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Standoff to Commence Wednesday at LinuxWorld

SAN MATEO, Calif. — Untangle, the pioneer in open source network gateway platforms, today announced that the "Untangle AV Fight Club" will take place at 6 pm PT on August 8 at the LinuxWorld Conference at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Untangle will test a variety of open source and proprietary anti-virus solutions in front of a public audience and present the results live.

Historically, testing labs funded by proprietary vendors have been unwilling to publicize the test results of open source projects. However, with its open Anti-Virus Fight Club, Untangle seeks to determine and publicize how open source anti-virus solutions really stack up against proprietary vendors.

Solutions to be tested include the proprietary Norton, Kaspersky, SonicWall, and many others, and the open source ClamAV solution.

This Fight Club has already made a splash in the community. Since issuing a call for viruses to be used in the test on July 24, Untangle has received numerous submissions from around the world. Virus submissions will also be accepted at the live event.

"By under-publicizing test results from open source projects, the testing labs are allowing proprietary vendors to create FUD around open source solutions," said Dirk Morris, Founder and CTO of Untangle. "We think businesses deserve to know whether or not free and open source anti-virus solutions can hold their own against proprietary vendors. We want to give our audience an objective evaluation of these anti-virus tools and let them decide for themselves which solutions are appropriate for their businesses."

About Untangle

Untangle was founded with the vision of untangling the complexities of technology, initially targeting network security and control for SMBs. The company follows Open Source development practices to create better code and make it widely available. The Untangle Gateway Platform, the world’s first commercial-grade open source solution for blocking spam, spyware, viruses, adware and unwanted content on the network, provides a free and better alternative to costly, inflexible proprietary appliances. Untangle’s applications are currently being used in hundreds of businesses in a variety of industries, including financial services, real estate, education, bio-science, and professional services. Untangle is located in San Mateo, California. For more information, visit www.untangle.com or call (866) 233-2296.

COPYRIGHT 2007 Business Wire
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning

Information provided by: Findarticles.com

PIRBRIGHT, England — Biosafety experts scoured a high-security animal laboratory in rural England Sunday to determine how a strain of the foot and mouth virus may have escaped from a facility dedicated to eliminating the devastating animal disease.

Officials increasingly suspect that the lab — home to a government research center and a company that makes foot and mouth vaccine — was the source of the outbreak on a nearby farm. That has raised hopes that the disease was not spread by other animals and could be contained.

The particular strain of the highly infectious disease was identical to one used at the lab and had not recently been seen in live animals, the agriculture department said.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he hoped a potentially disastrous livestock epidemic could be averted.

“The first thing, having identified a possible source of the disease, we must now look at the transmission mechanism,” Brown said, adding that the government has not ruled out other sources.

Britain has banned exports of livestock, meat and milk and halted the movement of cattle, sheep, goats and pigs nationwide.

to prevent the spread of the virus. The United States and Japan immediately banned British pigs and pork products.

The case is the first in Britain since 2001, when carcasses of the 7 million culled cattle were burned on huge pyres that dotted the countryside. The farming industry was devastated, and rural tourism was badly hit.

The affected farm is about four miles from the lab, which is shared by the government’s Institute for Animal Health and a private pharmaceutical company, Merial Animal Health, the British arm of Duluth, Ga.-based Merial Ltd.

The agriculture department ordered a six-mile protection zone set up around the lab and the farm. It also began an urgent review of biosecurity measures at the lab. Experts from the Health and Safety Executive were inspecting both the Merial and government facilities.

Cattle on the farm outside Wanborough, 30 miles southwest of London, tested positive for the disease, which affects cloven- hoofed animals including cows, sheep, pigs and goats.

About 120 cows from the farm were slaughtered Saturday, as well as animals owned by the same farmer at two additional fields nearby, officials said.

Farmer Derrick Pride said he had done all he could since discovering the infection when his cows were grazing in a nearby rented field.

“It is nothing to do with us. It is not our fault. It is something beyond our control,” Pride said, speaking from his farm in Elstead, Surrey. He said messages of sympathy offered to his family were “giving a lot of comfort to us.”

The disease, which does not affect humans, can be transmitted though contact between animals or by wind.

The agriculture department said there had been no movements of livestock from the affected farm since July 10, farther raising hopes that the situation could be contained. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, or DEFRA, said the strain was present at the government lab and was used in a vaccine batch manufactured last month by Merial Animal Health.

Merial suspended manufacture of the vaccine as a precaution, but insisted Sunday its plants “operated to the highest level of product quality and safety.”

Martin Shirley, director of the Institute for Animal Health, said the strain had been in “limited use” within the institute’s own laboratory in the past four weeks but an investigation had found no breaches of biosecurity procedures.

“There are other possible sources of the virus, but they are looking pretty remote,” microbiologist Hugh Pennington told the British Broadcasting Corp., saying it was possible the virus had spread from the laboratory on the wind.

“It may not be a huge security breach,” Pennington said. “It may just be one incident which let a puff of virus out.”

c2007 ANG Newspapers. Cannot be used or repurposed without prior
written permission.
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.

Information provided by: Findarticles.com

Your April 30 article "Another Look at Nuclear Energy" was right on the money. An article like this goes a long way toward ending the nuclear hysteria caused by the mass brainwashing that was done to our young people through our government schools in the ’50s and ’60s. These youth are today’s voters and legislators, many of whom are still inflicted with the anti-nuke virus.

A probably unintended omission in your article was a lack of reporting about the "Extron" secondary cooling patents that eliminate the use of large quantities of water needed for nuclear generation by using helium as the cooling agent. This should be good news for water-poor but land-plentiful Nevada (not to overlook ample nuclear waste to reprocess) for producing nuclear power.

I am ordering 25 copies for distribution to legislators and other key policymakers in my area. Thank you for the great article.

TOM JEFFERSON

Elko, Nevada

COPYRIGHT 2007 American Opinion Publishing, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning

Information provided by: Findarticles.com