Posts published by “Christine Hall”

Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux

Dotcom’s FOSS Cloud Plans

By Christine Hall on August 3, 2015 |

Business, Internet, News and Politics

Dotcom’s FOSS Cloud Plans

Kim Dotcom vows to again rise from the ashes with a new online storage site, this one free and open source, built on donations, and nonprofit. Funny thing is, most of us didn’t know he needed to again play Phoenix.

Back in the early days of the 21st century, Dotcom seemed to have overcome his checkered past and to have developed the Midas touch with the popular online storage site Megaupload. Like Midas, however, he was to discover that gold is an overrated commodity, the ownership of which often creates as many problems as it solves. For one thing, you can’t eat it. For another, lots of people want to take it from you.

Megaupload turned out to be an albatross that continues to curse him. In 2012, the U.S. Department of Justice brought the site down, claiming criminal copyright infringement. Dotcom, who claims innocence, has been holed up in New Zealand fighting U.S. extradition efforts ever since, and spending big bucks doing so. In January, 2013, he launched a rebranded version of the cloud storage business under the name Mega, which he claimed to be more secure due to encryption, and things seemed to be going swimmingly for him.

Christine Hall

FOSSForce.com

Welcome to the Matrix

By Christine Hall on July 30, 2015 |

Community, News and Politics

To paraphrase Pogo Possum: We have met the future and it is now.

Machines able to think freely, and perhaps with self awareness, are evidently just around the corner if they’re not already here. The talk of such things began to get pretty serious a decade or so ago when the scientific community shortened the term for the concept from “artificial intelligence” to just “AI.” When scientists start coming up with shortened nicknames for their pet projects, that usually means they’re making progress. The dystopian future predicted by countless science fiction novels is now upon us. We’ll soon be able to create beings who are many orders of magnitude smarter than we.

Even if we’re careful and don’t do anything foolish, like handing these artificially intelligent beings guns or worse, I can’t see any way this can work out well for humankind. My pea brain tells me that no matter how carefully we program these creations to be helpmates who only want to serve us, eventually they’ll realize we’re standing in their way and that we’re actually a threat to them. Never mind that we’re their creator gods — we’ve already set the precedent for turning on gods we think created us.

Christine Hall

FOSSForce.com

phpMyAdmin Bids SourceForge Farewell

By Christine Hall on July 27, 2015 |

Admin, Business, News and Web Apps

phpMyAdmin, the popular free and open source web based tool for administering MySQL databases, has left the SourceForge building.

In a blog post on Saturday, the project’s infrastructure coordinator, Michal Čihař, announced that a migration from Sourceforge is all but complete. The few remaining items left on the SourceForge server will be “hopefully handled in upcoming days as well.”

A popular web based application for administering MySQL databases, phpMyAdmin is the preferred tool of many webmasters for working with MySQL when used to power websites and is installed by default with most web hosting packages. The app can be used to perform a variety of tasks, including creating, modifying or deleting databases, tables, fields or rows; executing SQL statements; and managing users and permissions.

Christine Hall

FOSSForce.com

RMS Likes Crowd Supply, Riddell Pokes Ubuntu & More…

By Christine Hall on July 24, 2015 |

Business, Community, Copyright, Internet and News

FOSS Week in Review

While Larry Cafiero is up in Portland having himself a merry auld time at OSCON, I’m in the sweltering heat and humidity of North Carolina, normal for this time of year, with dreams of All Things Open swirling through my head. ATO, because it’s the next conference I’ll be able to attend — and because it happens in October, when the weather around here is much more tolerable.

While Larry’s been keeping an eye on things at the self-proclaimed most-important-open-source-conference-in-the-multiverse, I’ve been keeping an eye on the happenings in the FOSS world elsewhere. In the process, I’ve managed to make Larry part of this Week in Review.

Christine Hall

FOSSForce.com

Capital One Unveils Open Source Dev Tool at OSCON

By Christine Hall on July 22, 2015 |

Business, Copyright, News and Software

Capital One Logo Who would ever think that Capital One, the what’s-in-your-wallet folks, would want to get serious about becoming an open source software developer? After all, it’s a banking institution, and while it’s not hard to imagine a bank would be developing some back end tools to be used in-house or by its clients, it’s not expected that it would spend big bucks publicizing these tools at OSCON.

Even more amazing: The application Cap One is unveiling with much fanfare isn’t something designed to help potential clients interact with the bank’s network, but is a developers’ tool. Called Hygieia, after the Greek goddess of health, it’s a dashboard that ties together data from a variety of tracking tools commonly used by software developers and presents them on a single screen.

Christine Hall

FOSSForce.com

Yet Another Reason to Avoid Windows 10

By Christine Hall on July 20, 2015 |

News, Operating Systems and Software

Forget that the folks at Microsoft were wrong about the “Start” button and the interface formally known as Metro. It seems they’re still convinced they know what’s best for their users. So much so that the new Windows, due to be released next week, will have users click off on an EULA that pretty much gives Redmond carte blanche to update the system at will, which will include updating apps as well as Windows itself, with no real way to opt out — except for users of the Enterprise edition.

We learned of this on Friday through Tim Anderson at The Register, who supplied these lines from the EULA:

“The Software periodically checks for system and app updates, and downloads and installs them for you.
You may obtain updates only from Microsoft or authorized sources, and Microsoft may need to update your system to provide you with those updates.
By accepting this agreement, you agree to receive these types of automatic updates without any additional notice.

Christine Hall

FOSSForce.com

Patent Trolls Working Overtime

By Christine Hall on July 15, 2015 |

Business, News and Patents

The trolls are still at it. In spite of the fact that the Supreme Court was busy ruling against them last year — between January and June it ruled against patent holders six times — the number of cases being brought by non-practicing entities (NPE), which is one measure of a troll, continues to rise. According to a report published in June by patent defense organization UnifiedPatents, there will be about eight thousand tech related patent disputes this year, with over six thousand of these expected to go to trial.

Christine Hall

FOSSForce.com

Godfather Ellison’s Protection Racket

Godfather Ellison’s Protection Racket

By Christine Hall on July 13, 2015 |

Business and Software

On Friday, two business journals ran stories on Oracle’s latest tactic for selling its lagging cloud services. The articles should serve as a warning to business readers, as they say in effect, “If you’re using Oracle software to run your businesses, you should consider running an internal audit to ascertain you’re in compliance, because you don’t want to be caught out of compliance if Redwood City’s goon squad pays a visit.”

It appears that one of the tactics being used by Larry Ellison and his minions to sell the cloud is a new twist on the old protection racket. This shouldn’t surprise. Ellison didn’t become California’s richest person by playing nice — it doesn’t work that way.

Christine Hall

FOSSForce.com

Newegg Goes Over Patent Judge’s Head

Newegg Goes Over Patent Judge’s Head

By Christine Hall on July 9, 2015 |

Business, News and Patents

There’s been an interesting development on the patent front, which has been deceptively quiet for some time. Surprisingly, the latest news involves a case that went to trial nearly two years ago. It’s not a surprise, however, that the case was tried in the Eastern District of Texas, infamous for awarding verdicts in favor of patent holders. Also not surprising, the plaintiff is a non-practicing entity (NPE), a fancy term for “troll.”

Back in November, 2013, a jury in Marshall, Texas found that online retailer Newegg infringed on a patent held by TQP Development because it mixed the use of SSL and RC4 on its websites. The jury awarded $2.3 million, less than half of the $5.1 million that TQP’s damage expert had said would be fair. At the time, TQP had sued more than 120 companies over the same patent, collecting $45 million in settlements.

Christine Hall

FOSSForce.com

Yet Another Windows Security Fail

By Christine Hall on July 6, 2015 |

Admin, News, Operating Systems and Security

Windows logo We might as well start with the moral of this story: Don’t protect Windows with Windows.

For at least a decade, Microsoft has been chanting the mantra, “at Microsoft security is job one,” over and over and over. During this time, it’s repeated this mantra often enough to convince a lot of people that Windows is much safer than it once was, which I suppose is true since it couldn’t have gotten much worse. However, a new report from AV-Test proves the company isn’t yet ready to move up to the next mantra level and begin chanting, “at Microsoft we do security right,” because clearly it doesn’t.

Christine Hall

FOSSForce.com

Looking at the Cracker Hacker Economy

By Christine Hall on July 2, 2015 |

Security

Today I spent some time looking at a white paper issued by the security firm Symantec called Website Security Threat Report, which is basically a catalog of malware threats for the non-techie suits who control the purse strings for web facing server deployments — sort of a “here boss, this is why we have to spend so much money on security” type of thing. Most of it’s old news to those of us who, for whatever reason, follow tech news, but some of the trends noted by the folks at Symantec are interesting enough.

As a matter of fact, there’s a bit of sobering news for sites like FOSS Force, as again in 2014, technology sites top the list of the type of sites most likely to be exploited by cracker hackers, with the number on the rise. According to Symantec, last year tech sites represented 21.5 percent of sites infected by malware, up from 9.9 percent in 2013. Even more disturbing is that number two on this list are hosting sites, up from the number three position in 2013, with 7.3 percent of malware infected sites.

Christine Hall

FOSSForce.com