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FOSS Force

Torvald’s Thumbs Up, Gates’ Computer Skills & More…

By FOSS Force on February 8, 2014 |

Hardware, Internet, Mobile, News, Politics and Security

Torvald’s Thumbs Up, Gates’ Computer Skills & More…Wozniak

FOSS Week in Review

Canadians spy at airports

The more we see of the Snowden revelations the more we wonder, when did the English speaking world become a police state?

The latest news was reported January 30th by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), from which we learned that all the electronics eavesdropping hasn’t been being conducted solely by the U.S. and the Brits. The Canadians have had their hand in it too.

It seems that Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC), a Canadian spy agency, has been using the free Wi-Fi at “a major Canadian airport” to track wireless devices, which presumably would include laptops as well as phones and tablets. The surveillance would continue for days after visitors passed through the airport.

Continue readingTorvald’s Thumbs Up, Gates’ Computer Skills & More…

Microsoft: The King Is Dead; Long Live the King

By Christine Hall on February 6, 2014 |

Business and News

Satya Nadella
Satya Nadella, new CEO of Microsoft
So we don’t have Steve Ballmer to kick around anymore. The buffoon is gone. He’s out the door, replaced by Satya Nadella, a 46 or 47 year old geek from India who spent 22 years rising through the ranks at Microsoft to capture Redmond’s top prize as CEO. His starting salary in his new position will be $1.2 million. Nice work if you can get it, eh?

The fact that we don’t know Mr. Nadella’s exact age is telling, revealing a man who has spent his career keeping a low profile and evidently keeping his private life private. We do know that he was born in 1967, the year of the “Summer of Love” to us aging hippies, the same year the Beatles released the Sgt.Pepper’s album. After earning a bachelor’s degree in India, he came to the U.S. where he earned an MS in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He spent a brief period working for Sun before joining the staff at Microsoft in 1992.

Continue readingMicrosoft: The King Is Dead; Long Live the King
Results for Our ‘Red Hat & the NSA’ PollRed Hat logo

Results for Our ‘Red Hat & the NSA’ Poll

By Christine Hall on February 5, 2014 |

Business, Distros, Politics, Polls and Security

It looks as if Red Hat has some work cut out for them if they care what impression folks in the FOSS community have about them. If the results of our Red Hat &the NSA poll are any indication, some people aren’t convinced that the most commercially successful Linux distro on the planet has clean hands when it comes to the whole NSA mess.

A few weeks back, in response to what I thought (and still think) were unfounded allegations that Red Hat has been working with the NSA spying efforts by doing things like building back doors into RHEL, we ran a poll that asked the simple question, “Do you think Red Hat is cooperating with the NSA by building back doors into RHEL?” The poll went up on January 23rd and was ended this afternoon.

Red Hat logo

Continue readingResults for Our ‘Red Hat & the NSA’ Poll
The Day the Light Came On for Eddie…

The Day the Light Came On for Eddie…

By Ken Starks on February 4, 2014 |

Potpourri

Eddie Baker is a 16 year old high school student and his family was one of our Reglue 12 Geeks of Christmas program recipients. Not only did he qualify for a computer, his family was qualified for help with Internet via our Prometheus Project. Eddie is a big guy. He’s well over six feet tall and goes a good 230 pounds. The stuff football linebackers are made of. Football is of no interest to Eddie. When he says so, he’s almost apologetic in the way he says it. Here in Texas, high school football is darned near a religion.

ReglueHe wants to study and work in the field of geology. Specifically, the archaeological wing of geology. Eddie wants to study things like the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction. He wants to know more about what really happened in that time period. He wants to know how the molten rock and metals at our core generate a magnetic field that prevents us from being destroyed in a micro-second by a heartless, murderous universe.

Football is of no interest to Eddie. Eddie doesn’t care about games. He cares about contributing to the human condition in a positive way.

Continue readingThe Day the Light Came On for Eddie…
Google Beats Troll, Ellison’s Oracle ‘Unbreakable’ & More…Michael Copps

Google Beats Troll, Ellison’s Oracle ‘Unbreakable’ & More…

By FOSS Force on February 1, 2014 |

Business, Internet, Mobile, News, Patents and Politics

FOSS Week in Review

NSA involved in industrial espionage

Another big non-surprise this week in the continuing saga of the NSA. It appears that our beloved spy agency has been using their secret powers for the purpose of uncovering industrial secrets from foreign companies. So much for the separation of business and state. Reuters reported that in a television interview with a German TV network, Edward Snowden said the agency doesn’t confine its intelligence gathering to items of national security.

“‘If there’s information at Siemens that’s beneficial to U.S. national interests – even if it doesn’t have anything to do with national security – then they’ll take that information nevertheless,’ Snowden said…”

Even the Republicans are jumping on the stop-the-NSA bandwagon, which is rather surprising.

Continue readingGoogle Beats Troll, Ellison’s Oracle ‘Unbreakable’ & More…
Maintenance–The Achilles Heel of LinuxLinux Old Barn

Maintenance–The Achilles Heel of Linux

By Ken Starks on January 30, 2014 |

Desktops

I grew up in a farming and ranching environment. It’s not the easiest life and it can beat you down if you let it. There’s always something broken, something that needs to be fixed, and if you let it get away from you it can become an overwhelming task trying to set it right.

When my Dad decided to retire from the business, we set about the task of getting things ready for prospective buyers or their agents. One of my jobs was to make sure that the tack shed was in order and all of the tack was wiped with linseed oil and evened up on the wall racks. I was already way behind in my chores and getting to the tack shed was low on my priorities.

Linux Old BarnThe very first prospect took the tour with me and my dad. We were showing him some of the out buildings of which the tack shed was one. When the buyer pulled out one of the trace harnesses, it had a broken coupler and the leather was cracked up and down the trace.

Continue readingMaintenance–The Achilles Heel of Linux
Google Passes Motorola to LenovoMotorola Quasar TV ad

Google Passes Motorola to Lenovo

By Christine Hall on January 29, 2014 |

Business, Hardware, Mobile and News

Today it was announced that Google is selling handset maker Motorola Mobility to Lenovo for $2.91 billion. The move comes less than a week after the Chinese electronics company also agreed to acquire IBM’s low-end server business for $2.3 billion. Google purchased Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion in 2012.

Although the move is not necessarily a surprise, it is somewhat unexpected.

When Google purchased the consumer electronics end of Motorola, media pundits were quick to point out that the search company was primarily interested in attaining Motorola’s valuable patent portfolio. At the time, Google’s patent holdings were somewhere between slim to none and they desperately needed patents to defend themselves against legal actions, as Android had become a magnet for attracting patent trolls. Since then, Google has been actively adding patents to their portfolio.

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You Say NSA Has Hurt U.S. Tech Sector

By FOSS Force on January 28, 2014 |

Business, Politics and Polls

Back in the early days of the Snowden affair, when it first became obvious that Microsoft and others had co-operated with the NSA’s agenda to spy on every living human being on the planet who owned a computer, we said this wouldn’t bode well for those who make their living from tech in the U.S. We thought that proprietary software vendors would be most vulnerable due to their lack of transparency, i.e., the lack of available source code, especially after Redmond was exposed for building secret access into Windows.

Back in December, we asked for your opinion in our NSA in the USA Poll.

Continue readingYou Say NSA Has Hurt U.S. Tech Sector