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The open source blogosphere featured two articles the last week of December 2008 that inaccurately draw software-market history timelines from which the authors then inaccurately position the place of open source software in the information technology (IT) market. I doubt if the statements are intentionally misleading; they are most likely the result of ignorance or sloppiness.

I write a great deal about Google mostly because it is always trying new things and putting them out there for free for the world to try. The tools are easy to access and use from wherever you are--any device with a browser and an internet connection--and you can't beat the single-sign on across the tool kit, but for all it has going for it, Google has a major trust issue. Every time I write about Google the comments always include people who won't trust Google with their content ever.

Sylvania's G Netbook Meso offers a nice-looking screen and plenty of ports -- you get three USBs as well as a VGA. The keyboard is just too cramped for reviewer Jack Germain's liking, though that's a problem found on just about any tiny netbook computer. The available Ubuntu Netbook Remix OS will give you the option to effortless switch between two GUI styles.

The Wikimedia Foundation has raised the necessary funds to operate Wikipedia until the end of June, the nonprofit organisation announced Friday. Wikimedia has received about US$6.2 million since launching its fundraising campaign in early November. More than 125,000 donors have chipped in.

German Linux integrator Millenux is launching a series of monthly workshops for Linux developers and IT managers on open-source Linux topics including high availablity (HA), Debian, and kernel development. The initial January 7 event in Munich will address "mobile computing," plus NoMachine's "NX" Xhosting technology.

Google with a dialect: You ph33l1n6 lu(ky?

Scanning and packet sniffing software; specifically network mapper (nmap) and tcpdump are tools I now use almost daily in some capacity. The underlying software of tcpdump - libpcap (packet capture library) - I have on three occasions needed to leverage pcap libs for various tasks. In the final part of the libpcap series the full source listing of the pieces from part one and part two are cobbled together into a single program. The Makefile is also constructed in addition to a small barely functional packet injector program which shows another side of libpcap; packets don't just have to be read they can be written as well.

The Obama administration has made a pledge to spend $50 billion dollars on Health IT, yet it is unclear how they will come to grips with proprietary health IT software, a problem I will call the 'Some Dude' phenomenon. In my now lengthening health IT career, I have frequently come across a remarkably destructive and unfortunately abundant person called 'Some Dude'. Some Dude is the proprietary license holder of an entrenched piece of health IT software that needs to be interfaced with other software. Some Dude is entirely and in my experience usually capable of: stonewalling, obstructing, fleecing, lying, tollboothing, and ignoring any effort to interface with their proprietary software. There are few to no penalties or consequences to the proprietary license holders for such destruction. There are many real consequences and penalties for patients and practitioners by such obstruction.

Chris Mason, the founder of the Btrfs file-system, had previously stated he hoped to merge the first bits of this much-improved Linux file-system into the Linux 2.6.29 kernel. With the 2.6.29 merge window still open, earlier this week he started a new thread entitled Btrfs for mainline.

Chris shares that the Btrfs file-system is currently working against the latest kernel Git tree and not much has changed with this file-system code since early December...

Firstly, allow me to recap. A couple of days ago, I reported a presentation at the Chaos Computer Club conference in Berlin which outlined a major problem with the way Certificate Authorities handle message hashing, essentially this attack relied on well-known problems with the MD5 hash algorithm. Problems based on hash collisions, which were previously considered to be theoretical having been discovered in 2004, were now well-lodged within the domain of reality.

Want to see Linux succeed in 2009? Find out how it will continue to do so.

This posting, in general, follows up Clayton Shepard's “Howto Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex 8.10 Xen Dom0". However, several things went different. First, i had to disable XFS Support building Novell’s kernel, otherwise build just failed with error. Second, i still had to comment out "xen" bridging initiated via /etc/xen/xend-config.sxp and manually add the bridge to /etc/network/interfaces configuration file. I didn’t take care of "xvc0" and used virtual frame buffer when tested CentOS 5.2 PV DomU and Ubuntu Intrepid Server HVM and PV DomUs at Xen 3.3.0 Intrepid Server Dom0 based on Novell's kernel

Since it was the first real year for the blog (first post dated 6/1/2008), there were a lot of articles on extremely different topics in Linux, open source and the cloud, until it all pretty much focused on GNU/Linux. So before we start with the 2009 article batch, I thought it would be cool to take a look into the past and comment on the posts that were popular, and some of my personal favorites.

Google has been slowly, but surely, displacing Microsoft as the number one PC technology company. Google has done it by misdirection. Instead of taking Microsoft head-on in desktops, Google first consolidated their hold on Web search and only then started moving into Web-based desktop applications. Then, in 2008, they made their first direct strike at the desktop with the release of their own Web browser: Google Chrome. Now, Matthaus Krzykowski and Daniel Hartmann, founders of the stealth startup Mobile-facts, have found that you can take Google's smartphone operating system, Android, and use it as a desktop operating system.

Focusing on the embedded market (and seemingly well-liked by users of both Linux and the various BSDs) are the boards from the Zurich, Switzerland-based PC Engines. The company has some extremely compelling and relatively inexpensive offerings ... if you're willing or able to run your application(s) in 256 MB of RAM.

Netbooks run either Windows or Linux, and both are readily available in shops all over the world. The Linux variants chosen by several netbook manufacturers are usually derived from desktop distributions, and obviously, Windows is a desktop operating system as well. However, netbooks have small displays, and both Windows and GNOME/KDE and some of their applications aren't always suited well for such an environment. Enter Android, Google's Linux-based phone operating system. It is suggested that Android-based netbooks will appear on the market in 2010, maybe even sooner.

One more new filing from Wednesday, this one from SCO v. Novell. Here's the docket entry:..

I am admittedly not a normal computer user. I don't always fully grasp what's going on deep inside the operating system, nor am I always confident I'm clear on how an application is working with all of the services it requires to function. But I find it interesting, even if just on the most simple, conceptual level. The majority of computer users want their machines to "just work." And though I like seeing how my hardware and software interact, it is preferable to have things "just work," so I can get what I need done, and then spend the time I saved doing so leisurely poking at my application's innards. There's an inherent danger in the "just works" philosophy, however.

Yes, you're not the only one who's ever completely destroyed an important server at work ;)

Google's Android OS has been pretty well received thus far, and the presence of the Market, where users can download applications, has fared pretty well except it has missed one thing: paid-for apps. While it might sound like a bad thing that users will have to start paying for applications, the incentive for developers (ie cash) means that the whole experience should now get a little better.