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Every tech writer on the Internet seems to want to be the one to crack the code and figure out what Microsoft plans to do with Surface. I thought I was one of them until I spent three days trying to write this article. I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t really care what Microsoft’s plans are or if they’ll pan-out for them. They bore me. They’re irrelevant now.

The first and last time I visited Diaspora was back in 2010, when the social destination was still in it’s Alpha release. Although it had a reputation, as alpha releases do, of being buggy, I was surprised at how well it worked. It was impressive, a lot like Facebook but also quite different in its design. The problem was, there was nobody there. It was like entering an eighteen story highrise apartment building in which all the tenents had been evicted, hollow and filled with virtual echoes. So I ran back to the noise of the crowd on the virtual party that is Facebook.

The most immediately important story has to do with a ruling made by a Washington, DC federal appeals court that will definitely slow down the trolls and might put them out of business altogether. Basically the ruling requires patent holders to sue each alleged offender separately and not bunch them together in a single lawsuit. Daniel Fisher at Forbes explains it this way:

Though it’s not likely to happen, there is a possible way, however, to make Linux the next “big thing” in consumer computing. It would require a lot of money, thought and work – and the stars would have to be aligned just right – but if executed properly might just give Tux some lasting traction on the desktop. What if a commercial Linux distro with deep pockets, say Ubuntu, decided to become an OEM and follow the Apple model? What if Shuttleworth decided the best way to sell Ubuntu was on his own machines? After all, right now he can’t really sell the desktop version of his operating system at all, he has to give it away. But if he packages the OS with an impressive Ubuntu branded computer, there might be some money to be made.

Nobody seems to want to talk about the desktop anymore. It seems that the trend followers have jumped to the next biggest thing. The glamor now isn’t in desktops and laptops, machines that do all the necessary grunt work, but in gee-whiz tablets and smart phones. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but desktops and laptops aren’t going to go away soon – not as long as there’s work to be done.

I just received an email from Demand Progress, a progressive web site, proclaiming, “Wow. We just won.” The reference, of course, was to Wednesday’s Internet blackout to protest SOPA and PIPA. Indeed, it does appear we’ve won a battle, as both bills appear to be dead – for the time being. Winning a battle is not the same thing as winning a war. The losing side in any war always wins at least a battle or two. A war isn’t won until the other side raises a white flag and agrees to terms of surrender. So far, all we’ve won is one battle.

It would be too easy, at this point, to deride Microsoft for their efforts. Certainly, there will be some who will scoff and point to the fact that Redmond is only acting to serve their own interests. However, there’s nothing wrong with serving one’s own interest. The way I figure it, we can’t call Microsoft to task when they do things such as stealing copyrighted code and invoking the DMCA over reverse engineering Skype, then not give them a pat on the head and a “good boy” when they make a valuable contribution to a free software project. Deriding Redmond here would only give them the opportunity to spew more FUD along the lines of “you can’t win with those fanatics.” It would also do nothing to encourage them to move in a direction that would be beneficial to all of us. When a dog is good, you throw him a bone, even if he’s usually a mean and vicious junkyard dog.

Of course, if I’m going to get busy and miss deadline, it’ll happen on a busy week in FOSS news. The fates work that way, I’m convinced. Indeed, after a couple of ho-hum weeks, the news flew fast and furious this week. Hold on, it’ll be a hell of a ride!

More Apps Downloaded to Android than to iPhone

It was reported on Tuesday that ABI Research says Android now leads the pack in the number of apps downloaded. According to their figures, 44% of all mobile apps downloaded are headed for Android devices, with 31% going to the iOS platform. These figures are miles away from what the research firm predicted back in 2009 as the mobile wars were just getting heated up:

Another typical week in the FOSS world. Mainly, the proprietary guys have been busy bad-mouthing the competition, while the FOSS folks have been busy finding solutions. ESR Defends RMS on Jobs..

It would seem to be another slow week in the FOSS news world. As always however, there were a few tidbits, and the passing of a computer pioneer who’s work has effected everyone who’s ever sat in front of a monitor and keyboard.

U.S. Predator and Reaper Drones Hit by Virus…or Not

We learned on Monday from ars technica that the U.S. Predator and Reaper drone fleet has been hit by a virus. According to the report, the malicious code logs the keystrokes of those in the “cockpit” flying missions over Afghanistan and “other war zones":

I agree with his assessment of Red Hat. As far as I can determine, there’s not a for-profit company on the planet more dedicated to both the spirit and letter of the GPL. But SUSE? The distro that crawled into bed with Microsoft under Novell’s ownership, and remains Redmond’s Linux lover under the stewardship of Attachmate? Excuse me, but I think we can depend on SUSE staying the course about as much as we can depend on Apple not suing Samsung.

When it comes to software freedom, Richard Stallman is a bomb throwing anarchist. That’s a good thing. The FOSS community needs a few bomb throwers in its arsenal.

His job is to keep the bad guys, those who constantly attempt to usurp our principles for their own gain, at bay. More importantly, his job is to expose them, which helps keep us FOSSers from believing the spinmasters when they use Orwellian magic to convince us that “closed is open.”

It was already a slow week when the news came on Wednesday of Steve Jobs’ demise. Since then, most tech sites have been reporting on not much else. As always, however, there were a few things to note…Privacy Issues with Kindle Fire’s Silk Browser. Almost as soon as Amazon unveiled their new Kindle Fire tablet last Wednesday, Naked Security raised some privacy concerns about the device’s browser, called Silk. It seems the browser, in order to offer a quicker user experience, does most of it’s heavy lifting in the cloud:

I am not a coder, nor do I fancy myself as any kind of security expert. If I can figure out that secure boot will barely be a speed bump for the bad guys, but will be a killer for the casual computer enthusiast, wouldn’t it be safe to figure that the geniuses at Microsoft understood this long before the decision was made to require the feature’s full use by OEMs who want one of those nifty “certified Windows 8? stickers on their boxes?

The biggest news this week has centered around fears that Linux may become uninstallable on Wintel machines from the big OEM’s. But there’s been more. Some fun stuff. Some silly stuff. Some stuff that might eventually develop into something important…

You might’ve read the news that net neutrality rules are set to become law on November 20th. Of course, how “neutral” the net becomes depends on whether you’re connecting the old fashioned way, by a wire running into your house, or through the gee whiz magic of wireless service. The wireless providers get a break because evidently they aren’t charging enough already or something.

Since Oracle obtained MySQL in the Sun takeover, many FOSS folks have been wary of Oracle’s plans for the open source database, a wariness that wasn’t eased by Oracle’s handling of the OpenOffice/LibreOffice split. When a couple of weeks ago we learned that Oracle has added three commercial extensions to MySQL, many figured that was the beginning of the end of MySQL as a free and open project.

Whitman’s hiring looks like a desperation move. This is unfortunate, because the message HP needed to send with Apotheker’s firing was that the situation at the company is under control, that sanity is at the helm. Instead, they end up looking as if they’re merely grasping at straws.

I imagine that there are few readers of this site who haven’t procured a used Windows box to wipe the hard drive to install Linux on it. Well, there’s been some noise this week that might not be so easy anymore. Linux kernel developer Matthew Garrett has made it known that a secure booting feature of Windows 8 could lock-out operating systems other than Windows from being installed. In response, the folks in Redmond have been batting their eyes, acting all sorts of innocent and saying this isn’t their intention, that they’re only interested in security.

Since September 18th I’ve been saying that Hewlett-Packard needed to get rid of Léo Apotheker sooner rather than later. Well, the deed’s been done and Apotheker’s been shown the door. The trouble is, HP’s board doesn’t seem to have learned their lesson. They’re replacing him with former eBay CEO and would be California governor Meg Whitman, who might even be even less qualified than Apotheker to run the ailing tech giant. The announcement of the switch came early this evening, pretty much timed to coincide with the closing of the stock market.