Weblog Archive: September '07

Scarily dressed kiddies have been extorting sweets - great fun.

T'was a day in town for me. Visited Lush - great yor anything soapy... treat for wifey. A speciality restful bubblebath and a champaigne shower-jelly for the morning. Hubby in goodbooks. Nice hubby, sweet hubby, succulent hubby, crunchy... wait!

Noticed that Milla, I mean, Resident Evil has started it's run. Goody - can't wait.

Last post for this run - this set will be archived (a link will appear in the sidebar) and a new run started. Cheers and... unpleasant dreeamzzz ... mwoo-ha ha ha haa!

Samhain - probably the most important (Wiccan) seasonal festival - is at the other end of the year. This is the season for Beltain: a celebration of fertility.

Re: Ubuntu 7.10 release (screenshot in the sidebar) - I ran across this review - compares Gutsy with Vista.

The author, Rupert Goodwins is one of these enthusiastic (=mad) owners who collects OSs. He has seven, on separate machines, and proud of it.

My XP systems, I like. Everything works with them, the one in the office lets me use the office Windows-only software (gnash) that controls the phones, and the two at home get loaded up with other bits of hardware and software that I can't be bothered to (or just can't) shoehorn into Linux.

There are good reasons for that attitude - you get really busy with actually having a life (something geeks seem to keep forgetting) and don't really have time or energy, what with 1001 other headaches, to fiddle with the dread machine.

If this sounds like you then the review will speak directly to your heart - read on:

My Ubuntu boxes, I love. The 6.06 computer is an ancient Compaq Armada with a 500 MHz PIII, a smear of memory, a shagged battery, and an unusually large hard disk that got transplanted in from a dead Windows laptop. It does various server tasks perfectly well, I VNC into it from around the planet to keep it on its toes, and I last reset it after around 190 days uptime. It's the heart of the Goodwinsian computer matrix.

The use of VNC for remote management is a little eyebrow-raising: suggests that this box has a GUI to remote-desktop. A pure server should be headless... text only... and accessed with a secure shell (like OpenSSH). However, you can VNC over OpenSSH so maybe I read too much in there.

Then there's the work Ubuntu computer, on which I do just about everything when I'm in the office. On Friday, I decided to update it from 7.04 to 7.10. That took a single click - no, honestly - in the system software manager, and about ten minutes downtime, most of which was me playing about. While most of the software was downloading and installing itself, I could carry on working.

The first second and third impression is that 7.10 is "really rather nice". I won't bore you with the details - go read the whole review if your interested.

After detailing difficulties installing 7.10 to another machine (insufficient disk space and ATI graphics) he gets started on Vista. You all know my take on this: Vista is Evil - and Vista is here. Still, "the devil you know" right?

This is a Sony laptop that I've borrowed from the review pile while my lovely Dell X1 is up on bricks, and it's been my first serious encounter with the OS.

And it's not been a good experience. There are plenty of specific problems that may be Vista or may be Sony.

[snip]

But mostly: it's slow, it's intrusive, and it's arbitrarily different. It takes minutes to wake up from various sleep states or from a restart; minutes in which parts of the system seem to get going only to lapse into an unresponsive state where you're not at all sure whether your mouse clicks are registering. When you're going through a lot of restarts (as in, say, when you're trying to diagnose a wireless network problem), that adds up to a lot of pain.

Elsewhere, it behaves like XP behaves on a 256MB computer, only it's running in 2GB. Everything is just... slow.

The network problems could be a hardware/BIOS thing and thus down to Sony not Vista. But it could be because Vistas driver interface is different and the OEM people wouldn't have been able to test every situation. Thing is, we just don't expect wireless problems in Windows - the manufacturer provides special software to patch up any deficiencies (in the HW and Windows).

(There's an intreguing aside about what happens when you get a review machine without the product key... hehehe: you've got a brick. That's a feature: the Windows Genuine Advantage.)

The review then goes into loving detail an all the points raised above.

It boils down to one abiding impression: Ubuntu goes out of its way to get out of your way, even if it doesn't succeed all the time. Vista goes out of its way to be Vista and enforce the Vista way. You must conform regardless of the implications.

Call me curmudgeonly, call me prejudiced, call me atypical, but isn't computing all about doing what users want?

Installfest today netted two visitors and one install (and one taking a disk home)... however, one person phoned hoping to get an assisted install later on. When his computer has a new power-supply. I'll let him off.

There was some fun wrestling a chaotic-evil monitor (kept insisting that the video mode was wrong regardless of what it was set to). Ended up using my monitor.

I wasn't expecting a very big turnout as this is really a Windows stronghold and it is Halloween and then there's Xmas coming up. It was a nice day too. I'll have to rethink promotions for the next one.

So far, Ubuntu 7.10 is looking really good... lightning fast boot, slick and snappy feel. Each release of this distro has been that much more impressive than the last: can they keep it up?

New Terry Pratchett book out: Making Money. This is a Moist von Lipwig (I know) book... this time the veteran can-artist is put in charge of the Royal Bank. Usual fun and games. Could it be that Moist is to become the next Patrician of Ankh? Vetinari seems to be grooming him somewhat... he's off to the tax department next.

Much of today was spent cleaning, getting sorted for the Installfest... and Halloween. Managed to completely clear the top third of the house. Hardly recognise it without Corwin's stuff all over the place.

If the battle between computer operating systems was won or lost on the basis of which has the cutest name, Ubuntu would surely reign supreme.

According to market analyst IDC, Microsoft's various Windows versions have more than 95 per cent of the market for desktop and laptop PCs, followed by a resurgent Mac OS with about 2.5 per cent, then Linux, which also has many flavours, with about 1 per cent.

But those rankings are based on sales - the amount of cash paid for each OS. Since Linux is generally free, its share of the market is therefore under-reported.

There are other methods - why not talk about them: offer a comparison? Even so - Linux market share is very low compared with Windows XP.

Linux proponents have been trying to turn computer users on to the free operating system for years but Microsoft's advantage is Windows' support of a wider range of peripheral devices - the printers, DVD drives, webcams and numerous other accessories that computer users rely on.

Of secondary, but still important, value is that CD you get with your new hardware... you have to install extra software to use that fancy new stuff. This rarely happens with linux - you plug it in and it goes. With increased industry support, "rarely" is rapidly becoming "almost never".

Linux also lacks the range of software Windows enjoys, although there are free versions of many commonly used applications, such as OpenOffice, a near-equivalent of Microsoft Office.

Nor can Linux users count on the same readily-available help if things go wrong with their computer as Windows users can. Of course, the Linux camp responds that less does go wrong with a PC running Ubuntu or one of the many other OS versions.

...small businesses that shy away from Linux are missing out on significant software licensing cost savings. Microsoft might argue that the price of software is just 10 per cent of a computer's cost, ... for small outfits whose lifeblood is their cash flow, that's far from trivial.

Of course, Ubuntu has a lot of software included which has to be added (at extra cost) to a Windows machine. A very basic windows configuration works out at about the same price as the Ubuntu offering. This actually supports MSs claim that the Windows cost in PCs is small. But the lesson? Linux = value.

Small businesses running a server will tell you about the horrible costs (around $200 per seat + the install-cost or the server and the client). For something like a net-cafe, this cost has got to be significant.

To that end, I have grabbed a new printer: hp deskjet f4185, only $99 from Dick Smith. A very charming little number - never have I had it so easy with periferals. Hewlet Packard's Linux support is just awesome thee days.

Meanwhile, been focussing on the good parts of being married. IF you've never been married you have no way of knowing what I mean... suffice to say: your married freinds put up with all that they do for a reason.

Right nom I am under the influence of a happy woman and La Trappe Quadrupel - which is a German, Trappist Style, beer. Full flavoured and 10% alcohol by volume. I couple of swallows and I feel quite contemplative and at peace with the universe. Cheers.

Movie: The Brave One
Jodie Foster is a victim of a vicious attack who turns vigilante. The film starts disjointed, but manages to move in some unexpected directions. Riveting stuff - have something light to do afterwards.

Book: Twilight Watch
More of the same from Lukyanenko (Night Watch). This is the third book in the series: I couldn't find the second just yet. The power to turn ordinary humans into Others (light and dark magicians etc) falls into the right hands (someone who wants everyone to benifit rather than power or victory). Naturally he must be stopped!

These days things are different. Malware is being designed by proffessional coders for criminal use. They aren't really interested in the content of your computer, they are interested in your bandwidth - which can be used to attack computers whose content they do care about.

Here's an example that's been around since January: the Storm Worm.

Bruce Schnier explains:

Storm represents the future of malware. Let's look at its behavior:

1. Storm is patient. A worm that attacks all the time is much easier to detect; a worm that attacks and then shuts off for a while hides much more easily.

2. Storm is designed like an ant colony, with separation of duties. Only a small fraction of infected hosts spread the worm. A much smaller fraction are C2: command-and-control servers. The rest stand by to receive orders. By only allowing a small number of hosts to propagate the virus and act as command-and-control servers, Storm is resilient against attack. Even if those hosts shut down, the network remains largely intact, and other hosts can take over those duties.

3. Storm doesn't cause any damage, or noticeable performance impact, to the hosts. Like a parasite, it needs its host to be intact and healthy for its own survival. This makes it harder to detect, because users and network administrators won't notice any abnormal behavior most of the time.

4. Rather than having all hosts communicate to a central server or set of servers, Storm uses a peer-to-peer network for C2. This makes the Storm botnet much harder to disable. The most common way to disable a botnet is to shut down the centralized control point. Storm doesn't have a centralized control point, and thus can't be shut down that way.

Linux users shouldn't get too smug here. The worm is windows only now, but the primary attack is based on social engeneering. Windows users are used to running everything as the administrator. They are used to handy features enabled by default. And, it seems, they like to open those funny attachments and follow the links. Linux users don't have as much of their behavior engineered in like that - but there are things we respond to. How about an attachment that announces "MS granted key linux patent: US court"? How many of you will open it?

I also keep seeing newcomers trying to rig their systems to run autamatically as root. Or, disabling the sudo password for their main user. Do not do this - linux is good at making robust networks: our machines will become sought-after to co-ordinate these bot-nets.

Meanwhile: keep an eye on these newer malwares. They are the future.

Today was a work day. Quite a few showed up (max about 16) from a mix of courses. The really keen students are working through the exercises in their text book and it seem an entire section in there is incorrect! I'm going to have to get a copy of this thing and sit down with it. Still, they need the practise in being right.

• Ubuntu 7.10 "Gutsy Gibbon" is due October 18.
• Fedora 8 is due on November 8.
• OpenSUSE 10.3 is out! (October 4)
• Mandriva 2008 is out! (October 10)

It's not their fault: they are catering for a particular kind of person that just ain't me. So far my favorite local restaurant is still the Sahara on the main drag, Orewa. Freindly, relaxed, atmosphere, excellent food and music you can dance to without actually being intrusive. Imbibe has a view, but Sahara has the beach right across the road - handy for a moonlit stroll.

Today, the focus is (overdue) on budgeting: trying to get the bills down. Shock-dosed the pool (while I have the funds) so it should be easy to maintain over summer.

Films: Looking forward to Resident Evil: Extinction and I Am Legend. Seen: Rush Hour 3 and My Best Freind. Avoid the first, see the second.

• Rush Hour 3: A disappointment to Jacky Chan fans. Concentrates on histerical but un-funny gags and an uneven plot. Possibly the only remotely funny joke concernes a taxi driver who want's to "kill for no reason" and thus discover what it is really like to be an American.
• My Best Freind: A farce (French + subtitles) has a nice, if somewhat bitter-sweet, riff on freindship. A serious prat is surprised to learn he has no freinds. Runs around trying to make one. Good date movie.
• I Am Legend ...reason to see: reversal of the vampire legend and so a possibly intellectially appealing horror film. Dunno though, the previoun incarnations were interesting but fell short of the novella in things like depth and plot.
• Resident Evil: Extinction ...reason to see: Milla Jovovich kicking zombie butt.

There's supposed to be another tutor on with me (as "second") but, as Tuesday's are usually not well attended, and so the one worthy was late and the other absent. The absent one got to make it up to me today. The late one got to work double-hard :)

I tried a policy of getting the students to help each other - and there was a surprising resistance to doing this. All the students have the same questions only with different numbers. Close to the end of the year and they still think this means none of their experiences can be applied to anothers assignment. These are people who are going to be doctors.

There was a tendancy to ignore past learning. One of the questions drew on work in the previous section (weather - humidity and partial-pressures... you remember). It wasn't that long ago and they've sat a test on it (but did they pass?) Yet, nobody there could see the connection even after it was spelled out. (Sit them down and force them to reread their notes.)

But most worrying is the lack of a healthy disrepect for authority. The most common quiery is that they got the science and the math right - but it gives the "wrong" answer. That is, the answer in the book they have, or the answers given to the example test questions.

Well... if the science disagrees with the authority - let me spell this out:

T.H.E. A.U.T.H.O.R.I.T.Y. I.S. W.R.O.N.G.

Thank you.

It's been known to happen, the example answers are notoriously off and text books can contain misprints. They can also be correct, but have rounding in a different place (your result is 40.58, theirs is 40.6, these are the same!) Of course, the actual number-crunching can be bad: I'm talking about folk who can add the same figures on their calculator three times and get three different answers.

So I have to focus on "How To Tell When You Get It Right" lessons. Also some usefull discipline like doing the algebra symbolically and the arithmetic 'till last.

I mean, what are we teaching our kids these days? "Tow the party line"? Now I know I'm getting old - I'm starting to worry about "the kids of today"!

I have a new link - UserFreindly.org - a daily cartoon sometimes dubbed a "Dilbert Killer". See it under my mug. In reference to yesterday's discussion, the image is a gif pulled off the UF site... they use the "white background" workaround so the site looks OK in IE. See how pervasive this is? At some stage I'll download the image and convert it to a png so it looks better here.

Bills week this week and they have been neglected a bit lately. Time to do the books.

Here's what I mean:

PNG

GIF

JPG

From that article I see that IE is even worse than I had imagined - and I'm biased. Upgrading to IE7 will bring your browser into the late 20th century at least. It's not just PNGs - it's what it says about the developers attitude to customers... MS has known about pngs since the 70s and have yet to impliment it other than sloppily. Now the web has moved from an MS standard, IE has become less relevant anyway. There are hundreds of 21st century browsers to choose from. The more popular being Firefox and Opera. The downloads are fast and free, they use your existing bookmarks and settings, so what are you waiting for?

What other web designers do: they make a big png of the entire site to get all the transparency effects right, then they re-render it to jpg. Now the site looks right. Then they divide up the page and use javascript to get the links to work - which is why so many sites need javascript. And why "poisoned" web-pages/blogs (see yesterday's rant) are so useful for phishing. The other method is to use a white background.

Meanwhile: HBCLinux is in the process of getting it's own domain - hbclinux.net.nz - hbclug will get hosted there as well but the personal stuff will stay with ihug (provided they behave). All the links and bookmarks will still work, I'll just stick a redirect to the pages here. Unless something happens, I'll be hosting with hosting4less.co.nz

At home... starting to tidy up.

Today, I had my attention drawn to a Computerworld article to the effect that phishing networks are based on Linux machines. Here's another one in The Register.

The upshot is that eBay's CISO, Dave Cullinane, made a speach in a Microsoft-sponsered forum (set BS filters to "high") indicating that he had done a "study", who's results are secret (BS filters to "very high"), along with the methods and the data (stratospheric), which shows widespread use of websites being used for phishing along with bot-nets used to help or exploit this.

This is not new. This is how phishing is done. The head-raising comment is about linux's role. Looking closely, we see that linux is running the web-servers. (The bot-nets, which do the damage, are all on Windows.) IMO: Cullinane is just getting confused, or, more likely, playing to his awedience.

If you really want to be frightened, try this PCWorld offering. Note that the "vulnerable systems" in the article are all Windows systems... though anything with a vulnerable application is, well, vulnerable, regardless of OS. But much of this is FUD: watch

Just because nearly three-quarters of respondents [to a questionaire] aren't on high alert, it doesn't mean the threat isn't there, says Rick Wesson, CEO of Support Intelligence, a San Francisco firm that tracks bot outbreaks.

You're a sysadmin for a large company (Wesson is talking Fortune 1000 here) and some wag asks you if there's any bot activity on your net. What do you say? Support Intellegence gets it's threat assessments from Honeypots - which are deliberately vulnerable systems - not that good for assessing risk to the security-conscious (though they will show you how frequently people try). So you're CEO of a firm who's business is computer security and the same wag asks you if the risk is overblown. Now what do you say?

While the magnitude of the problem is likely FUD, the problem itself isn't. The trouble with bot-nets is that they don't affect you directly. There will be a small drop in performance but it could just be Vista phoning home again.

The bottom line is: surf intellegently. Don't enable javascript by default (you'll see precious little script on this page: look - no animated buttons!) Don't do anything that lets someone run programs on your computer. Use a firewall and check your logs.

And use Free and Open Source Software - really.

"The exact same reasoning leads any smart security engineer to demand open source code for anything related to security." -- Bruce Schneier

"In the cryptography world, we consider open source necessary for good security; we have for decades. Public security is always more secure than proprietary security. It's true for cryptographic algorithms, security protocols, and security source code. For us, open source isn't just a business model; it's smart engineering practice." -- Bruce Schneier

This is old FUD. Sorry guys, but you don't get to make useful conclusions based on a single metric only... no matter how the figures get massaged.

Meanwhile I have a cartoon for you... all about a blogger :)

I'm looking into NZ hosting and domain registration for HBCLinux and HBCLUG websites. Probably be able to start something next week. Ihug I am avoiding due to high prices and low reliability. I may even move the blog off the free ihug site considering updating issues last month.

Reading: The God delusion by Richard Dawkins. He presents a popularist anti-religious stance contered on the idea that God is far too complex to be any conclusion to the argument from complexity. There's a lot about other roles religion is claimed in society: foundation of laws, of morals etc and argues against them. Mostly it's fun.

On the Corwin front, I've had a call from the coroner today - they are at the stage of collecting information from everyone with records. An inquest is not likely to be held soon. And the NZWW story is all written... sorry, you gotta buy the mag :D

Been going through a huge stack of cards sent to the funeral box number. The ones from kids are the sweetest - we got drawings and a big rainbow heart. A message "Soon I will play with Cowin in heaven forever."

"Soon"? Um...

Stand-outs include, a small wooden elephant and a restaurant voucher. Lots of touching comments. Cathy and I spent a while sitting and looking at the sea afterwards. Tui's in the trees. I had to evict a blackbird and a thrush that managed to get inside... they both allowed themselves to be handled, which was new.

For some reason, Beryl has decided to start on system boot today. It is supposed to but has been erratic about it in the past. Perhaps the last set of upgrades fixed something? (For non-linux folk: "Aero" is the MS answer to "Compiz". Beryl is like Compiz++.) At some point I will have to write out my install notes... maybe after Gutsy Gibbon is released (6 days...)

Reading: Night of the Living Vista ... c'mon guys, surely it's not that bad? We go through this with each new release right?

All this is the same pain Linux distributors go through moving people off Windows XP. Seems MS have the same problem - only they expect to be paid too.

NZWW interview tomorrow + photos. Stay tuned.

Work has been routine. Surprisingly few 150 (modern physics) students, especially considering they have a test tomorrow. But lots of 160 (pre med) students to make up for it... learning about humidity and condensation.

"Clouds form in high-pressure zones, where the partial pressure is higher than the saturation pressure ... they get pushed toward low-pressure zones where the air pressure cannot support the weight of the water and down it comes. So you get rain associated with lows on the weather map."

Nice?

Rainy day - Corwin's in the news.

The Sunday Star Times makes grim reading, lots of child-death and abuse. The Corwin story is handled well.

Herald on Sunday did two stories, one reiterated the blog, the link is to the other one.

Over all, the stories were solid examples of jounalism with only a few errors of fact (i.e. we are not Buddhists: I just know this one will come back to bite me.) and one or two odd contexts.

Both paper's emphasised the fire-safety message well. However, I have yet to read through the entire paper editions (which are more substantial than the electronic version).

Meanwhile a relaxing day catching up with the news I've been missing over the last couple of months. Like -

Microsoft Corporation getting convicted as a monopoliser in Europe and being ordered to unbundle the Windows OS. This will probably mean that European editions of Windows (XP and Vista) will be without stuff like WMP out-of-the-box. The idea is to empower consumers to choose from a wide range of well-respected competitors. Perhaps even opening the door for computers to be sold without an OS at all, by default.

Google and IBM have been suggested as next on the monopoly-buting hit list. Interestingly, IBM is supporting Linux as well as their proprietary Unix varient, AIX. This will be fun to watch. Meanwhile the European commission is offering to help the US Justice Department enforce a similar result in the States a long hime ago.

The same worthy apparently had a glitch in it's Windows Genuine Advantage servers so that legitimate users attempting to patch or update their computers found themselves locked out of their computers. This was fixed faster than expected - predicted 3 days - but I gotta ask: If Microsoft cannot keep a high demand service (like WGA) running on their own products (Windows 2003 Server), what hope have the rest of us? Would this have happened if MS ran Open-Source Servers? Well... when was the last time Google went down?

Anyone wondering about their hugely expensive Windows server, I have 11 sets of Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 - Desktop and Server versions. Novell has an office in Wellington and tell me they will support these installations free of charge (for security and software updates) for 60 days. If you don't want to pay for support after that, no problem... don't. It'll keep working and you can use the community supported OpenSUSE, free of charge.

Compare with Vista: 30 days to register or else.

I start work again on Tuesday. Physics 150, 160 and all comers at the Undergrad assistance room.

The fourth ECE Linux tutorial was cancelled - I was busy - and UALUG may be in some trouble as the main force behind the group scales back her studies. We'll see what we can do.

I have had no feedback on the SFD handouts. Either nobody has had problems or the CDs are sitting around in the "I'll try later" box. Havn't had a chance to check in with the businesses yet, and I have a round of nightschools to do. Next week.

Free Software News:
SCO has lost their long-running lawsuits: they ran out of momentum after a judge ruled that they didn't own the properties they were claiming Linux infringed (August, '07). Novell does and Novell [evil cackle] makes Linux.

To recap: SCO brought a suit against IBM (March '03) claiming that IBM illegally donated patented code to Linux. Initially they claimed that they had a "smoking gun" involving millions of lines of code. Under cries of "put up or shut up" from Linux Kernel developers, this figure turned into "thousands of lines", then "hundreds", then it was more a breach of "methods and concepts". SCO was now in a hole it couldn't climb out of.

Red Hat and Novell (both IBM competitors) joined the fray against SCO, (complex mess of suit and countersuit ensues) leading to the collapse of SCO's case and ultimately to SCOs claim for chapter 11 bankruptcy.

I am starting to see people using SCO products seeking support from the open source community, despite SCO promising to continue supporting existing customers. Nobody trusts you guys anymore.

Microsoft has lost another appeal in the European Courts - they remain a convicted monopolist. NZOSS is trying to bring this to the attention of consumer-protection groups in NZ. These guys have a history of tarring with the same brush, Free (libre) software and "free" (gratis) but proprietary software. For example:

An article on the consumer.org.nz website titled "End User License Agreements" includes the following passage as a warning:

"Use caution with 'free' software. It is rarely free. There's often a trade-off in advertising, access to personal information or use of your computer's resources. For example, peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing programs use your computer to send information across the web which may leave it vulnerable to viruses, software flaws and trojans (malicious programs hiding in benign applications)."

This paragraph completely ignores a major and rapidly growing genre of software: Free Open Source Software, or F/OSS for short.

F/OSS includes:

- Operating systems, such as Linux-based systems (eg Ubuntu, Debian, RedHat etc)

- Enterprise-grade office software, such as OpenOffice (www.openoffice.org)

- Internet client applications for web browsing and email, such as Firefox and Thunderbird (http://www.mozilla.org), which have proven to be more secure than Microsoft Internet Explorer and other Microsoft offerings

- Graphic design applications, such as GIMP (www.gimp.org)

- a vast assortment of other programs in all areas of computing

All of these programs are free, and none of these programs (to use your wording) "use your computer to send information across the web which may leave it vulnerable to viruses, software flaws and trojans (malicious programs hiding in benign applications".

F/OSS software allows its users to audit the source code (or seek the opinion of experts they know). Anything unwholesome in a F/OSS program's conduct will be discovered quickly, which serves as a powerful encouragement to F/OSS authors to keep their software clean and well-behaved.

More and more users are finding their computing experience becoming more secure, more enjoyable and less harassed by spam after switching to F/OSS alternatives - giving up Internet Explorer and switching to Firefox, giving up Outlook Express and switching to Thunderbird, giving up MS Office and switching to Open Office.

Your good work with the EULA article is sadly undermined by your failure to make the distinction between free (as in beer) proprietary software (which is often polluted by malware, adware, viruses etc), and free (as in beer, and as in speech) open source software, which is clean, wholesome and well-behaved.

As written, your paragraph above may dissuade people from considering open source alternatives, and encourage them to stay trapped in the confines (and privacy/security vulnerabilities) of a convicted monopolist corporate empire (Microsoft).

I would advise you to amend the online edition of your article. If the article has appeared in your print journal, I would advise you to publish a clarification in a subsequent issue.

Also, I would strongly encourage you to have a look into the world of Free/Open Source Software yourselves, with a view to writing a feature. It is a fascinating and revolutionary development in the computing world which, if well covered, would make compelling and entertaining reading.

If you want further information, please feel welcome to contact me. Alternatively, feel free to pay a visit to the New Zealand Open Source Society (www.nzoss.org.nz), and contact its directors.

Related Pages

Screenshot

Images are copywrite their individual owners. Everything else is Creative Commons Attribution to "Simon Bridge"... credit can be a link to this page at the bottom of the index.html or equivalent page.

addendum: Photos on this page are owned by me unless otherwise credited. They are covered in the same creative commons attribution licence above. Click the (CC) picture for details.