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FOSS Force

Lumpis Linux: A Windows User’s Dream if I Ever Did See One

I’ve been friends with Nicholas Knight for 33 years. We met at Fort Lewis, Washington where we were both stationed. Even back then Nick was involved with computers, helping set up and administer the new computer system the US Army was adopting for their personnel centers. Me, being a dumb ol’ combat engineer…well, I didn’t breathe the rarefied air that Nick did.

After the army, we visited each other from time to time. Our families even took a cruise together in 1999. Nick was working for AOL, tending their servers and watching the dot com bubble turn billionaires into millionaires and millionaires into working class stiffs. Fortunately, Nick hung on and came out of it relatively unscathed.

2013 — That Was the Year That Was

Now that the celebrating is out of the way, I thought it might be time to take a look at some of the stories we covered on FOSS Force this year.

1. The NSA. The biggest story to come down the wire this year undoubtedly had to do with Edward Snowden’s revelations about the National Security Agency’s bag of dirty tricks. Even those of us who have long understood that the Internet isn’t necessarily a place to expect privacy were surprised at how deeply the NSA has managed to reach into the Internet. Odds are, if you’ve been using social networks, everything you’ve posted is now on file with the NSA. What’s worse, every email you’ve sent probably has a copy resting on a NSA server somewhere.

Linux Predictions for 2014? Let’s Talk Direction…

2014 crystal ballThe last time I looked into my crystal ball, it told me to proceed with extreme caution if I invested in Google. Their business model was shaky at best. Needless to say, said crystal ball and I have parted company.

And yeah, I’m lousy at predictions. Sure, I could pick the “safe” things for 2014…

  1. Linux Torvalds will piss off a major tech company.
  2. Many will joke that 2014 will finally be “The Year Of Linux.”
  3. Apple will claim that Samsung infringed on their patent to patent patents.

So instead of predicting what might happen in 2014 within the Linuxsphere, let’s talk about what needs to happen and why.

Is Rockstar Android’s SCO?

Am I the only one who’s been having a bit of SCO déjà vu when it comes to Rockstar’s suit against Google and a bevy of Android handset makers?

You remember SCO, don’t you? They’re the company, once a major Linux player with the Caldera distro, that bought the rights to Unix then turned around and sued IBM for $1 billion, claiming that Big Blue had been copying Unix code into Linux. They’re also the company that sued two of their former clients, AutoZone and Daimler Chrysler, for moving to Linux. Trouble was, they had nothing, not even the copyrights to the code they claimed had been infringed.

SCO logoThere’s plenty about Rockstar vs Everybody Android to remind me of the SCO fiasco. Enough so to make me wish we still had PJ and Groklaw to take care of the play-by-play. Last week, Google returned fire. Wouldn’t it be nice to have PJ’s take on this?

Google Fires Back, Alan Turing Pardoned & More…

FOSS Week in Review

Just because Christmas week is supposed to be a slow news week doesn’t mean it’s a no news week…

Good news, bad news on the phishing front

First the good news. According to security company Websense, the amount of phishing attempts we’re finding in our email dropped remarkably this year, from 1.12% of all email volume down to 0.5%. Now, the bad news. The folks doing the phishing are getting better at targeting their attempts, so they don’t need to send as many emails to hook their prey.

The Ten Most Read Stories on FOSS Force in 2013

What were the ten best stories we published on FOSS Force this year? Well, that would depend on a lot of things, wouldn’t it, such as who’s asking? We could tell you what we think our ten best stories were this year, but we’ll hold that until next week. Today we’re going to look at the ten stories that got the most reads on our site this year.

A Very Linux Christmas

Since 2005, with the exception of last year, I have “worked” every Christmas day. I accentuate “worked” because I am lucky enough to have a job that feels more like a hobby than it does labor. I give computers to kids who cannot afford them. What’s not to like? I plan to work some of Christmas morning this year too.

This year is a special though.

Why?

Because I wasn’t supposed to be here. In fact, I wasn’t to be anywhere. Not in one piece anyway.

I was supposed to be dead.

Target Breach Illustrates Internet Weakness

In October, 2000, when Microsoft was presumably working on what would become XP, they were hacked. Somebody broke into their systems and managed to at least look at source code for Windows and Office. The folks in Redmond dutifully called in the FBI, examined their code and found it hadn’t been compromised. Or so they said.

“It is clear that hackers did see some of our source code,” Ballmer announced to a group of reporters and programmers at a seminar he was attending in Stockholm. “I can assure you that we know that there has been no compromise of the integrity of the source code, that it has not been modified or tampered with in any way.”

Target POS
The point of sale locations at Target stores — ground zero for the latest data breach.
At the time, this was disturbing, more so than if it were it to happen today. It was also an eye opener.

New Temp Patent Head, Amnesty for Snowden & More…

FOSS Week in Review

Credit card breach at Target affects over 40 million

Merry Christmas. Your bank account has been drained.

This week’s holiday cheer was marred for millions as they learned that their banking information might be in the hands of hackers.

Target has announced that over 40 million customer credit card transactions have been hijacked since Black Friday. The data was stolen from transactions at the retailer’s brick and mortar stores. Online transactions are evidently not affected. All information contained in a credit card’s magnetic stripe has been compromised, enough information to make counterfeit cards.

The story was originally made public on Wednesday by security expert Brian Krebs on his site KrebsonSecurity. This afternoon, Krebs wrote in an update that information pilfered from Target was making its way to the black market.

A Few Grains of Sand in the FOSS Bucket

Last week, we talked about just how important even your smallest contribution to FOSS might be. It doesn’t matter whether you occasionally spend time in forums helping others or if you submit code for review into the kernel. Everything you do goes into the sand pail. Eventually, everything you do filters down to the place it’s needed most: the everyday computer user.

This could be my sister, your cousin or the guy who bags your groceries at the supermarket…even your doctor. Your contribution benefits tens of thousands of people you will never know, people who will never know you even exist. Thus the beauty of what we do. “We” as in you and I.

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