Archive | July, 2005

Novell: SCO owns no copyright, and we ought to get all their licensing money

By Ted Roche on July 30, 2005 in Microsoft, OpenSource, Technology

OSNews points to a Groklaw article: Novell Files Countersuit Against SCO. “Today, Novell has answered SCO’s complaint alledging Novell slandered SCO’s ownership of the Unix copyrights. Novell claims that SCO approached Novell in 2003 to try and pursuade them to go along with the Linux Licensing Scheme. When Novell refused, SCO attempted to talk Novell into transfering the Unix Copyrights to SCO, which Novell also refused to do. Novell has also filed four counterclaims against SCO, one of them being Slander of Title (for SCO slandering Novell’s ownership of the Unix Copyrights).”

Delicious. If accepted, Novell should earn all the monies SCO got from “licensing” rights to software it didn’t own, plus penalties. Looking forward to the next step.

Kubuntu with KDE 3.4.2, Koffice 1.4.1 Released

By Ted Roche on July 29, 2005 in OpenSource

Kubuntu with KDE 3.4.2, Koffice 1.4.1 Released. Following the release of KDE 3.4.2 yesterday, the Kubuntu team is proud to announce a new Kubuntu livecd with KDE 3.4.2 and the also recently released Koffice 1.4.1. [OSNews]

FireFox: 75 Million and Growing

By Ted Roche on July 29, 2005 in OpenSource, Technology

Slashdot post: Firefox Downloads Reach 75 Million. “Today Mozilla Firefox has reached its 75 millionth download. The Mozilla staff find this a morale booster since recent security vulnerabilities have slightly lowered the browser’s growth rate. ‘We’re beefing up the management on the project. The project is still very healthy. We’re seeing continued corporate interest and have a lot of large organizations that want to do deployments,’ said Chris Hoffman.”

Python SIG meeting last night

By Ted Roche on July 29, 2005 in OpenSource

Laura and I attended the first meeting of the New Hampshire Python Special Interest Group (PySIG) at the Amoskeag Business Incubator last night. There was excellent attendance, enthusiasm and information. Looks like we’ve got a new meeting to attend the fourth Thursday of each month!

Insight into the Greasemonkey issue

By Ted Roche on July 27, 2005 in OpenSource, Technology

Following up on my response to Alex Feldstein’s post on Greasemonkey security warning, Jon Udell posts his weekly column today, “Greasemonkey in crisis:
A hole in a Firefox plug-in proves that no one, not even open source partisans, have all the answers” with several insightful comments:

This time there was no Microsoft to blame. The open source underdogs had done this to themselves.

How can sandboxed environments sufficiently empower developers while preserving meaningful isolation of risk? … There are no perfect answers to these questions.

Dvorak: struggling to make sense of Creative Commons

By Ted Roche on July 27, 2005 in Microsoft, OpenSource, Technology

Doc Searls’ IT Garage – notes Barning Creative Commons. “John C. Dvorak is one of the most interesting, informative and entertaining journalists in the history of the computer business. He is also something of a troll.”

To think at one time my career aspiration was to be the next Dvorak. Luckily, I got over it. Sadly, John never did.

P.S. If that one doesn’t hit your hot button, try “Windows Vista: Where’s the Buzz?” At least John’s an equal-opportunity troll.

Boot Fedora Faster

By Ted Roche on July 26, 2005 in OpenSource

OSNews points to an article that tells you how to Boot Fedora Linux Faster. “Everyone wants a quick boot time, from the beginner user to the advanced user, this is a issue that bothers us all. As Linux has advanced it has increasingly become slower to boot. So I decided to look into reducing the time it takes to boot my current setup, which is Fedora 4. In doing so I was able to reduce the boot time of my Fedora 4 installation to less than 25 seconds.”

You can never have too much RAM, too slim a laptop or too fast a boot-up sequence!

Back in the freight business

By Ted Roche on July 26, 2005 in Technology

At Shedding Some Light, Rick Schummer blogs Godspeed Discovery! “The launch of Discovery this morning was spectacular as expected taking 7 new heroes back to space. This is the second time Discovery has healed the space program as it followed Challenger into space back in 1988.” Godspeed, indeed.

Microsoft’s Genuine Advantage becomes mandatory

By Ted Roche on July 26, 2005 in Microsoft

OSNews points to an eWeek article, Microsoft Lowers the Boom on Illegal Windows Copies. “Microsoft is tightening the noose for those people running illegal or pirated copies of its Windows XP/2000 software on their systems. Starting Tuesday, it will be mandatory for users of this Windows software to certify that their software is a genuine and legal copy before they will be able to receive any updates except security patches.”

This just has Bad Idea written all over it. Copy Protection (and this is just a delayed form of Copy Protection) inevitably takes out some innocent bystanders while the really serious pirates work around it. (The first PC software I bought was CopyIIPC so that I could make backup copies of the company’s Lotus 1-2-3 key disks, since the employees were always destroying disks.) Some of Microsoft’s customers will end up in a situation where the “Windows Genuine Advantage” package, in an effort to enhance their experience, stops them from doing what they legitimately need to get done. More collateral damage. We’ve all ended up in a situation where Windows demands “Office CD 2” or that you type in some product key thats back in the office a thousand miles away. From the article:

Microsoft has also made changes to streamline the process, including no longer requiring customers to enter their product key since the ActiveX control used to validate their software can now automatically determine whether they have a genuine Windows product.

Oh, that should work fine.

Netscape releases four critical patches