FLOSS News

I wonder…

Since I wrote about getting the Windows license fee refunded on my Asus 1008HA netbook here in the UK, there have been more examples where individuals have had some success.

First we had a story on slashdot in the USA that seemed to be inspired by my own:

Back in 1995 something very odd happened. Microsoft released a new version of their operating system, jumping from version 3.x to version 95 which, as well as being a pretty innovative bit of version numbering, brought in a few other new things including the start menu. Now to get the start menu to work they pulled off an astonishing move and added a new key to computer keyboards, not just keyboards made by Microsoft (I am not even sure they did make them at the time) but keyboards made by all manufacturers. This key had a little windows advert on it and was called the Windows key.

This could be pretty big.

Google announced, in their own rather subtle way – via a blog post – their new Google Chrome OS. It’s quite exciting simply because it is from Google and what the objective of the OS is:

There seems to be something of a military campaign afoot. One that surely shows signs of desperation and anxiety on behalf of the instigator.

First we had Asus telling it’s potential customers that “It’s Better With Winblow$” using phraseology such as:

“Windows helps you easily get online and connect to your devices and services - without dealing with an unfamiliar environment or major compatibility issues.”

My friend Alan sent me an invitation to sign up for a beta trial of MiserWare’s MicroMiser power saving software.

I had this thought whilst wandering down to the pub last night. It’s a very pleasant walk on a warm evening; through leafy unmade lanes in the south of Farnham and has, on a number of occasions, been inspirational.

As a long time fan of the Linux desktop I was interested to see the the Linux desktop usage number for personal computers increase to over 1.02%. I suspect it’s partially fueled by the popularity of Linux netbooks from the Dell (who offers an Ubuntu option) and Asus (that’s uses a special version of Xandros Linux).

This article on ReadWriteWeb really caught my eye today.

From my previous life in data and telecoms I know a little of the scale of the Sabre network. It’s BIG. By the sounds of things most of it runs on Open Source software too. They have announced a partnership with a commercial Open Source vendor Progress to use a number of their FUSE Open Source products.

Over on the ubuntuweblogs, Gerry Ilagan pointed the readership to this excellent article by Foobar on how to write a Linux virus.

Remember the short piece I posted about the Radio 4 programme “In Business” a couple of weeks ago? Well, very kindly, the programme’s editor has provided me with a transcript of programme to

please use as you wish, but it has not been checked for accuracy. Good luck.

I have just read and listened again and didn’t find anything glaring although I did fix one rather amusing typo: “Linux Colonel” to “Linux Kernel”. It was sent to me as a Microsoft .doc file. I opened it in OpenOffice.org and exported it as a PDF so it should be readable by virtually everyone.

According to the BBC today,

Infections of a worm that spreads through low security networks, memory sticks, and PCs without the latest security updates is “skyrocketing”.

The malicious program, known as Conficker, Downadup, or Kido was first discovered in October 2008.

Anti-virus firm F-Secure estimates there are now 8.9m machines infected.

This is yet another major outbreak. At least the coverage of this one is pretty clear that it is just Windows PCs that are affected, but jeez, how come people are still putting up with this crap:

The last Windows computer in our house is very shortly going to be history

I have been threatening my wife’s PC for quite some time now, but there has been no real motivation to move until today… Our bank called and told her a credit card has been fraudulently used in the last few days. Fortunately they appear to have correctly and swiftly identified the misuse and are dealing with the problem.

Martyn, from Severn Delta Ltd, emailed me saying he had an Open Source story to tell. I’ve had this in my inbox for a while now, but have finally got round to publishing it.

Alan,

I own 50% of a manufacturing company in Bridgwater. When we bought the company out of receivership in ‘03 we had no systems at all. Our former parent company was running a character based ERP system called MAX on Unix and a Windows file serving network.

So day 1 (ish!) we set up two RH servers and installed samba, sendmail, apache etc on one for file print intranet and email and the Linux port of MAX on the other.

See this post for some other detail.

I used to work in the Computer Networking Industry and Cisco was, by far, my biggest competitor in almost all areas. You had to respect them however. Not only did they have a very full war chest of products, sales execs and money to pour into the channel but also they were the absolute best for the way they managed acquisitions (and they did a lot of them). They had such a thorough and well-honed process that the acquired companies almost always integrated swiftly and with minimal pain. Those individuals who stayed were made welcome on Day 1. And those who were not wanted were given their severance fairly and swiftly.

Remember this?