Charles McColm writes "At just under 1,000 pages the 3rd edition of Practical Unix & Internet Security might look intimidating on the shelf, but a quick glance through the pages reveals that it is both practical and entertaining. With Slammer and Blaster making their way into the news it seemed like a good time to brush up on security. Already considered a classic reference, the 3rd edition of the book provides extensive updated information about topics like PAM (Pluggable Authentication Modules), LDAP, forensics, intrusion detection, wireless devices, and cryptography." Read on for the rest of McColm's impressions of the book.

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Copyright and computer security guru Ed Felten warns: "A collision is happening between creativity and protecting intellectual property"

Edward Felten, a computer-science professor at Princeton University's Computer Science, specializes in security issues and is at the front line of the debate about intellectual property and copyright in the Digital Age. In 2001, the recording industry threatened to sue Felten and seven other researchers under the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act for planning to release a paper outlining security flaws in copy-protection technology.

The researchers filed a lawsuit asking the court to rule on whether publishing the paper was legal, causing the industry to back off. Now, Felten actively tracks other attempts to regulate technology through his Freedom to Tinker blog. Felten spoke with BusinessWeek Department Editor Heather Green about the ongoing debates around intellectual property and copyright. Edited excerpts of their conversation follow:

Security software and service company Symantec has added a controversial type of antipiracy technology to the new version of its main virus-zapping program.

Norton Antivirus 2004, which Symantec announced Monday for release next month, will use product activation, an increasingly common technique to tie a copy of an application to a particular PC. Symantec plans to add activation to the rest of its consumer software line over the next year.

Del Smith, senior product manger for Symantec, said activation is intended to protect consumers from widespread counterfeit copies of Symantec programs. The company estimates at least 3.6 million bogus copies of its programs are sold annually, causing headaches both for Symantec and unsuspecting buyers, who find out too late that the software isn't doing the job.

Residents of the Gulf kingdom will be able to use the cards for business and politics, including voting in municipal and parliamentary elections.

[ ... ]

The tender for the project was launched Tuesday. Bahraini officials envision a photo ID card with a 64-kilobyte microchip holding the card holder's name, address, national identification number, digital fingerprints and driver's license, passport, medical, financial and educational data.

Users will be able to pay bills, withdraw cash, transfer money check their bank balances and conduct Internet transactions with a swipe of the card, and use the same card to votes in municipal and parliamentary elections.

"We truly believe that this is going to improve and change things dramatically," Sheik Ahmed bin Ateyatella Al Khalifa, undersecretary of the Central Informatic Organization, told reporters Tuesday.

The cards will become available early next year and officials hope most of the kingdom's approximately 600,000 people will have one by 2005, when the next municipal elections are planned. The next parliamentary elections are in 2006.

Most Bahrainis used ID cards with bar-code like stripes to cast their votes in parliamentary elections last October. The new cards will carry more data than those cards.