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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

eBay Hacked – Will Ask Users to Change Passwords

By Christine Hall on May 21, 2014 |

Internet, News and Security

eBay announced this morning that they’ve been hacked and that “encrypted passwords and other non-financial data” have been compromised. They’re expected to begin notifying their customer base later today, which will include a suggestion for users to change their passwords. The company says that PayPal, an eBay subsidiary, uses its own servers and was not affected by the attack.

According to CNET, the first public news of the compromise came by way of a cryptic blog posting by PayPal:

Continue readingeBay Hacked – Will Ask Users to Change Passwords

Poll: You Mainly Use Desktops & Laptops

By Christine Hall on March 27, 2014 |

Hardware and Polls

Desktop wins pollIt’s hard to remember that it wasn’t that long ago that we only had a couple of choices to meet our computing needs. As recently as 2007, the year before Obama was elected, someone looking for a new computer basically could choose between a desktop or a laptop. In mobile, Research In Motion offered the Blackberry, which candidate Obama was famous for using — and still uses.

2007 was the year things began to change. In June of that year, Apple introduced the iPhone and in October Asus released the Eee PC, the first netbook of the modern era. When in October of the following year HTC released the Dream, the first handset running Android, it became obvious that consumer computing space had been forever changed. Less than two years later Apple released the iPad which was quickly followed by tablets running Android.

The introduction of the modern generation of tablets, which were highly capable and easy to use, had an immediate effect on sales of traditional desktops and laptops, leading some tech writers to proclaim that the age of the desktop was over and that desktop computers were on their way out. This wasn’t true, of course. We were just experiencing what the Wall Street types call a “market correction.”

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

FOSSForce.com
Continue readingPoll: You Mainly Use Desktops & Laptops

What a Layperson Can Gain From an Enterprise Open Source Conference

By Christine Hall on March 26, 2014 |

Business, Media and Software

Here at FOSS Force we’re very proud to be an official media partner for the Great Wide Open conference that’ll be held in Atlanta next week. Because this is an enterprise conference, I don’t think I need to explain to those who work in IT the benefits of attending such an event. However, those of you who are primarily home users may think there’s nothing for you at a conference focused on professionals.

This isn’t true.

Any open source user, whether a professional or not, will benefit from attending an enterprise conference. Remember, the user is considered just as important to any open source project as those who develop and distribute the product. In other words, an enterprise conference is just as much about the user as the developer — even if the user is never likely to call Red Hat on the phone to order service contracts for the RHEL stack on a hundred servers.

Here are just a few reasons for a living room Linux user to attend an enterprise conference such as Great Wide Open:

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

FOSSForce.com
Continue readingWhat a Layperson Can Gain From an Enterprise Open Source Conference
How Much Do You Pay Your ISP?ISP Internet map

How Much Do You Pay Your ISP?

By Christine Hall on March 20, 2014 |

Internet

On Monday Ken Starks published an article on Internet access in his neck of the woods, which is outside the Austin city limits. That got me wondering how much most of you spend each month to have the ability to read articles on FOSS Force, watch the latest episodes of your favorite TV shows and check in with your friends on your favorite social network.

Here at FOSS Force we pay $35 monthly for a 4Mbs DSL connection with our local telephone company. Believe it or not, that serves us just fine. I suspect this is because we’re only about the third subscriber from the nearest switching station and we’re probably getting much higher speeds than advertised. All I know is that we can watch multiple movies and videos on multiple machines just fine, with no jerks or freezes. We certainly have more than enough speed for our normal work around here, which mainly consists of writing articles and posting them to the web, reading and sending email and spending way too much time avoiding work by playing on Facebook.

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

FOSSForce.com
Continue readingHow Much Do You Pay Your ISP?
Is Your City Open Source?Jason Hibbets

Is Your City Open Source?

By Christine Hall on March 19, 2014 |

Internet and Politics

There is more to open source than software, hardware and the Creative Commons. Open source can also be seen as a guide for living life that is based on principles that go back to antiquity. Openness and sharing aren’t only for computers, electronics and creative writing.

Jason Hibbets is working to convince local governments to adapt open source ideas in their day to day operations. His book, “The Foundation for an Open Source City,” attempts to be a step by step guide for implementing open source ideas into government policies and solutions, based on his own experiences. He uses Raleigh, North Carolina, where he resides, as his example. He calls it the worlds first open source city. In a way, the small southern capital is his laboratory.

Jason Hibbets
Jason Hibbets, Director of OpenSource.com
He works as a project manager for Red Hat, where he’s currently in charge of the community website OpenSource.com. His work to bring open source ideas to Raleigh’s city hall is something he does on his own time as a private citizen. These days he spends a lot of time travelling to conferences, spreading the word about how people can engage their governments through the use of open source ideas.

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

FOSSForce.com
Continue readingIs Your City Open Source?
What Operating Systems Do You Use?Linux's Tux

What Operating Systems Do You Use?

By Christine Hall on March 13, 2014 |

Operating Systems

There was a time, back before smartphones and tablets, when most of us used, at most, only three operating systems. Indeed, for the average computer user there was only one operating system that mattered and that was Windows, which held a 95% market share. Even those of us who used Linux or Apple at home usually had to use a Windows computer at work–which remains true today.

However, today’s computer users daily come into contact with many other operating systems than merely Linux, OS X and Windows. Smartphone and tablet users boot into Android and iOS, with some even using the more open Firefox OS and Sailfish OS. To traditional consumer computers we can now add Chrome OS for those who don’t mind doing most of their work in the cloud.

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

FOSSForce.com
Continue readingWhat Operating Systems Do You Use?

SCO & NSA: The Great Digital Whack-A-Mole Game

By Christine Hall on March 12, 2014 |

Internet and Politics

Other than PJ, there’s not a character from the SCO saga that I would like to meet face to face.

Not Blake Stowell, even though he knows what went down behind closed doors at SCO and is the most likely candidate to tell what really went on inside the company. In those days he was SCO’s Director of Corporate Communications, the person who had to put a palatable spin on his boss’s actions. These days he’s working as PR Director for Omniture, a data mining company with questionable practices that’s owned by Adobe. Before his tenure at SCO he spent time working for Novell (no surprise) and Microsoft.

I especially have no interest in meeting SCO’s old CEO Darl McBride, the thug who now spends his time being President and CEO of Me, Inc., a renaming of SCO Mobility which he purchased for $100,000 in 2010.

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

FOSSForce.com
Continue readingSCO & NSA: The Great Digital Whack-A-Mole Game
Breaking Microsoft’s Chains by Moving to LibreOfficeItalo Vignol with LibreOffice

Breaking Microsoft’s Chains by Moving to LibreOffice

By Christine Hall on March 11, 2014 |

Business and Software

Sometimes it’s necessary to let go of the past, even if that’s somewhat painful.

Anyone still using MS Office should consider the advantages of moving to LibreOffice. For most single computer users, the move can be made with ease. When multiple computers and users are involved, as would be the case with most businesses, migration must be handled with care. However, any effort in this direction would quickly pay for itself in reduced licensing fees to Microsoft.

Italo Vignol with LibreOffice
Italo Vignol, board member at The Document Foundation
There are other reasons besides saving money to move to LibreOffice. For one, since the program is platform independent, its use will make easier a later migration to another operating system, such as Linux, should that ever be wanted or needed. Also, LibreOffice defaults to the open standard Open Document Format or ODF, meaning that once this move is made, data once held hostage by Microsoft can be easily opened and edited on just about any office productivity suite. And because LibreOffice is quite handy at opening and saving files using Microsoft’s proprietary format, that function will remain available for those few incidences when it’s needed.

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

FOSSForce.com
Continue readingBreaking Microsoft’s Chains by Moving to LibreOffice