July 14, 2025
Keeping tech free
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.”
I was planning to have an easy Tuesday, but then I got wrapped up in Reddit. But not just any Reddit topic — this one was special; as many of them are, of course, but let’s just put that aside for a second.
Reddit had a topic in r/Linux entitled “Should I /make/ my kid use Linux?” And because I have, um, a “history” with this topic (e.g., I have a child and she does use Linux and free/open source software, as reported by the San Jose Mercury News), I am going to go out on a limb and say the following:
Encourage your kid, by all means necessary, to use Linux? Absolutely, because he or she will want to use it from the start.
The Reddit topic is worth a read. If you haven’t done so already, go there now. There are a lot of good posts, but my favorite is from someone with the handle Robsteady, who says, “TL;DR Don’t MAKE them use it, just set them up so they grow accustomed to that being what gets used. Raise them in it instead of trying to change them to it eventually.”
There are pivotal times in our collective and personal histories when we remember exactly where we were. Those moments do not fade through the years, ever. For me, that first memory was President of the United States John Kennedy being assassinated. I wasn’t old enough to understand the weight or importance placed upon the event, but I knew, based on the reactions around me, something terrible and far-reaching had happened. Something terribly profound. Parents were called to come get their children. School would resume in three days.
And then, there I was, standing in my pajamas at 10:30 p.m., staring at the screen of our first color television set. My mom made us stay up late to watch “the most important event in history,” according to her. Neil Armstrong was about to set the first human footprint on the moon. Although later I thought the real important event was David Scott taking the coolest dune buggy ride ever during Apollo 15. Of lesser impact to most might be the Kent State massacre, Woodstock and the death of John Lennon.
Admin, News, Operating Systems and Security
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.
It inspires awe how quickly Friday comes along — one minute I’m talking stories for publication with my colleagues Ken Starks and Christine Hall, and the next thing I know, deadlines are poking me in the shoulder and saying, “Well…?”
So while I am reminded by my astute daughter that pirates, too, would also prefer to program in C because, well, that’s where they sail (thank you, Mimi), let’s take a look at the week in FOSS.
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.
One of the several privileges of fatherhood — maybe it’s a duty, I’ll have to check — is that you have opportunities to torture your children with bad jokes. I am proud to say I have not failed in my parental role in that endeavor — ask my daughter — and whenever the letter R comes up, it is usually quick to be followed by a pirate reference. The R programming language, which runs on a variety of platforms and architectures, is no exception.
R (of course, you have to extend it out, like “Arrrrrrrrrrrr” or it won’t make sense).
These are the ten most read articles on FOSS Force for the month of June, 2015.
1. SourceForge Not Making A Graceful Exit by Christine Hall. Published June 11, 2015. We look at why many well known FOSS projects are fleeing a once popular code repository, and what this means for its future.
2. A Look at Mageia 5’s Magic by Christine Hall. Published June 22, 2015. A first look at Mageia latest and greatest release, and putting this release in historical context.
I recently offered some security tips aimed at new system administrators. And hey, the home users among you should take note, after all, you’re the administrator of your home system! One of the tips was “Don’t run as root.” Today I would like to expand on that a bit. First, we’ll take a look at why you should limit the use of your super powers. Then we’ll look at the best ways to use su and sudo to help you limit your risks.
