James Evans writes "With a release date seemingly scheduled in December, the new PGP Corporation has today released PGP 8.0 Beta. It features Smart Card functionality, Unicode support, Novell Groupwise support, among other things. A Mac OS X Beta is out as well, also with a robust feature set. One word of caution however: On Friday, December 6th, 2002, the beta will expire, at which time access to encrypted data will be prevented."

Josh Berkus asks: "One of my clients would love to convert their entire office to Linux. But one thing keeps them tied to a NetWare file server: a little utility called 'Filer' Filer allows the sysadmins to retrieve deleted and overwritten files, up to a week after the event. With 70 secretaries using that server, that ability is crucial. I've looked around the Internet, but cannot find anything quite equivalent in the Linux world, except maybe hourly backups and that's a pain. What the client really needs is a utility/mod for the filesystem or network layer that archives files instead of over-writing or deleting them. I had one kernel hacker offer to write me something like that, but my client does not want to be a test case. Note, that we have nothing against Netware, it's just that this client has historically not been able to get good Novell support. Anybody know anything that's already in production like this? Is Reiser working on this for ReiserFS?" This sounds deceptively easy. If this was a personal machine, this would be easy, but the showstopper is that this has to work as a share meaning that this "trashcan" like functionality needs to be implemented at the filesystem level. While I can understand the submittors desire to not be a test case, if there doesn't exist a ready-made solution to this particular problem, how difficult would it be to add this on to ext2/ext3, Reiserfs or some other suitable open source filesystem and test it for reliability?

prostoalex writes "Dow Jones News asked several mahor scientists and technologists about their worst and best predictions of the future. The story, republished at Yahoo! Finance Singapore quotes Lester Thurow, Professor of management and economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management; Nicholas Negroponte, Founder and director, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab; Glover Ferguson, Chief scientist, Accenture; Alan Nugent, Chief technology officer, Novell; Peter Cochrane, Director, ConceptLabs; Michael Earl, Dean, Templeton College, University of Oxford. There seems to be a common agreement on having overrated the ability of machines to talk back to users and vice versa."

StefMeister writes "According to this article on CNet, MS wants to fight Linux by using their community support (of course by community they mean the few guys they personally know and who make money using their MS knowledge). My favorite quote of the article is this one "Linux is not like Novell, it isn't going to run out of money--it started off bankrupt, in a way.""

An anonymous reader writes "Ever since Oracle announced they wouldn't port 9i to NetWare, Novell has been scrambling to find an enterprise-capable DB. Now it looks like they're settling on PostgreSQL. This follows their decision to ship Apache as the default web server for NetWare 6. Linux aficionados might sneer at an old workhorse like NetWare, but it's got more than 80 million client licenses worldwide, and it ain't going anywhere anytime soon."

An anonymous reader writes "A flaw in Apache 2.0's interpretation of the backslash delimiter allows for a remote r00ting on NetWare, Windows, and OS/2. InfoWorld has an overview; the attack was discoverd by PivX's Auriemma Luigi, and he describes it in this technical document. I don't know whether there is such a thing as an OS/2 shop anymore, and most Microsoft shops probably run IIS, but Apache now ships as the default web server for NetWare 6, so Novell shops: Take note. A patch is available from Apache, and Luigi describes a workaround in his article."

An anonymous reader writes: "Caldera International, the company that sprang from Novell and went on to distribute a Linux distribution popular among users before the company's decision to withdraw from the retail desktop market, is no more. Instead, what was once Caldera is now 'the SCO Group.' The change, announced at the company's 'GeoFORUM' conference in Las Vegas Monday, recognizes Caldera's acquisition of SCO Unix, and follows what former employees claimed was a switch in emphasis from Caldera OpenLinux to SCO Unix. At the same time, the company announced a new business plan, called 'SCOx,' and new versions of its Unix and Linux distributions. Details, which combine a multitude of press releases, are on Linux and Main."

JSherman writes "Prosoft Engineering has released a client that enables Mac OS X to connect to a Novell network. The client is pure TCP/IP, and is not tied with AppleTalk. Its been possible for Macs to connect to Netware Servers for a long time by using Novell's Native File Access, but this is a much better method since it's an actual client that will remember your user ID and password when connecting to servers, and it allows you to browse the NDS tree. This is great news for all of us that use Apple computers in the Enterprise. Mac OS X progress marches on."

NeuralAbyss asks: "With all the recent discussions on biometric, password and token authentication, I thought I'd ask one simple question that no websites seem to be able to answer: What devices integrate transparently with pre-built infrastructure (Linux, *BSD, Novell, Windows NT/2K)? Any advice from Slashdot readers out there would be quite helpful, as I am looking into biometric/token authentication for a network that I administer, currently a Win2000/Novell hybrid."

Twintop writes "Taken from the PHP.net homepage: 'A Beta version of PHP for NetWare is available on the Novell Developer Kit site. This version is based on the 4.0.8 (development) version of the PHP source code.' --- Well, even if it is an old version, it's better than nothing for NetWare peeps."

Red Rocket asks: "There's no shortage of information on building special-purpose PCs. Water-cooled PCs, refrigerated PCs, overclocked monsters, quiet PCs, tiny PCs... it's all there. But there seems to be little info about building a PC that sips the minimum juice from the power grid. So I'd like to throw it out to the Slashdot throng to see what you've done." It would seem like a PC with a low power consumption would be an interesting selling point, especially for those people who are more concerned with something other than high clock speeds. Is there someone marketing a low-powered PC solution (CPU and monitor), if not how difficult and at what expense would it cost to build one?

jlttb writes "LinuxWorld gets under way this week in New York City, and CRN has some extensive preview coverage this morning, including a look at Raptor, IBM's first Linux mainframe, and other IBM and Compaq Linux servers to be announced at the show. A second feature takes a look at the growth of the Linux services channel, from industry heavyweights like IBM, Compaq, Red Hat and Caldera, to smaller 'mom and pop' Microsoft and Novell shops that are re-focusing on Linux. Finally, the magazine looks at how Microsoft and Sun are each fighting back against the gains made by Linux in corporate America." I still haven't packed yet, but I'm looking forward to the show.

rbeattie writes: "The Register is reporting that the code for 'the first generic operating system for microcomputers' is now open source. It's interesting to see the final chapter for the code that could have been what was MS-DOS. The article includes the requisite background of CP/M from Gary Kildall's snubbing of IBM to its transformation into DR-DOS, later being sold to Novell then to Caldera who spun it off with Lineo who finally opened up the source in October." The original story is actually at NewsForge. Update: 11/27 22:13 GMT by T : Note, thanks to reader Greg Head, that DR-DOS source appears available only for money; the original headline implied that DR-DOS source was also now available at no charge.

A reader writes "On Tuesday HP announced that it is closing a lab in NJ. This was an HP-UX development lab, responsible for porting HP-UX to IA64. The lab employed top engineers, including some who have worked in Unix kernels for over 20 years (originally from Bell Labs, Novell, and other companies). " That report came from a soon-to-be former employee.

The Ape With No Name writes: "I work as a network technician at a major Southern university and we are gearing up for what is lovingly called "Dorm Storm," aka the weekend the students return to their dorm rooms, ethernet connections and BearShare. We'll move in approx. 3500 students, install and configure 1500 or so network cards and troubleshoot hundreds of circuit, switch and routing problems over the course of the next two weeks (with less than 50 people or so). I was wondering if anybody out in the academic computing community had some advice, stories to relate, yarns to spin for the rest of Slashdot with regard to other universities and their networking for students. You might think you have had a hell of a time setting up machines for users, but this becomes a Sisyphean task when you face a wireless, IP only, Novell setup for a grumpy architecture student on a budget Win2K laptop - one after another after another!"

Otto-matic asks: "I work for the State of Montana. My Art Department more than likely comprises the entire Mac userbase in the Montana State Government (3 users). The state network is run on Novell Netware using Microsoft Exchange Servers over Ethernet. I started here 1 year ago, and the first dreadful thing I noticed was that the Macs were the only machines not connected to the state network. Instead, this department has one Wintel machine we SHARE for network and internet access. I talked to our IT folks about this situation and was assured that the state was vehemently opposed to the Macs being allowed onto the state network. I asked why, and was told a number of varying stories. Some of which include Appleshare being too 'chatty' over the network; MacOS being unstable, easily hacked, etc.; problems with Macs communicating over non-Mac networks. I'm getting the feeling that the truth is that these guys have something personal against the MacOS, and are unwilling to even allow consideration of its inclusion into the network." Is there anything to the fears of the submittor's IT department? Or is this just a bunch of hot air?

Doug Miller (no relation) is an amazingly affable and unflappable man. This interview came about because I asked Doug face-to-face if he'd do it when we met after a panel discussion he was part of in Washington DC a few weeks ago. He said "sure" without even a second's hesitation, let alone checking with PR people. His answers to the 10 selected questions we sent him are 100% straight-up. You may not like everything he says (devout Free Software people probably won't like any of it), but Doug Miller deserves your respect (and courtesy) for telling it like it is -- at least from Microsoft's point of view -- without a hint of weaseling.

jfmiller asks: "I'm an intern at an anonymous government agency (not the TLA kind). I have been tasked with simplifying and increasing password security. At present each of our users must log into Novell (and winnt) then Lotus Notes, telnet into a both a local and a statewide mainframe and then log into the individual subunits of each of those systems. In all they have to remember something like 7 passwords. What technology is available to simplify this situation? What experience have people had? I'm especially interested in Biometrics. Remember: the sky's the limit, after all, it's your tax dollars at work."

I recieved this press release at some point in the night (which I've included below). We've talked about it for a while now but the deal has been...consumated. Art Tyde, co-founder and current CEO of LinuxCare will be CTO, while T. Paul Thomas, president and CEO of TurboLinux will remain as CEO. As for the name - they are staying with TurboLinux. My hopes for LinuxLinux as the company name have been dashed.

Captain Novell asks: "Have you ever wondered what happened to the likes of the Intel Intelligent Server Adaptor? I have, one day it was on their site and then, later...*poof*...it was gone, only to be replaced by this Windows 2000 IP/Sec card! With tears in my eyes I went looking for any other manufacturer that had Intelligent NICs, but all I could found was this IP/Sec rubbish! (for those of us who run OSI complient software, a TRUE intelligent adaptor will off-load part of the OSI stack to the card and usually has some form of large cache on-board a.k.a. the old Intel Intelligent Adaptor card. I recommend server adaptors to many sys admins! Does the Slashdot community have any advice on where I can still find these elusive devices?"