From LinuxPR: Xi Graphics Inc., a six-year-old privately
held firm that specializes in premium graphics support software for Linux and
UNIX systems, announced today the release of Linux graphics support for
two members of the RADEON family of graphics cards — the
RADEON 32 MB DDR and the RADEON 64MB DDR from ATI
Technologies Inc., a world leader in graphics accelerators.

From a Business Wire press release: SuSE Linux has announced the release of SuSE Linux 7.0 PowerPC Edition.
SuSE Linux 7.0 for the PowerPC has numerous improvements over its predecessor. In addition to the renowned comprehensive manual, the five CDs
of this edition contain more than 1,000 applications for virtually any purpose. This includes image processing software, desktop applications, emulators,
and the wide range of available window managers, network tools and editors.

The advisory is at LWN.net: “The modules package is responsible for on-demand loading of kernel
modules/drivers. The /sbin/modprobe command, when executed as a new
task by the kernel-internal function request_module(), runs with the
priviledges of the init process, usually root.
Newer versions of the modprobe program contain a bug
which allows local users to gain root priviledges. modprobe expands
given arguments via /bin/echo and can easily be tricked into executing
commands. In order for this bug to be exploitable, a setuid root program
must be installed that can trigger the loading of modules (such as ping6).”

From LinuxPR:
Turbolinux, a provider of high-performance Linux for Internet infrastructure
solutions, today announced it is demonstrating the power of its EnFuzion
software by breaking Microsoft NT passwords at product demonstrations during
Linux Business Expo at Comdex in Las Vegas this week.

Info World reports on Brian Behlendorf’s search for more money for the Apache Software Foundation at Comdex. The foundation needs cash to “keep up with the demands that developing the leading Web server requires.”

It’s at LinuxPR: AvBrief was awarded the best E-business Start-up Award as part of Computer
Weekly’s prestigious E-Business Excellence Awards, and achieves break even
goals within 3 months.

As the UK’s first Internet service providing a “one stop shop” for on-line flight
briefing, AvBrief have succeeded in more than doubling their end of year one
target within only six months of launching. As a result of this,and their superlative
attention to customer service, AvBrief was awarded the best E-business
Start-up Award at the Computer Weekly E-Business Excellence Awards,
November 2000.

IDG.net reports that Inprise/Borland will join the GNOME Foundation Advisory Board, which fosters development of the GNOME desktop environment. Also, Slashdot readers discuss the announcement, and possibility of Inprise releasing Kylix.

From ZD Net: Backers of the KDE Linux desktop environment are expected to announce a corporate-backed group to push KDE as an alternative of GNOME, during Comdex Wednesday.

Steven Adler has just finished his writeup up on my trip to Dallas where he attended Super Computing 2000. You’ll find content on Teraflop computing for the year 2009, IBM’s Blue Gene Teraflop machine, some insights into the seti@home project as well as the Open Source panel discussion where issues relating to Open Source, high-performance computing and government funding agencies were discussed. You can find the writeup at ssadler.phy.bnl.gov. You can also visit Adler’s photo gallery of the cool stuff he found on the show floor – Submitted by Stephen Adler

A group of scientists at the Australian National University have won the 2000 Gordon Bell Prize for their efforts at creating a low-cost supercomputer. The winning creation is Bunyip, a 196-processor, 214-gigaflop parallel computer running Linux as a Beowulf cluster. Australian IT reports.