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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.

The U.S. WIPO delegation is also pushing for an extension of the broadcasters' control to the Web. The European broadcast laws don't cover the Web (although a European Union representative recently endorsed the U.S. proposal), so this is a new threat to the public domain.

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Novell has open-sourced the commercial AppArmor security tool for Linux, first developed by Immunix. The release brings application security features with high transparency and low overhead to the enterprise Linux community.

[ED: Repeat, yes but it's Novell and they are so much better than I expected - HC]

More than 40% of organizations in Ireland will use some form of open-source software in 2006, according to a study by iReach, a research company in Dublin.

[ED: Much less significant than the raw numbers might seem to imply. Within the EU Ireland is a friend of patents and MS goals. Hence, I would bet many of the companies and entities just do not carry the clout of 40% usage should imply due to many being small or not politically well connected. - HC]

Last month VMware released a free product called VMware Player. With the Player and one of the free images that run within it, users can explore new operating systems and environments without going through the inconvenience of formatting or partitioning a hard drive or configuring unfamiliar software. I tested the player by running Ubuntu Linux on a Windows host, and got good results with only a few glitches.

Once upon a time, somewhere in post-war Eastern Europe, there was a great famine in which people jealously hoarded whatever food they could find, hiding it even from their friends and neighbors. One day a wandering soldier came into a village and began asking questions as if he planned to stay for the night.

"There's not a bite to eat in the whole province," he was told. "Better keep moving on."

The 2006 Novell BrainShare session catalog has been posted, and I'm in it.

Longtime HP employee Christine Martino brings a more business and operational focus to the role than did her predecessor.