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Posts published by “FOSS Force”

February’s Top Ten

By FOSS Force on March 1, 2014 |

Site News

These are the ten most read articles on FOSS Force for the month of February, 2014.

1. Recommending Linux to a Friend by Ken Starks. Published February 21, 2014. Our Mr. Starks explains how he got one nothing-but-Windows user to try and like Linux.

2. Maintenance–The Achilles Heel of Linux by Ken Starks. Published January 30, 2014. Should Linux users fight back again “broken” aspects of their favorite distro because “that’s just the way it is?”

3. KDE Tops Desktop Poll by Christine Hall. February 12, 2014. Visitors to FOSS Force choose KDE as their favorite desktop.

Continue readingFebruary’s Top Ten

We’re Back! Did You Miss Us?

By FOSS Force on February 20, 2014 |

Site News

Yesterday afternoon about one o’clock eastern time, we began a migration to a new server. You weren’t supposed to notice the change. Or, if you did, it’d be like, “Wow! Look at how much better this site performs now!” We had it planned so visitors would just connect to our old server until the DNS change propagated the Internet and — voila! — they’d suddenly be visiting us on our new and improved server, without even knowing.

It sounds like a plan, eh? That’s what we thought, until it didn’t work out.

Continue readingWe’re Back! Did You Miss Us?
Russia’s Olympic Spying, Comcast Weds Time Warner & More…Boris and Natasha

Russia’s Olympic Spying, Comcast Weds Time Warner & More…

By FOSS Force on February 15, 2014 |

Business, Internet, News, Politics and Security

FOSS Week in Review

The day we fought back

Tuesday, February 11th, The Day We Fight Back, has come and gone. Whether the event was a success, failure or fell somewhere in between depends on whom you read.

Surprisingly, the biggest naysayer was probably the New York Times, which started an article. “The Day the Internet Didn’t Fight Back,” with the line, “So much for mass protest.” It appears as if the Times’ metric for this judgement was the lack of participation by some sites which took part in the online SOPA protest a couple of years back.

Continue readingRussia’s Olympic Spying, Comcast Weds Time Warner & More…
Torvald’s Thumbs Up, Gates’ Computer Skills & More…Wozniak

Torvald’s Thumbs Up, Gates’ Computer Skills & More…

By FOSS Force on February 8, 2014 |

Hardware, Internet, Mobile, News, Politics and Security

FOSS Week in Review

Canadians spy at airports

The more we see of the Snowden revelations the more we wonder, when did the English speaking world become a police state?

The latest news was reported January 30th by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), from which we learned that all the electronics eavesdropping hasn’t been being conducted solely by the U.S. and the Brits. The Canadians have had their hand in it too.

It seems that Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC), a Canadian spy agency, has been using the free Wi-Fi at “a major Canadian airport” to track wireless devices, which presumably would include laptops as well as phones and tablets. The surveillance would continue for days after visitors passed through the airport.

Continue readingTorvald’s Thumbs Up, Gates’ Computer Skills & More…
Google Beats Troll, Ellison’s Oracle ‘Unbreakable’ & More…Michael Copps

Google Beats Troll, Ellison’s Oracle ‘Unbreakable’ & More…

By FOSS Force on February 1, 2014 |

Business, Internet, Mobile, News, Patents and Politics

FOSS Week in Review

NSA involved in industrial espionage

Another big non-surprise this week in the continuing saga of the NSA. It appears that our beloved spy agency has been using their secret powers for the purpose of uncovering industrial secrets from foreign companies. So much for the separation of business and state. Reuters reported that in a television interview with a German TV network, Edward Snowden said the agency doesn’t confine its intelligence gathering to items of national security.

“‘If there’s information at Siemens that’s beneficial to U.S. national interests – even if it doesn’t have anything to do with national security – then they’ll take that information nevertheless,’ Snowden said…”

Even the Republicans are jumping on the stop-the-NSA bandwagon, which is rather surprising.

Continue readingGoogle Beats Troll, Ellison’s Oracle ‘Unbreakable’ & More…

You Say NSA Has Hurt U.S. Tech Sector

By FOSS Force on January 28, 2014 |

Business, Politics and Polls

Back in the early days of the Snowden affair, when it first became obvious that Microsoft and others had co-operated with the NSA’s agenda to spy on every living human being on the planet who owned a computer, we said this wouldn’t bode well for those who make their living from tech in the U.S. We thought that proprietary software vendors would be most vulnerable due to their lack of transparency, i.e., the lack of available source code, especially after Redmond was exposed for building secret access into Windows.

Back in December, we asked for your opinion in our NSA in the USA Poll.

Continue readingYou Say NSA Has Hurt U.S. Tech Sector

Chrome Eavesdropping, Balkanized Internet & More…

By FOSS Force on January 25, 2014 |

Browsers, Business, Hardware, Internet, News, Politics and Security

FOSS Week in Review

Sixteen-year-old wrote the code for Target breach

TargetMiamiThe press calls him a “nearly seventeen-year-old” and he’s reported to be one of the people behind the malware used to compromise credit card data at Target and other locations. By our way of counting, “nearly seventeen” means he is sixteen or, like the show tune says, “sixteen going on seventeen.” He lives in Russia and is said to be the author of the BlackPOS malware that was used against Target and might have been used against Neiman Marcus.

This info comes from Los Angeles based cyber-intelligence firm IntelCrawler, which says it’s also traced six additional breaches to BlackPOS. As noted on MarketWatch, despite authoring the malware, the kid is just a small fry in this affair.

Continue readingChrome Eavesdropping, Balkanized Internet & More…

You Say GIMP Was Right

By FOSS Force on January 22, 2014 |

Internet and Polls

GIMP logoBack in November, the popular open source image editing program GIMP ended their association with SourceForge and dropped the site as its host. Since that time, downloads of GIMP have no longer been available on the site but have been moved to the GIMP’s website.

The split was the result of GIMP’s concern over policies at SourceForge, primarily SourceForge’s use of DevShare, an installer for Windows that bundles third party software offers with FOSS downloads. In addition, the GIMP folks had reservations about potentially deceptive “download here” buttons on ads being served by the likes of Google’s AdSense.

There were two sides to this story, of course.

Continue readingYou Say GIMP Was Right