Thom Holwerda Archive

"Over the last six months I've received email from all manner of folks from all over the world relating to ODF. In virtually all instances, the senders were ODF proponents, many asking how they can help, or offering their personal experiences or thoughts. I've also received email from, and gotten to know, many of the other journalists and bloggers following the issue, as well as the principal vendor advocates, and some of the community of the disabled that have voiced concern, as well. Early last week, I received an email from closer to home, with a 'subject' line that read, "Maybe it's time we talk..." I was happy to get the email, because the sender was none other than Alan Cote, the Massachusetts Supervisor of Records."

One of the biggest reasons for many people to switch to a UNIX desktop, away from Windows, is security. It is fairly common knowledge that UNIX-like systems are more secure than Windows. Whether this is true or not will not be up for debate in this short editorial; I will simply assume UNIX-like systems are more secure, for the sake of argument. However, how much is that increased security really worth for an average home user, when you break it down? According to me, fairly little. Here's why.

Microsoft executives already are counting their Vista chickens before the next-generation Windows release has hatched. A Microsoft vice president on Feb. 1 detailed for attendees of the Merrill Lynch IT Services & Software Conference Microsoft's reasons for its high expectations for Vista, the release of Windows client due to ship in the latter half of this year. Microsoft expects 200 million new PCs to ship with Vista preloaded in the first 24 months that the operating system is available, said Michael Sievert, corporate vice president, Windows Product Management & Marketing.

IBM is expected to demonstrate a blade server next week based on the Cell processor the company is developing with Toshiba and Sony. The Cell processor, which also is the brains of Sony's upcoming PlayStation 3 videogame console, has a PowerPC processing core supplemented by eight special-purpose cores to boost the chip's calculation abilities.

LinuxHelp reviews PC-BSD, the (100% compatible) variant of FreeBSD aimed at the desktop, and concludes: "All in all, PC-BSD is an OS which has a bright future in the desktop market provided the developers provide more variety of software or at least equivalent to those found in the FreeBSD ports." Screenshots included to keep our younger readers happy.

"Once it became clear that Nicholas Negroponte, one of the key originators of the One Laptop per Child initiative, was going to insist that the device use open source software, Linux provider Red Hat became the most likely provider of the device's operating system. Mike Evans from Red Hat discusses his company's involvement in the One Laptop per Child project, which aims to develop and distribute a $100 PC to millions around the world."

Security watchers say the Kama Sutra worm, which is programmed to overwrite files on infected Windows PCs today, will have a damaging but not catastrophic effect. The Kama Sutra worm (or Nyxem-E or Blackworm) poses as an email message offering a variety of salacious content. Subject lines used in the malicious emails include: The Best Videoclip Ever, Fw: SeX.mpg, Miss Lebanon 2006 and Fuckin Kama Sutra pics. The worm, which can also spread across network shares, only affects Windows PCs.

The Free Standards Group, the non-profit group behind the Linux Standard Base, has announced that Debian Linux founder Ian Murdock will be its new chief technology officer and will chair the LSB workgroup. A spokesperson for the FSG said that as co-founder of Debian Linux and the commercial custom Linux distributor Progeny, Murdock brings unmatched experience building open-source communities, driving technical consensus and solving Linux distribution challenges. Murdock has also been one of the leaders of the DCC Alliance.

"R is a rich statistical environment, released as free software, which includes a programming language, an interactive shell, and extensive graphing capabilities. This installment discusses creating reusable and modular components for R development. This article follows up two prior installments and looks at the object-orientation in R along with some additional general programming concepts in R."

LinuxEdge has posted the videos of the presentation of Novell Desktop Linux 10 by Nat Friedman. "A preview of Novell Linux Desktop 10 was shown to an audience at the Solutions Linux conference this week. We have a selection of videos which display a variety of amazing effects through the use of XGL, including transparency, wobbling windows, a 3D cube for desktop switching, and a task switcher which displays a preview of windows."

We barely got time to install the first one, the second one is still in the donwload queue, but the third one is already here. OpenSUSE Linux 10.1 Beta 3 has been released , and it includes a number of bug fixes - however, we can't really tell which since they placed the changelog on the first CD. Here's to hoping this won't set a trend.

Microsoft realized that phishing, pharming, botnets and rootkits show that attacks are becoming more sophisticated. This situation makes traditional defenses to be inadequate and evolution is at hand. The Redmond giant has been mentioned in a positive context many times during the past year for the advances made in the security arena. At the Infosecurity Europe 2006 Press Conference, Detlef Eckert - Microsoft Chieft Security Advisor EMEA - demonstrated what Microsoft did and what more we can expect in the near future.

"The United States-based body responsible for protecting the 'Linux' name appears to be making a renewed push to register it as a trademark in Australia. The nation's intellectual property regulator, IP Australia, turned down an initial bid by local body Linux Australia to register the name on behalf of Linux creator Linux Torvalds in September 2005, saying the name was not distinctive enough to be trademarked. But the US-based Linux Mark Institute, which acts for Torvalds worldwide appears to be in the process of appealing the decision."

Linus Torvalds, father of the Linux kernel, has fleshed out his unhappiness with GPLv3 in three recent posts on the Linux Kernel Mailing List. Torvalds previously stated that the kernel will remain under the licensing terms of GPLv2. Yesterday, Torvalds offered his opinion as to where the battle over DRM should take place.