Showing headlines posted by theBeez

Microsoft's latest operating system, Windows 7, is currently shipping with a potentially serious defect. Ahead of the product's global launch on Thursday, Germany's federal IT security agency (BSI) has issued a warning about a high-risk vulnerability in the SMB2 protocol. This can be exploited over the network to shut down a computer with a Denial of Service (DoS) attack.

Although Windows 7 has been praised for loading and shutting down faster than prior versions of Windows, one software company says that, in many cases, the new operating system can take longer to get started than Windows Vista. The results are also fairly similar to what CNET found in its testing of the operating system. A Microsoft representative was not immediately able to comment on Iolo's findings.

[Can take longer to boot than Vista? Impressive.. - Scott]

A new wave of women's liberation is crashing on an unexpected shore, the world of free and open source developers. The FOSS communities might pride themselves with being the promoters of free, open and transparant. It is a world where a meritocracy rules, where you are judged by your skills and not by who you are of who you know. Right? Wrong!

I wanted to show you some real world examples of how successful women in IT and FOSS in particular think about the gender issue. These women are not some gray, anonymous, unsubstantiated array of possible FOSS participants, but real life women who have their own ideas and ideals.

I consider myself to be a FOSS proponent and there is only one thing that counts to me: great code. I don't care whether you are black or white, atheist or Christian, male or female. I don't check the "About" boxes before I give my judgment. Great code is just great code. It's what FOSS is all about: meritocracy. Because I'm convinced that is the real driving force of FOSS, not "sexism" as some are trying to make us believe.

The only references to software source code that I found in TomTom’s prospectus related to a discussion about copyright protection of source code (as opposed to “object” code, not open source code). I searched via a .pdf “find” and admit that even after apparently illegally obtaining the TomTom prospectus, I did not read it. In fact, TomTom appears very concerned with its intellectual property (IP) rights, particularly patent protection. TomTom’s position would appear to be a no-no among true-believer open source companies (if you believe there is such a thing) and FOSS zealots.

I came across two seemingly unrelated reports, one from the Register, stating that Microsoft will offer a choice of browsers in the EU version of Windows 7 and one from FAS Russia, which began proceedings in a case against several major hardware manufacturers. If this is the shape of things to come, it could mean the OS landscape is about to change.

Let's get real, that's what it's all about. It's not because we all wear tin foil hats or that we're harmful to the community and should be expelled. It's because we don't like Mono. And we don't like Mono, because we don't trust Microsoft. And we don't trust Microsoft, because.. Well, do I really have to repeat the whole story again?

For most people in The Netherlands, an Operating System means Windows. If it's not Windows, it can't be a computer. So if a new version of Windows comes out, it is major news. Consequently, even now there are people who still think Linux is a toy. Fortunately, I read German. If you happen to drive a Mercedes or a BMW, you know these guys know what engineering is. Linux is big over there. You know that SuSE was a German firm?

When my faithful Linux machine silently died under my fingers, I knew I had a lot of work to do. I need a lot of different software and installing and configuring it takes quite some time. A job I'm particularly "fond" of is installing the cross compilers. Even if you're using a Debian-based distro this may apply to you, because although cross compilers can be installed easily with apt-get, you're still left with a barebone cross compiler. The fun starts when you want to add a library.

Mike Dailey tries to convince us that moving to Linux is an all-or-nothing proposal. That's plain ridiculous. An undertaking of that scale is a gigantic project, which no CIO will endorse. What you can do is introduce FOSS technology in the enterprise, step by step. Once it has proven itself you may take the next step.

Every now and then you stumble across a blog that is run by a so-called Linux enthousiast. Some of them claim to have been using both Linux and Windows for years, so they have balanced and objective view on the advantages and disadvantages of both systems. But when you start to look a little closer, you will see that they spread the SOFUD. Some have a real gift for writing and are so credible that you see no need to investigate their claims.

With "Linux's dirty little secret: Uninstall" professional journalism has reached another, unprecedented low. I'm a customer and I expect nothing less than high quality articles of knowledgeable professionals. For this, I've always liked German magazines, which I consider to be the best in the world. That is in sharp contrast with David Ramel, who considers himself to be the new Hunter S. Thompson. Mr. Ramel, let me remind you that there is something like ethics.

Every now and then somebody attempts to debunk the usual Linux myths. Having quite some experience in that area I have a good idea of what will happen. If your article is picked up by the Windows community, you will get quite some comments. In order to save them some time and possibly prevent them from causing a devastating BSOD I've decided to collect their comments and publish them here, so they just need to reference this page.

A change to User Account Control (UAC) in Windows 7 (beta) to make it “less annoying” inadvertently clears the path for a simple but ingenius override that renders UAC disabled without user interaction. Microsoft has officially responded to my concerns and continues to insist the functionality is “by design”, dismisses the security concerns and again leans towards they will not be addressing the issue for the final release of Windows 7.

Finally Microsoft - in the person of vice-president Jim Allchin, amongst others - speaks the truth. Not because they want to, but because they are forced to. The quotes in this article are taken from the exhibits 7168 and 7175 of the "Comes vs. Microsoft" case, which were published by Roy Schestowitz.

The EC has sent Microsoft a so-called "Statement of Objections," or SO, indicating that it believes the company has illegally tied its Internet Explorer browser to its Windows operating system since 1996.

Many Windows users ask the same questions over and over again. Here are the true to life answers to those questions.

Yesterday I published "Why Linux makes Windows 7 obsolete" . Okay, that was quite funny and we all had a lot of fun. But let's analyze what actually happened. In the past, editors of the "major" websites complained they couldn't publish a story on Open Source without being "flamed to hell". It appears that nowadays Windows supporters are just as touchy. The point is, they seems to feel they have to defend their choice. That is quite a change from the arrogant attitude they had before. All in all, it was an interesting social experiment.

Sander dared us all to top the story of "Why Windows 7 will crush Linux". This is my submission - but not without a grain of truth.