The PHP development team have suggested that everyone immediately upgrade to PHP 4.3.10 due to a number of very serious flaws in previous versions that can result in your server being “owned”.

Expect most Linux distro’s to release patched versions of PHP in the coming days. If your using a Windows server you’ll have to dig up an updated version yourself, using Windows, you’ve already put yourself at a security disadvantage, so you really should make this a priority.

Franki

One of the things that for some strange reason seems to impress programmers is writing a program that achieves a specific goal in as few lines of code as possible. To that end, a gentleman by the name of Matthew Skala has written a peer to peer file sharing program in just 9 lines of Perl code.

The idea of this and another such program written in 15 lines of Python is to demonstrate that there is no real way the movie and record companies can stop peer to peer file trading using litigation, because any moderately accomplished programmer can knock one up themselves.

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I’ve been a long-time supporter of upgradeable video cards in laptops for some time. The days of buying a several thousand dollar machine every year or two should be at an end. I started an online petition some time back to encourage manufacturers to do the right thing.

Although Dell offered the XPS and 9100 systems not long ago, which do provide a single video upgrade, they are not true upgradeable laptops because it is entirely up to Dell to decide what you should be able to upgrade to, and we know they would prefer you just bought another laptop.

A Canadian company called Eurocom has just released a PCI express MXM architecture desktop replacement laptop, MXM is an Nvidia technology that provides a similar function to laptops that a normal AGP or PCIE slot does in a desktop machine, an interchangeable video adaptor system.

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Adobe has just patched two bugs in Acrobat reader that could allow a malicious type to take over your computer. You could be affected just be getting a PDF in an email, or by following a link in an email to a PDF file online.

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While taking a wander around the Firefox extensions site, I came across a new one I just had to try. It is called “FireFTP” and it is a fully featured FTP client that runs from within Firefox, it has a similar layout to all stand alone FTP clients in that you have a pane on the left displaying files local to your PC, and a pane on the right displaying files on the remote server, so anyone familiar with any FTP client will have no problem using this one.

My old suggestion for a free FTP client was SmartFTP, but after using this for a while, its simplicity and the fact that it’s a tiny download (only 55kb) makes it the most compelling free FTP client I have seen thus far.

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The only open and fully transparent TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) study I know of that compares Linux to Windows has come to a fairly predictable result. Linux is cheaper then Windows. Of course Microsoft would beg to differ, and has done on many occasions, but never has a TCO report been issued that has really provided the full depth of their methodology such that anyone who wants to can recreate the study themselves. Until now. The study is based on the needs of a 250 user company over 3 years. The long and short of it is that Linux turns out to be up to 36% cheaper over the 3 years then Windows. Now put your hand up if this surprises you. (MCSE’s and MS employees need not bother, instead you should go and read some more of Microsoft’s sponsored studies, their results are more predictable and calming for you.)

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The EU after finding out that they don’t have the majority vote on approving the software patent directives have found a new way to try and push it though without giving it the scrutiny it deserves. They are apparently going to put it to an EU meeting of Fishery experts.

It really makes you wonder who is funding this from the shadows as this is not the first time they have tried it and I can’t imagine they would be this devious in getting it pushed through if they were not getting something in return. As we all know, the really big software companies love software patents as it gives them a means to drag smaller competitors though the courts for years and drain them of cash.

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