Apple have released a security update to its Mac OS X operating system that closes more than a half dozen serious security vulnerabilities.

The April 2002 security update for OS X version 10.1 addresses recently discovered bugs in UNIX components used by the operating system, according to a description of the update released by Apple last week.

The security patch includes an updated version of the Apache Web server built into Mac OS X. The new version, 1.3.23, incorporates a fix to a component named mod_ssl that prevents remote attackers from being able to run code of their choice on the server, Apple said Friday.

Other flaws patched by the update include a bug in the PHP scripting language shipped with Mac OS X. The Computer Emergency Response Team, a federally funded computer security information clearinghouse, warned in February that the PHP vulnerability could allow a remote attacker to execute "arbitrary code" on the system.

According to Apple, the security patch also fixes security flaws in components including groff, mail_cmds, rsync, and sudo. The security patch does not require a system re-start, according to other OS X message board participants.

News source: Newsbytes
View: Apple Security Site

''Suddenly these companies that are not publishers find themselves having to create mountains of content,'' said Harvey Manning, an analyst with Forrester Research. ''The number of companies that have professional-level publishing needs has indeed expanded.''

The key for Adobe is a language called XML. XML (which stands for Extensible Markup Language) provides a way to label individual pieces of data so that they can be more easily used by others on the network. That means a company would be able to create data once and use it many times, in many different types of applications.

This is an area where Word does not play particularly well. Word can be slow when it comes to searching through huge documents, and the most recent version cannot create the highest-quality XML, which corporate users would demand.

''In general, Word doesn't provide any specific support for outputting stuff in XML,'' said Rob Helm, editor in chief at Directions on Microsoft, an independent firm that follows Microsoft exclusively. ''Microsoft has not focused on XML for documents, and really doesn't have a solution there.''

Case in point: Microsoft itself uses FrameMaker for complicated publishing tasks. Microsoft Press, the unit that publishes instructional books such as Readiness Review for Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE) exams, uses FrameMaker 6 to lay out its books. Because of the compatibility with Word and built-in XML capabilities, Microsoft Press can lay out content in FrameMaker and publish it in book form, on the Web, and as electronic books.

Microsoft said it will continue to add XML to its products. ''XML is clearly strategic to Microsoft, and you will see Office continuing to support this as a rich file format much like Excel and Access already do today,'' said David Jaffe, lead product manger for Microsoft Office.

Adobe's ambitions go even further.

Knowledge worker

Matthews says Adobe wants a piece of the enterprise ''knowledge worker'' -- a term for anyone in a large corporation who is trusted to analyze information and make critical decisions. His vision is for human resources workers to create policy documents in FrameMaker, for engineers to use it to write up specifications, and for bureaucrats to use it to organize tax law.

When Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen first introduced the idea of ''network publishing'' a year and a half ago at the Tech Museum in San Jose, audience members had to use their imagination to grasp what he was talking about. Network publishing seemed to have something to do with using the Internet and a wide variety of connected devices.

Over time, Chizen's meaning became more clear. The network publishing dream involved creating a new way of working, in which Adobe products would allow people to speak once and yet be heard in several different media almost immediately, in printed documents, in video, through the wired Web and on wireless devices.

The dominant product in this new vision would not be Photoshop, the image-editing program that captured the imagination of professional artists and powered Adobe to its position as the world's second-largest creator of PC software. Instead, it would be Acrobat -- a program that allows users to capture documents in digital form, manage and share them.

Network publishing would not be simply an artistic revolution -- it would be a corporate one.

But the large business market -- the enterprise -- was an arena in which Adobe was supposed to fail.

Here was a company that made digital T squares and paintbrushes, not enterprise tools. But Acrobat has become a success, even through the economic downturn. Now Adobe wants to use the success of Acrobat to propel FrameMaker. Adobe acquired FrameMaker in 1995 when it bought Frame.

Big obstacles

But Adobe has some big obstacles to overcome and some think it's not possible. Manning at Forrester Research says Adobe forgets that while artists and publishers love its products, other users can find them prohibitively dense. And to achieve the inroads it hopes for displacing Word in corporate publishing, FrameMaker will need to be accessible to a much larger group of computer users.

''Adobe has often leapt into this problem, which is because they know that their core group of users loves their interface, they confuse that with meaning that they have a broadly appealing interface. That's just not true,'' Manning said.

''You know who's got an advantage from their interface? Microsoft. Just like Adobe didn't displace Microsoft's FrontPage Web design program with GoLive, they're not going to displace Word with FrameMaker, except among people who are dying for the power and probably shouldn't have been using Word in the first place.''

The experience of Adobe customers provides some hope, however.

Beverly Hrablook, director of information solutions and global standards at communications equipment provider Marconi, said about 20 employees now use FrameMaker to create and distribute technical documents. Marconi has been a FrameMaker customer for five years, and Hrablook has become an in-house evangelist, extolling the virtues of the software.

Available before July

But times are tough, and Hrablook can't yet get copies of FrameMaker for the 80 people in her organization. The product will cost $799 when it's available sometime before July, Adobe says.

Marconi employs about 28,000 people worldwide, and Hrablook estimates that about 12 percent would see significant benefits if they switched to FrameMaker rather than the document software most use, Word. That would be more than 3,000 people.

But there are a couple of huge barriers. One, people know how to use Word already, and it hasn't been easy to persuade them to switch. Two, FrameMaker feels a bit too intimidating for a lot of people.

''If I was running the company, I would do it with FrameMaker,'' Hrablook said. ''But I can't imagine, even from where I sit, I would be able to make that happen. My dreams are more for 300 rather than 3,000.''


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