Quoting analysis by web developer Denis Sinegubko, “the comprised systems all have one thing in common,” says the post. The lightweight web server nginx is, “running and serving content through port 8080″.

And, he warns on Unmask Parasites. Blog, “if this is not just a proof-of-concept attack that will cease to exist in a week, there is a real problem that server admins must address ASAP!”

The systems are, “inconspicuous and appear to operate quite normally,” says Heise, noting the “new tactic” was discovered afterlinks to malware posted in China were replaced by dynamic DNS names from DynDNS.com and No-IP.com.

“What we see here is a long awaited botnet of zombie web servers!” – says Sinegubko, continuing

A group of interconnected infected web servers with common control center involved in malware distribution. To make things more complex, this botnet of web servers is connected with the botnet of infected home computer (the malware they serve infects computers and turns them into zombies).

Who knows what else can those infected web server do? They may be involved in SPAM distribution, in DDOS attacks, etc. They can do just everything normal zombie computers do, but more effectively thanks to better Internet connection.

However, having a web server as a zombie has obvious downsides for hackers. Once the IP of the server is known, it’s only a matter of time to shut it down – they are all on networks of reputable hosting providers that can switch off the server if its admin fail to remove the malicious service. On the other hand, server admins are usually much more experienced in terms of security than an average computer user, so the chances that a dedicated server gets hacked are significantly less than the chances that a home computer gets infected with some virus. At the same time, the number of dedicated servers, I believe, is also significantly less than the number of home computers connected to the Internet.

“So,” Sinegubko adds,  “if hackers want this attack to be active for more than just a week, they need to either have a ‘portfolio’ of thousands of already hacked servers waiting for their turn, or they know about some exploitable vulnerability in Linux (all servers I checked were Linux-based) so that they can easily turn any number of servers into zombies. ”

The pic on the right is a clip from David Vorel’s amazing map of interconnected, bot-infected IP addresses with Scott Berinato’s interactive controls which allow users to zoom in and explore botnets’ inner workings.

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Heise Online – Botnet discovered on Linux servers, September 14, 2009
Unmask Parasites. Blog – Dynamic DNS and Botnet of Zombie Web Servers, September 11, 2009

The giant online (for the moment) advertising company, “recently gobbled up ON2 Technologies who create high-quality video compression technology,” says ReelSEO, continuing:

“What’s that mean for the video web? One can never be certain, can one?”

On2’s technology powers client online and desktop apps including Adobe, Skype, Nokia, Infineon, Sun Microsystems, Mediatek, Sony, Brightcove, and Move Networks, says the post.

“That’s a pretty big list of heavy hitters,” it says.  Google has agreeds to purchase On2 for about $106.5 million, not too shabby to say the least.”

But, “the regulatory folks have their noses in it and have to vet the whole deal,” the story notes.

On2’s earlier VP3.2 is the basis for Ogg Theora and, “some believe by purchasing On2, Google is likely looking to take their much more advanced VP7 and VP8 codecs open source and possibly license-free,” says Zatz Not Funny!

That’d, “provide HTML 5 with very advanced video technology for free, and would create serious competition for other current codecs and/or platforms such as h.264, Flash, Silverlight, etc., while at the same time giving Google another point of real strength in future internet developments,” it says.

But, “Open source means different things to different people,” says CNet News.

“It can be a software development methodology, a distribution technique, or a marketing gimmick.”

But, “Could it also be a way to minimize patent infringement damages?” – it asks.

After all, Google, “contributes to open source for a variety of reasons, not the least reason being that it recognizes open source is an efficient way to create community around its products,” says the story, adding:

“But perhaps Google has this more subtle, and sophisticated, reason as well?

“Brilliant.”

Stay tuned.

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ReelSEO – Google Gets ON2 Video Compression, August 6, 2009
Zatz Not Funny! – Ramifications of Google’s On2 Acquisition, August 6, 2009
CNet News – Is Google’s open-source advocacy a patent-busting scheme?, August 6, 2009

That’s the intro on BluWiki. And now bully company Apple has had to abandon its efforts to muscle it into submission.

Apple told Bluwiki’s Sam Odio (right) to, “remove postings that talked about ways to work around a special Apple file, known as iTunesDB,” p2pnet reported last December.

“Apple said copyright law prohibited such talk.”

Riiiight.

But following the EFF’s  involvement, Apple has now had to stop bullying Odio.

The David v Goliath fight involved a set of anonymously authored wiki pages in which hobbyists were discussing how to sync media to iPods and iPhones using music library playback software other than iTunes, explains the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation), going on »»»

In November 2008, Apple sent a series of legal threats to the operator of Bluwiki, alleging that these hobbyist discussions about interoperability violated copyright law and constituted a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), even though the author(s) of the pages had not yet figured out how to accomplish their goal. In response to Apple’s legal threats, Bluwiki took down the wiki pages in question. In April 2009, EFF and the San Francisco law firm Keker & Van Nest sued Apple on behalf of OdioWorks, which runs Bluwiki, asking a court to reject Apple’s claims and allow Bluwiki to restore the discussions.

On July 8, 2009, Apple sent letter withdrawing its cease-and-desist demands and stating that “Apple no longer has, nor will it have in the future, any objection to the publication of the iTunesDB Pages.”

The EFF has, in turn, moved to dismiss its complaint against Apple.

But the kettle may continue to boil

“While we are glad that Apple retracted its baseless legal threats, we are disappointed that it only came after 7 months of censorship and a lawsuit,” says the EFF’s Fred von Lohmann, adding:

“Because Apple continues to use technical measures to lock iPod Touch and iPhone owners into — and Palm Pre owners out of — using Apple’s iTunes software, I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more discussions among frustrated customers about reverse engineering Apple products.”

Stay tuned.

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p2pnet – Apple: muscling the small guys, December 4, 2008
EFF – Apple Withdraws Threats Against Wiki Site, July 22, 2009

The question sparked heated debates and, “Ian Hickson, a Google employee involved in Google’s work with the W3C and responsible for editing the forthcoming HTML 5 specification, has made a clean break,” says Heise Online.

Following endless public and private discussions, he’s concluded no codecs, “are likely to attract a consensus among the members of the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG) for integration into their browsers,” he says in a post on WHATWG, according to the story,which goes on:

“These could be used for playing back multimedia content on the internet without requiring the installation of proprietary plug-ins. Some firms, for example, feared a risk of “submarine patents“, while others advocated the much more efficient H.264 (MPEG-4 AVC), although it does incur licence fees.”

Heise says Hickson summarizes the views of browser developers like this »»»

• Apple declines to integrate Ogg Theora into the QuickTime used by Safari, pointing to a lack of hardware support and the uncertain patent situation.
• Although Google has incorporated H.264 and Theora into its Chrome browser, it says Ogg Theora doesn’t yet deliver the “quality per bit” required for YouTube sites.
• Nor does Google feel in a position to supply an H.264 licence to Chrome distributors.
• Mozilla argues the same point and has backed Theora for Firefox 3.5.
• Opera refuses to integrate H.264, finding the licence fees incredibly high.
• Microsoft hasn’t yet said whether it’s even considering supporting the viceo element.

But, “If Ogg Theora is further improved, if hardware supports the format, and if Google distributes the codec for long enough without being sued, Theora could become the de facto web standard,” Hickson says.

The situation with audio isn’t quite so dramatic, “because besides Ogg Vorbis and MPEG 4 AAC there are many more options,” and, “There’s also the fact that the patents for the de facto web standard MP3 will expire in a few years’ time.”

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Heise Online – No mandatory audio and video codecs in HTML 5, July 6, 2009

The news comes in response to the open letter written by Free Software founder Richard Stallman about the “Mono problem,” says Heise Online.

Says Stallman »»»

Debian’s decision to include Mono in the default installation, for the sake of Tomboy which is an application written in C#, leads the community in a risky direction. It is dangerous to depend on C#, so we need to discourage its use.

The problem is not unique to Mono; any free implementation of C# would raise the same issue. The danger is that Microsoft is probably planning to force all free C# implementations underground some day using software patents. (See http://swpat.org and http://progfree.org.) This is a serious danger, and only fools would ignore it until the day it actually happens. We need to take precautions now to protect ourselves from this future danger.

This is not to say that implementing C# is a bad thing. Free C# implementations permit users to run their C# programs on free platforms, which is good. (The GNU Project has an implementation of C# also, called Portable.NET.) Ideally we want to provide free implementations for all languages that programmers have used.

The problem is not in the C# implementations, but rather in Tomboy and other applications written in C#. If we lose the use of C#, we will lose them too. That doesn’t make them unethical, but it means that writing them and using them is taking a gratuitous risk.

We should systematically arrange to depend on the free C# implementations as little as possible. In other words, we should discourage people from writing programs in C#. Therefore, we should not include C# implementations in the default installation of GNU/Linux distributions, and we should distribute and recommend non-C# applications rather than comparable C# applications whenever possible.

But Reichle-Schmehl says this isn’t the case, and the default installation hasn’t changed, stating »»»

… in answer to your open letter Why free software shouldn’t depend on Mono or C# I like to explain a small misunderstanding that seems to have been spread pretty wide recently.

Debian has not to include Mono in the default installation, for the sake of Tomboy. The default installation – or to be more precise: The default GNOME installation (there are installation media which install an KDE, Xfce or LXDE desktop by default, too) – hasn’t changed. It still installs a more or less minimal Gnome Desktop without tomboy and without mono. As far as I know there haven’t been major changes in package selection for the GNOME installation media, nor are there major changes planed.

What really has changed is that one of our meta packages, which are mainly used to install a set of packages. Indeed our meta package to install everything gnome related got a dependency on Tomboy and will indeed pull in mono, too.

That doesn’t have any effect on the default installation (which doesn’t use that package) nor does it effect a major part of Debian’s GNOME users, who prefer to install gnome-desktop (a meta package to pull in a simple GNOME Desktop) or even the gnome-core meta-package (which installs the bare necessities to run GNOME applications). Please see the numbers at our popularity contest system for yourself.

So, Debian didn’t change the default installation (whatever that’s supposed to be) but the dependency of a package which is used by a minority of our users who explicitly wishes to install everything GNOME related (which is to the best of my knowledge in accordance with upstream developers who added tomboy to the default GNOME installation, too).

Stay tuned.

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Heise Online – Debian – Mono is not in our default installation, July 2, 2009
Stallman – Why free software shouldn’t depend on Mono or C#, June 26, 2009
Reichle-Schmehl – Dear Richard, June 30, 2009

That’s Linus Torvald on the release of Linux 2.6.30.

He goes on »»»

The appended shortlog from 2.6.29-rc8 is not very interesting, but it’s about as good as it gets. Not a lot of changes (just 72 non-merges,
according to git rev-list), and most of those are pretty small and
trivial. We’re talking mostly one-liners, with just a couple of them
standing out (in fact, just mainly the DPMS handling cleanup in
drm_crtc_helper.c)

As to the whole set of changes since 2.6.29, the best place to look is
probably just

http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_2_6_30

as usual. One thing that doesn’t seem to be mentioned there is that we’re
hopefully now done with the suspend/resume irq re-architecting, and have
switched to a new world order. Although I suspect lots of details will
still change, of course.

And as usual, I’ll wait a day or two before really opening the merge window. I want people to actually test this one rather than immediately  sending me “please pull” requests. Deal?.

Says the aforementioned kernelnewbies:

“This version adds the log-structured NILFS2 filesystem, a filesystem for object-based storage devices, a caching layer for local caching of NFS data, the RDS protocol which delivers high-performance reliable connections between the servers of a cluster, a distributed networking filesystem (POHMELFS), automatic flushing of files on renames/truncates in ext3, ext4 and btrfs, preliminary support for the 802.11w drafts, support for the Microblaze architecture, the Tomoyo security module, DRM support for the Radeon R6xx/R7xx graphic cards, asynchronous scanning of devices and partitions for faster bootup, MD support for switching between raid5/6 modes, the preadv/pwritev syscalls, several new drivers and many other small improvements.”
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June, 2009

Shared Vision councillor Andrea Reimer (right) says local politicians shouldn’t be, “fearful about the public knowing what we know”.

With that in mind, she proposed, “moving toward using open-source software, open standards and open data” in the city’s bureaucracy and operations, says Georgia Straight.

Reimer, “backed by several speakers from the open-source community, argued that bringing open source, open standards, and open data to city hall will help result in a ‘more economically vibrant and environmentally sustainable city”,” says the story, going on »»»

As an example of one of the constraints that proprietary software can pose, open-source software user Bobbie Bees noted in a colourful speech that he can’t access old council videos because they are in a proprietary format that Linux users can’t view.

The, “council voted unanimously to adopt most of the proposals, including the three core principles of open and accessible data, open standards for data and documents, and open-source software,” the story states.

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Georgia Straight – City of Vancouver supports open-source software, open standards, and open data, May 22, 2009

Because that isn’t a new kind of telephone adapter.

It’s the SheevaPlug — a Linux computer.

Or as Scientific American described it back in April, it’s a “cheap and powerful home server stuffed into a package the size of a power brick”.

Now, “There’s no display,” says the New York Times, “But there is an Ethernet jack to connect to a home network and a U.S.B. socket for attaching a hard drive, camera or other device. Inside is a 1.2 gigahertz Marvell chip, called an application processor, running a version of the Linux operating system.”

And it can be yours for $99 today and, “probably for under $40 in two years”.

It’s designed to, “deliver storage capacity and processing power for technophiles looking to string together every network-capable device in their house so they can share movies, music, photos and other files, hook up surveillance cameras or create a mini data center that fits in the palms of their hands,” said Scientific American, also observing:

“Knowing that its current audience consists of tech-savvy tinkerers interested in experimenting with new computing platforms, Marvell designed the Sheevaplug to run on the Linux operating system, whose source code is freely available for anyone to use. Marvell also documented the device’s hardware on its Web site so the curious could see how it works.”

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Scientific American – Hackers Weigh In: 8 Big Things to Do with a Mini Server, April 28, 2009
New York Times – Plugging In $40 Computers, May 21, 2009

Otherwise, why would he have sanctioned the insertion of so many hardcore RIAA employees into the Department of Justice?

But does he dislike open source as well?

“The Administration counts as a user of open source, with some of its Web sites running Drupal,” says Dana Blankenhorn on ZDNet, continuing, “On the other hand the Free Software Foundation finds itself on the opposite side of the bar from the Administration in the case of Sony v. Tenenbaum, a music-sharing case.”

He’s referring to FSF operations manager John Sullivan’s view that the RIAA’s position, “is a direct attack on free software” and that he “aimed a special dollop of bile at Vice President Joe Biden (right), practically calling him the copyright industry’s answer to Dick Cheney.”

When Biden, “recently spoke at a MPAA luncheon,” he, “assured the MPAA that President Obama would find the ‘right’ copyright czar, Blankenhorn notes.

Reporting on the same luncheon, “With commerce secretary Gary Locke promising to do the corporate movie industry’s bidding, US vp Joe Biden, ‘lauded Hollywood at a gala dinner in Washington, D.C … assailed movie piracy, and promised film executives that the Obama administration would pick ‘the right person’ as its copyright czar,” we said, quoting CNET News.

Let’s see how that works, we said, going on »»»

… the man who’s theoretically second-in-command of America promising to allocate desperately scarce resources to Hollywood, which is reporting a surplus of $14 billion, when the US is already struggling to find ways to save citizens from destitution caused by the George W. Bush recession?

But it’s not so incongruous when you consider the RIAA already has five of its henchmen deeply embedded in the US Department of Justice.

On the other hand, even with Biden as a devout RIAA worshipper, the Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music extortion unit probably won’t be able to manage install one of its hacks as Obama’s Top Corporate Copyright Cop, whose six-figure (at the very least) salary will be footed by American citizens.

So with RIAA hoods — sorry, executives — out of the running, that leaves MPAA persons.

And who’d be better than Dan ‘The Joker’ Glickman (right) who is, after all, seeking gainful employment?

‘Afraid to distribute disks with Linux’

Back to Obama and open source, “Sullivan’s fight is really with the RIAA and MPAA, which he charges want to change copyright to ‘an ordinary physical property right’ by extending its terms to eternity and making every file transfer subject to payment,” Blankenhorn writes, adding »»»

Sullivan is warning that kids are already becoming afraid to distribute disks with Linux, fearing teachers doing the work of the copyright police.

My own view is more nuanced. I believe Sullivan is deliberately making a “slippery slope” argument that equates the Administration’s support for copyright law, which open source depends on for its own protection, with opposition to open source.

However, I find myself increasingly at odds with the President on issues like torture, banking, and his latest FCC nomination. The honeymoon is over and it’s time to support the man when he’s right and fight him when he’s wrong.

So I’m willing to be convinced that President Obama hates open source.

Can you convince him? – he wonders.

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May, 2009

hardcore RIAA employees – RIAA help at the DoJ, May 2, 2009
ZDNet – Where does Obama stand on open source?, May 14, 2009
direct attack on free software – FSF steps into RIAA vs The People war, May 13, 2009
CNET News – Biden promises ‘right person’ as new U.S. copyright czar, April 21, 2009
surplus of $14 billion – Upsurge in anti-P2P actions under Obama, April 22, 2009
seeking gainful employment – MPAA boss Dan Glickman: on his way out, April 3, 2009
Hollywood Reporter – Glickman relishes new role, July 2, 2004

The Jaunty Jackalope (right) refers to the just-released Ubuntu 9.04.

However, development has already started on the Karmic Koala, version 9.10 of the Ubuntu Linux distribution.

Karmic Koala is scheduled for a final release on October 29 and a, “first milestone (Alpha 1) is expected to be finished in mid-May, says Heise Online, adding:

“A Feature Freeze is planned for the end of August. As usual with Ubuntu, a Beta release (01.10.09) and a release candidate (22.10.09) are planned, following the first six alpha releases.

“Ubuntu 9.10 is expected to focus on server functions related to cloud computing, energy conservation, shorter start up times and a revised login screen. Better hardware support for the growing number of netbooks is also planned. Following the final release of Ubuntu 9.10, a Developer Summit is scheduled for the 19th of November.”

[We borrowed the pic of the very rare Jackalope from Mentalfloss.]

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Heise Online – Ubuntu 9.10 development begins, April 28, 2009

“What being in FAT means to me, a poem by borna sammak & bun-b of UGK,” says the caption to pic number two.

So? What is it?

It’s short for Free Art and Technology, and it’s, “Dedicated to enriching the public domain one mutha-fuckin LOL at a time,” says the FAT site.

In a little more detail »»»

The Free Art and Technology Lab is an organization dedicated to enriching the public domain through the research and development of creative technologies and media.

The entire FAT network of artists, engineers, scientists, lawyers, musicians and Bornas are committed to supporting open values and the public domain through the use of emerging open licenses, support for open entrepreneurship and the admonishment of secrecy, copyright monopolies and patents.

“Release early, often and with rap music,” it says.

“This is Notorious R&D.

“The contents of the site are all in the public domain.

“You may enjoy, use, modify, snipe about and republish all F.A.T. media and technologies as you see fit.”

FAT people.

Excellent!

JN

Spinning vinyl ipod app from Theodore Watson on Vimeo.

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April, 2009

“Open Platform launched with two separate content-sharing services, which will allow users to build their own applications in return for carrying Guardian advertising,” it says, going on »»»

A content application programming interface (API) will smooth the way for web developers to build applications and services using Guardian content, while a Data Store will contain datasets curated by Guardian editors and open for others to use.

Emily Bell, the Guardian News & Media director of digital content, described Open Platform as a “new chapter in our history and a new foundation for the future of our journalism”.

She said that Open Platform would allow Guardian content “to be woven into the fabric of the internet” as people outside the organisation saw the value of adding Guardian content to their projects.

The Cass Sculpture Foundation is using the service to add Guardian articles about British artists to its site.

Partners include web design firm Stamen and OpenStreetMap, a free, open alternative to commercial map data services, says The Guardian, adding:

“Stamen and OpenStreetMap developed a service that they hope will encourage Guardian readers to ‘geo-tag’ the newspaper’s content, positioning every article, video and picture on a map so users can find news, commentary, video and other content related to their area.”

The Guardian – Guardian launches Open Platform tool to make online content available free, March 10, 2009

It’s a new  torrent search interface and the folks putting it together tell p2pnet they’re looking for collaborators.

Torrent30 is open source so anyone can get into it and, “This is one of the first versions, so there is much room for improvement!” – say the developers, going on

At this time, Torrent30 scans Isohunt.com and Mininova.org although many additional site filters are in the works. Results are initially ranked by the most active torrent seeders and made sortable thereafter for additional relevancy.

The front-end is built using components from the Yahoo! User Interface Library (YUI), whilst the backend multi-threads CURL requests from PHP5.

Interested?

Then you know what to do.

March, 2009

It’ll be adopted “when it delivers best value for money”, he said, according to the story, which goes on »»»

According to some in the open source industry, the shift from proprietary standards could save the government £600m a year.

The government’s action plan could see a wave of open source software being deployed in areas such as office applications (word processing and spreadsheets), document management and database infrastructure, the backbone of many large-scale IT systems.

Steve Shine, European vice president of Ingres, an open source support vendor, said the government’s action plan had “more teeth” than policies being adopted in other countries because the plan was tied into policies regarding how IT managers procure new software.

The move was partly driven, “by a series of high-profile IT failures in recent years that had relied on proprietary software,” says the story.

“Open source can help avoid many of the hidden costs of proprietary software such as making organisations re-pay for licences if they want to shift use of a particular piece of software from one place to another,” it has Watson stating.

“This is irrelevant in the open source world.”

Tom Watson – Dear Andy Burnham: On X-rated Net sites …, December 30, 2008
BBC – UK government backs open source, February 25, 2009

Time: 12:30 pm – 2:00 pm
Location: Room 101/102/201
George F. Curtis Law Building, 1822 East Mall
Email: communications@law.ubc.ca
Phone: 604-822-0846

Stallman launched the development of the GNU operating system (see www.gnu.org) in 1984, notes the announcement post.

It’s a free event that’s open to everyone.

“Stallman has received the ACM Grace Hopper Award, a MacArthur Foundation fellowship, the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Pioneer award, and the Takeda Award for Social/Economic Betterment, as well as several honorary doctorates,” the UBC points out.

• What is free software and why is it so important for society?
• FSF management and board
• FSF staff
• Current projects
• GNU’s Who

January , 2009

She bought a Dell laptop loaded with the Linux system and said she had to cancel two school sessions because she couldn’t figure out how to use it and therefore wasn’t able to go online, said p2pnet.

Her tale of woe was picked up by WKOW TV which reported, “Tens of thousands of people have read and commented on this story,” making it one of the most-read items in the station’s history.

“Schubert says she never heard of Ubuntu until learning that she accidentally bought it,” says WKOWTV, continuing she called Dell the next day and was told there was still time to change back to Windows.

But, “The person I was talking to said Ubuntu was great, college students loved it, it was compatible with everything I needed,” it has Schubert stating. “So she stuck with it but later found her Verizon High-Speed Internet CD wouldn’t load, so she couldn’t get online.”

Her problems, “drew several angry letters from Linux users to the television station, according to the station’s web site,” says Wired Campus, continuing »»»

Several insulted the student’s intelligence, and called the television station biased against Linux and technically inept. “Perhaps it’s for the best that the young lady doesn’t attend college,” said one of the letters to the station, “I don’t think it would be a good fit for her.”

Ms. Schubert told The Chronicle that reading such comments has been frustrating. “I in no way intended to offend people who like the Ubuntu system, it’s just not what I wanted,” she said. “My issue is that I ordered this computer so that I could run with it, but I don’t want to spend more time and money learning how to learn a new operating system. I just think I was treated unfairly by Dell.”

But Dell spokesman David Frink said Ubuntu isn’t a default option and, “customers must go out of their way to select it,” says the story.

He also pointed out when people choose Ubuntu, “Dell’s Web site warns them that the product is not Windows.”

On top of that, Schubert didn’t call Dell to complain, “until several months after her purchase, after the 30-day return period had lapsed,” Wired Campus has Frink stating.

However, two different Dell officials, “called Ms. Schubert,” and she now, “plans to take the online course this semester,” adds the post.

p2pnet – The Dell Ubuntu Blues, by Abbie Schubert, January 15, 2009
WKOW TV – Woman blames Dell for missing online classes, January 13, 2009
Wired Campus – Online Student’s Struggles With Linux Make Her an Online Celebrity, January 16, 2009

Whether they want them or not.

It’s a given and has been Lo! these many years. But not every laptop comes with an MS operating system.

“Ubuntu is the way to go, says Dell, and putting its product where its mouth is, the company is launching three computer systems, including one notebook, with the open-source Linux operating system already on board,” p2pnet posted in 2007, going on, “The move represents the fulfilment of a promise Dell made at the beginning of this month.”

And this year, Abbie Schubert spent $1,100 for a Dell laptop with Ubuntu on board, says WKOWTV.com.

But is she happy? She most definitely is not.

Saying, “Tens of thousands of people have read and commented on this story, making it one of the most-read stories in the history of WKOWTV.COM,” Schubert says she ordered her laptop online at Dell.com, ” expecting to buy your classic bread-and-butter computer,” says the story, going on, “She didn’t realize until the next morning her laptop defaulted to the Ubuntu operating system. ‘It’s been a mess,” she said. “I regret ordering the computer.’

“Schubert says she never heard of Ubuntu until learning that she accidentally bought it,” says WKOWTV, continuing she called Dell the next day and was told there was still time to change back to Windows.

But, “The person I was talking to said Ubuntu was great, college students loved it, it was compatible with everything I needed,” says Schubert in the story.

So she stuck with it but later found her Verizon High-Speed Internet CD wouldn’t load, so she couldn’ t get online.

Nor could she install Microsoft Word, “which she says is a requirement for MATC’s online classes,” says the post, and, “with no internet and no Microsoft Word, Schubert dropped out of MATC’s fall and spring semesters.”

However, there’s a happy ending. Kind of.

“Verizon says its high-speed internet does indeed support Ubuntu, but some advanced features and installation disks clearly don’t work with Linux,” says WKOWTV, adding:

“MATC also says it promises to accept any of Schubert’s papers or class documents using whatever software she has installed.

“Schubert’s computer came with Open Office, a word processing software package that is compatible with Microsoft Word.  She says she wasn’t aware it was compatible.  MATC promised to show her how to save documents in compatible formats so she could enroll in online courses again.”

p2pnet – Dell keeps Ubuntu promise, May 26, 2007
WKOW TV – Woman blames Dell for missing online classes, January 13, 2009

Vietnamese state agencies have been ordered to use open source software exclusively, says VietnamNet Bridge, quoting minister of information Le Doan (right).

Nor is this a half measure.

By June 30, 2009, “100% of servers of IT divisions of government agencies must be installed with open source software; 100% of staffs at these IT divisions must be trained in the use of these software products and at least 50% use them proficiently,” says the story, going on:

“IT divisions at government agencies comprise the IT departments of ministries and government agencies, provincial and municipal Departments of Information and Communications.

“Open source software products are OpenOffice, email software for servers of Mozilla ThunderBird, Mozilla FireFox web browser and the Vietnamese typing software Unikey.”

By the end of next year, 70% of servers of ministries’ agencies and local state agencies must be running on the software mentioned above, “and 70% of IT staff trained in using this software; and at least 40% able to use the software in their work,” says the story, adding:

“The instruction also requests that computer traders not sell PCs installed with cracked software, but open source ones.”

VietnamNet Bridge – Vietnam to widely use open source software, January 6, 2009

“Upon looking at his computer, I saw he was giving a demonstration of some sort,” she says, going on:

“The student was showing the ability of the laptop and handing out Linux disks. After confiscating the disks I called a confrence with the student and that is how I came to discover you and your organization. Mr. Starks, I am sure you strongly believe in what you are doing but I cannot either support your efforts or allow them to happen in my classroom.”

As p2pnet explained in its post on the travesty, ‘Mr. Starks’ is HeliOS Solutions‘ Ken Starks, who had quite a bit more to say on the subject, among other observations »»»

Linux is a free as-in-cost and free as-in-license operating system. It was designed specifically for those purposes. Linux is used to free people from Microsoft. The fact that you seem to believe that Microsoft is the end all and be-all is actually funny in a sad sort of way. Then again, being a good NEA member, you would spout the Union line. Microsoft has pumped tens of millions of dollars into your union. Of course you are going to “recommend” Microsoft Windows”. To do otherwise would probably get you reprimanded at the least and fired at the worst. You are only doing what you’ve been instructed to do.

And »»»

The most disturbing part of this resides in the fact that the AISD purchases millions of dollars of Microsoft Software in a year’s time when that money could be better spent on educating our children. A dedicated School Teacher would recognize that fact and lobby for the change to Free Open Source Software and let the money formally spent on MS bindware be used on our kids.

A teacher who cared about her students would do that.

AISD is the Austin Independent School District. Click here to read Stark’s full post on the blog.

Meanwhile, “Please update your link in the article above to the Helois Blog to the real blog http://linuxlock.blogspot.com/ suggests Nicholas in a Reader’s Write, going on,  “And as another commentator said, there is an update where Starks apologizes for his strong words after a talk with the teacher and some investigation into the AISD tech situation.Thank you.”

Real blog? Anyway, we’ll do better. Below is Stark’s latest post in full. (And you’re welcome, Nicholas.) »»»

It never was my intention to attack anyone personally….

My sights were set on correcting some obvious misconceptions. It was a focused attack on ignorance but with some unsolicited commentary on a particular group.

Whether by proxy or focused intent, it appears that is what has happened, however.

A particular teacher within the Austin Independent School District now sucks.

The consensus began building about 24 hours ago when I published a blog strongly chastising a teacher who emailed me. She made, what I considered to be, some amazingly ignorant statements, statements that I felt attacked the very core reason for my existence. It made me much angrier than it should have.

I’m human, so sue me.

No wait, scratch that last line…don’t sue me. It is being discussed.

Her tone didn’t help her case much. She insinuated that I may had done something illegal. We build/refurbish computers for kids who are financially disadvantaged. We also build and present computers to kids of high achievement. To even hint that I am involved in anything that approaches breaking the law is not only silly, it evokes emotion better left un-evoked. I’ve worked for years to bring the level of success, however limited, we have now. The last thing I need is to lose it all for something silly.

So instead of crafting a measured, count-for-count personal response, I chose to share her obvious ignorance with members of the Linux Community. It was meant to illustrate the maddening ignorance and bias a Linux Advocate faces in a Microsoft Windows world. It was also meant to digitally spank the hand of the offender. It was a good direction to go I thought.

Things pretty much turned to fecal flakes from there.

Look, I write this little back-water blog to document what we do at the HeliOS Project and to advocate Linux in general. One of our main focuses is to see to it that Linux begins gaining a foothold in the computing public’s awareness. And no, my goal isn’t to convince you to switch to Linux.

That’s my desire.

My goal is to make you aware that you have a choice in how you operate your computers. And yes, a bias exists on the Linux side of the ledger.

Ya think? People don’t realize they are prisoners in their own computers when they use Microsoft Windows. If they ever read the EULA, they’d understand quickly.

So boasting a stunning readership in the dozens, I go about my business writing about things that happen in our day to day operations. Every now and then, something or someone does or says something that I believe needs attention.

Holy Crap!

Well, we got attention. When I published a part of the email this Teacher sent me, it experienced something known as “The Slashdot Effect.” Slashdot is a website devoted to the tech/internet world and is read by hundreds of thousands an hour.

Yeah…hundreds of thousands an hour. My article scolding this teacher ended up on the front page of Slashdot.

For whatever reason, this story took on a life of its own. By 10:30 AM, I had to turn my cell phone off. Poeple were getting my number from my business website and calling me with their comments and reactions.

Not all of them were particularly on my side.

I received calls from South Africa, The Netherlands, Croatia, The Land Down Under and Russia.

It’s the one from New Zealand that bothered me the most.

The caller identified himself and then further identified himself as an editor for a well known magazine published in the UK. He was extremely to-the-point with his call.

He would donate $1000.00 immediately to The HeliOS Project if I would give him the name of the Teacher I blogged about.

I hung up the phone.

“This is madness.” I thought to myself. What is the big friggin’ deal here? This is a non-story.

And my phone buzzed again but it wasn’t with the incoming call ring…it was a text message being received. I cued the caller ID and it returned as “unavailable”.

I pushed “read message” and waited for the text to appear on my screen.

“Can I call you?”

I pulled the truck over into a parking lot and answered:

“I guess. Who r u?”

The inactivity was so long that I started the truck and began to put it into gear and re-enter traffic when the buzz came again. I pushed the read button.

“Karen”.

It was my turn to hesitate. Finally, I toggled Reply and typed in one character.

“k”

She didn’t call right away. It took her about 15 minutes to finally call me. When she did she didn’t say anything for the first 15 seconds. When she finally did speak, it was obvious she was crying.

“Why did you throw me to the wolves like that?”

I didn’t even have to think of the reply.

“I didn’t throw you to the wolves Karen, I threw ignorance to the wolves. Let me ask you something. If I had not emailed you a link to my blog, would you have even known about this?”

Again she hesitated. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that if you didn’t know I had written that blog, would you have known about all these comments? Has anyone called you or bothered you about this? Have your co-workers mentioned it?”

“Well…no.”

“Then the wolves didn’t touch you Karen. If I had included your last name or email address, then yes, you could ask me that question but as it stands, you are just a nameless school teacher that evoked a public response from me.”

She didn’t say anything for several seconds. When she did, it was a quiet and simple:

“Thank you”.

Yeah…thank you. Like I deserve that. Let me share a couple things with you here. First off, I want to sincerely apologize for some things I did say, things that were way off base and even if they were situationally true, they didn’t add anything of value to the conversation.

I want to apologize to all the hard-working and honest NEA members. My statements were based on an isolated but nasty experience two years ago, and, while I developed a nasty dislike for the people in that situation, it was both unfair and short-sighted to say the things I did. The teachers that we entrust our kids with on a daily basis do us a service that is under-appreciated, under-paid and over-criticized. My mini tirade didn’t add anything of value to the situation and only served to inflame an already volatile area of debate. You have my sincere apology for slapping you all with such a wide brush.

Karen isn’t alone in her ignorance. I have sat in a PhD’s office…a PhD that happened to be a principal of a school. She told me that according to her “tech staff”, it was illegal to remove Microsoft Windows from their school computers. So who is ignorant here? The “tech staffer” afraid of losing his MCSE position or the Dr. of Education that didn’t bother to check into such a statement. Ignorance isn’t the sole possession of this particular school teacher.

Karen and I have talked on the phone now for a couple of hours, here and there. We’ve come to understand each other more and had she said some of the things in her email that she said during our phone conversations…this black ink on white digital paper probably wouldn’t exist.

And neither would over 2000 comments that were less than kind on one end of it and absolutely brutal on the other.

The student did get his Linux disks back after the class. The lad was being disruptive, but that wasn’t mentioned. Neither was the obvious fact that when she saw a gaggle of giggling 8th grade boys gathered around a laptop, the last thing she expected to see on that screen was a spinning cube.

She didn’t know what was on those disks he was handing out. It could have been porn, viral .exe’s…any number of things for all she knew. When she heard that an adult had given him some of the disks to hand out, her spidey-senses started tingling. Coupled with the fact that she truly was ignorant of honest-to-goodness Free Software, and you have some fairly impressive conclusion-jumping.

In a couple of ways, I am guilty of it too.

Karen seems to be a good teacher, and as she stated to me today, she has learned more about the tech world in a few days than she’s learned in five years.

That’s because she’s trapped in a world of Windows. Most people are.

I have contacted the technology department of AISD and have discovered it has a rich technology environment that uses open source software in all aspects of instruction, operation, and administration. The District has over 36,000 desktop and laptop computers. While about 24,000 of those computers run some version of Windows, AISD is anything but a Windows shop. Their current standard teacher/student image includes both Open Office and Firefox on all Windows computers, and recently has added Open Office to the Apple OS image. Other open source software on both images include audacity and lame, and other free software such as Google Earth, iTunes, Adobe and many plug-ins. They also are members of the world community grid; their 36,000 computers are providing many hours of spare processing time (during the work day) to organizations trying to solve major world problems such as energy, cancer, and AIDS. Additionally, they are running more than 100 Linux servers. Other Open Source and Free Software AISD uses include:

apache for web servers
samba for file sharing
nagios for server monitoring
mySQL and postgreSQL for some databases
sendmail for email services
ISC DHCP and bind for DHCP services
moodle for course management
tomcat and jboss for web based applications
perl and php to build in-house applications

As an Austin citizen I am proud to see that AISD is a solid supporter of the open source community and is not blindly following a Microsoft centric architecture. In fact because they are reasonably agnostic they make an overt attempt to find applications that are multi-platform and save money. Also, it is not unreasonable that an organization with approximately 6,000 teachers representing a cross section of America with many different teaching specialties, that there will be some individuals that are not totally aware of current technology trends.

Now to the meat of the matter. Many, many of you have pushed for the identification of this teacher.

I cannot or will not relinquish that. Read the comments from slashdot alone or the hundreds on my blog to understand why!

There isn’t any amount of money I will accept to throw a human being into that cement mixer.

The fact that I did it to a profession is bad enough.

All Righty Then

Stay tuned?

(The crazed-looking penguin in the upper right is Frazzle, the HelioOS mascot.)

Blog of helios – Linux — Stop Holding our Kids Back, December 8, 2008
p2pnet – Penguin of Linux wreaks Havoc in Texas!, December 12, 2008
latest post in full – Character-Assasinations-Ain’t-Us, December 12, 2008

So it’s suing Cisco which, according to Server Tales, is, well, “disappointed”.

Cisco bought Linksys in 2003 for $500 million and, “Both licenses place restrictions on the ways in which open source software can be commercially used and distributed,” says InformationWeek, continuing:

“FSF notes that Cisco uses GNU Compiler Collection and GNU Binutils, as well as other open source utilities over which the group holds copyrights, in its Linksys brand routers.

“FSF claims Cisco violated the licenses by failing to provide end users of its products with access to the source code for open source software embedded within the products, as required by the GPL and LGPL.”

Cisco says it’s, currently reviewing the issues raised in the suit” but believe it’s “substantially” in compliance, says Server Tales, going on, “Cisco also is holding a $100,000 contest for Linux developers and uses the open source operating system with its AXP router module as well.”

In the lawsuit, “FSF claims Cisco brushed off its complaints about the matter,” says InformationWeek.

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Server Tales – Richard Stallman’s FSF Suing Cisco for GPL Violations, December 12, 2008
InformationWeek -  FSF claims the company failed to make source code for its routers available to customers, December 11, 2008