discusses the Internet's future and outlines his views on spam, privacy, IPv6 and interplanetary networking.

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INTEREST: Munich to stick with open source
by billing 18 Jun '04

18 Jun '04

...from: http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5237356.html By Jo Best CNET News.com June 17, 2004, 7:19 AM PT Munich, the city whose switch to Linux was seen as so significant it attracted a personal visit from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, has announced that its yearlong trial is a success and that it will stick with open source for its PCs. The change will officially take place on July 1, and 14,000 desktops will permanently migrate to the open-source platform. The pilot was run using Novell's SuSE Linux and IBM products. But the eventual contract--which could be worth tens of millions of euros--will be put out to tender. The city's move to Linux is the biggest migration ever from proprietary software to open source, and it will call for municipal PCs and notebooks to move from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice and to use the Mozilla browser. City officials voted last year to make the change. The decision will doubtless come as a blow to Microsoft, which pulled out all the stops to get the German city to stay with proprietary software. According to a document seen by USA Today, the concessions the software behemoth was prepared to punt Munich's way included undercutting a Linux bid by $12 million, letting Munich license stripped-down versions of Windows, and offering training and support for nothing. The migration is expected to be complete by 2008 or 2009. Earlier this week, Norway's second-largest city, Bergen, announced it would be following in Munich's footsteps and opting to run Linux.

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INTEREST: Linux Enterprise Grip Tightens with EU Wins
by billing 17 Jun '04

17 Jun '04

...from: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1613842,00.asp By Peter Galli June 16, 2004 The open source Linux operating system continues to gain ground in governmental agencies around the world, winning another two converts this week. The Norwegian city Bergen on Tuesday said it plans to move 100 schools and 32,000 users away from its proprietary Unix and Microsoft Windows applications platform to Linux by the end of this year. And the German city Munich on Wednesday also voted resoundingly in favor of its plan to switch to Linux from Microsoft Windows following a closed-door city council meeting. Bergen decided on a two-phased implementation of Novell Inc.'s SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 8, which will impact some 50,000 users of the city's administrative and educational networks. The implementation will initially see the current 20 Oracle database servers running on HP-UX, which power the City's core health and welfare services applications, being replaced with Enterprise Server 8 running on 64-bit Itanium-based Hewlett-Packard Co. HP Integrity servers. The second phase of the implementation will involve the migration and consolidation of the current Microsoft Windows application servers that power Bergen's educational network to Enterprise Server 8 on IBM eServer BladeCenters. Bergen will also be able to consolidate its more than 100 Microsoft Windows application servers to 20 IBM eServer BladeCenters running SUSE LINUX. The implementation is expected to be completed by year's end and officials hope to be able to channel the resultant cost savings into building core public services for the public, Janicke Foss, the CIO of Bergen, said in a statement. "The most important issue for the City of Bergen is to provide best possible public services to our citizens through cost-effective municipal operation. In addition to the IT-based benefits from migration to Linux, we attain a business model that doesn't tie us to a single vendor's solution architecture. "By migrating to Linux, the City of Bergen has a business model that is open and democratic, and we believe that will ensure a greater degree of freedom of choice, more efficient operation and major cost savings that will benefit the citizens," Foss said. Richard Seibt, the president of Novell for the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) region, expected more public and private sector Linux deployments to follow. "The City of Bergen needed to do more with less and the advantages of Linux such as lower costs and greater reliability are clear and will certainly continue to drive Linux adoption among enterprise and public sector organizations, he said. Michel Teyssedre, the vice president for IBM's business development in EMEA, said that with 32,000 students and 4,000 teachers accessing Bergen's educational network, the city's current server environment was not scaling with growing demand. Rudi Schmickl, HP's vice president of enterprise storage and servers for EMEA, added that Bergen's current database servers ran several critical applications, so it was essential that the new solution offered maximum uptime while being cost effective. Meanwhile, Munich moved forward with its Linux plans on Wednesday. The city last May decided to develop a detailed conceptual implementation and migration plan for the move, which has been under wraps until now. This week's vote approved that move and started the process of putting the matter out for bids and receiving tenders, a source close to the decision told eWEEK. Last May, the Munich city council said it was looking to migrate its 14,000 desktop and notebook computers away from Windows products to Linux. The city currently runs Microsoft Office, Windows 3.1, 95, 98 and NT as well as the Internet Explorer browser. The council also planned to move to the free OpenOffice desktop productivity suite. Walter Raizner, the country general manager for IBM Germany, said at the time that the German public sector is embracing open standards-based software such as Linux. "Worldwide, more than 75 IBM government customers—including agencies in France, Spain, UK, Australia, Mexico, the United States and Japan—have now embraced open computing and Linux to save costs, consolidate workloads, increase efficiency and enact e-government transformation, Raizner said then. Hans-Juergen Croissant, a spokesman for Microsoft in Germany, said last year that "with respect to the Munich administration, we will continue to work closely with them to explore additional programs and offerings that best meet the needs of Munich's citizens and businesses." In addition, Linux continues to gain footholds in U.S. governmental organizations. eWEEK reported this week that the latest stateside governmental win for Linux is the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts (AOUSC), in Washington, which provides administrative support, program management and policy development services to the federal courts. The agency is migrating applications from Solaris to Linux using HP's ProLiant servers that are running Red Hat Inc.'s Enterprise Linux Advanced Server and HP's StorageWorks tape libraries.

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Fwd: Join Apple for two free must-see events
by Doug Hamilton 27 May '04

27 May '04

Hi, I thought many of you would be interested in at least one of these presentations, if not both. http://www.apple.com/ca/tours/postnab/ http://www.apple.com/ca/tours/server/ Regards, Doug

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Word 2004 Poser
by Doug Hamilton 12 May '04

12 May '04

Hi Everyone: Well it appears that some bored individual has written a unix shell script, and changed the script file meta-tag and icon to make it appear to be Microsoft Word 2004. http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/top_news_item.cfm?NewsID=8664 Some misguided individual in Europe downloaded what he thought was MS-Word 2004 from LimeWire (a peer-to-peer file-sharing service). That was his first mistake, as commercial applications are not legally distributed via peer-to-peer file-sharing services. His second mistake was double clicking on what he thought was MS-Word 2004. In actual fact, this individual unknowingly executed a malicious unix shell script. A shell script which most likely contained a rather innocuous looking command like the following: rm -dfRP ~/ For those of you unfamiliar with unix commands. The 'rm' command is used for removing files. The "-" means use the following modifiers. In this case the 'rm' was to use the these modifiers: "d" remove directories, "f" do not challenge user for a 'yes/no' response to the removal of a file or directory, "R" run this command recursively (that is deletes every file or folder within any file or folder), and for good measure "P" tells 'rm' to overwrite the files three times. The "~/" means run the command on the home directory of the user running the script. This script would recursively delete every file and folder contained within that user's home directory without challenging the user for a 'yes/no' response to each file or folder deleted. If you have ever worked on a computer running DOS, this is similar to but not as damaging as running the command, " C: *.* ". Yep, this individual managed to very thoroughly delete their entire home directory. While this would not affect any other user on that computer, this particular user's account is completely unrecoverable. Regardless of the hardware or operating system, the only thing that will protect your personal account from this type of malicious programming is good user practices. Consider creating yourself a user level account. Apple refers to this type of account as a "Standard" account. When you first start an new Mac, or after re-installing the operating system, you will be asked to create and account. That first account is an admin or administrator level account, which means that account has access to other folders and files then just home directory of that account (e.g. the Applications folder). By making yourself a "Standard" account on your computer for your every day work, you are providing a level of security for your system. This does not protect your account for the script above, but it will keep the script from running at an admin level. Thus providing protection against the deletion of Applications and other files outside of your home directory. If you are really concerned about this type of attack. Consider creating another account for testing applications. If the application is malicious, then only that test account will be impacted. Should that happen, delete the test account and create a new one. Thus preventing your working account, and the accounts of other users on the system from being damaged. In addition, if you are downloading files from the Internet make sure that you are downloading from a legitimate website (e.g. www.versiontraker.com, www.macupdate.com, www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/). To keep someone from walking up to your computer and installing a malicious script/application or engaging in destructive activity. Use the security features of the operating system (e.g. turn off auto log-in, specify that the user must provide a password once the screen saver has been enabled). And if at all possible, physically secure your computer (e.g. lock your office door ... if you have an office door). If you have any questions or concerns regarding this, please email me and I will post the question and answer to the list. Regards, Doug ------------- Doug Hamilton, BA, MA, APP Senior Apple Computer Consultant Computers-on-Campus; Univ. of Manitoba 204-474-6196 204-474-7556 http://www.umanitoba.ca/bookstore/

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Apple Portable Promo -- Revised
by Doug Hamilton 04 May '04

04 May '04

Hello, I just received a notice from Apple today regarding the Apple portable promotion. Apparently all of the portables have to be the same. Given the original information I thought that this might have been a good promotion for our campuses, guess we'll have to wait until mid-July to see what Apple offers in the way of back-to-school promotions. Sorry for any buying confusion this may have caused. Regards, Doug ------------- Doug Hamilton, BA, MA, APP Senior Apple Computer Consultant Computers-on-Campus; Univ. of Manitoba 204-474-6196 204-474-7556 http://www.umanitoba.ca/bookstore/

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Mac OS X 10.4 -- aka "Tiger"
by Doug Hamilton 04 May '04

04 May '04

Hi Folks, Well its official, the next version of the Macintosh OS is version 10.4. Its development name is "Tiger" and Steve Jobs will be showing off some of the its capabilities on June 28. He will be addressing the attendees of the Apple World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC). Why the name "Tiger", well according to Apple it is because "Innovation never sleeps". Wow, you really gotta appreciate the people in Apple marketing for that by-line (note the sarcasm). For all the details regarding this keynote follow this link: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2004/may/04wwdc.html There is no word as yet about a web-stream or satellite-feed of this keynote. If Apple decides to broadcast this event, we will most likely know only a few days before the event. However, I will email this list as soon as I know of any broadcast details. Regards, Doug ------------- Doug Hamilton, BA, MA, APP Senior Apple Computer Consultant Computers-on-Campus; Univ. of Manitoba 204-474-6196 204-474-7556 http://www.umanitoba.ca/bookstore/

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Apple Promo - Reply
by Doug Hamilton 03 May '04

03 May '04

Hi Everyone: Regarding the mild spam I sent out discussing Apple's latest portable promotion (see original message below). I have received requests from several of you wanting to know what models qualify under this promotion. They are as follows: - Both stock versions of the 14" iBooks (pricing starts at $1,333** -- 14" iBook 1.0GHz Combo Drive); - and all of the PowerBooks (pricing starts at $1947.00** -- 12" PowerBook 1.33GHz Combo Drive); - or any custom configuration of the above listed base models. [** Regular Higher-Ed pricing, doesn't include $125.00 savings of this promotion.] Regards, Doug ------------- Doug Hamilton, BA, MA, APP Senior Apple Computer Consultant Computers-on-Campus; Univ. of Manitoba 204-474-6196 204-474-7556 http://www.umanitoba.ca/bookstore/ On Fri, 30 Apr 2004, Doug Hamilton wrote: >> Hi Everyone: >> >> I apologize if I offend any of you with this mild bit of spam. >> >> I just received notice that Apple has a new limited time offer on bulk >> purchases (e.g. 10 or more) of (2) different models of the new iBooks, >> and (5) different models of the new PowerBooks. >> >> Now, it is highly probable that no one on this list needs ten iBooks >> or >> PowerBooks. That said, I am willing to start a list of interested >> people, if we hit the minimum number (10), then we can start the >> ordering process. >> >> The promotion will save you $125.00 over the regular educational price >> for either an iBook or PowerBook with and Apple Care warranty; custom >> configurations are allowed. >> >> The window of this opportunity is April 29 to June 26th of this year. >> >> Re-cap: >> -Minimum collective order must be (10); >> -Systems (iBook/PowerBook) can be custom configured; >> -Systems must be purchased with an Apple Care warranty; >> -You'll save $125.00 on each system. >> -This offer is not restricted to staff, students qualify as do >> university institutional purchases. >> >> >> Thanks for your time. If you have any questions or comments, please >> contact me. >> >> >> Regards, >> Doug >> >> ------------- >> Doug Hamilton, BA, MA, APP >> Senior Apple Computer Consultant >> Computers-on-Campus; Univ. of Manitoba >> 204-474-6196 >> 204-474-7556 >> http://www.umanitoba.ca/bookstore/

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Mild Spam
by Doug Hamilton 30 Apr '04

30 Apr '04

Hi Everyone: I apologize if I offend any of you with this mild bit of spam. I just received notice that Apple has a new limited time offer on bulk purchases (e.g. 10 or more) of (2) different models of the new iBooks, and (5) different models of the new PowerBooks. Now, it is highly probable that no one on this list needs ten iBooks or PowerBooks. That said, I am willing to start a list of interested people, if we hit the minimum number (10), then we can start the ordering process. The promotion will save you $125.00 over the regular educational price for either an iBook or PowerBook with and Apple Care warranty; custom configurations are allowed. The window of this opportunity is April 29 to June 26th of this year. Re-cap: -Minimum collective order must be (10); -Systems (iBook/PowerBook) can be custom configured; -Systems must be purchased with an Apple Care warranty; -You'll save $125.00 on each system. -This offer is not restricted to staff, students qualify as do university institutional purchases. Thanks for your time. If you have any questions or comments, please contact me. Regards, Doug ------------- Doug Hamilton, BA, MA, APP Senior Apple Computer Consultant Computers-on-Campus; Univ. of Manitoba 204-474-6196 204-474-7556 http://www.umanitoba.ca/bookstore/

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INTEREST: Where does Security begin...
by Wayne Billing 29 Apr '04

29 Apr '04

..from the Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A32480-2004Apr21?language=printer Who Should Keep Out The Hackers? By Jonathan Krim Thursday, April 22, 2004; Page E01 The calm of a few months without a major attack of a computer worm, virus or other form of cyber-harassment was rattled hard this week. So dangerous are the latest vulnerabilities that the Department of Homeland Security took the rare step of briefing the media yesterday, warning that quick action by users and network operators was crucial to avoiding serious Internet disruption. This time the problem is with routers, the appliances that push traffic around the Internet. Routers made by Cisco Systems Inc., which has a major share of the market, have two separate security holes that could allow easy access for hackers to do their worst. It's another reminder that security threats are not likely to go away anytime soon and of the fragility of a world whose technology is so intertwined that a breach in one place can be exploited to bring down thousands or millions of systems around the world. All of which makes recent recommendations in a report by an industry task force unusual and worthy of close attention. In effect, the group is saying: Tech providers, heal thyselves and make safer products. That's a significant change for a technology industry that has spent considerable public-relations resources talking mostly about the need for better educating users and going after the bad guys. But the report, issued Monday, pulls few punches. "The lack of 'out-of-the-box' security in many products is staggering," the authors state. By not having software that is set to be secure from the start, "vendors are placing the entire burden of securing products on their users." [...] For many security experts and an increasingly concerned Congress, the question is, "What happens now"? The celebrated public-private partnership was created expressly with the hope of avoiding the need for regulation. As a result, none of the task forces recommended government intervention. But there is no single entity responsible for driving adoption of the numerous ideas. The Department of Homeland Security officials say they are not responsible for riding herd on industry. The technology trade associations leading the corporate side want the agency to use its bully pulpit to improve education but have been careful not to urge federal action directed at their own industries. In the meantime, worms and viruses are becoming so commonplace that they are losing their luster as news stories. But they continue to cost companies and ordinary consumers millions of dollars a year. ------------------------------------------------- This mail sent through IMP: http://horde.org/imp/

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