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Eolas Doesn’t Own Internet, Ubuntu Hacked & More…

FOSS Week in Review

Ubuntu Edge–computing on the go-go

Probably the biggest news in all of tech this week, not just the FOSS world, came with Canonical’s announcement on Monday of the Ubuntu Edge. In case you’ve been away camping somewhere all week, the Edge is a hybrid device that can function both as a high end smartphone, running either Android or Ubuntu Touch, or it can be hooked up to a monitor, keyboard and mouse to work as a conventional PC running Ubuntu Linux.

That news alone would be dumbfounding enough, but as the pitchman on TV always says, “Wait! There’s more…”

Linus Torvalds Shoutback, ‘The H’ Closes & More…

FOSS Week in Review

Here we go with yet another “better late then never” edition of our Week in Review…

Jolla smartphones to utilize Wayland

You might remember Jolla, the Finnish company started by a group of laid-off Nokia employees. Back in May, we reported on their plans to release a new phone to be sold online that would run their own MeeGo fork called Sailfish OS.

NSA/PRISM Mess–Yahoo Wins & Microsoft Loses

I’m beginning to rethink Yahoo, just as I reappraised my feelings on the old Novel after they went to bat against SCO for the benefit of IBM and Linux.

On Monday, the Sunnyvale, California company pulled a honest-to-goodness rabbit out of the hat when they managed to persuade a FISA court to order the Obama administration to declassify as much as possible of a 2008 court decision justifying Prism before releasing it to the public.

Yahoo’s victory came one day before Microsoft went into damage control mode by denying allegations revealed by the publication last Thursday of documents leaked to the Guardian newspaper and website.

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

Microsoft Reorganizes, Big Brother in Iran & More…

FOSS Week in Review–Part 2

Now that we got last week out of the way, let’s look at what happened this week–or at least news that came to our attention this week…

You can now actually own digital comics

Digital rights and anti-DRM activists should be a little happy to learn that a major player in the comics’ world has decided to make actual ownership of its comics possible.

IRS Targets Open Source, Android Outprices iPhone & More…

FOSS Week in Review–Part 1

We’re making up for lost time. We took last week off to celebrate the Fourth (any excuse for a party), so this week you get more bang for your buck. To paraphrase the Doublemint Twins, you get two, two, two weeks in one!

Windows 8 now used by more people than Vista

Something tells us this is a milestone Steve Ballmer wishes we’d keep quiet about, but last week we learned from CNET that Windows 8 is now on more computers than Vista. It took eight months, but as of June, the installed base of Redmond’s latest has now passed that of Vista, probably the least popular operating system in Microsoft’s history.

Windows 8 AWOL at Dell

In the last couple of weeks I’ve received two advertising flyers from the folks at Dell. As usual, both were pretty flashy print jobs featuring high quality color photography on slick paper. One of the brochures was aimed at business customers, the other at consumers.

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

RMS Inducted, Nook Tablet RIP & More…

Friday FOSS Week in Review

Texas stands up for email rights

Texas? Did you really say Texas? The state that leads the world in the number of executions–that Texas? Well, la-di-da, who would’ve ever thought the folks down there in the Lone Star State would be the first to stand up and protect our inboxes? Does this mean that the spirits of Ann Richards and Maury Maverick, Jr. are looking over the Texas legislators?

Army Blocks Access to The Guardian

According to a story posted by Phillip Molnar at the Monterey County Herald, the U.S. Army is blocking access to parts of The Guardian, the UK based news website which broke the story about the NSA’s surreptitious data collection programs. When the Herald’s story was first posted last night, it was unknown how widespread the outage was or who was behind it, only that employees at the Presidio of Monterey, California were unable to connect with certain pages of the UK website:

Microsoft Nemesis Dies, SCO Lives & More…

Friday FOSS Week in Review

We may be paranoid but they are out to get us

In week three (or is it week four?) of the Spy vs. Spy scandal, the Obama folks keep saying things like “what’s the big deal?” while trying to convince us that the secret oversight court called FISA (we prefer “the Star Chamber”) has nothing but our constitutional rights in mind when it rubber stamps requests to secretly steal our privacy. Obama likes to talk about transparency. Indeed, he becomes more transparent by the moment; we’re beginning to see right through him. The 22nd amendment should now be seen as a face saver for Mr. Obama–as we would think no self respecting liberal or progressive would vote again for this man who once represented our best hope. Pity.

Windows Blue Blues, Symantec’s Kernel Confusion & More…

Friday FOSS Week in Review

Looking at life through the prism of the NSA

We thought last week was the week for leaked government secrets on government spying. Nope. Last week was just the tip of the iceberg coming over the horizon, with the helmsman going into full reverse attempting to avoid a collision. This week the slow motion ship of state made contact with the iceberg. Damage assessment is being done now as we write these words.

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