The Champaign-Urbana Computer Users Group

The Status Register - June, 2004


This newsletter will never appear on CUCUG.ORG before the monthly CUCUG meeting it is intended to announce. This is in deference to actual CUCUG members. They get each edition hot off the presses. If you'd like to join our group, you can get the pertinent facts by looking in the "Information About CUCUG" page. If you'd care to look at prior editions of the newsletter, they may be found via the Status Register Newsletter page.
News     Common     PC     Linux     Mac     Amiga     CUCUG

June 2004


To move quickly to an article of your choice, use the search feature of your reader or the hypertext directory above. Enjoy.

June News:

The June Meeting

The next CUCUG meeting will be held on our regular third Thursday of the month: Thursday, June 17th, at 7:00 pm, at the First Baptist Church of Champaign in Savoy. The Linux SIG convenes, of course, 45 minutes earlier, at 6:15 pm. Directions to the FBC-CS are at the end of this newsletter.

The June 17 gathering will be one of our split SIG meetings. For the Linux SIG, Tom Purl informs me that "No one has come forth with any presentation topics for this month's meeting, so we will have a question and answer session. Please bring any ideas and/or questions that you may have about Linux, *BSD, or free software in general." So, there you go. For the Macintosh SIG, Emil Cobb will be showing more interesting hardware for the iPod. For the PC SIG, Ben Johnson will be doing a tablet PC demo.

ToC

Welcome New Members

We'd like to welcome the newest member of our group, joining us in the last month: Jim Alvis (Windows PC).

We'd also like to welcome back an old member, returning after a few years absence: Phil Wall. Phil, once an Amigan, is running a Windows PC Desktop and a Linux PC Desktop these days.

We welcome any kind of input or feedback from members. Run across an interesting item or tidbit on the net? Just send the link to the editor. Have an article or review you'd like to submit? Send it in. Have a comment? Email any officer you like. Involvement is the driving force of any user group. Welcome to the group.

ToC

Novell Wins Remand Contest - Case Stays in Federal Court - It's Copyright Proof Time

Thursday, June 10 2004 @ 06:39 PM EDT
URL: http://www.groklaw.net/

Judge Kimball, as he promised, has issued his order on the Novell case. The big news is that SCO lost its fight to get the case sent back to state court. SCO's entire theory of the case as a contract issue only went out the window, and they are now squarely in a pure copyright fight, which is the last thing they wanted. They will now have to prove that they own the copyright they are using to threaten end users like AutoZone. Kimball agrees with Novell that there are serious questions about whether the agreement even as amended by Amendment 2 is sufficient to be a copyright conveyance, and that means it stays in federal court. He retains jurisdiction. Remember all the experts who told us SCO might win this? They were mistaken.

Judge Kimball says he can't grant Novell's motion to dismiss at this stage, but he clearly has a leaning, and it isn't in SCO's direction. It's just that on a motion to dismiss, the judge is required to construe all facts in the light most favorable to the party whose case might be dismissed, the non-moving party, and on the Motion to Dismiss, that would be SCO, and as a matter of law, he can't grant the motion to dismiss in totality, because while "Novell has raised persuasive arguments as to whether a sufficient writing exists" without more evidence, he can't rule on the sufficiency of the agreement yet.

As we expected, he says SCO didn't plead the damages part adequately and he gives them 30 days to try, try again. I doubt they will be able to do it.

The conclusion is this:

"For the reasons stated above, Plaintiff's Motion to Remand is DENIED, and Defendant's Motion to Dismiss is DENIED as to Plaintiff's pleading of falsity and GRANTED as to Plaintiff's pleading of special damages. Plaintiff is granted 30 days from the date of this Order to amend its Complaint to more specifically plead special damages."

This is a huge loss for SCO. It's the kind of ruling that normally gets the plaintiff settling, out of fear of what the judge might do next, like in the BSDi case, when Debevoise's ruling on a motion got the parties working things out fast. I love this judge.

This just isn't SCO's day.

ToC

Common Ground:

A Member Asks About our Amiga History

By Kevin Hisel

Norris Hansell sent me an email asking about our history and why we had so many Amiga members at one time. So, I explained:

> I don't know the reason why our Amiga following was so large, I thought
> probably because you were a strong resource.
>
> Do we have a written history which would would account the matter?

Not really, but in a nutshell, here it is:

When I first got on the World Wide Web in 1993 there was very little Amiga info since the Amiga did not have a TCP layer (the software modern computers use to connect to the Internet). You had to use a text terminal program and go through a text-based web browser called Lynx. It was very primitive so not very many Amiga people were on the web, opting instead for the wacky world of BBSes.

I started keeping a list of all the Amiga-oriented web sites I knew about and eventually posted them on CUCUG's web site as I was also learning HTML. The list grew over time and in 1994 I gave it a name, the "Amiga Web Directory". We posted a few notices about the AWD on Usenet, the early message forum that was popular at the time. Then we contacted the web masters of the sites we listed and asked them to post a link back to us. Within about a year of constantly tweaking the list and adding more and more to it, the AWD got to be the most comprehensive Amiga resource on the Internet and our site became popular by the standards at the time.

We added a search script and started posting timely Amiga news in a format which is now called a "blog" (it didn't have a name back then). The site layout was redesigned a few times and we kept it simple and readable. I wrote all the site descriptions myself and eventually became very selective (quality-wise) about which sites would be listed and which news stories would be posted. The snowball effect took hold and we became (according to the measurement devices available at the time) the #1 Amiga site on the Internet.

I was spending quite a bit of time on this project and my girlfriend asked me one day if we made very much money on this project. Of course we did not make a cent. So, with her encouragement and the enthusiasm of our thousands of users I got the idea to ask people to support the site by simply becoming members of the organization. It started with just a few memberships and gradually began to pick up steam. Since most Amiga users were in Europe it was difficult for them to join unless they sent cash through the mail. International checks are no-go down at our bank.

We tried getting a credit card merchant account and that was impossible. So we contacted a service that was set-up originally to collect shareware fees and asked if they could do memberships. They worked with us and we were finally able to take credit cards for memberships. Then, all hell broke loose. We were bringing in 10-20 new members a week! That was the magic bullet we needed. In our peak year (1999), we signed up 626 members.


The AWD closed on January 1, 2000. The Amiga had been passed from Commodore to Escom in Europe and nothing was happening development-wise. Escom went bankrupt and sold off its Amiga intellectual property to Gateway 2000 (the big PC company). They did absolutely nothing with it and there was little hope that a new machine would ever come out. I also personally got a little disenchanted with the negativism in the Amiga community.

Because of the popularity of the Amiga Web Directory in the late 90's, CUCUG (now a multi-platform group) is financially comfortable and we don't need to do a lot to raise money to pay for our great meeting place (with a monster projector) and other club activities. So, I guess you could say that CUCUG was an early, if not short-lived, Internet success story.

ToC

Is Torvalds really the father of Linux?

By Stephen Shankland
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
URL: http://news.com.com/2100-7344-5216651.html
Story last modified May 19, 2004, 10:10 PM PDT

What's new:

A new report suggests more credit for creating the Linux operating system should go to Unix clone Minix, rather than to Linus Torvalds.

It's hard to imagine that Linus Torvalds could have launched Linux without directly using earlier operating system work, according to a report that has become controversial even before its scheduled publication Thursday.

The 92-page report, from a 14-person Washington, D.C., think tank called the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution, suggests more Linux credit should go to Minix. A Unix clone, Minix was designed by Andrew Tanenbaum to help him teach operating systems and software at Vrije University in Amsterdam. Torvalds used Minix before he embarked on Linux development in 1991.

In an e-mail interview, Torvalds strongly disputed the study's conclusions. And Tanenbaum himself has harshly criticized the study.

According to the study, it's safe to argue that Tanenbaum, who had years of OS experience and who had seen the Unix source code, could create Minix in three years. "However, it is highly questionable that Linus, still just a student, with virtually no operating systems development experience, could do the same, especially in one-sixth of the time," says the study, which was written by Ken Brown, president of the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution.


"Why are the most brilliant business minds in the history of PC technology, with hundreds of millions of dollars in capital, licensing Unix source code, if it is as simple as writing it from scratch with little help or experience?" the study asks. "Is it possible that building a Unix operating system really only takes a few months--and, oh by the way, you don't even need the source code to do it?"

The total cost of owning a Linux setup

Gordon Haff, an engineer and analyst for analysis firm Illuminata, took a more measured view. "I think we can all stipulate that Linux is not a 'clean room' creation. Whether that makes it a derivative work is a question for the lawyers and the philosophers," he said. As for suspicions about Torvalds' rapid early progress, it should be noted "that the original product was quite primitive," he said.

The study comes not long after several attacks on Linux--many of them spurred by Microsoft, whose Windows operating system competes with Linux. More significantly, it arrives in the midst of a legal attack on Linux by the SCO Group, which argues Linux violates its Unix copyrights.

Bolder words

Although the new study raises more questions than it answers, in an interview, Brown was bolder in his claims.

"It's clear to me, at least from quotes from Tanenbaum, that Linus started from Minix...He just sat down with Minix and wrote this product. By definition, that is not an invention," Brown said. "If you sit down with the Ford blueprints and build a Chrysler and don't give Ford any credit, that's not invention."

In an interview conducted for the study, Brown quoted Tanenbaum as saying that Minix "was the base that Linus used to create Linux. He also took many ideas from Minix, including the file system, source tree and much more."

If Linux is a derivative work of Minix, that makes Linux vulnerable to charges of intellectual property infringement by Prentice Hall, which published books on Minix, as well as the Minix source code, but restricted its use until 2000, the study said. "Arguably, Prentice Hall has lost out on tens of millions of dollars" because of lost book sales, the study said.

But Torvalds argued that he and other Linux developers have given proper credit.

"Linux never used Minix code...We never credited anybody else's code, because we never used anybody else's code," Torvalds said. But Unix, he said, did provide ideas: "Linux has always credited Unix. There has never been any question about the fact that Linux was very open about taking a lot of good ideas from Unix."

Minix, he said, was simply a platform on top of which Torvalds did his programming work.

The study suggested that Torvalds might have gradually replaced Minix code with Linux, but Torvalds says that did not happen.

"I didn't 'write the Minix code out of Linux,'" Torvalds said. "I was using Minix when I wrote Linux, but that's in the same sense that you are using Windows when you write your columns. Do your articles contain Windows source code because you use Windows to write them?"

Torvalds isn't the only one to dispute the study: Tanenbaum himself sided against Brown.

"Linus didn't sit down in a vacuum and suddenly type in the Linux source code. He had my book, was running Minix and undoubtedly knew the history (since it is in my book). But the code was his," Tanenbaum said in a Web posting about his interview.

"By the time Linus started, five people had independently implemented Unix or something approximating it...All of this was perfectly legal and nobody stole anything. Given this history, it is pretty hard to make a case that one person can't implement a system of the complexity of Linux."

Fueling the flames

When the institute announced the pending publication of the report earlier this week--saying it "directly challenges Linus Torvalds' claim to be the inventor of Linux"--it immediately drew criticism from open-source advocates who suggested Linux foe Microsoft was behind the report.

Microsoft indeed has provided funding to the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution for five years, a Microsoft representative said, without disclosing how much has been granted. Microsoft funds several public policy institutes, including the American Enterprise Institute, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Heritage Foundation, and the Cato Institute, the representative said.

Brown declined to discuss his organization's funding sources, but said there are several and that its research is independent. "I publish what I think, and that's it. I don't work for anybody's PR machine," he said.

One area where Brown and Torvalds agree is that Torvalds shouldn't bear the title of Linux "inventor."

"I'd agree that 'inventor' is not necessarily the right word," Torvalds said, to describe his role in Linux.

The study also raises the issue that Torvalds saw Unix source code. This was available in annotated source code that John Lions, a professor at the University of New South Wales in Australia, made available to his classes. The notes were widely distributed illegally afterward, and "many suspect that Linus also had the Lions notes," the report said.

Not true, Torvalds said: "I've never seen the Lions book, although I've obviously heard of it. And no, no Unix source code either."

Brown and his colleagues interviewed more than two dozen people for the study, but Torvalds "didn't get back to us" with requests for comment. Torvalds said he never received any e-mail from the institution.

The Linux issue fuels Brown's concern that open-source software makes it easier for other countries to benefit from U.S. technological prowess, he said: "How are you going to have an intellectual-property economy if you can just rip off stuff?"

Such political and business issues likely will get more attention in a book Brown plans to publish in coming months that will expand on the study.

The study will be sold by an outside e-book seller, Brown said. Although his organization usually makes studies available on its own, outsiders have crashed the group's Web site twice in recent days, after it published a press release on the upcoming study, Brown said.

The study is at times provocative, but in the end, it isn't revolutionary, Illuminata analyst Haff said: "It doesn't ultimately tell me anything surprising that would cause me to rethink the role of open source." --What's your take on this story? Visit News.com's feedback section.

Bottom line:

The study comes not long after several others unflattering to Linux and in the midst of a legal attack on Linux by the SCO Group.


Related News

ToC

The PC Section:

WinInfo Short Takes

Paul Thurrott
http://www.wininformant.com/

Gates: It's All About the R&D

At the annual Microsoft CEO Summit in Redmond this week, Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates told more than 100 corporate CEOs that his company will spend $40 billion on R&D during the next 6 years in a bid to "rewire the economy" following the dot-com era. "The fundamental technology that lets companies connect together is called Web services," Gates said. "The foundation has been laid over the past few years, and you'll see it accelerate in a pretty dramatic way. The work we're doing at Microsoft is building software delivering on a dream of seamless computing where your information is there when you want it and all systems are connected together with no manual effort."

Google to Deliver Desktop Search Tool

Google announced this week that it will soon release a file search tool that will bring the company's Web-based search tools to the Windows desktop. Code-named Puffin, the search tool will tackle one of Windows' weakest features--its search functionality. And perhaps most importantly, it will do so at least 2 years before Microsoft ships Longhorn, the next major Windows version, which will allegedly fix this problem. As many a Microsoft representative has remarked to me recently, "Why does it take forever for Windows to find a file that I know is on my hard disk but Google can find anything on the Web in seconds?" That's a good question, however rhetorically it's delivered.

Microsoft to Release Standalone Search Product Before Longhorn Ships

Integrated desktop and Internet search engines might be one of Longhorn's key features but Microsoft is apparently preparing a standalone search tool that will debut well before Longhorn does. The company is hatching the plans for this standalone search product, called MSN Search, through its MSN division; the product will incorporate email, database, file- system, and Internet searching. "As far as the consumer is concerned, [MSN Search will] be an end-to-end system for searching across any data type," Microsoft Corporate Vice President Yusuf Mehdi said this week during a speech at the Goldman Sachs Fifth Annual Internet Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. "I think it's fair to say that we will tackle all of the things that you expect, including PC search, as part of the MSN effort." A beta version is expected this summer, and the final release will ship next year, Mehdi said.

Gateway Irrelevant? Not According to Its CEO

Gateway President and CEO Wayne Inouye, who came to the company from eMachines, denied reports that the PC maker has become irrelevant because of shrinking sales and an inability to right itself financially. "I hope they just keep saying that," he said during his first annual shareholders meeting. "I like to be ignored for as long as possible." Gateway, indeed, has suffered some hard times: The company has racked up 13 money-losing quarters out of the last 14, has closed all its retail stores, has cut its workforce from 24,600 to 7400 employees, and has stopped manufacturing its own computer products. I find it hilarious that Gateway still has a bigger market share (3.8 percent in the United States) than Apple does (3.5 percent in the United States), and you know how uppity people get when we refer to Apple as "beleaguered." Maybe we could start measuring Apple compared with Gateway, in which case Apple's market share could be expressed as 0.92 Gateways.

PC Shipments to Jump Dramatically in 2004

Gartner said this week that PC users will upgrade more than 100 million PCs to new machines in 2004, setting the stage for dramatic growth in the PC industry this year. Gartner is now predicting that PC makers will sell 186.4 million PC units in 2004, an increase of 13.6 percent over 2003. Gartner based its estimates on first-quarter PC sales, which were much higher than previously anticipated, and on the fact that more than 30 percent of installed PCs were at least 3 years old. Microsoft's XP Reloaded marketing campaign seems to be happening just in time.

Intel Expects Better Revenues in Current Quarter

This week, microprocessor giant Intel revised its earnings forecast for the current quarter, alerting investors that its earnings will be higher than previously anticipated. The reason? Intel is experiencing higher-than- expected demand for the flash memory chips that manufacturers use in cell phones. Meanwhile, demand for Intel's microprocessors remains in line with its earlier estimates, the company said.

Intel Preps New 64-Bit Pentium 4 Chips

And speaking of Intel, the chipmaker will soon unleash a bevy of new PC microprocessors, including the long-awaited 64-bit version of its best- selling Pentium 4 processor. Five of the upcoming chips, which are part of the Prescott family of Pentium 4 processors, will debut June 21 alongside new chip sets and will feature speeds ranging from 2.8GHz to 3.6GHz. Later in the summer, Intel will release three other new Pentium 4 processors, which will include the 64-bit extensions; those chips will run at 3.6GHz, 3.4GHz, and 3.2GHz and will initially target the workstation market. Intel says that it will also ship 64-bit-enabled versions of its Xeon processors sometime this summer. All of Intel's 64-bit Pentium 4 and Xeon chips will support the so-called No Execute (NX) processor technology. NX works in tandem with a software feature in Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) to pervasively prevent buffer-overrun errors, which attackers often use to compromise Windows machines.

Microsoft Files New Lawsuits Against Spammers

Yesterday, Microsoft filed eight lawsuits against spammers it accused of deceiving consumers and using false information to hide their identities. "These spammers sent millions of emails individually--some hundreds of millions--soliciting a variety of products including body enlargement pills, prescription drugs, dating services, university degree programs, and work-at-home and get-rich-quick scheme offers," a Microsoft release stated. This set of lawsuits is the most recent salvo in a legal effort that began last summer; since then, Microsoft has pursued more than 80 lawsuits against spammers around the globe, the company noted. I wish I could get excited about these suits but evidence mounts that spam is more of a problem now than ever before.

ToC

The Linux Section:

Linux And Other Free Software News

from Tom Purl (tompurl2000@yahoo.com)

SUSE 9.1 FTP Version Available

SUSE, everyone's favorite non-free Linux company, has released the "FTP" version of their latest distribution. This version is nearly identical to the "Professional" edition, except that it's missing some proprietary software. If you would like to use a real, free Linux distribution, the please visit nearly anyone else. For more information about SUSE 9.1, please visit this link:

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/06/06/0533233&mode=thread&tid=106&tid =143&tid=185&tid=187&tid=190

Gentoo Officially A Not-For-Profit Organization

The Gentoo Foundation is now an official non-profit corporation. This is good news for anyone who wants their contributed work to remain free. For more information, please see Gentoo's home page (http://www.gentoo.org).

Computer Associates To Release The Ingres Database Under An Open Source License

CA will be relicensing their "CA Advantage Ingres" database under an open source license. Ingres was arguably the first real relational database, and was also the foundation for the open source Postgresql database management system.

CA also plans on releasing a document management application that's based on Zope and Plone, two popular open source web applications. To support their needs, CA plans on adding database-related software enhancements to Zope that will eventually be released under an open source license.

FreeBSD 4.10 Released

The 4.10 version of FreeBSD was released on May 27th. To view the press release, please visit the following link:

http://www.freebsd.org/releases/4.10R/announce.html

SMP Support Is Now OpenBSD's "-Current" Tree

Support for multiple processors (Symmetric Multi-Processing support) is now available in OpenBSD's -current source tree. For more information, please visit the following link:

http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=openbsd-cvs&m=108716345328561&w=2

News Flash: FreeBSD Is Not Dead

Netcraft's latest statistics site that there are nearly 2.5 million active FreeBSD sites. This statistic contradicts the common misconception in the Linux community that no one uses FreeBSD. This really wasn't much of a surprise to me. Most web masters that I've ever dealt with that didn't work for big corporation used some version of BSD.

ToC

The Macintosh Section:

Dual-Processor, Liquid-Cooled Power Mac G5s Announced

TidBITS#733/14-Jun-04

Apple last week announced a new line of Power Mac G5 desktop computers, featuring dual PowerPC G5 processors in each model. The top-of- the-line dual 2.5 GHz configuration ($3,000) sports a new liquid cooling system, circulating liquid past the G5 processors and through a radiant grille, where the liquid is cooled by air flowing through one of the Mac's four thermal zones. Mac OS X dynamically adjusts the flow of the cooling fluid and the speed of the fans based on the temperature. A dual 2.0 GHz G5 retails for $2,500, and the entry-level model, featuring two 1.8 GHz G5 processors, starts at $2,000. These models, featuring Nvidia GeForce FX 5200 Ultra video cards, are available immediately, and the high-end, liquid-cooled dual 2.5 GHz model with an ATI Radeon 9600 XT graphics card, will be available in July. Apple has also ended production on the 1.25 GHz Power Mac G4; remaining units will be available for prices starting at $1,300 while supplies last.

<http://www.apple.com/powermac/>
<http://www.apple.com/powermac/design.html>

Apple has also added a nifty software improvement, too. A new Mac OS X setup assistant can migrate your data from an existing Mac - including user accounts, applications, system preferences, and permissions - to the Power Mac G5 over a FireWire connection (using the Mac's target disk mode). For now this feature exists only in the new Power Mac G5s, no doubt part of Apple's strategy to encourage customers to retire their Power Mac G4 production machines, though it will undoubtedly appear in new Mac models or in an upcoming revision to Mac OS X. [MHA]

ToC

Microsoft Office 2004 Ships

TidBITS#731/24-May-04

Microsoft has officially released Office 2004 for Mac OS X, a significant revision to the near-ubiquitous suite of productivity tools. We plan to look more closely at the changes in Word, Entourage, Excel, and PowerPoint once we've received the software and evaluated whether the new features and fixed bugs in the final versions of each program are worthwhile. For now, suffice to say that you can purchase it for $400 (list price) or $150 (educational); upgrades cost $240. Individual products are also available if you don't want the full suite. You can also download a test drive version (186 MB) that works for 30 days, but keep in mind that Office 2004 requires Mac OS X 10.2.8 or higher. [TJE]

<http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/office2004/office2004.aspx>
<http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/office2004/howtobuy/howtobuy.aspx>
<http://www.microsoft.com/mac/default.aspx?pid=office2004td>

ToC

Apple Creates New iPod Division

TidBITS#731/24-May-04

Highlighting the importance of its digital music player to Apple's bottom line, the company has formed a separate iPod division headed up by Vice President Jon Rubinstein, who previously ran Apple's hardware engineering. A separate Macintosh division has also been created, with Tim Cook, head of worldwide sales and operations, at its helm. Some pundits have tried to make much of this move, but to us, it sounds like standard corporate restructuring to reflect the reality of Apple's markets. [JLC]

<http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=5198496>

ToC

Apple Releases Mac OS X 10.3.4 Update

TidBITS#732/07-Jun-04

Apple has released Mac OS X 10.3.4, a free update for owners of Mac OS X 10.3 Panther. (A similar update was also released for Mac OS X Server 10.3.) Apple says the update addresses issues in Mail, Safari, Address Book, Stickies, QuickTime Player, and DVD Player; and improves behavior with iPods connected via USB 2.0, mass storage devices, and video cameras connected to PowerBooks via FireWire. The installer also reportedly incorporates recent security updates (although Adam was prompted to install the latest security update on one Mac even after installing 10.3.4), improves file sharing and directory services, and fixes some disc burning oddities. The update is available via Software Update, which requires a 41 MB download. A standalone installer is available as a 39.5 MB download to update from Mac OS X 10.3.3, or as a 79 MB combined update for any earlier version of 10.3. [MHA]

<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25764>
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/macosxupdate_10_3_4.html>
<http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/apple/macosxcombinedupdate.html>

ToC

Eudora 6.1.1 Released

TidBITS#732/07-Jun-04

Qualcomm has released Eudora 6.1.1, a minor update to the company's popular email program. Bug fixes include a fix to importing from Apple Mail, tweaks to Eudora's Bayesian-based spam filter, and other minor fixes. Although the update is minor (and free), it's worth getting because one of the spam filter fixes eliminates a bug that could cause corruption of Eudora's junk mail database. Eudora 6.1.1 is available for Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X and is a 6.1 MB download. [ACE]

<http://www.eudora.com/download/>

ToC

Security Update 2004-06-07 Plugs Launch Services Holes

by Adam C. Engst <ace@tidbits.com>
TidBITS#732/07-Jun-04

Just as we were about to wrap this issue, including a brief bit about an update to Paranoid Android - Unsanity's hack for warning the user about the launching of unknown URL schemes - Apple released Security Update 2004-06-07, which claims to fix all of the recently identified security vulnerabilities in Mac OS X (see our articles on the topic in TidBITS-731_ for full details on what was broken).

<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=07679>
<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=07680>
<http://www.unsanity.com/haxies/pa/>

In short, the security update revises Launch Services so it alerts the user to applications that have not been explicitly launched before (with a dialog along the lines of the one Paranoid Android puts up). It also removes the registration of the disk URL scheme so disk images accessed via disk URLs no longer mount automatically. A change to Safari eliminates a feature that could open certain downloaded files when the Show in Finder button was clicked. And lastly, an unrelated fix enables telnet URLs to have port numbers specified with them again; that functionality had been removed by a previous security update. See Apple's articles on the topic for more details and a look at the new alert.

<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=61798>
<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25785>

Security Update 2004-06-07 is available via Software Update; it's also available as a 900K standalone download for both Mac OS X 10.3.4 and Mac OS X 10.2.8.

<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/securityupdate_ 2004-06-07_(_10_3_4).html>
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/securityupdate_ 2004-06-07_(_10_2_8).html>

Needless to say, we haven't had time to evaluate how well Apple's fixes work or if they cause any other problems, but we'll be tracking user reports on TidBITS Talk and other forums in the upcoming week.

ToC

The Amiga Section:

My first small review for AmigaOS 4.0 Pre-Release

Written by SieGeL on 04-Jun-2004 21:27:38
URL: http://www.saschapfalz.de/amigaone/a1faq_details.php?ID=10&CAT=-1

On June 3rd, 2004 I've recieved my Copy of the Pre-Developer Release of AmigaOS 4.0, a product that we all have waited for sooo long is now...HERE! :)

This short review will reflect my first impressions when installing and also using the Pre-Release, which will be referred to AOS 4 from now on (I know, it is NOT the Final...). I must warn everybody that I'm an Amigan since 1989, so don't expect a very objective review :) I'm an Amigan and will defend my beloved System at all costs.

Part 1: Preparations before Install

I have bought my AmigaOne XE in July 2003 together with Debian, and of course it was running Debian until the AOS4 CD arrived, so my HD was already installed with a lot of Linux Software, which I do not need anyway. So decision was made not to save anything from my System but let the AOS4 Installer re-initialize the complete Harddisk (80GB).

Before actually starting the installation, one must update the U-Boot Firmware to the latest Version from 12-Apr-2004 (v1.0.0), which ships together with AOS4. As usual, there are an ISO and a Floppy Version on CD, so take your favourite choice and upgrade first the U-Boot as described in the short installation docs. I would recommend to make the Installation Guide available on a second machine, so you can read the instructions and simultaneously execute the listed commands on your A1, at least this was at great help for me (copied the InstallationGuide folder to my WinXP box and read them locally there).

I had some trouble when trying to update the U-Boot from Auto-Boot CD, after entering the usual diskboot 500000 2:0 command U-Boot does in fact starts loading the Updater, but returns silently to the prompt and does not execute the updater at all.

After setting the U-Boot Env variable set autostart yes followed by the diskboot command the updater finally executes and flashes the new U-Boot. [UPDATE: I've read that bootm should also work without autostart var!] After an reboot one must add some additional U-Boot Parameters and verify also some settings inside the U-Boot menu. For all these stages I REALLY (!) would recommend to follow the Installation Guide word-wise, this way you avoid any trouble, at least this all works fine for me.

Part 2: The First Boot from CD

After all required pre-installation tasks are performed, it is time to actually boot the System from CD for installation. The boota command starts the loading of AOS4 directly from CD, and the loading process is IMO very fast when you remember that a lot of 68k emulated Code is still there and also the IDE device is not running in DMA mode currently.

It took about 50 seconds to get the first screen of AOS4, and this was the moment when I really got my good old Amiga Feeling back :) The first requester popped up stating that you should setup your Locale/Keyboard/Mouse Settings for installation. When working with these preferences, you will notice nice improvements everywhere, i.e. The Time Preferences have now the possibility to sync the System time with a NTP server, which works very fine here. Also the keyboard settings give me a big smile on my face, as the Amiga has now finally ISO-8859-15 aka Euro Support build in!

After setup these prefs, the good old Amiga Installer starts and asks you if you wish to prepare your Harddisc for use with AOS4. As I have written above, I wanted to kill my complete Harddisk for usage with AOS 4, so after confirming the question with Yes, the HDToolBox (now called MediaToolBox) starts and shows again a huge improvement over it's 3.9 counterpart, as you can now control CD-Rom, Hds and many other devices all controlled under this very nice tool. Amazing IMO.

To prep your Harddrive, you should again follow exactly the instructions listed in the Installation Guide, as you need to add a second-level Boottool and of course the RDB Block to your harddisk. The Installguide states that it should be possible to use Classic Amiga Hds, too but I have none available (my A4000/060 still works 24/7 days here), so this was no option for me.

After performing all the required steps, the Partitioning was the next action item to perform. The InstallGuide states that you should give your Boot Partition at least 100MB and that you also should leave about 500MB space free (unpartitioned), this should be used later as virtual Memory when the paging system is working and implemented. Well, I have a 80GB harddisk installed in my A1, so a 100MB Workbench sounds strange to me, and I've decided to use the following partitions:

DH0: (Workbench) - Boot Partition with 1.1GB
DH1: (Anwender) - All non-system related Tools with 10GB
DH2: (Coder) - My coding partition with all required Compilers etc. set to 10GB
DH3: (Storage) - For everything else like MP3 etc. Set to 54GB

All 4 partitions are using the new DOS/7 FFS Filesystem with support for Long Filenames! AFAIK you can also install Classic FFS filesystems if you wish, but for me this was no option, as I want to have a clean install after using my Classic System with all upgrades since 1989 without any re-install...

After I have finished the partitioning and clicked on Save to Drive, it is required to reset your A1 so that the changes can take effect. I was very amazed how fast the Reboot was, and I found it very nice that the normal Reset does not jump back to the U-Boot, but instead performs some kind of "Warm-Reset" bypassing the U-Boot start, which is completely different than Linux behaves, and I must say that I love this :)

After rebooting from CD, you need to format the Disks before starting the install, at least the Bootpartition must be formatted of course :) Do not format the Disks in "Normal" mode. This took about 1.5 Hours on my 10GB Partition! Just use the "Quick Format" Option, which initialized the 54GB Partition in about 30s.

Now you can start installing AOS4, this took here about 5-7 Minutes! After installation, you will be asked for your favourite Screenmode. Make your decision, remove the CD from drive, and either use the Resetbutton on your A1 or reset it via Keyboard (on PC Keyboard use STRG + LEFT-WINDOWS + RIGHT-WINDOWS).

After a short period, the AmigaOS 4 finally starts, the well known Deskop pops up and you can now start exploring the Pre-Release.

The first thing I've noticed when the OS was started: The fonts are now anti-aliased! Yay, looks great and gives the whole desktop a much better professional look IMO. After checking out the installation (most of the tools/utilities are known from the AOS 3.x line) I've started to install the supplied SDK, which takes around 200MB if you decide to install it completely, but you get also a lot of nice tools like gcc 2.95/3.3.4, gdb, all header/include files etc. I had no time yet to further check the contents of the SDK, but a first check let me smile again :)

PART 3: How it works

Next, I was very interested to see how the 68k Emulation works and copied some of my good old Classic Amiga Tools to AOS4. These are in particular: Dopus 4.17, CED 4.2, Diavolo, Aweb Demo Version from AmigaOS 3.9 and some of the network tools I'm using here like Samba, Yam etc.

Except Diavolo, which seems to have major problems with restoring data from backup files, everything works fine, really fine! I would not expect that high level of compatibility in the PreRelease, also because the JIT is currently not implemented, but I can use almost the complete Software I've used for years now for developing, so this is definitively rocking the world ! :)

Next and final step was the configuration of the TCP/IP stack Roadshow. Well, I was very surprised to see such an easy setup for my LAN here, just start Sys:Prefs/Internet, enter new Interface, fill out all required things like IP address, DHCP (if required), DNS, Gateway and optional servers/routes etc. click save, go to SYS:Devs/networks, double-click on the newly created Icon and Voila, you are online! This is even simpler than the MiamiDX Setup I'm using on my A4000, so I can only say:

AMAZING WORK OLAF!!!

AFAIK Roadshow has everything a TCP stack must have, but again I had no time yet to dig further into the setup and configuration. My A1 is now able to use the Internet and also access my Windows/Linux Boxes. This is currently enough for me. And as a nice side-effect, my Amiga goes online every time I reboot. Nice work!

BTW: For Windows and Samba Share Access I'm using the smbfs.lha package that can be found on Aminet. It is in no way a replacement for Samba, but does a very nice job when it comes to quickly access a SMB share. I really recommend to everyone to take a look to it.

As last installation step I've taken the native AOS4 distributed.net Client that is available on http://www.distributed.net, configured it and made a benchmark run. Happily, the result was exactly the same that was achieved under Linux: 2.67MKeys/s (G3 @ 800Mhz). I let the box now crunching non-stop on RC5 for about 24 hours, no problems occur and I'm using the machine heavily now while the client is running.

Part 4: Final Conclusion:

I'm absolutely surprised what Hyperion has supplied with the Pre-Release. I expected some kind of a "dirty hack" where everything is mixed together, with a lot of crashes and problems, days of installation issues etc., etc. What I actually got was a CD with everything you need to install the AmigaOS 4.0 Pre-Release in less than one hour without any problems, at least here for me. Amazing!

I could write even more, but I want to start developing now, expect new releases really soon :) And I think that other users will write reviews, too!

So happy Computing on the new Future, which starts for me on June 3rd, 2004 :-)

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The CUCUG Section:

May General Meeting

reported by Kevin Hopkins (kh2@uiuc.edu)

May 20, 2004 - The meeting began at 7:06 PM with the tradition introduction of officers.

The floor was opened up to questions and Kevin Hopkins brought up a JAVA problem he was having with the web site bonus.com. The site has games that his daughter plays at school on a Windows machine, but at home on a Mac, the games refuse to run. He has downloaded the latest version of JAVA for the Mac and still no luck. Emil Cobb recommended the latest version of Netscape, 7.0.

Norris Hansell asked about buying a G4 Powerbook and USB networking. He was particularly interested in how it would handle floppies and all of his other external USB devices.

Kevin Hisel recommended the Logitech Cordless MX Duo Keyboard. He is very pleased with his.

Ben Johnson will be showing a PC tablet at the next PC SIG and the network camera set up on his building on the U of I campus. It's a Sony SNC-RZ30N and can be found at 130.126.248.11.

Our guest, Richard Bronson, asked about getting a cable modem versus a DSL connection. During the discussion that ensued, the cable modem was strongly recommended. However, Anthony Philipp said he was running his own server on a DSL connection.

Tom Purl asked about the differences between iBooks and PowerBooks. Emil Cobb and Craig Kummerow fielded that topic.

There was a discussion about the Mac OS on a PC emulator, PearPC 0.1.2. It this point it's pretty much a novelty.

There was a discussion about the smear campaign being launched against Linus Torvald and his creation of Linux. The consensus is that a certain software company's fingerprints are all over this one.

Richard Rollins reported that Comcast had purchased his favorite computer television program, TechTV. You can check it out at http://www.techtv.com/ . Richard said it's on channel 407 on digital cable or dish here locally. It's being renamed to G4techTV.

There was a discussion about the new NVidia PCI Express buss dual video card.

A member pointed out a news story on News.com about FBI planning a spammer smackdown.

The RIAA is going after 10,000 music sharers again.

The PC SIG: DVD archiving by Kevin Hisel

reported by Kevin Hopkins (kh2@uiuc.edu)

Before the actual presentation got going, Richard Rollins showed a neat little cable he found on the discount table out at Staples. It's a USB cable you can use to synch a Palm. It replaces the normal Palm cradle.

Kevin Hisel then began his demo with what must be the obligatory caveat that the "Law says you can make a backup, so it is legal to make an archival backup of a DVD you own." That said, he showed us the neat software tools he'd found to do the job.

Kevin first directed our attention to a couple of web sites. The first, http://www.DVDShrink.info , is the web site where you can get the program DVDShrink. He said you should also check out http://www.DVDShrink.org.

Covering some of the basic technical information, Kevin said that blank DVDs hold 4.5 GB of material. This is the DVD5 standard. However, commercial DVDs can hold as much as 8.5 GB. This is the DVD9 standard. Thus, the need to "shrink" DVDs down to the readily available media you can buy.

Kevin then introduced us to the program. The latest version of DVDShrink is 3.1.7.6. He said DVDShrink shrinks video, but not the audio. He then showed us how to use it.

One of the things that Kevin made note of was that DVDShrink does not actually burn DVDs. It is a utility for "shrinking" DVD files. He said what DVDShrink will do is use Nero to burn your finished disk. Nero is a commercial program, but is very inexpensive and readily available. DVDShrink will also use DVD Decrypter, a free program, to burn your disk for you.

You can control how much compression DVDShrink exerts on your source video, but Kevin said you have to be careful, because you'll start to see problems if you reduce it to 70% or below.

He then showed "Re-authoring" where the magic happens. Kevin noted that DVD video is already compressed, but 100% means no loss of quality from what the original DVD had. In the process, DVDShrink strips region code, Macrovision, and gets rid of menues that force you to watch certain content, like the FBI warning.

Kevin said you have to have about 10 GB free on your hard drive to work with DVDShrink. You also have to have plenty of free RAM. Kevin said you need at least 256 MB in your machine, but he recommends 500MB. You also need the NTFS filesystem, not FAT32.

You do not get menus when you re-author. After, working on the first movie, Kevin went back to "Re-author" the extras left on the disk, which he had eliminated on the first pass to conserve space. What you do, he said, is go back to the main movie and compressed it to still pictures. This takes up the least amount of space.

If you can copy a disk without compression/shrinking that is best. It's the analysis of the disk initially that takes the most time time.

Kevin showed "Young Frankenstein" first. He showed "2001: A Space Odyssey" next. 20001 had 32 chapters in it. The Re-authoring section of DVDShrink will let you burn chapters, so on a movie like 2001, which is too big to fit on a single blank DVD, you can burn, say, chapters 1 through 16 on one disk and chapters 17 through 32 on another disk, and not lose any quality of image.

Kevin said it takes about 17 minutes to burn a classic 40s movie. He has a 4X burner and a 3 GHz processor in his machine. Older machines can take as long as 4 hours to burn a disk. If the movie has to be compressed, the time really goes up.

Kevin noted that the new Dual layer burners are now about $80, but the media for them costs about $15 a disk, because it's new. Hardly economical at this point. Most of the drives are IDE.

Another bit of advice Kevin offered was the more audio you eliminate, the higher quality you can give your video.

DVDShrink is a 1 MB download. Kevin said once you are in to it, it is kind of simple to use.

He also said go to Google and search for "DVDShrink guides" for all the help you need.

There are other alternatives. DVD X Copy is a commercial program, costing around $70-$100. But, DVDShrink is free and infinitely more flexible.

As things wound down, Kevin briefly touched on DVD Decrypter. He said it is a program for combining two source disks into one DVD.

The Linux SIG: Presentation on Backups by Tom Purl

reported by Tom Purl (tompurl2000@yahoo.com)

I did a short presentation on how to back up your system using a program called rsync (rsync.samba.org). In addition to rsync, I also use the script and tutorial found the this (http://www. mikerubel.org/computers/rsync_snapshots/) web page. This script works "natively" on UNIX-based OS's like Mac OSX and Linux, and it can also be made to work on Windows machines. Anthony wasn't able to do a presentation on Backula because it required too many supporting applications, including MySQL.

The Macintosh SIG: Removing tunes from an iPod by Emil Cobb

reported by Kevin Hopkins (kh2@uiuc.edu)

Emil said the Mac SIG looked at ways to take music out of an iPod, rather than the usually methods of putting music into an iPod.

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May Board Meeting

reported by Kevin Hopkins (kh2@uiuc.edu)

The May meeting of the CUCUG executive board took place on Tuesday, May 25, 2004, at 7PM, at Kevin Hisel's house. (For anyone wishing to attend - which is encouraged, by the way - the address and phone number are both in the book). Present at the meeting were: Emil Cobb, Kevin Hopkins, Kevin Hisel, Rich Hall, and Tom Purl. Richard Rollins had to deal with a client, so was unable to attend, although he phoned in.

Tom Purl: Tom said he didn't know what the Linux SIG would be doing next month. He talked about the possibilities of a Perl tutorial and something on PHP in the future. Tom said Ben Johnson would be doing a tablet demo for the PC SIG.

Rich Hall: Rich reported that we had two people join at the last meeting: Phil Wall, an old member returning after several years absence, and Jim Alvis, a new member.

There was a discussion of interest rates and how they have impacted the club's finances.

Emil Cobb: Emil said that the Mac SIG had investigated the process of extracting music out of an iPod, in order to burn it to a CD for backup purposes. Some of the programs Emil looked at were XPod, BurnOut, iPod Decloak, and PodWorks. They allow you to suck the tunes out of your iPod as MP3s. Emil said you can use a Google search or look on VersionTracker to find the latest versions of these programs. They are known as DRMs, or Digitasl Rights Management software.

Emil reported that there were twenty people at the last meeting.

Emil said he would have more hardware for the iPod at the next Mac SIG. As an aside , he noted that the new iPods are very touch sensitive. He then talked awhile about all of his iPod toys.

Kevin Hisel: Kevin had nothing new to discuss. He said he had an MP3Tag program coming and he may demo and review it soon.

Kevin Hopkins: Kevin had nothing new to discuss.

Richard Rollins: Richard phoned in that he had a guy from PowerComputing magazine who wanted to come to do a demo. This seemed a little odd to us all.

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The Back Page:

The CUCUG is a not-for-profit corporation, originally organized in 1983 to support and advance the knowledge of area Commodore computer users. We've grown since then, now supporting PC, Macintosh and Linux platforms.

Meetings are held the third Thursday of each month at 7:00 p.m. at the First Baptist Church of Champaign in Savoy. The FBC-CS is located at 1602 N. Prospect Avenue in Savoy, on the NE corner of Burwash and Prospect. To get to the the First Baptist Church from Champaign or Urbana, take Prospect Avenue south. Setting the trip meter in your car to zero at the corner of Kirby/Florida and Prospect in Champaign (Marathon station on the SW corner), you only go 1.6 miles south. Windsor will be at the one mile mark. The Savoy village sign (on the right) will be at the 1.4 mile mark. Burwash is at the 1.6 mile mark. The Windsor of Savoy retirement community is just to the south; Burwash Park is to the east. Turn east (left) on Burwash. The FBC-CS parking lot entrance is on the north (left) side of Burwash. Enter by the double doors at the eastern end of the building's south side. A map can be found on the CUCUG website at http://www.cucug.org/meeting.html. The First Baptist Church of Champaign is also on the web at http://www.fbc-cs.org .

Membership dues for individuals are $20 annually; prorated to $10 at mid year.

Our monthly newsletter, the Status Register, is delivered by email. All recent editions are available on our WWW site. To initiate a user group exchange, just send us your newsletter or contact our editor via email. As a matter of CUCUG policy, an exchange partner will be dropped after three months of no contact.

For further information, please attend the next meeting as our guest, or contact one of our officers (all at area code 217):

   President/WinSIG:   Richard Rollins      469-2616
   Vice-Pres/MacSIG:   Emil Cobb            398-0149               e-cobb@uiuc.edu
   Secretary/Editor:   Kevin Hopkins        356-5026                  kh2@uiuc.edu
   Treasurer:          Richard Hall         344-8687              rjhall1@uiuc.edu
   Corp.Agent/Web:     Kevin Hisel          406-948-1999
   Linux SIG:          Tom Purl             390-6078         tompurl2000@yahoo.com

Visit our web site at http://www.cucug.org/, or join in our online forums at http://www.cucug.org/starship/index.php .

CUCUG
912 Stratford Dr.
Champaign, IL
61821

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