An anonymous reader writes "According to The Inquirer, Microsoft has used their Xbox Live Vole System to patch any Xboxes that access it....without asking their permission before installing the software. However, in this occurrence, the bug appears to be the 'dashboard bug' that allows Linux to be easily installed on an Xbox. Further, according to The Xbox Linux Project, users who do not have an Xbox Live account may find themselves being patched without permission as well. If a gamer tries to access any part of a game that uses Xbox Live, the console can 'phone home' and install the patches anyway. While patching bugs can be a nice touch to poor software, I don't know if I feel comfortable with ANYONE installing software on my hardware without asking permission first."

KingDaveRa writes "The Register is reporting that motor giant Ford is switching to Linux for its sales systems, human resources, customer relations and infrastructure, referencing a report in yesterday's Scotland on Sunday. According to The Register, the biggest battle was over which Linux vendor to use - RedHat or SuSE." Update: 09/16 01:51 GMT by T : An anonymous reader points to this NewsForge report, according to which Ford is not moving to Linux.

Eric_Z writes "Ace's Hardware has got a article called "The Mad Hatter meets the MSCE" by Paul Murphy, about the TCO benefits of using UNIX(Lintel) instead of Wintel. According to the piece: 'The subject of this article looks at alternatives to the Windows desktop, which is a hot topic these days with IBM/SuSe scoring a highly public win in Munich with desktop Linux, and Sun aiming to build on StarOffice being the leading alternative to Microsoft Office with a software stack code-named Mad Hatter which Sun also plans to use extensively in-house. But companies depending on Microsoft Certified Engineers to adapt to Linux will carry over a number of problems, significantly increasing the chance of project failure. Paul considers the alternatives, the migration problems, and in seeking a more reliable alternative takes the opportunity to look at the business desktop from an entirely different angle, and propose a more radical solution.'"

Read on below for two readers' review of books aimed at Red Hat 9 users: acemics writes with a quick review of Red Hat Linux 9 Professional Secrets, and reader skogs contributes a longer look at Sam's Publishing's Red Hat Linux 9: Unleashed.

JigSaw writes "OSNews published an interview with Havoc Pennington, the head manager of Red Hat's Desktop department, also known for his freedesktop.org initiative and his very active/leading role in Gnome. Havoc discusses the internal changes on Red Hat, the future of the desktop version of Red Hat Linux, the XFree86 fork Xoutert, GTK+ and Gnome while he characteristically says regarding Linux eating UNIX's marketshare: '...nails are firmly in the UNIX coffin, and it's just a matter of time.'"

sweede asks: "I have a dedicated server that seems to reboot more often than it should. In Windows 2000/XP (maybe NT4.0?), if your computer or server crashes it will leave an event message in the Event Viewer for you to review on what went wrong. Is it possible to do something similar in Linux? Where a power outage or an unexpected kernel panic will leave a message in /var/log/event (or whatever) Searching Google for 'kernel trapping' doesn't give me a whole lot of info on the subject."

5p1urge asks: "I really love the Mono and DotGNU projects. As someone who's worked in Java for for over 5 years, I welcome C# and it's buddies to the OpenSource world. However, here's question: as far as I can tell, only the C# spec and System.* assemblies were submitted to ECMA and therefore made officially public. What happens when MS decides that, Linux -is- going to steal valuable income-generating business, and therefore it should use it's newly acquired patents to sue? I'd appreciate comments from IT lawyers / solicitors and individuals with experience in this area, as well as from the wider community. I'm asking this question because I want to code in mono / DotGnu but I'm cautious because I wonder if MS can take it away from us?"

Richard asks: "I am interested in starting some home automation projects. The only requirement is that it needs to be controllable via my Linux based system. A Google search for ' "home automation" linux ' returns more than 35,000 hits, including some good ones like this one, which just show how MUCH is out there. Are there any recommendations for a good controller with a serial or USB connection to the computer? What about power switches and sensors? Do I want a system that sends control signals over my house's power lines or RF? Any good software recommendations? As a first project I thought a simple controllable power switch would be fun: Then I could ssh to my home system, use the power switch to turn on a computer controlled radio (Ten-Tec RX-320) and use Speak Freely to send back the audio to my remote location. (This works now except that I don't want to leave the radio on all the time)."

locarecords.com writes "The Economist has an excellent article about Microsoft attempting to undermine the Open Source and Free Software movements. Particularly interesting are the issues relating to proprietary software and government and how other countries are mandating free software in government software projects."

An anonymous reader writes "This whitepaper describes how engineers at IBM's Pervasive Computing Advanced Technology Laboratory created a Linux-based, intelligent, remote control system for a model airplane as a way to showcase gateway server technology. The onboard computer controls various navigational equipment and interfaces to a wireless access point and PDA. The user can control the plane through handheld wireless technology. A 3-dimensional virtual flight environment tracks the plane's flight and provides a gps-based autopilot function. The environment is based on LandSAT maps and gives the user a virtual view of the flight from the cockpit of the plane, which can be augmented by real-time updates from an onboard camera. The article briefly introduces "gateway server" concepts, describes the embedded hardware and software architecture, explains how the IBM developers implemented the control systems, and includes lots of cool photos."

MadFarmAnimalz writes "Science Magazine's reporting on the results of the NSF's Science and Engineering Visualisation Challenge and the first prize in the Illustrations category has been claimed by the Innolab 3D File Manager, which was developed on linux. Apparently this involves arranging data in a ferris wheel type structure." The data is arranged by its relationship with its content, rather than by its physical position on a hard drive or its file system.

ubiquitin writes "While KNOPPIX has been around for some time, the GNOPPIX project has only recently made its first release. The main difference is that it lets you boot into the GNOME desktop environment. Usually forks are more trouble than they're worth, but given the limits of what you can compress onto a single CD, separate projects makes sense to me. Hopefully more widespread recognition will also bring about a few more mirrors."

thedarb writes "Mandrake has decided to sell ads to be seen during installation, web browsing and in screen savers. This all comes in their upcoming 9.2 release. Seven G's and you could put your face in their installer." Update: 09/12 18:07 GMT by M : Mandrake has a page about the ads.

grugruto asks: "A lot of open source solutions are available to scale web sites with clusters but what about databases? I can't afford an Oracle RAC license but can I have something more reliable and fault tolerant than my single Postgres box? I have seen this recent article that looks promising for open source solutions. Do anyone have experiences with clusters of MySQL , Postgres-R, C-JDBC or other solutions? How does it compare to commercial products?"

Anonymous guy who can't remember his login sent in a story from the Globe And Mail that says "During August, 67 per cent of all successful and verifiable digital attacks against on-line servers targeted Linux, followed by Microsoft Windows at 23.2 per cent. A total of 12,892 Linux on-line servers running e-business and information sites were successfully breached in that month, followed by 4,626 Windows servers."

kerneljacabo writes "In what is yet another testament to the flexibility of the Gentoo platform, it has been ported to the PS2. It is still in the early stages but more information can be found here."

Tony Bybell writes "For the old school RPGamers, the 1980s Bard's Tale style of role playing is being unofficially resurrected as Bard's Legacy: Devil Whiskey. Check out the FAQ: a Linux port will be available immediately and they'll be releasing the code under an Open Source license after 50,000 copies of the full game have been sold." There's also a new downloadable demo available in both Windows and Linux flavors.

brakk writes "From this article at Infoworld, Linus responds to SCO's open letter in a manner reminiscent of patting a child on the head." chrisd notes that his company is making SCO employees unhireable.

An anonymous reader writes "This whitepaper at LinuxDevices.com includes benchmarks comparing the real-time performance of the vers. 2.4 and 2.6 linux kernels, based on LynuxWorks' BlueCat Linux 5.0 beta. The graphs compare the results for average and worst-case measurements of both interrupt response and task switch performance for the two kernels, running on a 1GHz Pentium III under relatively heavy load. Check it out -- there's an enormous improvement. The article also includes a rundown of other features of the new kernel that seem likely to be welcomed by embedded developers."

chendo writes "Gnome 2.4 will be released today. Here is the link to the article on Ars Technica. GNOME 2.4 is the result of quite a bit of work toward complying with the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines (HIG), which mainly focus on user interface consistency and predictability. This release has also undergone some general polish, and it can finally be said that the GNOME 2 platform has achieved maturity with this release. The Epiphany web browser, a major new component of GNOME, also makes its debut with this release. (From Footnotes)"