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

By FOSS Force on July 26, 2013 |

Business, Distros, Hardware, Internet, Mobile, News, Patents and Politics

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

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…”

Continue readingEolas Doesn’t Own Internet, Ubuntu Hacked & More…
NSA Exposes Cloud Computing’s WeaknessCloud Computing

NSA Exposes Cloud Computing’s Weakness

By Christine Hall on July 24, 2013 |

Business, Internet and Security

Cloud computing was always a bad idea.

Not totally bad, mind you. It has its place. I use Google Docs/Drive or whatever they’re calling it this week sometimes so I can work on articles on the computer at my day job without leaving a mess behind on the bosses hard drive. But mostly cloud computing has always been a bad idea.

Ask Richard Stallman; he’ll tell you. Or ask me.

Continue readingNSA Exposes Cloud Computing’s Weakness
Your Obligation to Online Advertisers

Your Obligation to Online Advertisers

By Christine Hall on July 23, 2013 |

Browsers, Business, Internet and Media

The IAB wants you to know that if you don’t let online advertisers follow you around when you’re surfing, then you’re scum, a criminal and probably a traitor to your country. At least, that would seem to be the thick of it from reading their latest in a series of diatribes against Mozilla published last Tuesday on their website under the heading “Has Mozilla Lost Its Values?”.

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

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

By FOSS Force on July 22, 2013 |

Hardware, Media, Mobile and News

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.

Continue readingLinus Torvalds Shoutback, ‘The H’ Closes & More…
Debian Tops Our Community Distro PollDebian community distro

Debian Tops Our Community Distro Poll

By FOSS Force on July 18, 2013 |

Distros and Polls

The results have been tallied and Debian got the most votes in our Community Distro Poll. We would call them the “winner,” but this wasn’t about winners and losers. It was about trying to reach a consensus on what we mean by the term “community distro.” We asked, “Which GNU/Linux distros do you consider to be legitimate community distros?” Choices weren’t limited to one; voters could choose as many as they wanted and even add more through a text box supplied by choosing “Other.”

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NSA/PRISM Mess–Yahoo Wins & Microsoft LosesYahoo

NSA/PRISM Mess–Yahoo Wins & Microsoft Loses

By Christine Hall on July 17, 2013 |

Internet, News and Security

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.

Continue readingNSA/PRISM Mess–Yahoo Wins & Microsoft Loses
Welcome to Microsoft Trustworthy ComputingMicrosoft German camput

Welcome to Microsoft Trustworthy Computing

By Christine Hall on July 16, 2013 |

Business, Internet, Politics and Security

It used to be you only had to worry about the accidental insecurities in Windows. Now Redmond’s giving away the keys to everything they sell. Microsoft is beginning to surprise even me and I thought I was beyond surprise.

I get it. I understand patriotism. I also understand legal obligation. The guys and gals in Redmond would want you to believe that their cooperation with the feds is based mostly on the later. Their story is they were forced to give access to their customer’s data by a loaded court order being held to their collective head.

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Microsoft Reorganizes, Big Brother in Iran & More…Richard Stallman and Julian Assange

Microsoft Reorganizes, Big Brother in Iran & More…

By FOSS Force on July 13, 2013 |

Business, Copyright, Internet, Media, News and Politics

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.

Continue readingMicrosoft Reorganizes, Big Brother in Iran & More…

IRS Targets Open Source, Android Outprices iPhone & More…

By FOSS Force on July 13, 2013 |

Hardware, Mobile and News

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.

Continue readingIRS Targets Open Source, Android Outprices iPhone & More…
CentOS Tops Our Web Server PollCentOS web server winner

CentOS Tops Our Web Server Poll

By FOSS Force on July 12, 2013 |

Distros, Internet and Polls

The polls are closed. The votes have been counted. CentOS hands down wins our Web Server OS poll.

About six weeks ago we offered-up a list of six GNU/Linux distros and asked which you’d choose for your web server if you were limited to the distros on that list. The list was composed of what we’ve found to be the most frequently offered Linux OS choices by web hosting companies for their virtual private server (VPS) or dedicated server customers. We offered each of the six in both their 32 bit and 64 bit implementations, which is also usually the case with web hosting companies.

CentOS web server winnerMissing from the list were two distros that are almost exclusively associated with server environments, Red Hat and SUSE Linux Enterprise. They were not included in our list because they’re rarely offered without additional cost by hosting companies because they’re not freely available to download and install.

Continue readingCentOS Tops Our Web Server Poll
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