OSNews posts Microsoft Plans Better Disclosures of Tool. “Microsoft acknowledged Wednesday that it needs to better inform users that its tool for determining whether a computer is running a pirated copy of Windows also quietly checks in daily with the software maker.” Ya think?
The article goes on to quote: “It's kind of a safety switch,” said David Lazar, who directs the Windows Genuine Advantage program.”
Is this Trustworthy Computing?
Slashdot post: Lenovo Backtracks on Linux Support Statement. After a report that the company would not install or support the Linux operating system on any of its PCs, morcego writes “Looks like Lenovo decided Linux is a good idea after all. From the article: 'Lenovo executives Monday backtracked from remarks last week that the company would not support Linux on its PCs, saying it would continue to pre-load Linux onto ThinkPads on a custom-order basis for customers who purchase licenses on their own. In addition, they said, the Raleigh, N.C.-based company was working behind the scenes to boost its Linux support in conjunction with the expected July release of the next version of Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop.'” Cool!
OSNews points to Netcraft: Microsoft Continues to Chip Away at Apache's Lead. “Microsoft continues to gain share in the web server market, chipping away at Apache's commanding lead. The number of hostnames on Windows servers grew by 4.5 million, giving Microsoft 29.7% market share, a gain of 4.25% for the month. Apache had a decline of 429K hostnames, and loses 3.5% to 61.25%. Apache's lead over Microsoft, which stood at 48.2% in March, has been narrowed to 31.5%, a shift of 16.7% in just three months.”
Wow! That's a phenomenally large shift in a short time period. Looking at the historical graph, the speed of changing is unprecedented. Even with the large shift of parked domains, there's something interesting going on. Did Windows Server 2003 R2 deliver some new compelling feature that caused several large hosting providers to shift over? Did they get a killer pricing deal?
Microsoft Watch from Mary Jo Foley reports Another Windows Vista Bites the Dust. “Microsoft has cut PC-to-PC synchronization from Vista. Vista Beta 2, which is slated to go to as many as two million testers, does not include the P2P synchronization technology. Quality is the reason for the latest cut, Microsoft officials said.”
Meanwhile, Computerworld Breaking News reports Microsoft to tweak key Vista security feature. “Microsoft will change a key security feature in the Windows Vista User Account Control to make it less cumbersome for users.”
Amazingly, this will appear in “Release Candidate 1” which has slipped to August 25th. I'm astounded that they could get to this level with features as clumsy as this.
SANS Internet Storm Center logs a chilling tale of a new piece of maliciousness out there infecting Windows, not yet detected by any virus detectors: A malware jungle, (Tue, Jun 6th). “Detection We got an interesting piece of malware from one of our readers, Robert. Robert detected one …”
The next meeting of the Monadnock Linux User Group (MonadLUG) will be this Thursday, June 8th, 7:00pm, at the SAU 1 Superintendent's Office behind South Meadow School in Peterborough. For directions and other information, visit http://wiki.gnhlug.org/twiki2/bin/view/Www/MonadLUG
Tim Lind presents on Asterisk – the Open Source PBX!
Asterisk is a complete PBX in software. It runs on Linux, BSD and MacOSX and provides all of the features you would expect from a PBX and more. Asterisk does voice over IP in many protocols, and can interoperate with almost all standards-based telephony equipment using relatively inexpensive hardware.
Over on Scripting News, Dave Winer points to a Jon Udell blog entry, “Earth to Google PR,” with an incredibly bad dialog with Google. This is not how you deal with your customers, your early adopters nor the media. Google's been Dilbertized. Hope it's just a Memorial Day hangover and not a permanent condition.
Slashdot post: Lenovo To Shun Linux. dominique_cimafranca writes “CRN reports that Lenovo will not install or support the Linux operating system on any of its PCs.”
That's a disappointment. However, I never looked to IBM for support of the various RedHat, Fedora and Ubuntu installations I've installed on the laptop. Sites like Linux-laptop.net are great for getting the various non-standard laptop devices working. And if I was searching for a pre-installed version, I'd likely go to Emperor Linux for a fully-installed and -configured machine.
Even though I've beat the daylights out of it, my ThinkPad A31p has been a great laptop. Laura swears by the TrackPoint navigation and after fumbling with it for the first few weeks, I don't notice I'm using it any more, either. Lenovo still seems to be making the ThinkPad line with the red TrackPoint navigator, but we'll have to snap one up quick if they decide to discontinue them. Sadly, it doesn't appear that anyone else offers them.
It's getting to be time for me to start thinking about a new laptop, as the ThinkPad will be celebrating it's 4th birthday this summer. I've managed to flash-fry the wireless mini-PCI card, shear off one of the lid hinge screws, overheat it with a second 7200 rpm drive, short out the USB ports and just recently lost the backlight. Like the one-eyed, three-legged dog joke, I think I'll nickname it “Lucky.”
So, the next machine? I'm shopping…
The other thing bothering me about the Microsoft-Adobe thing: Microsoft took on the DOJ and in losing, won. Microsoft is taking on the EU and daring them to the brink of Microsoft's oblivion. Microsoft settled with Burst.com. Microsoft settled with Novell. Microsoft settled with WordPerfect. Microsoft settled with Stacker. How is Microsoft is unwilling to wrestle with Adobe? Not because they were certainly. That hasn't been a problem for them in the past. No, there's something else going on. I wonder what.
Ethan Zuckerman blogs “It's cute. It's orange. It's got bunny ears. An update on the One Laptop Per Child project.” They are cute. The OLPC project intends to sell these in lots of millions to third-world countries and school systems. They intend for these to be owned by school children and distinctly colored to disuade commercial trade in them.
This will be quite the challenge. These aren't laptops as we use them, but internet appliances. I could envision lots of uses for them.