Corporate Web servers infecting visitors' PCs, Jun 25, 2004

Webmaster's note: Not a Linux story per se, but I can't think of a better reason to switch to Linux, or at least, an open source browser like Mozilla Firebird on Windows

Security researchers warned Web surfers on Thursday to be on guard after uncovering evidence that widespread Web server compromises have turned corporate home pages into points of digital infection.

The researchers believe that online organized crime groups are breaking into Web servers and surreptitiously inserting code that takes advantage of two flaws in Internet Explorer that Microsoft has not yet fixed. Those flaws allow the Web server to install a program that takes control of the user's computer.

The extent of the attacks is unknown, but the security community has seen numerous cases of personal computers infected when the user merely visits a Web site.

Do you want a Linux and Windows desktop all in one? That's exactly what Element Computer, a Linux hardware vendor, is claming it will provide July 1. The company says it will become the first to offer a Linux desktop that also runs almost all Windows 95, 98 and ME applications.

Staten Island, N.Y.-based Element Computer Inc. does this by combining its own Linux distribution, ION OS; its own line of PCs; technology from NeTraverse Inc.'s Win4Lin; and a licensed copy of Microsoft Windows 98 SE.

The two software firms are setting up a joint facility in Singapore to promote the open-source operating system to businesses

Software makers Oracle and Red Hat are launching a facility in Singapore to promote the development of Linux for businesses, the companies announced on Wednesday.

The $13m (£7.1m) Linux Enterprise Applications Porting (LEAP) Centre, the first-ever joint facility set up by Oracle and Red Hat, intends to tap the growing popularity of the open-source operating system in the Asia Pacific region.

Microsoft's server division expects to release a beta version of Windows Server 2003 tailor-made for the high performance computing (HPC) market by year's end, Microsoft said, but failed to clarify whether either Intel or AMD's top-end 64-bit processors would be supported. It spearheads an attack on a market where Unix and Linux are firmly entrenched.

According to Dennis Oldroyd, director in Microsoft's Windows Server Group, the new product, called Windows Server 2003 HPC Edition, will integrate Microsoft's Windows Server with other software considered standard in high performance computing, including a cluster manager, a scheduler and an implementation of the Message Passing Interface protocol.

It's no mystery why investors may be turning away from Red Hat: The company's stock price has plummeted almost 30 percent since June 7.

But I think this is exactly the time to pay attention to the Raleigh, N.C., Linux company.

The stock, which shot from $5.95 all the way up to $29.06 during the course of this year, plummeted on two bits of news in the last couple of weeks.

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