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  LXer Feature: 13-Jan-06

Linux News raises questions about Microsoft's alleged $6 billion per year investment in R&D. Is it money well spent, or are they just throwing it away?

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Teron writes: I recently rented the film Aliens vs. Predator.
Haven't watched it yet, don't know if it's cr*p or not.
But, when I put the DVD to my PS2 to watch it, up jumps a commercial.
It was that commercial that made me write this.

"You wouldn't steal this, you wouldn't steal that. You wouldn't steal a movie, right? Movie piracy is stealing. Stealing is against the law. Piracy is a crime."

Maybe the title should have been "Does Microsoft Use the DOJ as a Shill Against Linux and any other competitive threats?"

Sadly this story carries over into the events taking place in Massachusetts, where raw intimidation of the worst kind was used to send a most chilling messages into a critically important marketplace of government information management systems.

Related to:
Does the DoJ Use Microsoft as a Shill Against Linux?

In a rush to arrange an interview just as the holidays rapidly approached at the end of 2005 a series of mis-communications has resulted in a more interesting set of questions and answers than might have been otherwise expected.

SFN writes: I knew I shouldn't have read this but I guess I just can't help myself. As usual, MS - this time throwing it's voice through ventriloquist dummy Martin Gregory - is presenting us with ideas that run the gamut from baseless opinion to bald face lie. Let's take each point one at a time.

Related to:
Microsoft's open source point man

  LXer News Story: 10-Jan-06

The Bible Desktop Project released Bible Desktop 1.0, a Java-based Bible study program, on Saturday. Thanks to a committed, responsive development team, Bible Desktop is maturing into a solid Bible study tool.

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In response to The Boston Globe In Agony Over Peter Quinn?, Gary writes: Big media is corrupt and long ago lost the trust of their readership... Where's the Department of Justice? Or how about Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly? Talk about being asleep at the switch! And it's not just the reprehensible array of intimidation, FUD, and outrageous corruption of democratic processes to further their own business needs that should cause us all to shout loudly that Microsoft be immediately hauled back in the docket.

This is the second part of my series on the Internet in China. I recently returned from a year teaching at a Chinese University. During my time in China, I had the pleasure of getting to know the state of the Internet in China, both directly and indirectly, through my own use of the Internet and the classes. In my last article, The Butterfly Effect: Microsoft, Security, and the Developing World, I dealt with the effect of pirated software and security and its impact on development. In this article, I would like to cover my experience of the Chinese Firewall from the inside and the way we contribute to censorship in China.

It's nearly time folks, are you excited? That's right, the "new" version of Windows is almost upon us and down at Redmond the coffers are being readied. Microsoft are getting ready to collect another pile of money from your children, your governments, your hospitals and your paycheck.

If Microsoft's a crocodile, Steve Gibson's its version of the Crocodile Hunter. The Gibson Research chief claims somebody on the Windows crew installed the WMF vulnerability as a backdoor. Redmond vehemently disagrees. But they both agree on one thing:

The growing influence of open source movement – the collaborative effort by which developers freely contribute and distribute software codes — has caught up with the local education sector as five tertiary institutions made a deal to promote the technology in their curriculum.

With all the recent comments and stories posted by the self-satisfied realists, where they insist any idealistic endeavor is doomed to fail, this is a very telling antidote: "Mr Graham Hosty, of Huddersfield, has discovered a nova with nothing more to help him than an O-Level in astronomy, keen eyesight, one half of a broken pair of binoculars that cost him £10, and an observatory housed in a wooden shed in the yard of his back-to-back house."

The most intelligent label I ever saw was on a railway station in Woerden. It was upside down. All commuters turned their head to see was was written. It said "This label is upside down," which was completely correct.

When I made my way outside, I saw the same label again. This time it was instantly readable. And then it dawned on me. The label was still correct. Positioned this way, it had lost all its purpose. The only way it had any effect was when people were forced to turn their head. So, whatever its position the label was always correct. I've never seen a label like this again.

Astlinux is a bundled distribution of the Asterisk open source iPBX private branch exchange (PBX) software and a Linux operating system. Originally developed by Mark Spencer at Digium, Asterisk is the leading open source software in the telephony/VoIP space. Asterisk excels at combining traditional TDM telephony capability - provided through hardware from Digium and others - with VOIP services. These include call routing, media gateway, media server and SIP signaling capabilities.

One of the more intriguing capabilities of the BSD operating systems is their ability to run binaries for other Unix-like operating systems. I recently found myself requiring the commercial PGP Command Line for a project. Rather than install a Linux box just for this one piece of software, I jumped through some hoops and made it work perfectly on one of my existing FreeBSD systems. Getting a random piece of commercial Linux software running on a FreeBSD system isn't always as transparent as you might like, but you can do it with a minimum of fuss if you have a few extra troubleshooting skills.

Penguin Computing plans to announce Monday that it has hired Pauline Nist, who long led HP's NonStop server group.

[ED: CEO of Penguin and Nist are both from Tandem that was purchased by HP. Another big Unix to Linux move? - HC]

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts has a new, albeit temporary, top technology executive. Bethann Pepoli was appointed acting CIO last week, replacing Peter Quinn, who stepped down last month. Quinn drew national attention and stirred controversy within the Massachusetts government and among major IT vendors when his office outlined a plan to move away from proprietary document formats and adopt the XML-based OpenDocument file format for all state records.

Appreciating that not everyone wants to spend a half-hour talking finance, Angela suggests taking a moment to focus on an entirely different type of Web resource--one that saves not your money but your time. For a technology that was supposed to save time, the Web can certainly keep you glued to a chair. Checking and rechecking favorite sites can be a mighty pain, and as for bookmarks--well, Angela's got well over 2000 sites on her list. Who's got the kind of time it would take to check in on all those regularly?

Where is desktop Linux at the moment? Right now we see end-user Linux in fixed function and transactional systems and technical workstations.

[Ed: This article provides excellent insight into the Linux desktop. Don't let the title fool you. The title betrays the content: tadelste]

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Open-source advocates are hoping that effective new provisions for patents and compatibility with other software licenses will be prominent in the first public draft of the GNU GPL 3.0.