About an hour or so after Jeffrey Hammond from Forrester Research gave his keynote address at All Things Open, in which he spoke of a…
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
Do you have any traffic tickets you neglected to pay? You know, the kind that eventually turn into bench warrants and cause you to be super careful when you drive, lest you get pulled over for yet another minor infraction and end up handcuffed in the back of a squad car, on your way to spend a few hours in the local hoosegow until your significant other shows up with bail? If so, don’t worry. As long as you manage to not get pulled over, you’re still reasonably safe. But the time is rapidly coming when just walking down the street minding your own business might cause a squad car to be dispatched to pick you up to make sure you pay your fine, thanks to our old buddy, facial recognition.
I know this is old news and it seems like implementation of the technology in such manner is years away — but I think it’s coming quicker than we think. Some may even think this to be no big deal. After all, what’s wrong with the fuzz having the ability to pick lawbreakers out of downtown pedestrian traffic or while on a jaunt across the parking lot to Office Depot at a local strip mall? Wouldn’t that include the ability to get dangerous violent criminals off the street?
Well, yes. But this old hippie still doesn’t like it. During my life I’ve seen too many instances where the police overzealously abuse a new technology they’ve embraced. Think tasers or pepper spray — or swat teams for that matter. Do a Google to get an idea of how many unarmed citizens have been dispatched to their graves through the wrongful use of tasers or pepper spray — although the investigation of these incidents rarely find fault with the officer who did the dispatching.
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
When my colleague Ken Starks wrote on FOSS Force the other day about his gripe with Linux Mint’s handling of updates, I was a little amused because I had just dealt with this issue during the recent Bash crisis. I run Mint Maya with Xfce and I expected to find the Bash fix in Synaptic, but it wasn’t there. When I eventually found the update manager, I actually quite liked the set up. Having system updates easily available seemed to make sense and I liked the design. Like many things in tech, it turns out that the design was a little accidental, the result of a conflict necessitating the removal of the system update functions from Synaptic. But it works. I kind of like it.
It also seems to fit with one of the underlying philosophies of the distro. Mint is famous for being a desktop that anybody can use. Updates on the dash is a concept which a new-to-Linux Windows’ user can understand, maybe even without having to go to the forums for help — and a piece of cake for experienced free software users. In my case, the only problem I had is that I misunderstood the severity numbering scheme, figuring one to be most severe instead of the least, but I easily managed to patch and update my system.
I was impressed — which is why I was amused by Ken’s consternation.
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
It’s not a good day for Drupal users, with the security folks at the CMS platform telling all users to consider themselves compromised if they didn’t install a security patch within seven hours of its release on October 15th.
Fixing the infected sites will require a bit of work. Sites will need to be taken offline, and the current install of Drupal blown-up and replaced with a backup from before October 15th. Any changes made made to a site since that date will have to be redone. Site owners will also need to notify their hosting companies of the situation, since the Drupal exploit could also be used to hack into other sites on a host’s server. Hosts will not be happy to hear this.
Users of other CMS platforms can give a sigh of relief — after all, they’ve dodged a bullet — but they’d be well advised to pay attention; a similar scenario could play out on any platform at any time.
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
It’s all over for Hello World’s fundraising campaign on Indiegogo — and what a success it was.
You may remember that the project, which makes short educational videos on Linux and other tech subjects, began a crowdsourcing campaign on September 10th, hoping to raise $2,048 needed to purchase new equipment. On October 9th we reported that the project had exceeded its goal, with a total at that time of $3,145. The campaign ended nine days ago, on October 20th, with the total raised at $3,705 or 181 percent of the target.
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
There was absolutely nothing wrong with this year’s All Things Open conference. There were a few glitches, as might be expected, but not enough to matter. Was it perfect? Probably not. Perfection at a conference would probably be pretty boring — and boring would be a fault keeping it from being perfect, if you’ll excuse a little circular logic. Let’s just say say that ATO was more than good enough — and then a lot more.
But now it’s over, one for the record books, as they say, leaving behind memories and anticipation for 2015.
I saw this last year at ATO, which is about the only opportunity I have to rub elbows with big tech. This year, I no longer raised an eyebrow when I saw good things going on and positive energy being generated by the development teams at companies with worrisome business practices. I figure this is a good thing. The suits need to be surrounded by FOSS folks. Maybe a little of that “share and share alike” philosophy will rub off.
Take Facebook, for example. There’s more going on with the social giant besides Zuckerberg and his friends being busy turning data mining into profits.
It seems that the company is committed to open sourcing practically everything it creates, from hardware to software. I knew about the company’s open sourcing of green hardware through the Open Compute Project, but I’d assumed the company was like many other firms, given its track record on privacy issues — happy to build infrastructures on open source and give nothing back.
Not true, according to Pearce.
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
Walking through the noisy between sessions crowd, I asked Charley Rich (not the dead country singer, he assured me) if he’d been at All Things Open last year. He hadn’t. Rich had rented a booth at the conference and had come down from Long Island to unveil his new SaaS product, jKool. We were looking for a reasonably quiet place where we could sit for an interview.
I pointed out that ATO was only in its second year. “Last year it was really good,” I said. “This year is even better.”
I’d been saying that all day, since about an hour or so after I arrived for day one of ATO’s second go. I’m not being paid to shill for the event or anything like that — I’m just truly impressed.
Of course, some may think that I impress much too easily.
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
I spent the summer of ’67, the Summer of Love, in Raleigh, North Carolina. Although the hippie thing hadn’t yet made it there, the city was still cool and somewhat hip, even though at first glance it appeared to be little more than just another sleepy southern capital, flush with tobacco money and not quite sure about the end of state-sanctioned segregation, which was just getting underway. Nearly fifty years later, Raleigh still has cool cred, although time has changed it greatly.
Last year I returned to Raleigh for pretty much the first time since the sixties to attend All Things Open (ATO) and saw hardly any evidence of the city I’d known nearly a half century ago. That was okay — time marches on. What I saw was vibrant and moderately hip, in a nerdy, geeky sort of way. I was conferencing, so I expected to see the city’s geek side — which I did in spades. So much so that I began to get the idea that Raleigh had morphed into something of an open source Silicon Valley.
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
It should come as little surprise to most that Reglue is just about our favorite nonprofit Linux project. This would be true even if the organization’s founder and executive director wasn’t also our own fun-to-read columnist, Ken Starks. After all, what’s not to like about an organization that collects old, worn Windows boxes, fixes them up until they’re practically new again, and finds them homes with school kids who otherwise wouldn’t have a computer? Along the way, those Windows machines become Linux machines, which helps break the vendor lock-in which Redmond tries to create in the minds of American school children.
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
Monday’s article on easy Netflix coming at last to Linux garnered a few polite responses, taking me to task for my enthusiasm for a “non-free” solution. The problems are that Netflix uses DRM and that currently its use on GNU/Linux requires the use of the proprietary Chrome browser. One commenter even questioned FOSS Force’s commitment to software freedom with the remark: “Your logo “Keeping Tech Free” I take it that means free beer and not freedom.”
Nope. I’m an advocate of free “as in speech” software — which includes the freedom to choose. If there’s a FOSS solution for something I need or want to do, I’ll take that every time, and encourage my friends to do so as well. However, if there’s something I need or want to do with no FOSS solution available, I might use a proprietary solution, depending on the depth of my need or want and on how draconian the terms of the proprietary EULA.
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