July 17, 2025
Keeping tech free
The All Things Open conference is off and running!
If there was any doubt that Raleigh would be the perfect place to hold a major tech conference, an open source conference at that, those doubts are now laid to rest. In spite of a super large room, this morning’s keynote addresses, by Andy Hunt and Whurley, were presented to a standing room only crowd. The line lor lunch, provided free with admission, was…well, let’s just say something about the mouth of a gift horse, if you catch my drift.
Unlike you, I do not have this opportunity. Neither do many other office workers. That is because medium and large companies have their own policies about the software allowed to be used on their computers. More often than not, the choice of operating systems is Microsoft Windows, unfortunately. That can be because of some specific software required for business or because of management’s numbness. However, that’s not the point of this article.
The All Things Open conference is this Wednesday and Thursday and I’m looking forward to being there.
Although Raleigh, where the conference is happening, is only an hour and a half from my home, I haven’t been there since the mid-nineties. That would’ve been back when I was living and hanging-out in Chapel Hill, the southwestern point of the region called the Triangle which includes Raleigh and Durham as it’s other two points. Chapel Hill is an über cool blend of students from the University of North Carolina and old hippie-leftie types–perfect for an old devotee of Leary and Ram Dass like myself. Alas, as much as I’d like, I won’t have time nor money to visit my old stomping grounds. I’ll be in the area to work and get back home. No playing or partying will be on the agenda for this trip. Oh well…
Desktops, Internet, News, Social Networks and Software
Google wants to put your face on ads
We’ve always wanted to like Google. We want to believe them when they chant their informal motto, “Don’t be evil,” as if it were a mantra. We believe they have good intentions, just as we believe that Mark Zuckerberg is clueless when it comes to the privacy rights of Facebook’s users. We also believe it’s much too easy to convince oneself that wrong is right.
The latest news concerning Google puts Google+ in the same camp as Facebook when it comes to user privacy issues. Here at FOSS Force, we first heard about a change in Google’s privacy policy on Monday in an article posted by the BBC. It seems the search and advertising giant has modified its policy to allow it to soon pull endorsements from its user base for advertising purposes.
Sometimes the community can win. Hordes of people became upset when Facebook began playing hardball with Matt Kruse and the browser extension he develops. Called…
Debian begat Ubuntu who Begat Mint and Zorin who begat…
Sorry for going all biblical on you but you get the idea. At some point in the Linux world, most of us are beholden to code not written by us but still often changing it for the better.
But every now and then, you run into someone who is no longer happy with all the begitting, begotting and begatting.
You can be certain of one thing; if you’re a penguinista I’ll have your back at the All Things Open conference. I’ll be paying attention. Plenty of good companies and organizations will be represented at the the conference, to be held next week in Raleigh, but it is an enterprise conference so there will be a few snakes slithering about.
Mainly I’m talking about Oracle and Microsoft.
Adobe hacked
We’ve known for years that Adobe doesn’t seem to have a knack for keeping their products secure. New vulnerabilities are found almost daily in Reader and Flash, so much so that Windows users grow used to the constant updates required of them by the fine folks at Adobe. Now it appears as if the San Jose based company can’t keep their servers secure either.
Last Friday, The Australian reported that black hats had managed to steal source code and sensitive customer information:
Earlier this week at the Gartner Symposium ITXpo in Orlando, Microsoft’s lame duck President, Steve Ballmer, once again restated his vision for “One Microsoft/one world.”
Actually, we jest. As reported by Larry Dignan on CNET, the vision remains a single Windows GUI to be used across all devices, from smartphone to tablet to PC. That’s what he and the rest of the crowd in Redmond have been saying since long before the release of Windows 8, when Metro was still Metro, which was their first attempt at implementing this one-size-fits-all vision. Nevermind that it hasn’t worked for them so far. You know what they say about “try, try, try and try again?”
Alien Pastures, the blog of Eric Hameleers, otherwise known as AlienBOB, returned to functioning status yesterday after being unavailable for about five days. The blog,…
