Alle får!

http://itavisen.no/811951/microsoft-alle-faar-windows-oppdateringer

Bra, lille Ballmer! Endelig litt fornuft fra Microsoft's side, vel, dette var allerede annonsert tidligere, men da ble det ikke sagt sort-på-hvitt at "alle får", men det ser ut som det er nettopp det som skjer nå.

Alle får!
Hvem får sikkerhetsoppdateringer? Det er et spørsmål Microsoft får oftere enn de hadde regnet med. Kanskje grunnet piratkopierings-sperrene i Windows XP og Vista.

Skal nettsikkerheten ivaretas for alle, må også alle være sikret. Dette er i alle fall et steg i riktig retning.

Levner ingen tvil
«Det ser ut til å være en myte at Microsoft holder tilbake Windows sikkerhetsoppdateringer og leverer dem kun til de som er eiere av ekte Windows. La meg være klar: alle sikkerhetsoppdateringer leveres til alle brukere» skriver selskapet på The Windows Blog.

Får håpe det fortsetter.

Men bare for å legge alles oppmerksomhet litt opp på G, så sies det i "The Windows Blog"-innlegget hvor dette legges frem, at ikke ALLE oppdateringer fra Windows Update sendes ut til alle brukere (uavhengig om de er genuine brukere eller pirater, noe jeg mener er lite trolig allikevel med tanke på hvem vi snakker om her) "fordi det kan dreie seg om ekstra-produkter innenfor Microsofts varesortiment" (les: pirat-kopierte enkelt-programmer).

System-oppdateringer sendes allikevel ut til alle, men det mener jeg er mer fordi pirat-maskiner ikke skal knele genuine brukeres nett-opplevelser, enn at "alle skal sikres best mulig".

Microsoft ser seg nok tvunget til å gi alle system-oppdateringer, men ikke å bevare bruker-opplevelsen til ikke-genuine brukere fordi "de ikke har bruker-rettigheter på gjeldende produkt" (sett ut ifra et juridisk standpunkt), så det er rett og slett mer en "fiks" for å garantere genuine brukeres rettigheter enn at pirat-brukere også skal ivaretas sikkerhetsmessig.

N.B.! Dette innlegget er IKKE ment som hets mot Microsoft. Jeg er en åpen tilhenger av OSS (Open Source Software), men jeg jobber til daglig med Microsoft-teknologi, og har årevis med erfaring med deres produkter, faktisk helt siden MS-DOS v4.

Samsungs Android-mobil

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Google/?p=1397

Official news coming from Samsung says that they are releasing a new phone (the I7500) that runs Android this June. So far, the only company with handsets that run Android is HTC, but it sounds like that won’t be for long.

Så med andre ord, stemte det ikke helt i min tidligere artikkel, at den slippes i september. Ikke at dette er noe negativt i-og-for-seg ;P

Kommer i september, dette var visstnok resten av Europa...typisk.

Samsung + Android

http://www.digi.no/811832/avduket-ny-android-mobil

Samsung trapper nå opp med åpen kildekode og benytter Googles mobil-plattform "Android" slik som HTC har gjort med sine "Magic" og "Dream" modeller.

Personlig er jeg ikke noen stor fan av Samsungs mobil-produkter, men skal i dette tilfellet i alle fall teste 'duppeditten' for å få et skikkelig førsteinntrykk.

Slipp-dato sies å være en gang i september i år.

Geocities legges ned...

Et gammelt webhotell blir nå etter flere års drift lagt ned. Jeg husker selv å ha brukt geocities på et tidspunkt. Men slik er det blitt etterhvert, søsterselskaper legges ned til fordel for moder-selskapet, punktum.

Eller rettere sagt: dødkjøtt fjernes dersom det ikke genererer nok kapital.

http://www.hardware.no/artikler/geocities_lukker_portene/69357

Yahoo har kunngjort at webhotellet Geocities, nå geocities.yahoo.com, skal i løpet av året legges ned.

SubGenius Recruitment

" If they can't take a joke, F*ck'Em! "

Hahaha, I just LOVE their poster-ads! XD

Way to market events d00ds ;P

Linux Mint maintainer

Clement Lefebvre is the BDFL and core maintainer of Linux Mint (an Ubuntu-based Linux distribution I'm considering to implement on my mom's, and my dad's computers because of the Windows 7-hysteria).

I really like this guy, coz he's had a very similar Linux-experience as I have since the 90's. Here's a little quote to exemplify:

I started using Linux in 1996. It was Slackware(!) and I was quite happy with it. I learnt a lot about the internals of the system thanks to that distribution. A few years later more and more distributions became available and at the same time people started to get fast Internet at home with faster and faster download speeds. So I started distro-hopping... a lot :) I enjoyed many different distributions and for different reasons.

As I became more experienced with Linux I started asking myself how I could contribute back. I spent a lot of time helping out on different IRC channels and writing tutorials and reviews on the web. Eventually I even got paid for it and started writing for LinuxForums.com (you can still read some of my contributions here). I specialized more and more on distribution reviews and after a while I became expert (or so I thought anyway :) at seeing pros and cons in each one of them.

Looking at all the other distributions, I got a very precise idea of how I would make the perfect desktop if I was to do it myself. And because everything is easy when you're having fun, it wasn't long until I was producing my first ISO files.

So, to put it all together, we started using Linux about the same time, AND we used the same distro.

And by reading his blog-posts on linuxmint.com, I realized he has a lot of the same ideas as me, quite similar development guidelines, etc.

Linux Mint appealed to me basically ;)

I absolutely LOVE this site ;P

http://thisisfreakingridiculous.squarespace.com/

Norsk kryptolog

Vi har våre egne bidragsytere innen datateknikk / informatikk i Norge, bl.a. Ernst S. Selmer (født 11. februar 1920, død 8. november 2006), matematikk professor som står bak algoritmen som brukes til å beregne kontrollsiffrene i våre norske fødselsnummer.

Computer illiterates are dangerous!

Seriously? FFS!!!

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/04/boston-college-prompt-commands-are-suspicious

On Friday, EFF and the law firm of Fish and Richardson filed an emergency motion to quash and for the return of seized property on behalf of a Boston College computer science student whose computers, cell phone, and other property were seized as part of an investigation into who sent an e-mail to a school mailing list identifying another student as gay. The problem? Not only is there no indication that any crime was committed, the investigating officer argued that the computer expertise of the student itself supported a finding of probable cause to seize the student's property.

The whole problem started because the computer science student was using a command-line interface, of which the arresting officer did not understand. Quotes from the arresting officer's report say:

"Mr.Carlixte uses two different operating systems to hide his illegal activities. One is the regular B.C. operating system and the other is a black screen with white font which he uses prompts on"

I mean.., c'mon! Seriously!? Are all computer hobbyists to be considered "crackers" until proven otherwise? FFS!!!

OS X utsatt for botnet-orm

http://www.itavisen.no/811025/forste-botnet-for-os-x

Nå er det i hvert fall ikke trygt å bruke Mac lenger...

Mac / Apple har siden 70-tallet vært trendsetter på data-markedet, så det var ikke et spørsmål om "hvordan" eller "hvis", men "når". Visste det bare var et tidsspørsmål. Og det har jeg sagt lenge, så lenge det finnes en merkbar markedsandel med folk som bruker visse typer systemer, vil disse da bli mål for cyber-kriminelle (crackere).

Botnets har lenge vært et problem med Windows-maskiner. Mac-folket har lenge ment at noe tilsvarende ikke kan skje med deres maskiner. Dels fordi de er en minoritet få virusmakere gidder å bry seg med, og dels på grunn av at Apples operativsystem OS X er bygget på Unix - en plattform som av mange regnes som sikrere enn Microsofts.

En nedlastbar fiks fra Apple, kalt "iWorksServices Trojan Removal Tool", kan hentes ned herfra.

For å videre beskytte Mac- / Apple-maskiner fra slike trusler, bør en installere anti-virus og evt. anti-spionvare programmer (og her gjelder KISS-prinsippet, mer enn ETT anti-virus eller anti-spionvare program på samme maskin byr på mer problemer enn nytte).

LuLz! SubGenius Graphics Orgy ;P

Entitled: "V-Heart-4"

Made by SubGenius-member: Heart Ignition
Part of the "SubGenius Graphics Orgy" collection.

Hahaha! Lov-E-Ly! ;P XD

Travelling companion

My EPC 900 on a food-tray, in one of NSB's new "Stadler Flirt" cross-country train models.

Scenery imagery 2

Scenery imagery

Oh man, I can REALLY relate XD

I have numerous stories similar to the following article by Carla Schroder @ linuxplanet.com.

http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reports/6728/1/

My monitor gave up the ghost in the middle of the workday, naturally when I had deadlines and a half-dozens things to do right now. It turned out to be a fried video card, and I took the long way to figure it out, but I was able to keep working until I had time to troubleshoot and fix it, thanks to Linux's easy remote networking.

I came back from a break to find it in a hard lockup. Well OK, this is inconvenient, but at least with Linux a hard crash usually doesn't have bad side effects like mangled system files, unlike a certain other inexplicably popular but frail operating system.

I remember a totally useless IBM ThinkPad laptop I had lying around, which did NOT accept any of the M$ products I tried to force into it. It had a smashed LCD display, so it really didn't serve any purpose as a personal computer.

Then I tried installing Slackware Linux (this was in the v7-8 days of Slackware), and figured I could use it as a headless webserver/fileserver or something in that manner. And, to my own surprise, it was really effective. I had network connectivity (allthough without a GUI, the command-line more than sufficed for my needs. web-surfing included, even if it was text-based ['lynx']), remote network access, local network access, and it ran fine for like 3-400 days non-stop.., right up to the day it kicked the bucket of fatigue.

This remarkable stability and security was unknown to me up to this point. Since I've been fiddling with computers since the mid-80's, I've been around a few operating systems over the years. But none could ever aspire to be what Linux is for me today.

After seeing how Linux performed as a server, I was keen to see it's performance as a desktop. So, I decided I was running ONLY open-source software on every technical doo-dad I owned. But as Linux has one of the steepest learning-curves out there, this did not happen overnight.

Actual time spent learning the building-blocks of Linux came to a total of at least 10-11 years!

My ambition was not realized until very recently actually. My whole home-setup runs Slackware Linux, derivatives, or some kind of embedded Linux. And it's all grand! ;-P

Here is another similar, what I'd like to call: "wish-I-did-not-push-Enter"-story:

http://blog.eracc.com/2009/04/16/kill-linux-unix-system/

One thing I like about Android™

The developer's choice ;)

This is a compilation of videos of the Android developers, telling about their favourite functions in Android.

Nysatsingen på åpen kildekode

Da ser det ut som det blir Bergensområdet som først får benyttet alle de vidunderlige åpne kildekode-prosjektene som finnes rundt om i verden, i et offentlig samarbeid "for åpne standarder i offentlig sektor" (som ble nevnt tidligere i en-eller-annen artikkel/offentlig dokumentasjon).

Nytt kraftsenter på åpen kildekode - digi.no : Bedriftsteknologi

Bergen kommune, it-ekspertene Avenir, Høgskolen i Bergen (HiB), Universitetet i Bergen (UiB) og lokale it-miljøer går sammen for å gjøre Bergen til et kraftsenter for utnyttelse av åpen kildekode i utviklingen av fremtidens it-løsninger.

Initiativet understøtter både Regjeringens satsing på økt bruk av fri programvare og ønsket om styrket samhandling mellom offentlig og privat sektor.

Gartner spår at innen 2012 vil 80 prosent av alle it-løsninger inneholde elementer av åpen kildekode. De fastslår at virksomheter som velger å ignorere denne utviklingen, automatisk vil stille seg to skritt bak konkurrerende virksomheter.

Bergen Kommune, Avenir, HiB, UiB, og store lokale it-miljøer som DnB Nor, NextGenTel og EDB Business Partner ønsker å ligge i forkant i utnyttelsen av åpen kildekode.

Linux gets reseller friendly

SYNNEX, a leading software and hardware distributor (i.e. not a vendor), has partnered up with Red Hat and other open-source ISVs, to form the Open Source Channel Alliance. Is this the first step against getting Linux into more offices?

Computerworld Blogs

For VARs and integrators this means that they'll have a one-stop Web site and distributor to pick up Linux, and open-source content management systems, databases, business intelligence, network authentication, backup and recovery, e-mail, etc., etc., etc. For business users, especially those with small in-house IT staffs, this means they can just go to their local channel partner and get their pick of some of the top commercially-supported open-source programs.

I think this can be the beginning of something quite extraordinary ;)

"GhostNet" linked to the "Waledac" botnet

Conficker.C-infected computers have shown activity recently, according to security analysts and software/network engineers, so it seems the threat is not over...yet.

It's main activities (identified activities, that is), are:

• downloading (malware from other botnets, mainly the spammer-botnet "Waledac", better known as the re-animated Storm DeadNet "Valentines e-mail spammer botnet")
• linking (assumably to other malicious botnets)
  
• communicating (assumably with it's creators).

It is also reported to flash rogue anti-viral software ads directed at users of these infected machines.

Darknet.co.uk had this article to explain (excerpt from article below):

“Fear is used, universally, as a means to control people,” said Sendio CTO Tal Golan. “Governments use it. Large businesses use it. So it should come as no surprise to anyone that ‘cyber-bad guys’ use it.”

At the moment, the rogue anti-virus software comes from sites located in the Ukraine (131-3.elaninet.com.78.26.179.107) although the worm is downloading it from other sites, according to Kaspersky Lab.

Hmm. No, not surprising at all if you ask me.

Norsk - 60 Teraflop Switch

Norsk svitsj gir 60 teraflops på Blindern - digi.no : Bedriftsteknologi

Svitsjen utgjør hjertet i superdatamaskinen «Ranger» ved Texas Advanced Computing Center. Ranger kom på fjerde plass på Top500-listen allerede ett år etter lanseringen av Constellation 3456.

Slik ser Constellation ut før den koples til.



Slik ser den ut tilkoblet.

IBM kjøper teknologien som berget Apple

IBM kjøper teknologien som berget Apple - digi.no : Bedriftsteknologi

Det var Transitive-teknologi – kalt «QuickTransit» – som berget Apple da all Mac-programvare skulle overføres fra PowerPC-prosessoren til Intel-prosessorer.

Hmm, voldsomt så IBM kjøper opp for tiden? Vel, at IBM henvender seg til Apple av alle firmaer er jo noe ekstraordinært i seg selv (eller?).

Uansett, at IBM nå tar til seg kryssplattform-verktøy for å konvertere Linux/x86 kode, til Linux/PowerPC betyr i alle fall at de nå har muligheten til å oppskalere brukte plattformer/arkitekturer (bruke større dataanlegg, flere hard-prosesserende maskiner og/eller forskjellige/større systemer/anlegg, alt etter applikasjonshensiktene/brukerlasten i gjeldende firma) siden de nå kan kjøre samme kode overalt.

The "Big Blue Sun" ?

Well, the news about IBM and Sun Microsystems merging has slipped my attention.

But now that I'm aware, what will this mean to future Java / JavaScript development? Personally, I think(hope) that IBM will continue the open-source development and release of Java code.

JavaScript is basically public-domain, but changes aggressively every month/business-quarter. It is governed by the ECMA initiative (hence, is often referred to as "ECMAscript"
 in web-development communities).

http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-04-2009/jw-04-if-ibm-owns-java.html

Another article I found @ computerworld.com insisted IBM would commit to hold Java development under the supervision of the community, maybe under a revised community development group?

Anyway, as IBM has been a great contributor to OSS communities the last years (in contrast to Sun), I expect them to better handle Sun's main development products, or if not, their own Java implementation(s) (Apache Geronimo / Jakarta) will suffice (if not even exceed the optimal performance of Sun's implementation(s).., at least according to some web-developers/journalists and/or Java enthusiasts).

Computerworld.com link:
http://blogs.computerworld.com/good_bye_solaris_the_fate_of_suns_top_5_technologies