Six hours to hack the FBI (and other pen-testing adventures) - Computerworld

It takes a lot to shock Chris Goggans; he's been a pen (penetration) tester since 1991, getting paid to break into a wide variety of networks. But he says nothing was as egregious as security lapses in both infrastructure design and patch management at a civilian government agency -- holes that let him hack his way through to a major FBI crime database within a mere six hours.

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New Climate Report Foresees Big Changes - NYTimes

The rise in concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from human activities is influencing climate patterns and vegetation across the United States and will significantly disrupt water supplies, agriculture, forestry and ecosystems for decades, a new federal report says.

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Bob Metcalfes original memo describing his idea for the ethernet.

Enter Ethernet - Wired Magazine

Metcalfe had been an MIT undergraduate whiz kid and Harvard grad student working on computers and how to network them. Even before completing his Ph.D., he went to work for Xerox PARC, which assigned him the task of designing and building the first network for PCs.

PARC was installing its own Xerox Alto, the first personal computer, and EARS, the first laser printer. It needed a system that would allow additional PCs and printers to be added without having to reconfigure or shut down the network. It was the first time that computers were small enough for hundreds to be in the same building, and the network had to be fast to drive the printer.

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Ethernet - Wikipedia

Ethernet was originally developed at Xerox PARC in 1973-1975. Robert Metcalfe and David Boggs wrote and presented their "Draft Ethernet Overview" before March 1974. In March 1974, R.Z. Bachrach wrote a memo to Metcalfe and Boggs and their management, stating that "technically or conceptually there is nothing new in your proposal" and that "analysis would show that your system would be a failure." ... In 1975, Xerox filed a patent application listing Metcalfe and Boggs, plus Chuck Thacker and Butler Lampson, as inventors (U.S. Patent 4,063,220 : Multipoint data communication system with collision detection). In 1976, after the system was deployed at PARC, Metcalfe and Boggs published a seminal paper.

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~ update ~

The Ethernet entry on Wikipedia has been edited to remove the Bachrach memo reference and quotes. It now reads:

Ethernet was originally developed at Xerox PARC in 1973-1975. In 1975, Xerox filed a patent application listing Metcalfe and Boggs, plus Chuck Thacker and Butler Lampson, as inventors (U.S. Patent 4,063,220 : Multipoint data communication system with collision detection). In 1976, after the system was deployed at PARC, Metcalfe and Boggs published a seminal paper.

Also, I have received an email from R.Z. Bachrach, and so has at least one other person, clarifing his point of view of the 1974 quoted memo. Here is the text of email to me.

Deep packet inspection under assault over privacy concerns - Ars Technica

Add the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC) to the list of groups concerned about the privacy implications of widespread deep packet inspection (DPI) by ISPs. CIPPIC has filed an official complaint with Canada's Privacy Commissioner, Jennifer Stoddart, asking her office to investigate Bell Canada's use of DPI (and we're flattered to be quoted as an expert source in the complaint). In addition, the group would welcome a wider investigation into possible DPI use at cable operators Rogers and Shaw, as well.

more ...

Broadband: other countries do it better, but how? - Ars Technica

One of the ironies of the current broadband situation in the US is that staunch free marketeers defend the status quo even though the result of their views has been duopoly and high prices. Meanwhile, other countries (including those with a reputation in some quarters for "socialism") have taken aggressive steps to create a robust, competitive, consumer-friendly marketplace with the help of regulation and national investment.

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The computer security paradox - Raiden's Realm

One of the most prized rights of any American is the right to privacy and security. It's something people in some countries would kill for. Yet now there appears to be a very frightening trend growing. Your privacy and security are being thrown out the window wholesale in favor of easier access by law enforcement. A recent example of this can be seen with the announcement that Microsoft has been providing a tool to investigators that can effectively rip your Windows security to shreds in seconds, exposing all your private data to whoever wants to look at it.

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IBM, Microsoft Trounce Apple on Climate Friendliness Scorecard - Wired

Scorecard IBM earned top honors among electronics manufacturers on a recently-updated climate friendliness scorecard (.pdf), earning 77 out of a possible 100 points to beat runners-up Canon, Toshiba, Sony and HP in a ranking of the companies' responsiveness to climate change. IBM, which makes big, hulking servers and mainframe computers, even beat out Microsoft (38 points) and Google (55), whose products are composed entirely of electrons. Apple, which has taken heat from Greenpeace for the allegedly toxic chemicals in its iPhone, scored a pathetic 11 out of 100.

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Viacom, Google set for fight to bitter end over Safe Harbor - Ars Technica

It has been just over a year since Viacom launched its $1 billion lawsuit against Google for "brazen disregard of intellectual property laws" on YouTube. Although we haven't heard much news about the case as of late, some fightin' words have come out of both sides recently to indicate that the case is still going strong. There's no sign of an impending settlement, either, as Viacom is still beating the piracy drum and Google continues to stand its ground. Because of this, the eventual outcome of the Viacom suit may set a legal precedent that could send ripples throughout the entire Internet.

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What piracy crisis? MPAA touts record box office for 2007 - Ars Technica

... But this sort of thing has become crucial to the MPAA. Take a look at the group's homepage; nearly everything is about copyrights and piracy. The MPAA routinely asserts that the movie business is being decimated by piracy, but the press release announcing the Weekly Reader deal sits just below a far more interesting piece of news (PDF): data that shows the US box office doing its biggest year of business ever in 2007, growing 5.4 percent over 2006 and bringing in $9.63 billion.

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Comcast Must Die - MojoBlog

Comcast, the cable TV giant, has given its customers lots of reasons to hate the company. They've refused to embrace a la carte programming, charged people $2 to stop sending them junk mail, wrecked people's credit reports, falsely advertised its Internet speed and generally abused the people who pay for its services. Comcast's customer service problems are so acute that Advertising Age columnist Bob Garfield started a blog called Comcast Must Die to compile all the gripes about the company from consumers. But Comcast doesn't really need any help generating bad press.

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AT&T's degrading service and my landlord’s ban on Comcast - ZDNet

With all the negative attention headed towards Comcast lately, AT&T's problems seem to be slipping below the radar. Unfortunately for me, those problems are first hand for me as I'm personally suffering degradations in speed. As if getting 1200 Kbps downstream on a so-called 1500 Mbps service and all those outage problems (example here and here) weren't bad enough, my AT&T DSL service has declined. I suppose I could count myself lucky compared to my Mom's neighbor who only got 320 Kbps service after AT&T unilaterally and without permission "upgraded" his bill to the 1500 Mbps service without upgrading his performance.

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Great news for Microsoft: Zunes stolen! - ZDNet

Providing yet another sign that Apple's iPod is the audio and video platform, a policy think-tank on Tuesday said that thefts of the media player have skewed crime statistics. Microsoft wishes it had that publicity.

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The Gaza Bombshell - Vanity Fair

After failing to anticipate Hamas's victory over Fatah in the 2006 Palestinian election, the White House cooked up yet another scandalously covert and self-defeating Middle East debacle: part Iran-contra, part Bay of Pigs. With confidential documents, corroborated by outraged former and current U.S. officials, David Rose reveals how President Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Deputy National-Security Adviser Elliott Abrams backed an armed force under Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan, touching off a bloody civil war in Gaza and leaving Hamas stronger than ever.

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Could a Coffee Maker Be Worth $11,000? - Slate

The New York Times used words like "cult object," "majestic," and "titillating"; the Economist called it "ingenious" and "sleek." The subject of these encomiums is, incongruously, a commercial coffee machine—the Clover 1s, an $11,000 device that brews regular coffee (not espresso) one cup at a time. Could the Clover represent that much of an advance in the state of the coffee art? I had to try it for myself.

more ...

Immune Systems Increasingly On Attack - Washington Post

First, asthma cases shot up, along with hay fever and other common allergic reactions, such as eczema. Then, pediatricians started seeing more children with food allergies. Now, experts are increasingly convinced that a suspected jump in lupus, multiple sclerosis and other afflictions caused by misfiring immune systems is real.

Gary Gygax, 1938-2008: Rest in peace, Dungeon Master - Crave

Gary Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons and one of the fathers of tabletop role-playing games, died on Tuesday at the age of 69. He had suffered from heart problems.

Windows-based cash machines 'easily hacked' - ZDNet

Security experts have hacked ATMs to show how easy it is to steal money and bank account details from modern cash machines. ATMs, or automated teller machines, today face the Internet-born threat of worms and denial-of-service attacks, as well as being at risk from malicious applications that can harvest customer data or hijack machines.

Why spam isn't going away soon (Hint: Blame the Storm worm) - C|Net

Recently, Symantec said in its February 2008 State of Spam report that 78.5 percent of all e-mail is spam; they also said most of that is now coming from Europe. That's a change from previous reports that had suggested servers in North America were responsible. What the Symantec report doesn't explicitly state is that much of the European spam doesn't come from individuals sitting at their desks pumping out lists. Europe is one of the hotbeds for the Storm worm botnet, notorious for automatically co-opting its victims into spam relays.

New supercomputer is a rack of PlayStations - The Sydney Morning Herald

When the PlayStation3 was released in November 2006, Gaurav Khanna's wife braved long queues so he could be one of the first people in the US to get his hands on the gaming console. But the astrophysicist was not itching to burn some rubber in Gran Turismo or shoot hoops in NBA 07. Instead he wanted to build his own supercomputer.

Record-High Ratio of Americans in Prison - Washington Post

More than one in 100 adults in the United States is in jail or prison, an all-time high that is costing state governments nearly $50 billion a year, in addition to more than $5 billion spent by the federal government, according to a report released today.

No impact from Energy Saving Day - BBC

The UK's first Energy Saving Day has ended with no noticeable reduction in the country's electricity usage. E-Day asked people to switch off electrical devices they did not need over a period of 24 hours, with the National Grid monitoring consumption.

In Norway, Global Seed Vault guards genetic resources - IHT

With plant species disappearing at an alarming rate, scientists and governments are creating a global network of plant banks to store seeds and sprouts - precious genetic resources that may be needed for man to adapt the world's food supply to climate change.

French police deal blow to Microsoft - AFP

The French paramilitary police force said Wednesday it is ditching Microsoft for the free Linux operating system, becoming one of the biggest administrations in the world to make the break.

Your First Steps with Linux - Terminally Incoherent

Over the years I think I helped to influence few people here and there to actually start experimenting with linux. I count that as a personal success. I’m sure I was not the primary influence in most cases, but I’m glad I could help people to start tinker with the new OS

The Tao of ScreenIn search of the distraction-free desktop - Slate

If your computer desktop is anything like mine - and, brother, it is - you've paved over every spare pixel in an iconistan of clutter. Desktop design originated in a wistful visual metaphor, the clean, still work surface, encouraging users to productive ends. Leaps forward in computing horsepower and the rise of constant Internet use has transformed the tabletop terra firma into a cockpit, an antic terminal for the networked self. Our desktops are now a thick impasto of tabbed windows, pull-down menus, dashboard widgets, and application alerts. No possible distraction gets left behind, no link, feed, IM, twitter, or poke unheeded.

Senate Delays Eavesdropping Vote - AP/US News

The Senate granted at least a temporary victory to the White House on Thursday, turning back an attempt to increase court oversight of the government's surveillance of phone calls and e-mails that involve people inside the United States.

Rising Anti-Americanism in Russia - US News

Vladimir Dobrovinsky, 33, a teacher at a design school in Moscow, says he's not interested in politics. But bring up America and the well-traveled, university-educated Dobrovinsky holds forth. He criticizes Washington's "crude interference" in world affairs. He complains that Russia is not treated as an important partner by the Bush administration. "A lot of Russians," he says, "are angry that America deals with us like we're Thailand."

Big Brain Theory: Have Cosmologists Lost Theirs? - NY Times

It could be the weirdest and most embarrassing prediction in the history of cosmology, if not science. If true, it would mean that you yourself reading this article are more likely to be some momentary fluctuation in a field of matter and energy out in space than a person with a real past born through billions of years of evolution in an orderly star-spangled cosmos. Your memories and the world you think you see around you are illusions.

U.S. Given Poor Marks on the Environment - NY Times

A new international ranking of environmental performance puts the United States at the bottom of the Group of 8 industrialized nations and 39th among the 149 countries on the list.

Virgin Galactic unveils SpaceShipTwo model - Reuters

Entrepreneur Richard Branson on Wednesday unveiled a model of the spaceship he hopes will be the first to take paying passengers into space on a regular basis as soon as next year.

Geophysicists Urge Steep Cuts in Greenhouse Gas Emissions - Scientific American

The scientists of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) warn that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions must be slashed in half to keep temperatures from rising 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius)—or else. "Warming greater than 2 degrees Celsius above 19th-century levels is projected to be disruptive, reducing global agricultural productivity, causing widespread loss of biodiversity and - if sustained over centuries - melting much of the Greenland ice sheet with ensuing rise in sea levels of several meters," the AGU declares in its first statement in four years on "Human Impacts on Climate."

It's be a year (to the day I believe) since I've installed Ubuntu on my Dell Inspiron 6000 laptop and it's been a fun ride. So, if you have a few minutes, let my tell you my story.

Last winter we had a bit of snow here in Denver that left us with little we could actually do outside. After the first few weeks of January, cabin fever started setting in and I began playing around of the idea of putting Linux on my computer. I can't remember exactly how or why, but I ended up downloading Ubuntu 6.10 and tried the LiveCD on my laptop. It worked wonderfully and I decided to do a dual boot with XP so I could see how it actually functioned day to day. Well, I dun f***ed up the dual boot and ended with a PC that would do anything. Can you say nOOb!

I have been a practitioner of the backup for years, so after a few minutes of utter panic, I calmed down and remembered everything was backed up on an external drive. (OK, I did inevitably loose a weeks worth of emails, no great loss.)

As luck would have it, having been an experimenter and no great fan of MS, I had moved onto programs that where all cross-platform (Thingamablog, Firefox, Thunderbird and Sunbird) but one (MS Money). Thus, I thought, what the hell, maybe I should just install Ubuntu by itself. So I did.

It was shocking once Ubuntu was installed. I have media buttons on the front of my laptop, they worked. All my data for Thunderbird, Firefox and Thingamablog was easily loaded. All the function (Fn key) keys on keyboard worked. It was amazing to me, I never expected this all to work so well. I was sold.

I did have some problems, suspend had issues and there was the problem with no wireless. I spent some time on the Ubuntu forum and after some time of trial and error the wireless kicked in. Honestly, I still have no idea how I was able to get the wireless working, all I know is, boom, it worked one day and has ever since. Suspend came around after a month or so.

I spent the next few months perusing everything Linux. I learned cool commands to run from the Terminal. I played with installing and removing programs from the Add/Remove manager and the Synaptic Package Manager. I screwed things up and re-installed 6.10 a few times. The first time I did this, I was amazed by the fact that quite a few of the settings in my /home folder (set on a different partition, something I started doing way back when from my 2-3 re-installs per year of Windows to keep it clean) kicked right in. Things like Tomboy notes where all there, KeyPass knew where to look for its database, JAlbum and Thingamablog where able to start without having to re-install them. These kind of things where unheard of from my Windows days, it was re-install everything and update all settings to my liking.

Then, along came 7.04. I promptly upgraded to it. Oops. Then I downloaded and did a fresh install. Much better. The first few weeks it acted a little funny, issues mainly with suspend. Once a month went by it was smooth sailing. I spent more time on anything Linux or Ubuntu. I downloaded and tried other distros LiveCDs, spend more time exploring the Linux OS and even tried to help out on the forums (I never really did learn enough to be much help, but I tried).

With the other distributions, I found no reason the change. I was happy with how my laptop worked, so why change. I spent some time on Gnome-look and figured out how to change my splash screen, login in screen and themes. In all I was settling in quite nicely with my new OS and how it worked.

As October was coming closer I was getting excited with the prospects of 7.10. Once it was released I promptly upgraded. Oops. Then I downloaded and did a fresh install. Much better. The first few weeks it acted a little funny, issues mainly with suspend. Once a month went by it was smooth sailing (hmm, sounds familiar?) I played around with the new graphics for a while, installing software for widgets and desktop toolbars. In the end, I removed Compiz as I am happy a simple UI and don't need the fancy graphics. The Panel with shortcuts on it works just fine for me and I never really did like things all over my desktop (see). This also explains why I never switched to a KDE distribution.

Of course there was that Load_Cycle_Count issue. For me the fix was removing Tracker, something I didn't use anyway.

So now I am just waiting for 8.04 to come out. I've learned to wait for a month or so before I install the upgrade. Actually I will probably do a fresh install, I never have liked how upgrades go whether Windows or Linux. Once it is running I probably will not upgrade again, what, with 8.04 being a LTS version. For this laptop it should be just fine for it's life.

All in all, it has been a fun little adventure. I'll keep running Linux and helping all my friends with their Window boxes and laptops. I doubt I'll ever be one to get anyone to switch to Linux, Windows works for them and there is no reason tor them to change right now. Maybe when XP is no longer supported the time may come. However, I will do what ever it takes to keep them away from Vista.

I'll keep perusing Ubuntu forums and the various Linux sights - I especially loved finding the flame wars between Linux and XP/Mac, KDE and Gnome and the various distributions. The second two seem so ironic to me, isn't Linux suppose to be about choice? Occasionally I might throw my 2 cents in, but I think pretty much I just be user from here on out. I have found an OS that works and I don't have to worry about.

I am one happy Ubuntu camper.

Wow, I didn't even notice,but Bob has been busy. Thingamablog has been updated quite a bit in the last few months.

Check out What's New.

Found the coolest extension for OpenOffice the other day. It is enables you to bookmark documents for easy opening. It places a Bookmark button on your the main menu for easy access.

Read more about the extension on Linux.com.

OpenOffice Bookmarks Menu download

~ Update ~

I have been using Bookmarks Menu for a few days now and have come to find it very useful. I don't care for desktop shortcuts and since you are unable to put documents/files in the Gnome panel Drawer feature, this extension has become invaluable to me. I definitely suggest it.

Ten Best Technologies and Trends of 2007 - Extremetech.com

Ten Worst Technologies and Trends of 2007 - Extremetech.com

Five desktop Linux highlights of 2007 - DesktopLinux.com

2007: The Miserable Year in Review - John C. Dvorak

The Top 10 New Organisms of 2007 - Wired

THREAT LEVEL's Year in Review - 2007 - Wired

The Year in Oversight:The yeas and nays of Congress' efforts to gavel the Bush administration into order in 2007 - MotherJones

100 things we didn't know last year - BBC

Restricted Codecs Mess in Linux - Mad Penquin

There are a number of newcomers who migrate to Linux and then find themselves at ends with the confusion regarding restricted formats and codecs in the US. The laws regarding usage are confusing and all over the map, thus leaving many Linux distributions forced to mark them as possibly illegal to use in some countries, despite no solid evidence to actually support this outside of MPAA and RIAA rhetoric, which is hardly a court's decision. And in a recent article, I took this whole idea to task and examine how it may not actually be illegal to use libdvdcss after all.

Interesting comment from CompUSA - Very Grumpy Rabbit

I don't know if you've heard or not, but CompUSA is going out of business. ...

... I asked one of the employees off the record if he could comment at all on the impact of Vista sales on the end of CompUSA's business, expecting no comment. Afterall, most such retail chains don't want local employees speaking out for the company.

That... isn't what I got. With a glaring look he responded I'd be better off asking about the returns. Returns? Well, the employee asked me to follow him to the back, and he pulled out a cardboard box opening it up to reveal it was packed full of copies of Vista.

Returns.

Sixty years ago today William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain succeeded in building the first practical point-contact transistor at Bell Labs.

ENIAC, which used vaccum tubes, weighed 28 tons, consumed 170,000 watts of power and required several operators

Opera files EU antitrust complaint against Microsoft - Reuters

A small Norwegian maker of Web browsers, backed by an industry coalition, has filed the first complaint against Microsoft to the European Commission since the software giant lost a landmark antitrust case earlier this year.

Microsoft hits back at Opera antitrust claims - ZDNet UK

Microsoft has hit back at Opera antitrust claims regarding Internet Explorer, denying that it is abusing its dominant market position to lock users into the web browser.

Stars named in report on steroid use in baseball - Reuters

Pitching great Roger Clemens joined home-run king Barry Bonds among dozens of Major League Baseball players named on Thursday in the Mitchell Report that detailed widespread use of banned drugs in America's pastime.

Bamboo PC is eco-friendly and looks nice too - Reuters

Back in 1976, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak built the Apple I, an early personal computer that consisted of a circuit board in a simple wooden box. ...The Asus Eco Book, as it's dubbed, has a case made of laminated bamboo strips available in different shades.

Review: Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon takes on Mac OS X Leopard for the OS of the Year - Linux Magazine

Today we have a technological cage match involving two operating systems, both UNIX- based, both mature, both with passionate detractors and even more passionate defenders, and both released just a week apart. I'm talking, of course, about Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon), with its final release on October 18, and Apple' s Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, which was available for purchase on October 26.

The stereotype for each OS is well known: Mac OS X is elegant, easy-to-use, and intuitive, while Ubuntu is stable, secure, and getting better all the time. Both have come a long way in a short time, and both make excellent desktops. So we have two great desktop operating systems out at roughly the same time. Let's see how they stack up against each other.

Read on ...

Choosing a Linux Distro, Part 1: Kicking the Tires - LinuxInsider

Start your search by checking out the distribution Web sites. Read the the FAQ and Wikis pages to learn how the different distros work. Check out the features and read what sorts of requests for help have been made on the community forums, and how those requests were answered. This approach will help you to narrow down exactly what you are looking for in terms of support and ease of use.

Running Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) Latest News about Microsoft Windows or Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) Latest News about Apple Mac OS X gives users about the same amount of flexibility as was offered to early car buyers. They could drive any kind of car they wanted, as long as it was a Model T and as long as it was black.

When the free open source Linux OS first showed up, early developers offered much the same set of options. Today, however, when picking a Linux distribution (known as a "distro"), users are offered a wide variety of flavors and features. In fact, Linux comes in so many different sizes and shapes that selecting the version most suited for consumer or enterprise use can be a seemingly impossible task.

Read on ...

Six places in the world where climate change could cause political turmoil - CSM

From Nepal to Nigeria, Indonesia to the Arctic Circle, a warmer world poses different problems.

Data-recovery firm reveals top client mishaps - C|Net

Ant infestations, oil saturation, and failed parachute jumps are some of the unusual fates that have befallen innocent data-storage devices recently, according to data-recovery company Kroll Ontrack's list of the most unusual recovery jobs it has faced in the last

Iran's Nukes: Now They Tell Us? - Time

The President looked awful. He stood puffy-eyed, stoop-shouldered, in front of the press corps discussing the stunning new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that Iran halted its nuclear-weapons program in 2003. He looked as if he'd spent the night throwing chairs around the Situation Room. ...

Taser death in Canada sparks heated debate around the world - CSM

The death of a Polish man at Vancouver International Airport has sparked an intense debate in Canada over the increasing use of Tasers by law-enforcement officials. Concerns over the use of these electric shock guns has mounted in several other countries after a UN Committee on Human Rights recently labeled their impact "torture."

Heritage Foundation on Hunger: Let Them Eat Broccoli - MotherJones
Poor people aren't hungry; they're fat.

While most Americans were planning for the annual ritual of overconsumption known as Thanksgiving, the good folks at the Heritage Foundation, America’s leading architects of conservative thought for at least three decades, were doing their part to add to the holiday cheer. According to a November 13 Heritage article, well-off revelers could stuff their faces unhampered by guilt about the less fortunate, because there are no longer any hungry people in the United States.

Sen. Clinton proposes moratorium on foreclosures - Reuters

Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton proposed on Monday a 90-day moratorium on home foreclosures to give financially troubled borrowers time to work with lenders and avoid losing their homes.

U.S. report contradicts Bush on Iran nuclear program - Reuters

U.S. intelligence has determined that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 but believes it is continuing to develop technical capabilities that could be used to build a bomb, a government report said on Monday.

Bali climate summit: a test of the world's resolve - CSM

Next week is seen as crunch time in the fight against global warming. Representatives from some 130 nations will gather in Bali, Indonesia, beginning a two-year effort to agree on a new pact to cut greenhouse-gas emissions - one that goes well beyond the goals of the current Kyoto Protocol.

Microsoft FUDwatch II: Internet Explorer vs. Firefox security - C|Net

Microsoft is at it again. Or, rather, Jeff Jones is. Jones is Microsoft's security strategy direction and is the one who periodically remixes history and data to declare that Windows is more secure than Linux. Now he's declaring that Internet Explorer is much safer than Firefox.

If you use Firefox and wish a festive Christmas/Holiday theme, check out Tinseltown. The extent that the author went in taking this theme is incredible.

Tinseltown is a Christmas theme with holiday imagery including Christmas lights, snow, reindeer, presents and more. This theme is made eve better with great Christmas icons from Watiworks and a semi-transparent URL bar. Get in the holiday spirit!

I Was Wrong: Microsoft Won - open dot dot dot

I could feel it in my bones: the great victory of the EU over MS is a sham. Here's why.

Ex-steely Neelie - to be renamed wheeler-dealer Neelie - said as follows:

I told Microsoft that it should give legal security to programmers who help to develop open source software and confine its patent disputes to commercial software distributors and end users. Microsoft will now pledge to do so.

And naively, I thought that meant what it said. Silly me. Reference to the rather low-profile EU FAQ clarifies:

Can open source software developers implement patented interoperability information?

Open source software developers use various “open source” licences to distribute their software. Some of these licences are incompatible with the patent licence offered by Microsoft. It is up to the commercial open source distributors to ensure that their software products do not infringe upon Microsoft’s patents. If they consider that one or more of Microsoft’s patents would apply to their software product, they can either design around these patents, challenge their validity or take a patent licence from Microsoft.

Read on ...

Tenryu-ji temple and its 14th century zen garden (Kyoto)

Image available on Flickr

Here is a great slideshow of antonioperezrio.es' Traditional Japan

Mother's ire puts Ballmer on defense over Vista - ComputerWorld

The For a few minutes during Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer's appearance at the Gartner Inc. Symposium ITxpo conference here, emotionless management-speak gave way to a mother's frustration with the Vista operating system.

Shuttleworth on Ballmer - Linux-Watch

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has once more claimed that Linux and open source violates Microsoft's intellectual property and patents. Canonical's CEO Mark Shuttleworth thinks Ballmer has it all wrong.

Ballmer comments reflect deeper problems - ZDnet

Ballmer Claims Red Hat Violates Microsoft IP - PCWorld

All open source dev should happen on Windows - Register

Ballmer threatens Linux and open source with patents again - Linux-Watch

Microsoft is updating Windows without user permission - ZDNet

Is your Vista or XP system set to not automatically update? Doesn't matter. Microsoft is fiddling with your system files -- without asking or telling you.

Read on ...

DRM, Vista and Your Rights - polishlinux.org

In the US, France and a few other countries it is already forbidden to play legally purchased music or videos using GNU/Linux media players . Sounds like sci-fi? Unfortunately not. And it won’t end up on multimedia only. Welcome to the the new era of DRM!

In this article I would like to explain the problem of Digital Rights (or restrictions) Management, especially in the version promoted by Microsoft with the new Windows Vista release. Not everyone is familiar with the dangers of the new “standard” for the whole computer industry. Yes, the whole industry — because it goes way beyond the software produced by the giant from Redmond and its affiliates.

A similar (but a bit more specialized) term to DRM is Trusted Computing. The term is intentionally misleading. It does not try to improve the security of the user, but rather wants to ensure that the user can be “trusted”. Obviously it’s not about the trust, it’s about the money. The companies that deliver content (specially multimedia, but it’s not restricted to media only) to the client want to be able to control the way it is used. For example, they want the content to be displayed on approved media only, banning all the “illegal” applications (illegal does not mean that it violates the law, but rather the agreement between the client and the company that sells the media). More on Trusted Computing can be found (as always) in Wikipedia.

Read on ...

It's from January, but still a good read if you are unfamiliar with what DRM really is.

Microsoft patents the mother of all adware systems - ars technica

It's such a tremendously bad idea that it's almost bound to succeed. Microsoft has filed another patent, this one for an "advertising framework" that uses "context data" from your hard drive to show you advertisements and "apportion and credit advertising revenue" to ad suppliers in real time. Yes, Redmond wants to own the patent on the mother of all adware.

The application, filed in 2006, describes a multi-faceted, robust ad-delivering system that lives on a "user computer, whether it's part of the OS, an application or integrated within applications."

"Applications, tools, or utilities may use an application program interface to report context data tags such as key words or other information that may be used to target advertisements," says the filing. "The advertising framework may host several components for receiving and processing the context data, refining the data, requesting advertisements from an advertising supplier, for receiving and forwarding advertisements to a display client for presentation, and for providing data back to the advertising supplier."

Read on ...

Google Earth and NASA Turn Up The Lights - Wired

Google has rolled out some spectacular new layers for Google Earth. "Astronaut Photography of Earth" is filled with images from the last 40 years of NASA Earth exploration, and "Earth City Lights" has stunning views of our home planet at night, as viewed from space.

The new layers can be found in the Featured Layers section of Google Earth. If you don't have Google's desktop atlas program, it's available as a free download. If you already have Google Earth, there’s no need to upgrade your installation. The layers should be there - just look for the "NASA" header.

The update showcases the ongoing collaborative effort between Google Earth and NASA which is designed to promote NASA’s various Earth exploration programs. As Wei Luo notes on the Google LatLong blog, "People are usually familiar with NASA’s space missions, but not everyone knows that NASA also devotes a considerable amount of effort to Earth explorations."

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Living With a Computer by James Fallow - The Atlantic Monthly, July 1982

The author talks about his Sol-20 that he purchased in 1979, his trials and tribulations with it and then gives advice about buying a computer in the early 80's. It is interesting read as he talks about the make up of the industry in pre Microsoft days. It is amazing to read the specs he suggests and the capacities of the time.

... for a total of about $4,000, Optek gave me the machinery I have used happily to this day.

The microcomputer industry these days is like the auto business in 1910, with a thousand little hustlers trying to claim a piece of the action.

although any serious computer should have at least 48 and preferably 64K of random access memory

You don't need to remove the hard disks because each one stores a prodigious amount of data, from two or three on up to several dozen megabytes.

I gave in and bought a daisy wheel (printer), the Anderson-Jacobson 830 model, which cost about $1,400.

... the Displaywriter with a good printer was quoted at $11,350 by my local IBM dealer.

The best-known small computer is probably the Apple. Because there are so many Apples in circulation, and because the company has pushed software so aggressively, you can get a wider variety of programs and accessories for an Apple than for any other system. (How things change!)

One of the most interesting new computers, both as a piece of machinery and as a specimen of capitalism in action, is the Osborne I.

PC Mags Five Ideas That Will Reinvent Modern Computing

• IMAX At Home
• The Midair Mouse
• The Perfect Machine
• Extreme Peer-to-Peer
• The Man-Made Brain

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There are a couple of interviews with Mark Shuttleworth recently.

"I'd love to work with Microsoft" - Duncan McLeod spoke to software billionaire Mark Shuttleworth last week about his Ubuntu Linux deal with Dell, the Microsoft software patent fracas, and his desire to return to live in SA. This is an edited extract.
(An edited interview with the complete one available on mp3)

Mark Shuttleworth Talks Dell, Hardware, Ubuntu 7.10 & More - Mark Shuttleworth has flown into space on a Soyuz TM-34 and founded Thawte Consulting that later sold to Verisign for over $500 million, but he is now known most for being the founder and leader of the Ubuntu Linux distribution. In addition to Ubuntu he also established HBD Venture Capital and is involved with several other free software projects. Earlier today we had spoke with Mark Shuttleworth to discuss the latest happenings in the Ubuntu world including Dell shipping Ubuntu PCs, getting open-source drivers from hardware vendors, and what is coming down the road for Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon.
(This is the one where he refers to Linux as "a bit of a dorky teenager" on page 3)

Dell Backpedals on Preloading Linux - newsfactor

The Linux camp's ears perked up earlier this week when Dell said it planned to unveil a new line of certified, Linux-loaded desktop and laptop PCs. But business users who want to buy a Dell machine with the open-source operating system preinstalled won't have that Linux luxury in the near-term.

Although Dell is dancing around the idea of reintroducing Linux desktops and notebooks, the computer maker said it won't make a move until one of the competing flavors of Linux emerges as a business favorite. Dell now maintains that it doesn't want to pick one Linux distribution and alienate users with a preference for another.

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~ More ~

The empire strikes back - ITWire

With one stroke, Microsoft has reasserted its number one position as deal maker and decision maker in the computer industry, reminding all wannabes that they are just that - wannabes.

Yesterday's announcement that Dell would be joining the Microsoft-Novell pact is proof positive that Microsoft is playing the same game it always has - extend, embrace and then extinguish.

Notice that Dell wasn't exactly prominent in the announcement of the deal - most of the talking was done by Microsoft, in itself a reminder that whether you are a big player or not in the tech industry, you had better do as the boys in Redmond say. No getting too much out of line.

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Via consumeraffairs.com

The news that Dell will begin making the fast-growing Ubuntu flavor of Linux available on some of its machines should be welcomed by consumers everywhere.

It not only makes a tiny dent in Microsoft's armor but also is one of the few times consumers can actually get something for nothing. Best of all, the something for nothing is, in this reviewer's humble opinion, a lot better than the high-priced spreads.

Though its name may sound odd initially, there's nothing odd about the way Ubuntu works. It is fast, lean and responsive, like a sleek jungle cat prowling through the South Africa outback.

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From the free features section of Wall Street Journal comes:

Linux Starts to Find Home on Desktops
More Businesses Adopt Cost-Saving Software For Some Workers' PCs

The Linux operating system, having made inroads into corporations' backroom server computers, is showing hints of inching into a much broader market: employees' personal computers.

The much-hyped notion that Linux would be viable software to run desktop and notebook PCs seemed dead on arrival a few years ago. But the idea is showing some new vital signs.

Chief information officers have experienced the cost savings that Linux has brought to their server computers, which do narrow and repetitive tasks such as data storage and serving up Web sites. Now some CIOs are taking new interest in installing Linux on workers' PCs as well, for certain narrow applications.

Auto maker PSA Peugeot Citroen last month said it will start using Linux on 20,000 of its workers' PCs. Novell Inc., which sells a version of Linux and is supplying it to Peugeot, says it has recently signed up several large U.S. financial institutions that are installing Linux on some employee PCs. Sales of Linux PCs are showing a "really nice uptick" at Novell, says Ronald Hovsepian, chief executive of Novell.

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MIT Technology Review - Open Source and You

The real value of open-source software is the community it fosters.

No one would buy a car with the hood welded shut, but that is essentially what commercial software is. However, since computing began, some software has been distributed in such a way that users can change or repair it by modifying its source code--the step-by-step instructions that the computer executes when the software runs. Software distributed under a license that allows a programmer to modify the source code and freely distribute an improved version of it is called open source.

Open-source software can make good business sense. For example, a company might be able to reduce costs by building a product on top of an existing open-source application rather than writing it from scratch. But does open source matter to those who do not program computers? I think the answer is yes.

Read on

I am sitting over at my local Einsteins using their hotspot and enjoying it. I wasn't sure how easy it would go with my Linux system, but no problemo. Just a click in the NetworkManager and away we go. It is slow compared to my wireless at home, but it's nice to be out of the house and connected.

Last week the power supply died on my DVR. With this opportunity at hand, I decided to go with a new Silverstone LC13 HTPC case to replace the Silverstone TJ06 case I had been using as I wanted to get it up off the floor. Because of the 3 dogs in the house and where it was located, the case seemed to be taking more that average amount of dust and dog hair which led to the eventual downfall of the power supply, and luckily just that. So, anyway, most of yesterday was spent rebuilding that system. I had no problems with the disassemble and rebuild, it was all very straight forward. The longest part of the day was installing WinXP and the required drivers, but once I was to the BeyondTV install, it was all downhill from there. The LC13 is not as quiet as the TJ06, but it does look better in the living room than the big tower case.

I did receive a little grief yesterday about using WinXP on that system. I would like to change over to Linux on it, but I am waiting for Linux DVR software to come of age. There are a few out there such as MythTV, but from what I have read they are close although still needing some development.

Since switching from XP to Ubuntu, I have noticed my battery is lasting longer per charge. Whether this would be true for all Linux distro's, I don't know, but I have noticed it with Ubuntu. I also don't know why except it must not have as much overhead and demands that XP did.

I am having an issue with the sleep mode. I rarely shut down my computer now, I usually just put it into sleep mode. After doing this a half dozen times, the power comes on but I just get a blank screen. I then have to do a forced shutdown. I have noted that this happens to others with laptops via various forums. It will be interesting to see whether the 7.04 release will take care of this issue.

~update~

I have noticed if I unplug any USB devices - mainly my mouse - the sleep problems goes away.

I have been using two different backup options to figure which I like best. To begin with, I did like ntbackup on my old XP install. It was straight forward and I like it did differential backups as I have never been a fan of incremetal backups. With my Ubuntu distribution, I have been using both Keep front end for rdiff and Simple Backup Suite (sbackup). I have decided to go with Keep. My main objection with sbackup is that I have to go into root to look at the backups, Keep doesn't require this. I do miss being able to do a full backup and then weekly differentials though. I will keep looking for possible replacements.

Man, haven't posted in a coons age.

Here are a couple of new links I have found recently pertaining to the installation of XP and Ubuntu:

Installing Ubuntu: A comparison of Ubuntu 6.06 and Windows XP
http://rhosgobel.blogspot.com/2006/06/installing-ubuntu-comparison-of-ubuntu.html

This weekend, I reinstalled XP and Ubuntu.
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=221756

~~

I have been running Ubuntu for a good month and a half and have enjoyed the experience. I have had a couple of problems along the way, but overall, everything has gone incredibly smooth.

Picasa started acting funny a few weeks ago. It requires me to change the permissions on 2 nvidia files after every shutdown. It also imports photos in reverse order of time stamp and photo number. Very bizarre.

Thingamablog still requires to be started from a terminal window.

I am still playing around with music files and my iPods. I have started copying my music onto my laptop with the intention of trying out Banshee's ability to sync with my Nano. Right now I am burning all my purchased iTunes music onto cd's so that I don't have to rely on a Windows machine to update my iPods.

I have liked using Tomboy for making notes and gFTP has worked fairly well for me as a replacement for WS_FTP.

I do miss not having Roboform anymore. I am using KeePass for my passwords, but it doesn't intigrate into a web browser. I guess I could memorize my passwords, but just think of all the brain cells that would require.

Here is a collection of links I have found useful for my beginning Linux experience. They range from help sites to news sites and are in no particular order

http://www.control-escape.com
http://www.linuxlinks.com
http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/
http://lxer.com/
http://www.whylinuxisbetter.net/
http://www.ericharshbarger.org/lego/penguin.html - Lego Penguin
http://www.xpenguin.com/penguinlinks.php
http://www.linuxjournal.com/
http://www.linux-mag.com/

So, there are a couple of problems showing themselves with my recent Ubuntu install.

Wireless comes and goes. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Haven't quite figured that one out. It does appear there are quite a few people out there like me having these problems, so, more than likely, I am hoping, this will get worked out in future kernel and Ubuntu updates. (That is a nice run on sentence!)

I am having some problems with Ubuntu and Thingamablog. Luckily for me, Bob, who wrote the program, keeps a constant eye on his forum and helped me out pronto. Bob, you rule!

Picasa is causing some problems also. I really liked it as a photo manager in windows and for some reason it is just not working for me in linux. I will have to hit the forums harder for help on that one.

But I still am enjoying playing with it. Must be all the snow we have here in Denver. Nothing left to do but put linux on your laptop

~ Update ~

Yea - Picasa works now. I just have to learn the terminal window more. I am making silly little mistakes in it that prevent things from working correctly

I have installed Ubuntu 6.10 "Ed