07.19.08
Links 19/07/2008: Dell Expands GNU/Linux Efforts, Mandriva Preinstalled on GDium
GNU/Linux
- Linus Torvalds, Geek of the Week
RM: ‘I can’t end without asking you about the Steve Ballmer quote. You know the one where he said ‘Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches.’ What do you think he meant by this?’
LT: ‘I have a hard time really seeing what the heck Ballmer is doing. First the monkey dance, then the chair throwing. At some point he called Linux ‘un-American’, apparently because he doesn’t like the competition. Then the cancer thing. And now this fixation with Yahoo! When will it end?
So what can I say? I think he tried to say that open source grows very aggressively and takes over (which is good – if you’re into that whole expanding markets thing), but he wanted to put it in terms of something that grows out of control and is bad for what it is growing in. Thus: cancer.
So I can certainly see the logic of choosing that word. ‘
RM: ‘Do you think it makes any sense?’
LT: ‘Do I think it makes sense? No. Of course open source grows aggressively: what’s not to like? Low cost, great quality, and a lack of being shackled to some commercial company that you can’t really trust further than the fact that they’ll happily continue to take your money. Sure, it grows.
And yes, it does grow at the cost of Microsoft, but that’s called ’competition’. It doesn’t make it ‘cancer’ any more than it ever made it ‘un-American’.
- Linus Torvalds’ Followup On Software Security, Sensationalism And Self-Stimulating Simians
Here is his response:
Heh. I did talk to an OpenBSD [developer], and offered to apologize if they really thought “masturbating monkeys” was offensive, but at least that developer just found it funny.
- Mandriva leaps into the netbook market with the GDium
- Dell’s Ubuntu love-in expands to new laptops
- OSCON: Linux Rocks in Mobile, Embedded Realm
Jim Zemlin of the Linux Foundation says Linux is the platform of choice for the mobile and embedded platforms. Zemlin will speak on the state of mobile Linux at OSCON.
- ASUS’ Big Development
The ASUS sneak attack. The most interesting story the media is downplaying is the ASUS announcement that it will have a ROM boot chip on all its motherboards, which will boot Linux instantly on start-up. When you flick the switch the machine is instantly on. (It’s about time.) Of course, you will have to press another button for the machine to load Windows.
- VMware exec says Windows days are numbered
OK. I know people at Red Hat who would say that that’s exactly what will happen. That’s right out of the new Red Hat KVM-based virtualization playbook. But, someone from VMware saying this? Wow.
- Dual-core PPC SoC drives 55
- PCLinuxOS : The Best Desktop GNU/Linux
I have no reservations or doubts of any kind to recommend PCLinxOS to a newcomer or a home user with a reassurance that this distribution will rarely fail upon you. Just go and spin the PCLinuxOS CD and see what wonders it brings for you.
- AMD Phenom Gets Linux Thermal Driver
F/OSS
Web Censorship Using the “War on Child Pornography” Excuse
…’Placeholder’ Laws to Extend in Terms of Scope Later.
- Cable giants bullied into new child porn censorship deal
It is unclear what, if any, notification cable customers will receive before their Web sites are deleted, or what legal rights they will have to appeal the classification of their content as illegal child pornography.
- Mom continues to chase Prince over ‘fair use’L
enz, who resides in a rural Pennsylvania area, claims that her video is protected under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the Fair Use provision in copyright law. She fought the order, and eventually, Universal Music abandoned any claim that she violated Prince’s copyright. YouTube has since reposted her clip.
Now Lenz is out to teach the music industry a lesson.
Crime
- Ex-Microsoft Manager Gets 22 Months for Fraud
Carolyn Gudmundson, 46, formerly a program manager at Microsoft’s MSN division, pleaded guilty in January to charges that she used her position within the company to run a number of scams between 2000 and 2004.
- EU files new charges against Intel
European Union antitrust regulators made new accusations against chipmaker Intel on Thursday, saying it paid retailers to not sell PCs using chips made by rival Advanced Micro Devices.
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