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“Why we don’t all switch to Diaspora I will never understand.”

My friend Ross made this remark on Facebook Thursday as introduction to a link to a petition by Demand Progress, a progressive political action site. The petition addresses Facebook and privacy issues, making some rather disturbing accusations. Although the text is short on siting sources, the accusations still ring true. The claim is that every time something is typed into a comment box but then not posted, Facebook keeps a record.

It appears that the police in Tallahassee, Florida have been busy tracking folks by their cell phones without bothering to show up before a judge and ask for a warrant. Why would they violate the constitutional rights of their citizens this way? Evidently because they were using technology on loan and had signed a non-disclosure agreement.

Not so long ago all of us pretty much did our computing either on a desktop or a laptop. Those were pretty much our only choices, unless servers are included and they’re pretty much desktops without…well, a desktop.

The good news is that in lieu of POSSCON, IT-oLogy is throwing what promises to be a big shindig of an enterprise level open source conference in Atlanta. Called Great Wide Open, the conference is less than a month away, scheduled to get cranked-up on April 2nd and 3rd at the 200 Peachtree Special Events & Conference Center in downtown Atlanta.

Last year, we began holding two day “Computer 101? classes each week. For two hours each night, we taught people the most basic computer skills. We discovered that the majority of people attending were in the age group of 50-70 years old. That’s when I coined the term “task-set mouse clickers.” As long as people are doing things they are used to doing, they are comfortable. But take them outside of their task set and the mouse in their hand becomes a hand grenade.

We figure that any currency that can’t be safely tucked into a mattress isn’t secure, so we haven’t been too quick to jump on the bitcoin bandwagon. Needless to say, we weren’t surprised on Monday when Reuters reported that there’s a botnet on the loose with the aim of stealing the virtual currency.

Those who keep up with my posts on Google Plus might know about my month-long struggle with Google Drive. For those who do not, here’s the deal. I split a 200 gig account with my organization Reglue. Half of it I pay for so I have a place to backup my important stuff. The other half is dedicated to files and other documents for Reglue.

He walked me over to a computer at the back of the big room and told me that I could conduct tests on that machine. I nodded and he left me to my business at hand. In my haste I had forgotten to ask him some pertinent questions and at that moment I was staring one of those pertinent questions in the eye.

A huge Ricoh wall to wall copier, scanner, printer, make-your-coffee-and-do-your-dishes business solution.

It appears that Satya Nadella is everything Steve Ballmer is not, or so it seems at first blush. It’s hard to remember what Microsoft was like before Ballmer, at least for me. He didn’t lead at Microsoft. Most times he reminded me of a charging storm trooper, shooting first and asking questions later.

Ballmer rarely asked questions. You did what he said or you did the unemployment line. Friends at Microsoft have told me of such abrupt firings, even at the executive level. No one was warned or privy to the change ahead…the next day there would be a new name plate on someone’s door. The attitude from above? Deal with it.

Tuesday, February 11th, The Day We Fight Back, has come and gone. Whether the event was a success, failure or fell somewhere in between depends on whom you read.

Surprisingly, the biggest naysayer was probably the New York Times, which started an article. “The Day the Internet Didn’t Fight Back” with the line, “So much for mass protest.” It appears as if the Times’ metric for this judgement was the lack of participation by some sites which took part in the online SOPA protest a couple of years back.

Microsoft understands the importance of apps. Apps are how it gained its grip on desktop computing. The company made it easy for software developers to write for MS DOS, thereby making it easy for users of “IBM compatible” computers to find needed programs, thereby creating a demand for desktop computers loaded with Microsoft’s finest. This strategy quickly brought DOS and then Windows to dominance on the PC, which Redmond proceeded to parlay into a monopoly.

According to the results of our FOSS Force Desktop Poll, our readers prefer KDE over any other desktop environment by a wide margin. In fact, all other desktops were practically left at the gate.

Right now it’s too soon to tell what kind of CEO Satya Nadella will be for Microsoft. He may be a good guy who understands just how much his company has erred ethically, almost since day one, and who has plans to realign the company he now guides to a postion where it can become a positive force in the tech arena. I’m not expecting that. I’ve learned over the years to not expect anything sane or ethical from the Redmond company, no matter who’s in charge or doing the talking.

At about 1 p.m. this afternoon the security company behind the WordFence plugin for WordPress issued a security advisory via email informing users of their plugin that WordPress sites are currently under a brute force attack.

As deep as the NSA has dug its tentacles into the likes of industry giants such as Microsoft, why would we assume they haven’t managed to get inside some of our favorite Linux distros and/or free software applications? I would be willing to bet they have. I have no evidence; I figure it’s a numbers game. Somewhere along the line, the NSA has to have been able to make the right threat or the right offer to get some developer to send our right to privacy to storage on a government server.

It seems that Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC), a Canadian spy agency, has been using the free Wi-Fi at “a major Canadian airport” to track wireless devices, which presumably would include laptops as well as phones and tablets. The surveillance would continue for days after visitors passed through the airport.

So we don’t have Steve Ballmer to kick around anymore. The buffoon is gone. He’s out the door, replaced by Satya Nadella, a 46 or 47 year old geek from India who spent 22 years rising through the ranks at Microsoft to capture Redmond’s top prize as CEO. His starting salary in his new position will be $1.2 million. Nice work if you can get it, eh?

It looks as if Red Hat has some work cut out for them if they care what impression folks in the FOSS community have about them. If the results of our Red Hat &the NSA poll are any indication, some people aren’t convinced that the most commercially successful Linux distro on the planet has clean hands when it comes to the whole NSA mess.

Now I agree, if you want to kill a party buzz all you need to do is pull out your Book of Stallman and start repeating quotes. I mean, let’s be honest here. There’s nothing particularly exciting about FOSS.

It’s common knowledge that Microsoft is making tons of money collecting licensing fees from makers of mobile devices running Android. Well, according to BGR, Redmond may be set to make more money licensing its own Windows Phone than from trolling. Don’t expect this to happen in the next few weeks or months, however.