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tearmeapart writes "The teams at FreeBSD have reached another great achievement with FreeBSD 9.1, with improvements to the already fantastic zfs features, more VM improvements (helping bringing FreeBSD to the next generation of VMs), and improvements in speed to many parts of the network system. Support FreeBSD via the FreeBSD mall or download/upgrade FreeBSD from a mirror. Unfortunately, the torrent server is still down due to the previous security incident." And new submitter northar writes "The other day the NetBSD project released their first update to the 6.x series, 6.0.1. They also (rather discreetly) announced a fund drive targeting 60.000 USD before the end of 2012 in the release notes. They better get going if their donation page is anything like recently updated."

tearmeapart writes "A major security issue has been found in all OpenSSL packages. You probably want to download your preferred OpenSSL package as soon as possible. Changes to the CVS repository are detailed on the OpenSSL timeline."

tearmeapart writes "It may be time again for another discussion/flamewar on the reasons why a lot of us are (still) using Microsoft. The last big discussion on Slashdot was close to 10 years ago, and a lot has changed since then: Windows XP and 7 have proven to be stable (and memories of Windows ME are mostly gone.) There are many more distributions for Linux, especially commercial options. Distributions like Ubuntu and CentOS have made GNU/Linux more friendly. Options for word processing, spreadsheets, etc. have grown. Apple and their products have changed considerably, though their philosophy hasn't. Microsoft Silverlight came and is on the way out. Wine and solutions like Transgaming have matured. So... why are a lot of us still using Windows? What would it take for us to switch?"

First time accepted submitter tearmeapart writes "A new version of the operating system that most of us would love to love, but probably hardly ever directly use, has been released. As scheduled, release 5.0 brings support for more hardware, network improvements, and OpenSSH 5.9. The links: changelog; download; main 5.0 page; and how to order your OpenBSD products!"

SgtChaireBourne writes "NLnet, a Dutch foundation for an open information society, has publicly called for Microsoft to release its deprecated formats into the public domain. The maker of Office has made large efforts during the last year to move against the OpenDocument Format (ISO/IEC 26300). These efforts have been producing a lot of commentary regarding the amount of data bound up in the Redmond-based company's proprietary specifications. It's a nasty situation to end up with files that cannot be read because the sole vendor with the documentation for the files has withdrawn permission. ODF is the way forward, or a step forward at the least, with new documents. But for the old documents in the legacy formats, they cannot be read without supporting software and that support requires full access to the specifications."

Slashback tonight brings some corrections, clarifications, and updates to previous Slashdot stories, including a possible release date for the long awaited Optimus keyboard, yet another extension in the Blackberry court case, lakebed theory on Mars possibly all wet, US-CERT statistics perhaps not all they are cracked up to be, stem cell investigation reveals papers were faked, the FTC objects to the Netflix settlement, and a new Crossover Office fixes the WMF exploit among other things. Read on for details.

Optimus keyboard may have a real release date? Jacket writes to tell us that the much talked about Optimus keyboard has a suggestive message on their website. With "Good things come in small packages February 1, 2006" could it be possible that this holy grail (for some) keyboard could be available in our near future?

Yet another delay for Blackberry court case. ahsile writes "TheGlobeandMail.com is reporting that 'NTP Inc., the company suing Research in Motion Ltd over the Blackberry e-mail service, wants more time to respond to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's preliminary rejections of its patents.'

Lakebed theory on Mars all wet? Sensible Clod writes "The Meridiani Planum region on Mars, long believed to have been covered with water millions of years ago, may not have been so wet after all, according to a new study from the University of Colorado at Boulder. From the article: 'The new study indicates chemical signatures in the bedrock, interpreted...as evidence for widespread, intermittent water at Mars' surface, may have instead been created by the reaction of sulfur-bearing steam vapors moving up through volcanic ash deposits. Known as Meridiani Planum, the region may have been more geologically similar to volcanic regions in parts of North America, Hawaii or Europe.'"

US-CERT statistics not all they are cracked up to be? jtshaw writes "Tectonic has an interesting article about the latest US-CERT stats. The actual vulnerabilities for a hand full of OS's after wading through the data: Microsoft Windows - 44, Apple Mac OS X - 21, IBM AIX - 21, HP-UX - 15, SCO Unix - 9, Red Hat Linux - 7, Suse Linux - 12, Debian Linux - 10, Gentoo Linux - 5, FreeBSD - 13, NetBSD - 2. It appears to me that commercial unix systems and open source *nix systems did pretty well compared to Windows on the vulnerability front."

Stem cell papers, confirmed fakes. An anonymous reader writes "The committee created to investigate stem cell researcher Hwang Woo Suk has confirmed that his first and second papers were faked. 'dashing hopes that his work is a breakthrough in treatments for diabetes and Parkinson's disease. [...] The panel backed Hwang's claim that he cloned the world's first dog.'"

FTC objects to Netflix settlement. AtariDatacenter writes "Although some question the validity of a recent lawsuit against Netflix, many users were up in arms about the terms of the settlement, which seemed like more of a marketing gimmick. Today, we learned that The Federal Trade Commission agreed, and asked the judge to reject the terms of the settlement."

New Crossover Office fixes,among other things, WMF exploit. ubuntuincleelum writes "Just on the heels of the announcement of new WMF security vulnerabilities Codeweavers is releasing Crossover Office 5.0.1. A bugfix release, this release features a fix for the original WMF bug. Among the changes in this release: Improved support for Gnome, improvements in Debian packaging and improvements in general for operability on Debian and Debian Derivatives."

hizzo writes "Richard Clarke, former White House cybersecurity and counterterrorism adviser, harshly critized Microsoft's security track record. 'Given their record in the security area, I don't know why anybody would buy from them.' He also called for some regulation of security for ISPs in addition to better industry self-regulation, such as disclosing QA practices and becoming more accountable for secure code. I wonder if anyone will finally start listening to him?"

Erazmus writes: "NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has manufactured the world's lightest solid. At only 3 milligrams per cubic centimeter, it's close to the density of air (1.2 milligrams per cubic centimeter). Spaceflight Now has the article. The article points to JPL's site, along with some amazing pictures."

pangloss writes: "Yay: XML, built-in Perl-ish regex, jdbc 3.0, asserts, IPv6, lots of other goodies. Release notes and incompatibilities. And I think this means I can use my wheel-mouse in NetBeans without that extra module ;) Download it here." WilsonSD adds: "There are many cool new features including a New I/O package, an Assert Facility and enhanced performance." Some other random Java notes: O'Reilly has an essay about why you won't see any open source J2EE implementations, and Kodak has filed a patent-infringement claim against Sun regarding Java.

Ned Flanders writes "JapanToday is reporting that Hitachi has produced a Wearable Internet Appliance with head mount display (800 x 600) and a pointing device (all at @500 grams total). Smurf the Weib (c) via PHS or wireless LAN on your shinny new wearable SH-4 32Bit RISC processor running Windows®CE3.0. Available February 28, 2002. Launch in US and Japan was Planned for end of 2001." Someday.

ark_baby writes "Theres a BSD conference scheduled for 9-11 November 2001 in england. Paper & talk submissions as well as pre bookings are now available. More info at http://www.bsdconeurope.org/"

Blah writes: "A while back Slashdot made reference to The Platypus Solid State Disk. The boys down at LinuxWorld.com.au have scored themselves one and given it a look over. The article has some pictures showing just how much SDRAM this thing has on it, as well as graphs which compare its IO and transfer rate performance against that of standard SCSI disk."

Bender Unit 22 writes: "According to a study by the EU Commission, spam costs over 10 billion euro (1 euro is about 0,92$) a year worldwide. The study's analysis of e-mail marketing concentrates on the US market. The commision have made a proposal to update the 'directive on data protection and privacy' in the telecommunications sector. This proposal favours the opt-in approach. Today, opt-ins are required in Austria, Denmark, Finland, Italy and Germany."

Vekkypoo's bud writes: "Researchers at the Palomar Observatory have measured the most accurate value of a stellar distance to date. Using the Palomar Testbed Interferometer, the distance to the star Zeta Geminorum in the constellation Gemini is 1100 lightyears. That's accurate to about 13%. While that seems like a large error margin, it's actually three times more accurate than the best previous measurement. Check it out here."

detritus asks: "I own a few acres of woods and am wondering if there is some sort of camera that can be networked via ethernet instead of the standard video connectors? Preferably, a telnet interface and the ability to control and transmit live feeds/snapshots to a remote server on a LAN/WAN would be awesome. I am looking to mount them in specific areas on my property and running 10Base2 (BNC), repeaters and power to each camera, and then be able to remotely manage the cameras from the comfort of my computer. It evidently would have to be weatherproof. Any ideas on where one could find something like this?" For anyone looking for something like this, you might want to check out Axis.Com. Is there anyone out there who can comment on the performance of such devices?

OnlyNou writes "found this story at Linux Today." Apparently Fox did not intentionally exclude Linux users - along with users of all operating systems other than Mac and Windows - from fox.com, and is rectifying the error. Now if they made the site worth viewing in the first place, everything would be groovy with fox.com. (Free clue for Fox: start by dumping the flashy splash page. All it adds to the site is download time.*grin*)