Press "Enter" to skip to content

FOSS Force

Content Thieves Are on the Prowl

By Christine Hall on August 27, 2011 |

Internet, Media, News and Site News

This morning I found a rather weird pingback on this site. Weird because although the pingback appeared in the comments to the article I’d written about Steve Jobs resignation from Apple, it was a pingback to yesterday’s Friday FOSS Week in Review article. Being the curious sort, I clicked on the link and was taken to a site called TheoryReport, where I indeed found my Friday FOSS Week in Review article.

The article was posted in it’s entirety, but with two small differences. First, Joe Lovrek is listed as the author of the post, with no mention anywhere that the post was copied from FOSS Force or that it was written by me. Also, seemingly random words are inserted into the post, in an obvious attempt at keyword spamming for the “benefit” of search engines. The page contains Google Adwords, so the idea is evidently to garner some free clicks without having to work at actually creating content.

Continue readingContent Thieves Are on the Prowl

Happy Birthday Tux, Android Number One in Malware & Kubrick to the Rescue

By Christine Hall on August 26, 2011 |

Business, Mobile, News, Patents and Security

Friday FOSS Week in Review

I’m back from vacation and raring to go. Of course, when I decided to take time off, all heck broke out in the tech world – isn’t that the way it always goes. Now that I’m back, things will probably slow down and I’ll find myself begging for things to write about. Of course, the biggest story this week has little direct connection with FOSS, but has to do with Apple…

Steve Jobs Resigns as Apple’s CEO

By now, I assume everyone’s heard the news about Steve Jobs’ resignation as CEO of Apple, presumably due to health reasons. For the time being he’ll be staying on as board chairman and will continue in some undefined role as an “employee.” He’ll be replaced as CEO by chief operating officer Tim Cook, who’s worked closely with Jobs for thirteen years. By all accounts Cook is capable and is credited with solving the company’s supply problems early in his tenure at Apple. To my thinking, it’s much too soon to tell how Jobs departure will affect Apple, though it’s certain his absence will be felt.

Continue readingHappy Birthday Tux, Android Number One in Malware & Kubrick to the Rescue

Top 10 Announcements to Expect from HP CEO Leo Apotheker

By FOSS Force on August 25, 2011 |

Business and Humor

It’s Thursday – time for another Top 10 list.

When we came up with the idea for this weekly tongue-in-cheek look at the tech world, we were afraid we’d have trouble keeping to topical subjects. Well, that hasn’t been a problem this week, as the movers and shakers of the tech world have given us enough ammunition to keep the Top 10 list going for months to come. However, one incident seemed to be particularly appropriate for us to put in the sites of our humor guns, and that was HP CEO Leo Apotheker’s wacky announcement last week that he was throwing out the baby with the wash to rebuild HP in IBM’s image, acting under the old adage that the best way to separate yourself from the crowd is to be like someone else.

This move was so brazenly weird that we decided we’re going to hear even more wild and crazy announcements from HP in the near future, so we put our brains into overtime figuring out what we might expect. Here it is, the top 10 announcements to expect from HP CEO Leo Apotheker…

  1. “Now that we’re getting out of the consumer computer business, we’re going to be offering our remaining stock of desktops for $99 at Best Buy.”
  2. “We’re now pursuing licensing WebOS to be used to power kitchen timers.”
  3. “HP is aggressively seeking more companies to purchase for too much money and then shut down without monetizing their assets in any way.”
  4. “HP will be suing Red Hat, SUSE and Ubuntu because we just discovered WebOS code in the Linux kernel.”
  5. Holy cow! I was just informed that we’re the largest vendor of PCs in the world. I had no idea. If I’d known, I’d never would’ve abandoned our computer line. What was I thinking?”
Continue readingTop 10 Announcements to Expect from HP CEO Leo Apotheker

Apple’s Jobsless Future

By Christine Hall on August 24, 2011 |

Business, Mobile and News

As a FOSS supporter, I’ve often found myself POd by actions taken by Steve Jobs, especially in recent months as he’s pulled out his patent portfolio and declared war on Android. However, I’ve never viewed his actions through the same lens I’ve used to see the anti-FOSS moves made by the likes of Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer or Larry Ellison. Indeed, I’ve always viewed Jobs as something of a kindred spirit and have understood that his commitment to protecting Apple has been brought about because he knows what it’s like to be ripped off by the likes of Microsoft. It’s happened to him in the past and he’ll be damned if he’s going to let it happen to him again. I like Jobs. I admire him. But he still pisses me off sometimes.

I also have a love/hate relationship with Apple, the company he founded and the company he rescued from oblivion with his return to the helm in 1996. Under Jobs guidance, the company has risen to the top of U.S. corporate culture not by bullying but by honest and shrewd marketing and by offering products that represent quality and value. But now Jobs is gone as CEO, and the world wonders if Apple can continue to innovate and grow without his vision.

Continue readingApple’s Jobsless Future

HP Says Farewell to WebOS, Tablets & PCs

By Christine Hall on August 18, 2011 |

Business, Distros, Mobile and News

In a somewhat surprising move, HP has announced they are dropping all devices running WebOS. The announcement came in a terse two sentences included in a press release issued today on Business Wire:

“In addition, HP reported that it plans to announce that it will discontinue operations for webOS devices, specifically the TouchPad and webOS phones. HP will continue to explore options to optimize the value of webOS software going forward.”

This announcement caught many off guard. The PR folks at HP have been busy extolling the virtues of the mobile operating system, which became their property when they acquired Palm last year for about $1.2 billion. In the April, 2010 press release that announced the Palm acquisition, a HP executive vice president saw a great future for HP and WebOS:

Continue readingHP Says Farewell to WebOS, Tablets & PCs

Top 10 Things to Call a Linux Distro from Microsoft

By FOSS Force on August 18, 2011 |

Distros and Humor

Gosh, how the time flies when you’re having fun! Here it is, Thursday again, time for another Top Ten list. By now, we fully expected that we’d have heard from David Letterman or his lawyers about this, but we’re beginning to suspect he doesn’t even know we’re here. Just in case, however, we’re keeping all of our legal answers ready.

This week, we wondering what we’d call a Linux distro from Microsoft…

  1. Seattle’s Best.
  2. Breakable Linux.
  3. The best thing Microsoft ever came up with.
  4. Open Windows.
  5. Something that will never happen.
Continue readingTop 10 Things to Call a Linux Distro from Microsoft

Will Android Be Crushed for GPL Violations?

By Christine Hall on August 16, 2011 |

Business and Mobile

Yesterday, the blogosphere was abuzz that Google and Android vendors could find themselves in hot water over violation of the GPL. This mainly stems from Google’s decision back in April to not make source code for Android readily available, a decision that affected not only those parts of the OS covered under the “permissive” Apache License, but also the Linux kernel which is covered under the GPLv2, which clearly specifies that source code must be made available at the time of distribution.

When I first wrote on this story on April 5th, I expected that pressure would be put on Google and that Android would quickly be brought back into compliance with the GPL. That hasn’t happened. Pressure might have been placed on Google, I don’t know, but if so it’s done no good. Four months have passed and Android still isn’t compliant. Thankfully, it seems that era is now over, and the organizations that enforce the GPL are going to have to go after Google and all Android vendors for these violations.

Continue readingWill Android Be Crushed for GPL Violations?

Top 10 Things Linux Users Don’t Understand

By FOSS Force on August 11, 2011 |

Humor

Uh-oh, it’s Thursday and time for another Top 10 list. We still haven’t heard from Mr. Letterman’s lawyers, which means so far, so good.

A few weeks back when we did our list on the Top 10 Reasons to Switch to Windows, we were taken to task by a commenter for being too hard on the Microsofties. Well, as Three Dog Night said a long, long time ago, when it comes to Redmond, we find it “easy to be hard.” Anyway, this week, we’re taking that commenter’s advice and, in the interest of equal time, we’re going after our own kind, Penguinistas.

So, here it is, just to prove that we don’t always pick on Windows, ten things that Linux users don’t understand.

  1. “This program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down.”
  2. Blake Stowell.
  3. Office suite upgrade for $149 plus.
  4. The registry.
  5. Antivirus software.
Continue readingTop 10 Things Linux Users Don’t Understand

Congress Considers Stepping on Rights, Windows Mobile Share Nil & Whose DNA Is It Anyway?

By Christine Hall on August 5, 2011 |

Browsers, Business, Distros, Internet, Mobile, News, Patents, Politics, Security and Software

Friday FOSS Week in Review

With the Black Hat Conference going on in Las Vegas, and with Congress messing around where they shouldn’t, this has been a busy week in the FOSS world. Some of the news is good; some of the news is not so good. I’ll start with a rant…

Proposed Data Retention Bill Would Chill Free Speech

The House will soon be considering a bill that will require ISP’s to maintain logs of their customers Internet use for a 12 month period. As I understand it, the law would include a customer’s browsing history, credit card numbers, etc. The stated purpose of the proposed law is to catch pedophiles visiting child porn sites, but everybody who knows anything about the Internet agrees it won’t be very effective at doing that. What it will do, if enacted, is bring Orwell’s “Big Brother” vision a little closer to home and make your network connected devices look even more like telescreens than they do now.

Continue readingCongress Considers Stepping on Rights, Windows Mobile Share Nil & Whose DNA Is It Anyway?

Top 10 Reasons Why Larry Ellison Dislikes Red Hat

By FOSS Force on August 4, 2011 |

Business and Humor

It’s Thursday, and you know what that means… Time to cover your kids’ eyes and ears – heck, time to keep them away from any online device altogether – because it’s Top 10 day. We still haven’t heard anything from David Letterman’s lawyers, so we figure he’s cool with us stealing his IP. If he sends us one of those “cease and desist” notices, we’ll just claim that the rights to the Top 10 list were given to us by NBC, who said he abandoned them when he bolted to CBS. Anyway, we’ve discovered that the list is a teeny bit funnier if you read it aloud, pretending you’re Mr. Letterman, right Paul?

  1. “JBoss, ha! iBoss, and don’t you forget it!”
  2. “They never offer me a ticket to a Wolfpack game.”
  3. “Redmond/Red Hat… I don’t know, there’s something going on there, don’t you think?”
  4. “Whoever heard of a tech giant located in North Carolina? Shouldn’t they be rolling cigarettes or something?”
  5. “Wadaya mean they don’t trust our patches?”
Continue readingTop 10 Reasons Why Larry Ellison Dislikes Red Hat

osCommerce Under Attack – So Far 3.79 Million Pages Affected

By Christine Hall on August 1, 2011 |

Internet, News, Security and Web Apps

The popular osCommerce ecommerce application has been under attack at least since last week, according to web application security firm Amorize. At last count the attack has affected more than three million pages. The attack, in the form of an iFrame injection, utilizes several vulnerabilities in older versions of osCommerce. The latest version doesn’t seem to be affected. Any business using an older version of osCommerce is advised to upgrade immediately.

The Zen Cart ecommerce application, which was initially a value added fork of osCommerce, doesn’t seem to be affected. Kim Elliott, one of the founding members of Zen Cart, told me, “As far as I know there hasn’t been a problem. As long as you have our latest version and file permissions set correctly you shouldn’t have any issues.”

Continue readingosCommerce Under Attack – So Far 3.79 Million Pages Affected
Latest Articles