BSDToday brings us some more explanations and information about some uncommon or rarely-used utilities often installed on BSD systems.

A statement issued by Microsoft on Sunday, contradicting earlier
statements by company spokesmen, states
that the hacker infiltration of its Redmond,
Wash., campus network last week lasted
less than two weeks and that Microsoft
security tracked the infiltration soon after
it began. Although clearly an attempt to
mitigate the incident, the statement
tellingly leaves open the possibility,
reported last week, that the hackers were
able to steal source code for a major
product under development. From The Standard.

Installing multiple operating systems on the same box has become
common, especially for consultants, hobbyists, developers and Information Systems administrators. Everyone
has different reasons, but for everyone, it all comes down to the same reason – trying out the latest systems. But
is dual booting the solution? From 32bitsonline.

BSDToday reports that the chpass family contained a format string vulnerability that could be exploited by unprivileged local users to gain local root access.

Kaspersky Lab is warning users of the discovery of a new internet-worm: Sonic. This worm was discovered in France and Germany on the morning of 30th October 2000. The distinctive feature of this malicious program is its ability to update itself (ie: to automatically download additional component functionality) via the Internet. The worm consists of two parts -the loader and the main module. Copies of the loader are being distributed across the Internet by e-mail. Read more–Mirko Zorz [LogError]

The U.S. government on Monday told a federal
appeals court hearing the Microsoft Corp.
antitrust case that it favors
further outside opinions, but Microsoft said that
would be unfair. The court earlier said it would
accept two friend-of-the-court, or amicus,
briefs, one from those in support of the
government’s position and one in favor of
Microsoft’s side. From ZDNET.

Typos and all, here’s the transcript from Wall’s slide show at Atlanta Linux Showcase, from Perl.org.

ComputerWorld reports that Microsoft Corp. is sending up a trial balloon in its move to make its applications software more of a service. Next month, easyEverything Internet cafes will begin hosting Office 2000, Works 2001 and Encarta 2001 for a rental fee of approximately $2 per hour.

Paul Allen intends to sell 15 million shares of common stock
in the Redmond, Wash.-based company, according to
a filing made with the Securities and Exchange
Commission. From ZDNET.

“Let’s start off by looking at how this impacts Microsoft’s most important market, the corporate market. Within this market Microsoft has based their marketing on the claim that their software is secure and easy to use. On the server side specifically they have been fighting a rather hard battle against entrenched Unix systems and cheap Linux boxes. The core message that Microsoft sends to this market is that the customer should trust Microsoft, to trust their competency, to trust their ability to supply secure and powerful products.” –Kelly McNeill