Dr. Bill | The Computer Curmudgeon

OK, full disclosure, I think Microsoft is evil. OK, now that we have that out of the way, Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of Ubuntu Linux, is willing to cut them some slack.

Microsoft is not the real threat

Much has been written about Microsoft’s allegation of patent infringements in Linux (by which I’m sure they mean GNU/Linux.) I don’t think Microsoft is the real threat, and in fact, I think Microsoft and the Linux community will actually end up fighting on the same side of this issue… And I’m pretty certain that, within a few years, Microsoft themselves will be strong advocates against software patents. Why? Because Microsoft is irrevocably committed to shipping new software every year, and software patents represent landmines in their roadmap which they are going to step on, like it or not, with increasing regularity. They can’t sit on the sidelines of the software game – they actually have to ship new products. And every time they do that, they risk stepping on a patent landmine. They are a perfect target – they have deep pockets, and they have no option but to negotiate a settlement, or go to court, when confronted with a patent suit. Microsoft already spends a huge amount of money on patent settlements (far, far more than they could hope to realize through patent licensing of their own portfolio). That number will creep upwards until it’s abundantly clear to them that they would be better off if software patents were history. In short, Microsoft will lose a patent trench war if they start one, and I’m sure that cooler heads in Redmond know that.”

We’ll see. I think Microsoft is pretty much just spreading FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) right now… will they continue to listen to the “Dark Side?” I say… probably!

Check it out! “Weird Al” Yankovik, from “Virus Alert” as a tech guy in a video game!

Weird Al is your new IT guy

“It’s hard to make this up. Really. Left Brain Games announced a new interactive game for PCs that features ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic as the star of Virus Alert 3D, in which IT employee Weird Al takes on viruses at Companytechco Inc., LLC. Users get to control Weird Al as he helps eliminate viruses, protects computers, unlocks secret doors and secures help through ‘drone like co-workers.’ A trial version, with 5 levels of gameplay, is available. You can buy the full game of 25 levels for $16.95. In addition, check out the very funny music video of ‘Virus Alert’ on YouTube. Who said IT people aren’t funny? If only our own IT group were as wacky as Weird Al. (Just kidding, guys!).”

Wow! It is getting serious… they give us some info on what to expect from their Dell Linux pre-installed systems!

Ubuntu 7.04 Offering—Technical Details

“Before we announce the availability of Ubuntu 7.04 on select Dell client systems, I’d like to give an overview of what customers can expect from our initial Ubuntu offering.

Available Software and Hardware

* The default software from the Ubuntu media will be installed on the system, including kernel and applications.
* The peripheral options offered with Ubuntu will be a subset of what is offered with other operating systems. We’re offering the hardware options on each system that have the most mature and stable Linux driver support. These hardware options have been thoroughly tested by the Linux team here at Dell.
* We configure/install open source drivers for hardware, when possible.
* We use partial open-source or closed source (“restricted” in Ubuntu terms) drivers where there is no equivalent open-source driver. This includes Intel wireless cards and Conexant modems.
* We will have a wiki page on our linux.dell.com website that gives technical details of the supported systems, information on the device drivers used for system peripherals, details of our Ubuntu factory-installation, and information on the problems we found during our testing, with their fixes/workarounds.
* We recommend Linux users buy Dell printers that have PostScript engines in them. The previous hyperlink lists those printers. You can also check in the Tech Specs tab for each printer on Dell.com show if it has PostScript or not.”

Pretty cool… it will be interesting how many of these sell… and, how fast they do sell!

In the first update of it’s interface in a LONG time… Google has re-tooled it’s offering… I like it!

Big Google search upgrade

“In the most significant upgrade of its search engine in years, Google Inc. has added videos, book excerpts and local store information on its main results page, eliminating the need for users to visit the company’s separate, specialized sites. The Mountain View company unveiled the changes Wednesday as part of a plan called universal search that aims to make more kinds of information accessible from a single Internet search box. Users will see that Google’s results, traditionally a long list of blue links and snippets of text, are peppered with images for certain searches. For example, a query for ‘Steve Jobs’ brings up several images of Apple Inc.’s co-founder at the top of the results, plus a video of him down the page from Google’s video service, YouTube. Sergey Brin, Google’s co-founder, called the new approach ‘the largest revamp we’ve made to search in at least a few years.’ Google’s executives described Wednesday’s news as the first step in a long effort to integrate the company’s disparate search engines, all but the main one focused on narrow categories. Many users, the executives acknowledged, had no idea some of the engines existed or were confused about how they worked.”

And they did! How stupid is that?!? A security guy decided to do a Google Adwords ad to see, first, would Google accept it (they did,) then, would anyone respond and click the ad that promised a virus infection if you clicked on it… the ad said, “Drive-By Download, Is your PC virus-free? Get it infected here! drive-by-download.info” Ouch! Nobody’s THAT dumb, right? Wrong.

Hundreds Click on ‘Click Here to Get Infected’ Ad

“People will click on anything. That was evidenced by the 409 people who clicked on an ad that offers infection for those with virus-free PCs. The ad, run by a person who identifies himself as security professional Didier Stevens, reads like this:

Drive-By Download
Is your PC virus-free?
Get it infected here!
drive-by-download.info

Stevens, who says he works for Contraste Europe, a branch of the IT consultancy The Contraste Group, has been running his Google Adwords campaign for six months now and has received 409 hits. Stevens has done similar research in the past, such as finding out how easy it is to land on a drive-by download site when doing a Google search. In a posting about the drive-by download campaign, Stevens says that he got the idea after picking up a small book on Google Adwords at the library and finding out how easy and cheap it is to set up an ad… First, Stevens bought the drive-by-download.info domain. .info domains are notorious for hosting malware, he points out. Then he set up a server to display the innocuous message ‘Thank you for your visit’ and to log the requests. No PCs were harmed in this experiment, he emphasizes. The site is benign and has never hosted malware or other scripts or code. Then he started the Google Adwords campaign, using combinations of the words “drive-by download” along with the ad, which links to the drive-by-download.info site. Next, he sat and waited … for six months. Over that period, his ad was viewed 259,723 times and clicked on 409 times, for a click-through rate of about .16 percent. The experiment cost him $23, or 6 cents per click/potentially infected machine. Of the 409 people who clicked, 98 percent were running Windows machines, according to the user agent string, which is a text string that identifies a Web site visitor to a server. The agent string typically includes application name, version, host operating system and language.”

Wow.

As you may know, my Blog is based on WordPress. I am not going to be too fast to switch to the new version, but it looks good!

WordPress 2.2 is Out!

“On behalf of the entire WordPress team, I’m proud and excited to announce the immediate availability of version 2.2 ‘Getz’ for download. This version includes a number of new features, most notably Widgets integration, and over two hundred bug fixes. It’s named in honor of tenor saxophonist Stan Getz.”

New features:

WordPress Widgets allow you to easily rearrange and customize areas of your weblog (usually sidebars) with drag-and-drop simplicity.

Full Atom support, including updating the Atom feed to the 1.0 standard spec.

A new Blogger importer that is able to handle the latest version of Google’s Blogger product.

Infinite comment stream, meaning that on your Edit Comments page when you delete or spam a comment using the AJAX links under each comment.

Protection from activating a plugin or editing a file that will break the blog.

Core plugin and filter speed optimizations should make everything feel a bit more snappy.

WYSIWYG support for a future version of Safari.

Microsoft is very much against the Open Source movement, and they now claim that 235 patents that they hold are violated by Open Source projects. They are trying to “muddy the waters” over the new GPL (Gnu General Public License) version 3.0.

Microsoft Claims Open-Source Technology Violates 235 of Its Patents

“Microsoft is using the threat of patent violations by the free and open-source software community to try to drive enterprise customers to SUSE Enterprise Linux and to further muddy the waters around the next version of the upcoming GNU General Public License. As part of this latest strategy, Microsoft has, for the first time, put an actual figure on the number of its patents being violated by free and open-source software. In an interview with Fortune, Brad Smith, Microsoft’s general counsel, claims that the Linux kernel violates 42 of its patents, the Linux graphical user interfaces run afoul of another 65, the Open Office suite of programs infringes 45 more, e-mail programs violate 15, while other assorted free and open-source programs allegedly transgress 68. Some commentators, such as Microsoft Watch Editor Joe Wilcox, believe that Microsoft could use the ‘tacit threat of a patent-related lawsuit as means of keeping in line customers already committed to swap out Office or Windows for open-source alternatives.’ ‘Microsoft has 235 patents that read on open-source technology,’ a company spokesman confirmed to eWEEK May 13.”

Will the “Evil Empire” succeed in ridding the galaxy of the forces of good? Let’s hope not! Actually, though, just because they claim the technology infringes on their patents, doesn’t mean that they do… they mainly want to spook their own customers into continuing to “drink the Kool-Aid” and remain good little mind numbed M$ robots.