Sean Michael Kerner

From the ‘interesting to note‘ files: The issue of how long a Linux distribution will support a release is one that tends to go back and forth. Novell’s openSUSE Linux is now revising its policy. Starting with the openSUSE 11.2, maintenance support will be approximately 18 months which is a reduction of 6 months from […]

From the ‘this is not a drill’ files: Linux users take note: we’re all at risk from a kernel privilege escalation flaw. No it’s not the end of the world, that will lead to massive remote exploits and all Linux servers being pwnd. But it is something to be concerned about. The flaw is a […]

From the ‘Retweeting is the highest form of Twitter flattery‘ files: I retweet my fair share of tweets on a regular basis. Usually it’s a simple” RT@username Something interesting” kind of tweet. But soon, Twitter is going to have new built-in retweeting powers,  thanks to an API that is currently under development. The basic idea […]

What is the most popular programming language used by open source developers? The answer depends on how you define popularity. According to a new study from Black Duck, a software-license code analysis vendor, C represents more than 40 percent of all code written for open source software. Black Duck made its determination by counting the […]

From the “What Did You Know and When Did you Know It?‘ files: The i4i XML patent issue that could take Microsoft Word from store shelves, isn’t a big problem for open source users in my opinion – for a very simple reason. As far as I can tell, i4i is not a patent troll. […]

From the ‘Fast Ethernet Getting Faster‘ files: The U.S Department of Energy (DoE) is getting $62 million in U.S government stimulus funding to build out a 100 GbE (gigabit Ethernet) network. The network will be developed and used by ESnet (Energy Sciences Network) at the DoE’s  Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The goal is to provide […]

From the ‘What’s Going On?‘ files: Apple is updating its Mac OS X for a BIND DNS issue that was patched by other vendors two weeks ago.The issue is a critical vulnerability in the BIND 9 DNS server that could lead to a Denial of Service (DoS) attack condition. It’s an issue that US-CERT issued […]

Do enterprise apps make for good virtual appliance apps? According to enterprise software vendor Oracle, they sure do, but they need to have the right technology behind them. Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) today unveiled a new open source technology called Oracle VM Template Builder, which enables users to build their own virtual software appliances. “When you […]

From the ‘Yo Quiero Mozilla‘ files: Eight months ago, Mozilla announced a new effort called Test Pilot to help get user feedback. Today Mozilla is now making that effort available with the Test Pilot add-on for Firefox. The basic idea is that the add-on will make users part of the Test Pilot community where Mozilla […]

From the ‘scary security flaws‘ files: Imagine this scenario. An attacker visits your blog, inputs an array in the http address header and PRESTO, your admin password is automatically reset – locking the real admin out of their own site. A vulnerability fixed by the open source WordPress blog software today isn’t quite that scary […]

From the ‘heckling in the cheap seats‘ files: Apple is updating its Safari web browser on both Mac and Windows platform to version 4.0.3. The new browser releases fixes at least 6 different security issues that could potentially expose users to risk. The Safari 4.0.3 update follows a Mac OS X 10.5.8 update by a […]