10.07.09
Posted in Microsoft, Novell, Search, Servers, Virtualisation, VMware, Windows, Xen at 8:05 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“Find and Lean on your insider friend, ‘the fox’. Having a trusted MSfriend in the account is critical. Some people (unix Bigots) can think of lots of reasons to not have a MS solution. MS folks may not be the strongest voice but they are true believers (Protect them, make them look good).”
–Steve Winfield, Microsoft
Summary: Microsoft’s on-line business declines and VMware comes over to Washington, Microsoft’s home state
Microsoft’s latest efforts in search have gone nowhere — and fast! For the second time in one week [1, 2], a Microsoft-independent survey suggests (essentially corroborates) that Microsoft’s search is on the decline in the US. Even the Bing-sponsored blog has covered these findings:
The report found that Bing’s percentage of searches actually dropped by five percent during the month of September to 8.96 percent of all searches. Google, by comparison, gained one percent to 71.08 percent of all searches. (Chart below).
Once again they ignore the world. They treat the United States as though it’s representative of world trends at large. If Microsoft is going downwards, need it build any additional datacentres to cope with decreased demand?
While Microsoft builds search/SaaS datacentres at strategic locations [1, 2], so does VMware (the company which comes from Palo Alto, California) after getting more or less hijacked by Microsoft employees [1, 2, 3]. The same site (as above) covers this:
Given all of the former Microsoft executives now working at VMware, we’ve joked in the past that the Silicon Valley virtualization powerhouse might just want to consider setting up a new headquarters in the Seattle area. Well, it’s not quite the headquarters. And it is not quite Seattle. But VMware has chosen Washington — specifically East Wenatchee — for its latest and greatest data center.
VMware — led by former Microsoft executive Paul Maritz…
Another virtualisation company that Microsoft had captured from the inside followed the same trajectory. XenSource opened a facility next to Microsoft just before it was acquired by Microsoft’s partner of the year, Citrix, and after it had received funds from former Microsoft employees. It had also made a Microsoft employee its general manager.
Microsoft and its former employees are seemingly trying to buy and assimilate the entire market, including Microsoft’s competitors. It’s not necessarily deliberate, i.e. it is not intended to happen by design. But friends help friends and former colleagues. That’s just human nature; people — unlike robots — have no magic switch in their brain that flips over loyalties overnight. For instance, also see what Microsoft did to Yahoo!, Corel, Novell, and Borland. People must never forget that Novell’s management now has former Microsoft executives in it (recent examples include the board level). Novell is likely to get acquired. █
“Ask the partner to give you heads up on customer situations – bribe them!”
–Steve Winfield, Microsoft
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in Finance, Microsoft at 7:13 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Benefits or luxuries no more as Microsoft shelves an advertising arm
Microsoft had not only shed off 2,000 (or more) employees a couple of months ago. It also took away their benefits.
Employees at Razorfish — the digital media agency that Microsoft is selling off to Publicis Groupe for $530 million — will lose 75 percent of their unvested stock options once the deal goes through. AdAge reports that employees of the Seattle-based agency — which was consumed by Microsoft as part of the $6 billion aQuantive deal — will get 25 percent of their options and they must stay with the newly-merged company until next June in order to collect.
At the request of one reader, we have created this page which summarises developments and news about Microsoft layoffs. █
“The people of the States now confederated…..believed that to remain longer in the Union would subject them to continuance of a disparaging discrimination, submission to which would be inconsistent with their welfare, and intolerable to a proud people. They therefore determined to sever its bounds and established a new Confederacy for themselves.”
–Jefferson Davis
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in Microsoft, Security, Windows at 6:58 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Latest news on Microsoft and security
RailCorp wrestles with Conficker
RailCorp has confirmed that some of its workstations had been infected with the Conficker virus, although it insisted that the virus had caused no operational impact.
Hotmail phish exposes most common passwords [for context]
Neil O’Neil, a digital forensics investigator at secure payments firm The Logic Group, found that “123456″ cropped up on the list 64 times. There were 18 uses of the second most popular password, “123456789″, in the list.
Related posts:
- Journalists Suggest Banning Windows, Maybe Suing Microsoft Over DDoS Attacks
- When Does it Become Appropriate to Take Windows off the Information Highway?
- Microsoft’s Blame-Shifting Strategy Precedes More Trouble
- Leave Microsoft Alone
- Never Blame Microsoft, Blame Users and Exploits
- Botnets and Bounties Versus Real Security
- Is Windows to Blame for Cracking of Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)?
- Windows Problems Take Down Airplanes, JFK Airport, Houston Municipal Courts
- Turkey, France, United Stated Under Attack by Microsoft Windows Insecurities
- Microsoft Adopts Malware Techniques to Advance .NET
- Windows Botnets Go Out of Control, Obama Web Site Delivers Windows Malware
- One Windows Worm, One Week, and Possibly 250,000,000+ New Windows Zombies
- Death by Microsoft Windows
- UNIX/Linux Offer More Security Than Windows: Evidence
- US Army Becomes Zombies Army; London Hospitals Still Ill (Windows Viruses)
- Eye on Microsoft: Another Messy Week for Security
- Cybercrime Rises and Vista 7 is Already Open to Hijackers
- Vista 7: Broken Apart Before Arrival
- Vista 7 Security “Cannot be Fixed. It’s a Design Problem.”
- Department of Homeland Security ‘Poisoned’ by Microsoft; Vista 7 is Open to Hijackers Again
- Liability for Software When Life is at Stake
- Microsoft Windows Zombies Also Knocked Facebook and Gawker Offline, More “Critical” Microsoft Flaws Discovered
- Bad Day for Twitter: Attack from Microsoft Windows Zombies, Texas Lawsuit Over Software Patents
- Off Topic: A World Where Almost One in Two PCs is a Windows Zombie PC
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in FSF, GNU/Linux, Microsoft, Mono, Novell at 6:52 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: GNU/Linux and/or Free software supporters do not buy the misdirected defense/offence of Novell’s de Icaza
A COUPLE of days ago we wrote about Miguel de Icaza's smear against Richard Stallman. The news has made it into the front page of Slashdot and some other Web sites. The responses to this at Linux Today were uniformly in favour of Richard Stallman, without exception.
To quote just portions from the comments (fair use doctrine), wsd titles his/her comment “Icaza, join MS” and adds:
Why keep pretending? Just join your master.
John Helms calls de Icaza “naive”.
Ultimately Stallman is right and de Icaza is wrong.
There is nothing of benefit to OSS/FOSS and Linux to be gained from what de Icaza and friends are doing. Their efforts, as well intentioned as they might be, are wasted until the Ballmer’s and Gate’s at Microsoft come out and publicly state their support for Open Source and Linux and prove it with real visible actions such as ordering their workerbees to make it an official company policy to support Open Source and Linux.
Barney replies to the above as follows:
This reminds me of what a Microosft insider told be about when there was this big Microsoft managers meeting on Java and Microsofts Visual J++. That’s the one where everyone was talking about how they could do a great Java platform and Java IDE and then Bill Gates makes some loud noise and exclaims ‘does anyone remember Windows?’.
The result of that meeting is when started Microsoft down the road to an incompatible Java, into court, and to put massive efforts into what would become MS .Net. All because Microsoft executive(s) decided the policy.
An outspoken former Microsoft employee also replies to the “naive” theme:
He’s naive, all right. He’s been seduced by what, money? Fame? Perceived power? The dude that said Microsoft is not a democracy is right. I know, ’cause I used to work there.
Microsoft executives are hell-bent on one thing: total domination of the computing space. They were when I was there, and they haven’t changed a bit.
Lastly, Niki Kovacs says this about Miguel de Icaza:
Miguel de Icaza somehow reminds me of my old spanish hairdresser. The average hairdressing session more or less went like this. After a silent minute, the first sentence began invariably: “You know, me, I’m a democrat!” By this, I had to understand that my hairdresser was perfectly aware of his democratic right to vote for the French Front National, located far right on the political spectrum. And then, off
he went in one of his rantings about unemployed Arabs, Social Security, and so on. Until one day I got fed up and went to look for another hairdresser. Now we’re talking motorbikes, and everyone’s happy.
So, although my hairdresser desperately tried to prove it’s possible to be a democrat AND a fascist, I guess you just can’t be an open source advocate AND a Microsoft fan. Given this company’s track record, there’s just no way.
That’s all the comments at the time of writing. █
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in IRC Logs at 6:13 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Read the log
Enter the IRC channel now
To use your own IRC client, join channel #boycottnovell in FreeNode.
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in News Roundup at 6:09 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
-
That’s right, Windows 7 Home Premium (and below) does not have XPM. Most systems sold by retailers come with a version of Windows completely lacking XPM. Wait, it gets better. Thanks to Microsoft’s ingenious Windows Anytime Upgrade, consumers who bought a new PC with Windows 7 Home Premium can upgrade to Professional for $90 or Ultimate for $140. If you were sold Home Basic or Starter edition, you’ll have to first upgrade to Home Premium for $80. Like I said, ‘ingenious.’ One way or another, you are probably going to have to pay Microsoft some amount of money if you want XPM…
-
In it’s most basic form, virtualization involves the separation of a physical machine from the software the machine happens to be running. The first product of VMware ( VMW – news – people ), the EMC ( EMC – news – people ) subsidiary most responsible for the current interest in virtualization, allowed users to turn an entire Windows or Linux computer into a program, one that could then run as an application on another Windows or Linux machine.
-
VirtualBox, an open source x86 virtualization project available for free has just hit version 3.0.8.
-
But, where are the roles appearing? Iveson notes that his firm has, “seen demand for OpenSource technologies such as PHP, Linux and MySQL hold up fairly well and it is one area where we have been regularly placing candidates.”
Longer term, the rise of Google’s Chrome browser could mean good times for Linux contractors. “Linux professionals with qualifications such as LCP, LCE or RHCE will be much sought after by employers,” says Iveson.
-
Gettings allowed that not every customer is going to be able to support Apple systems, but “we’ve been shipping on Red Hat Linux for years, so if they’re supporting a Linux environment, they won’t have any difficulty with Apple,” said Gettings. “Those that are on Windows, it is a bit of a hurdle. But we’ll have that same hurdle whether we’re offering a Dell with Linux or OSX on an Apple.”
-
Kernel Space
-
The Linux kernel has several different IO schedulers. This article provides an introduction to the concept of schedulers and what options exist for Linux.
-
Linux 2.6.31.2 not only offers minor bug fixes, but also selected major changes. The X.org hackers have adapted their development strategy and, in the long term, plan to merge several drivers back into the X Server code.
-
Applications
-
Arora also boasts a similarly cool ClicktoFlash tool that disables embedded Flash by default until you click a Load Flash button—handy to have when you want to keep your browsing light and snappy (Tools > Options, then go to the Privacy tab and tick Use ClicktoFlash on flash plugins). You can right-click any blocked flash to whitelist Flash from sites where you don’t want to constantly click to allow, like YouTube, for example.
-
Desktop Environments
-
GNOME
-
Gnome-look.org has tons of wallpapers to decorate your favorite desktop. However the website isn’t really friendly to download them all. You have to go through a long list of wallpapers, click through each and download the wallpaper from the wallpaper page. Luckily, with the power of the command terminal and ftp you can get tons of wallpapers with a single command!
-
Since most may not know how to install custom themes in ubuntu , here is a quick guide for all those newbies.
-
KDE
-
It was interesting to read Johan Thelin’s blog entry on moving to KDE 4, particularly how much he likes the device notifier. I say this because that Plasma widget has been seeing a flurry of activity for KDE 4.4 so the timing was pretty neat.
[...]
You can grab the OGG file here or watch the screencast via blip.tv below (though it is inexplicably enlarged; very odd)…
-
KDE has gone through an impressive evolution of organizational, procedural and community related changes over its lifespan. What started out as a “in-our-spare-time” project became a critical component in many F/OSS operating systems.
-
I look at that and see hope. It is elegant and refined. It is glassy and tasteful. It says: “I can easily compete with Windows 7 and OSX.” Simply put, it is beautiful.
Yes, there are some problems with it. The buttons do not highlight in any way on hover. There are no tooltips, so I don’t even know what the top two buttons do. From what I can tell, they do absolutely nothing. But it really lives up to KDE’s reputation of eye candy.
-
I have had a fair deal of trouble with KDE 4, especially with brand new users. Many are amazed, including myself, of all that it can do.
-
-
Sabayon Linux is a good way for folks to get a taste of Gentoo without having to actually install or configure it. Just boot into the Live CD and you can play around until your heart’s content.
-
I think that ClearOS definitely deserves a good look at for an easy to use and maintain server implementation. It has been specifically designed for ease of use in any server application. It is especially suitable for single purpose services or as an all in one solution from personal use to enterprise level applications. Being based on Redhat Enterprise/CentOS Linux with Clear Foundations own customised interface, it looks like a winner to me. I was very impressed which is why I decided to write this review. There is no other reason.
-
Debian Family
-
The Debian Release Team is pleased to announce that it sees the port of the Debian system to the FreeBSD kernel fit to be handled equal with the other release ports. The upcoming release codenamed ‘Squeeze’ is planned to be the first Debian distribution to be released with Linux and FreeBSD kernels.
-
The first talk I attended was “How FreeBSD Finds Oil,” given by Harrison Grundy. Harrison runs a consultancy company in the US providing clustered computing systems to oil and gas companies.
-
Throughout his keynote, Shuttleworth talks about Linux as a whole. However, when you think for a moment, his views are those of a particular segment of the FOSS community — naturally, the ones to which he, Ubuntu and Canonical belong.
-
-
It’s been the Year of the Linux Desktop for some time now, insofar as Linux–or certain versions of it, at least–has been a viable desktop operating system. But if Microsoft has done one thing well, it’s demonstrating that good products don’t become popular on merits alone (and vice-versa): publicity is key.
-
As per the release schedule for karmic, the release candidate and final release are expected on 22nd and 29th of October 2009. Get ready with zsync for updating your beta iso to the final .
-
The first distro I took a serious look at was Debian (Lenny). It seemed like the “safest” route, which should theoretically allow me to build what I need from the ground up. I didn’t bother with a Live CD, I just pulled down an installer .iso and went from there.
[...]
As things stand right now, I’m still not sold on any one distro/desktop combination. Damn Small Linux (with JWM) is the runaway performance winner, but the lack of support for my wireless card makes it problematic. Debian looks like it will be a fair amount of headache for a small gain: there are other thin distros out there that offer what Debian does, including APT, so my incentive to go that route is greatly diminished.
I love Mint’s management tools. In many ways, I consider it an improved Ubuntu. But I also really like what wattOS is doing. They’re clearly not there yet, but they’ve shown me enough that I definitely want to spend more time with it, seeing if I can turn the beta version into what I need. For the time being, I’m going to experiment with some of the less-common environments on wattOS and see how well that works.
-
-
Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader is going on sale in more than 100 countries around the world, including the UK.
-
The SAM9G45 board offers dual boot capability, supporting Linux and Microsoft WindowsCE, with a pre-programmed demo showing the basic programming functionalities available under Linux and WinCE. Atmel provides full BSPs for both operating systems free of charge.
-
The Linux-based solution features Aricent’s Media EXP Software Suite running on RMI’s Ultra Low Power Processors. Target applications include connected media platforms such as home gateways, set top boxes and media phones across various form factors.
-
MontaVista® Software, Inc., the leader in embedded Linux® commercialization, today announced that Meld is now an active community of over 1,500 participants as it passes six months in operation.
-
Sub-notebooks
-
Based on a Linux kernel, Moblin has a sleek shell that was clearly designed for the novice Linux user and internet social butterfly. The images below give you the best look at what it is like to use Moblin. At the core of the interface are a series of tabs that line the top of the screen. They are all pretty basic and include a web browser, applications, etc.
-
-
Taiwan-based DMP Electronics has launched a US$100 netbook, the Edubook, that will be shipped to overseas markets in component form to be assembled by partners in other countries to save customs duties or meet import requirements. The netbook can be separated into about 10 different modules and components, and then be built up again in around 10 minutes using 30 steps.
-
The Dutch police are going for an open source solution. Today, Red Hat, the leader in open source solutions, announced that the Dutch Police cooperation “voorziening tot samenwerking Politie Nederland” (vtsPN) has selected Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (RHEL 5) and Red Hat Network (RHN) Satellite Server to manage the rollout of the Linux based systems, to make it easier, faster and more scalable.
-
Welcome to the premier Unified Computing magazine for Information Technology Professionals. Published on a monthly basis, opensourc3 is available for FREE download in PDF format, or can be read on-line.
-
There’s no question that enterprise IT is adopting open source in droves. Gartner speculates that 85 percent of enterprises already use open source. (The other 15 percent are, too, I suspect, but the CIOs at those companies simply don’t know about the Mule, JBoss, Postgres, etc. that is running rampant through their halls.)
-
Open source enterprise content management (ECM) vendor Knowledge Tree announced quite a generous offer today. Every time a customer places an order over $4,500, the company will plant a tree in Africa on their behalf. Food & Trees for Africa (FTFA) will do the actual overseas planting and the customer will receive a certificate outlining details of the contribution made in their honor.
-
When the Astricon conference kicks off Oct. 13 in Glendale, Ariz., The VAR Guy will be checking to see if Asterisk — the open source IP PBX — is ready for mainstream VARs and solutions providers. Actually, The VAR Guy thinks he already knows the answer to that question.
-
Take a look in any data center anywhere in the world, and you may well find free software running there. Linux, in particular, has done extraordinarily well for itself during the past decade, popping up in places that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago.
But why? “Well it’s bound to be popular isn’t it?” you’ll hear the non-tech savvy say. “Everyone loves something that’s free.” And that’s your cue to launch into the whole spiel about “free as in beer,” and “free as in speech.” About how software wants to be free. And about how, as the Free Software Foundation puts it, “we call this free software because the user is free. Free software is the foundation of a learning society — where the tools we all use are free to share, study and modify.”
We can also point out if we want to — or if we’re Microsoft — that Linux and other free software usually isn’t always free as in beer. Money often changes hands — Red Hat and Novell are testament to that — even if strictly speaking what you’re paying for is called a support contract or a maintenance subscription.
-
Mozilla Personas for Firefox is an add-on that enables you to change thevisual aspect of your web browser interface. You can quickly choose from aselection of pre-designed templates and colours, including the most popularthemes. Don’t get too excited though, the themes are more cheesy thanspectacular.
-
The Bazaar development team have announced the availability of version 2.0.0 of their version control system (VCS). The release includes a number of bug fixes and some stabilisation work.
-
Licensing
-
Two days ago, Netgear has announced the so-called “Open Source” WNR3500L router, together with an equally “Open Source” MyOpenRouter community.
The problem with this Open Source router is: It ships with binary-only kernel modules. Not only is this extremely Closed Source, but it also
* has very practical security implications: You can never update your Linux kernel to get the latest security fixes, but have to run vulnerable old kernel versions
* is a very questionable legal practise. Netgear as the vendor is simply relying on the fact that none of the authors who have written parts of the kernel against which their binary-only module links will ever make copyright claims against them
-
Networking company Netgear has been accused of breaking open-source licensing conditions, by shipping a Linux-based router without source code.
The claims were made in a blog post on Wednesday by Harald Welte, Linux watchdog and developer.
-
Here’s a real copy of an American citizen’s DHS Travel Record retrieved from the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol’s Automated Targeting System (ATS). This was obtained through a FOIA/Privacy Act request and sent in by an anonymous reader (thanks!)
The document reveals that the DHS is storing the reader’s:
* Credit card number and expiration (really)
* IP address used to make web travel reservations
[...]
-
Intellectual Monopolies
-
Viacom is suing Youtube for a billion dollars and claims to have uncovered emails that allegedly proved employees of the video website were among those who uploaded unauthorised content.
-
Fortunately, there are plenty of legal sources for torrents. One is the aptly named www.legaltorrents.com, which has plenty of music, movies, and games. Other legal sites include LegitTorrents.info, which offers a search box interface; Linuxtracker.org for open-source software fans; and the newer YouTorrent.com, which is still in beta but currently offers torrent files across a broad range of categories such as video, TV, games, and software.
-
The Pirate Bay is going on a road trip through Europe, one they hope to end today in a former NATO bunker. After a move from Sweden to the Ukraine, The Pirate Bay has now arrived at CyberBunker, an ISP that can provide them with a facility that can resist a nuclear attack as well as electromagnetic pulse bombs.
Internet Video Celebrity Caitlin Hill 12 (2007)
Digital Tipping Point is a Free software-like project where the raw videos are code. You can assist by participating.
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in Flying Chairlet at 3:03 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
THIS MONTH’S Golden Flying Chairlet Award (for September) goes to Tony Manco, who provided us with improved IRC functionality. The vast majority of Boycott Novell’s communication takes place in IRC. █
Permalink
Send this to a friend
Posted in News Roundup at 7:37 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Contents
-
Finally, after many months of development, testing and bugfixing a new version of q4wine has been released. q4wine is a wine configuration and management utility written in QT.
-
A big thanks to Ken Starks for once again putting his money where his mouth is, and generously sharing the fruits of his labors. And a big rude noise to those titans of industry who profit handsomely from Linux, but can’t be bothered to promote it in any way. The Linux “brand” is valuable and has many important differentiators; it’s all in how it’s presented.
-
MillenniumIT has already tested the system using data from the LSE. Fairbrother said that the system offered high performance, was highly scalable, and could perform at sub-millisecond speeds.
-
Applications
-
3D design applications are somewhat an anomaly among Linux. Sweet Home 3D proves that good, free programs now exist in that market.
-
After trying each of these different applets for a few days, I think I’ve settled on cGmail, although CheckGmail is a close second and would definitely be a winner if it integrated with osd. But that choice reflects personal preference more than anything else; all of these utilities perform the same basic function well.
-
-
The main tools used by developers for many LiveCD distributions was facing stagnation in 2008. Unity Linux has taken up the torch for bringing this great tool into the 21st century.
-
Some of these are more obscure lesser known distros that are quite powerful and very useful. Some of these come from personal use some of them came from the great comments you readers posted the first time I did this.
-
Red Hat Family
-
According to Red Hat Executive Vice President Paul Cormier, Red Hat now represents 75 percent of the paid Linux market, easily beating out other players in the sector such as Novell’s SUSE Linux and Canonical’s Ubuntu.
-
-
Ubuntu
-
Yes, after six months down the road, it’s time to gear up for the newly born Ubuntu baby again. This time, Ubuntu 9.10, codenamed Karmic Koala, will be officially released on 29th Oct 2009. We, at MakeTechEasier have not been slacking around. With the release of the 9.10 beta, we have grabbed the LiveCD image, wipe our machines clean and installed the full version onto it. Now, let us present you the screenshots tour (and new features) review of Ubuntu Karmic Koala 9.10 beta.
-
Canonical, and for that matter Ubuntu, pride themselves on certain philosophies that I believe must be upheld at all times, the theme of this philosophy being tolerance and humanity towards each other. How then can such a company throw out or pressure someone to resign because he had disagreed with his boss albeit publicly?
-
What? You asked why I give Linux to my father? Of course I give it to him, he have been using linux for more than 2 years now. My father and my sister were a fond user of Linux. He use Kubuntu 7.04 on his PC at his house, and Linux Mint Felicia on his office. Yet he is not an IT worker, he just a lecturer teachin Philosophy. My sister like using Linux for it’s unique style. She use Linux Mint Felicia for daily activities in his university, and she has been a kind of linux marketer whenever her friends ask her about it (giggles, since I myself were hardly doing it) … Well, nope she is not an Engineering, or Computer Science student, she majoring Psychology (and I’ve been asked her to do the research about people and open source for her final project).
-
Another real nice addition to this distribution for new users is the Ubuntu Software Center. This take on an apps store, makes it mindlessly easy for people to find and install software. Experienced Linux users won’t need this. For them, the Synaptic package manager and all the other usual package installation programs are there, and that’s great. But, if you have a friend who’s just getting their feet wet in Linux, this feature is great.
-
Of course what you really need to do is define “user friendliness”. For many people that means “just be Windows”. But for some it’s much more than that. If you say “Just be Windows” – doesn’t that include Vista? And Vista was not the most user-friendly OS. User-friendly, to me, is an operating system (as a complete whole – not in pieces) that does not interfere with the user. A real user friendly operating system will allow the user to do what they need to do without confusing road blocks or cumbersome sub-systems. And, finally, a user-friendly operating system should be secure from the threat of viruses and malware without the inclusion of third-party software. Linux has that in spades.
-
-
Atmel announced a new member of its Linux-compatible ARM9-based SAM9G family of industrial-focused embedded processors. Touted for supporting DDR2 memory and 100Mbps+ data rates, the “AT91SAM9G45″ clocks to 400MHz, supports LCD touchscreens and 3.3 V power, and offers a 480Mbps USB interface, says the company.
-
Analog Devices Inc. (ADI) announced an embedded module and host board designed to enable SIP-based multimedia communications. The ADI uCBF54x-Start Kit host board incorporates an ADI Blackfin-BF548 DSP-based uCBF54x System Module developed by Arcturus Networks, and is equipped with a uClinux BSP, says ADI.
-
Novatel Wireless announced an expanded development program and Linux-based SDK for its low-cost “MiFi” WiFi/3G mobile hotspot. Initially available only to select developer partners, the MiFi Developer Program provides a “NovaCore” SDK with comprehensive APIs for the MiFi, as well as technical support, says the company.
-
The company also tried to get the USB Implementers Forum to rule that Apple was unfairly locking the Pre out of iTunes, but the industry group sided with Apple’s position instead.
When Palm released webOS 1.2 without iTunes syncing, we thought perhaps the company had given up. But it seems Palm was just busy finding a work-around to Apple’s proprietary locks.
Barring some unforeseen and extremely unlikely change of heart for Apple, it’s only a matter of time before the Pre’s compatibility with iTunes is once again shut down. It’s a losing battle to be sure.
-
Yesterday I took part in an interesting event organised by BT called “Accelerating Enterprise adoption of Open Source Software” (disclaimer: filthy lucre was involved.) One topic that elicited much comment was why the public sector has singularly failed to deploy open source. As well as political issues (Tony Blair was and presumably still is manifestly in awe of (Sir) Bill Gates), there’s another important issue to do with a fear of failure.
-
Wikipedia is NOT about crowdsourcing: Jimmy compared crowdsouring to tricking people into free labor. Instead, he compared Wikipedia to bowling. Yes, bowling. “It’s about providing a nice bowling alley for people,” he stated as he explained that when people enjoy contributing rather than being tricked in free labor, it’s not crowdsouring.
The world is information dense: Culture has become smarter. He compared the plots and jokes of I Love Lucy to Seinfeld and just how much more complicated storylines have become. TV has become a more engaging experience because there are so many more characters and storylines. He then pointed out Lostpedia, a wiki for the TV show Lost which has over 5,700 articles. Yes, that’s how complex TV shows have become.
-
Q: Please tell us a bit about your history with with Web
Brian Behlendorf: I have been on the ‘net since I started at UC Berkeley as an undergrad in 1991. While working at a new magazine called Wired in 1993, I helped them launch the first major publisher’s website, then later one of the first ad-supported sites, called HotWired. I left that in 1995 to co-found a company named Organic which built commercial websites, then launched another company in 1999 named CollabNet, which creates open source development tools and communities. I spent 2007 and 2008 doing quite a bit of public speaking and travel to promote Open Source software collaboration practices across the tech sector, and then since February I’ve been in Washington DC helping the Federal sector understand where Open Source software can help address some big challenges.
-
Mozilla is testing the page, which pings the company servers, then returns a list of plug-ins, noting those that are up-to-date and ones that should be updated. Links to the plug-in download pages are also available so that users can obtain the most current versions of software from the likes of Adobe, Microsoft, Sun and Apple.
-
Could this be a more instructive metric of Maryland technical vitality than statistical measures such as number postgraduate degree holders?
-
When the news of the introduction of a single-window mode in GIMP 2.8 hit the net it became clear what an incredible desire for something like this there was. The reactions have been overwhelmingly positive, and this really helps to motivate you to hack on it. The news also revealed an interesting but previously rather anonymous group of people: multi-window zealots despising the idea of a single-window mode in their beloved multi-window application. I suspect they don’t realize that single-window mode is going to be optional…
-
The behavior of the Insert menu within charts now is selection dependent. In case a single data series is selected or an element belonging to a single data series the additional elements ( like error bars, data labels, trend lines or mean value lines) are only inserted for this single series. Otherwise the additional elements are added to all existing series.
-
I’m a community guy. In a company that has lots of products, both open source and commercial, I’m lucky enough to get paid to work on open source projects. What I’ve learned in my work with the community is that building a successful project takes more than many people think.
-
Tom Steinberg, co-founder of mySociety, the site behind online tools such as TheyWorkForYou.com has agreed to help the Conservative party
The co-founder of an organisation that has campaigned for smarter use of the Internet and open source software as a way to increase visibility in government has agreed to help advise the Tory party on its web strategy.
-
In addition to the $20 million grant announced today, the Libraries received a $300,000 grant from NSF to study the feasibility of developing, operating and sustaining an open access repository of articles from NSF-sponsored research. Libraries staff will work with colleagues from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR), and the University of Michigan Libraries to explore the potential for the development of a repository (or set of repositories) similar to PubMedCentral, the open-access repository that features articles from NIH-sponsored research. This grant for the feasibility study will allow Choudhury’s group to evaluate how to integrate activities under the framework of the Data Conservancy and will result in a set of recommendations for NSF regarding an open access repository. …
-
Finally, the American people are burning with overdraft anger and starting a revolt against outrageous credit card interest rates, and it looks as though their elected leaders in Washington and the state capitols might actually do something about these parasitic practices by the bailed-out banks.
-
Over the past day, Everyone has been reporting about the arrest last month of Elliot Madison for twittering about police movements to protesters during the G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh, PA.
-
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is pleased to announce the winners of its 2009 Pioneer Awards: hardware hacker Limor “Ladyada” Fried, e-voting security researcher Harri Hursti, and public domain advocate Carl Malamud.
-
“Is Intel trying to steal Second Life though an expensive advertising campaign?” (Reverse engineer, DD, it’s called reverse engineer.) Lack of credit aside, it’s probably the most publicized showing of an OpenSim project from a Fortune 500 company. Unless they’re planning to adopt Linden Lab’s sea of troubles, I doubt they intend Science Sim as a mass market product directly competitive with SL, or for that matter, consumer-oriented OpenSim products.
-
AstroTurf
-
SIGTARP Neil Barofsky, the independent inspector general for the TARP bailout program, issued a report highly critical of the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve and other federal agencies for comments made to the public last fall. Last October, the federal government was deeply enmeshed in the attempt to stem the worst financial crisis in decades. On October 14, 2008, the Fed and Treasury announced capital injections worth $125 billion for nine of the largest financial institutions: Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, State Street and the Bank of New York Mellon.
-
Censorship/Web Abuse
-
Cambridgeshire Police has emerged as the latest force that prefers not to explain itself to the public – and then not to explain why it won’t explain itself.
-
The European Parliament’s second reading version of the Telecoms Package has yet to be formally rejected by the Council of the European Union, but closed-door negotiations are already taking place as a run-up to the upcoming conciliation procedure.
-
Intellectual Monopolies
-
I’d actually heard about his book, Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization a few months ago when someone pointed out that he was giving away his book for free, but I hadn’t heard much more about it.
-
Here’s a perfect example of why intellectual commons should not be enclosed.
The UK Postcode data set is obviously crucial information for businesses and ordinary citizens – something that is clearly vital to the smooth running of everyday life. But more than that, it is geographic information that allows all kinds of innovative services to be provided by people with clever ideas and some skill.
Internet Video Celebrity Caitlin Hill 11 (2007)
Digital Tipping Point is a Free software-like project where the raw videos are code. You can assist by participating.
Permalink
Send this to a friend
« Previous entries Next Page » Next Page »
Content is available under CC-BY-SA