Linux World has the first in a series about Linux firewalls: “Security has always been a critical issue for
computer networking, and firewalls are an
essential ingredient for network security. In this
series, I will show you how Linux offers you
freedom of choice in this area. There are many
firewall solutions for Linux. Most are open source applications, but some excellent commercial
products have been ported to Linux. I’ll also show you how the Linux kernel can be used to build a
highly integrated hardware firewall.”

32bitsonline has an article about Accelerated-X laptop displays in Linux. “The last Xi Graphics product I reviewed was their MaXimum CDE (Common
Desktop Environment) Developers Edition. It seemed that the ‘standard’ UNIX
GUI was bolted onto a Linux distribution of nebulous lineage and shoved out the
door to fend for itself among the heavyweights from Redhat, TurboLinux and
SUSE. The result was less than satisfying.

Thankfully, this has changed. As far as I can tell, the Xi Graphics folks are no
longer in the Linux Distribution business. It pays to stay with what you know –
and there is no one in the display server business that is as fast to market with
new drivers for the Linux and BSD crowd than Xi Graphics.”

eWeek has a followup story on Rijndael being proposed as the U.S. government encryption standard.

From an IDG News Service story on Internet appliciances: “The new Internet Computer is the antithesis of the two MSN machines.
Its OS is Linux, running invisibly in the background. Netscape 4.73 is its
browser. Both load from a CD-ROM. The NIC is the most computerlike of the
three appliances, with a small vertical case, two stand-alone speakers, a tabletop
mouse (with mouse pad), and a full-size computer keyboard that lacks the
shortcut buttons included on the MSN Companions.”

A column at ZDNet examines script kiddies and their potential damage to poor, little corporate America. “It’s so easy to hack now that it’s almost certain that every corporate Web site will be compromised within the next couple of years.” Also, The Associated Press reports that the FBI is pushing for cyber ethics classes in schools.

From a column at ZDNet: “(Reverse engineering) sounds backwards. It sounds devious. But it is about analysis: taking things apart, potentially breaking them, to find out how they work; opening up the hood, seeing what parts are inside and how they are connected. And, although it sounds somewhat less noble than ‘engineering,’ the world needs reverse engineers and needs them badly.”

AbriaSoft, the first distribution of MySQL based database
solutions for the Internet, announced
today its release of the Abria App Pack, an application package
containing popular Open Source applications that are commonly used in
conjuncture with MySQL database, from Internet Wire.

One of the ripple effects of the Microsoft investment in Corel was a
potential change in the status of Wine, surmises LinuxPlanet, a technology that Corel had
mightily championed and used as the underlying technology for its
release of Corel WordPerfect Office 9.

32BitsOnline reviews Xi Graphics’ Accelerated-X laptop display server.

Red Hat previews GTK+ version 2.0’s advantages for users and programmer.