Jobs For The Jobless
Jan 27, 2010 GMT
No, even though today is the day that the wonder-child of Apple shows off his latest marketing blitz, this blog is not about Steve Jobs and his DRM-laden tablet.
Instead we are going to travel thousands of miles to the south-east and visit a man in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Marcelo Balisteri, of who most people do not know.
Marcelo was born in the favela, the Brazilian term for "slum", but since he and his mother were poor, Marcelo had to learn to be an "entrepreneur", and to make money any way he could. While sometimes this leads to drugs and theft, in... more »
Mr. Obama, Please Tear Down This Wall!
Jan 26, 2010 GMT
Only three days after posting my blog regarding the plight of Google's Chinese customers and how their data is now at the whims of a US-based company and its conflict with the Chinese government, I read about the issues of SourceForge.net and the U.S. State Department's Export lists and how the data stored in a US-based company, sometimes created by non-U.S. based citizens, is now being controlled by U.S. State... more »
Careful As She Goes, Captain!
Jan 23, 2010 GMT
One of the big stories this month has been the attempts of crackers to break into email accounts being held by Google and other companies.
There have been a lot of accusations flying back and forth, with many people commenting on the security of web browsers and whether or not Google should pull out of China or continue to do the censoring required by the Chinese government. I am not going to discuss the political issues on both sides of the situation, I will leave that for other people.
One point that I have not seen discussed is the concept of whether or not the... more »
Android Unleashed
Jan 06, 2010 GMT
There has been a lot of discussion about HTC's Nexus One, also known as "The Google Phone". The discussions back and forth about whether it is an "iPhone Killer" are often heated, with issues of whether or not this feature or that feature is better than the iPhone.
One feature that has not been discussed very much by the press is the fact that the "Google Phone" will has a ROM that will allow you to easily change the firmware, and to set up the phone for booting an unsigned version of the operating system, a changed version of the operating system or... more »
Penguin Awareness
Jan 04, 2010 GMT
Today Cesar Brod, a friend of mine from Brazil, sent me a picture of some fireworks he saw on New Year's Day that had a picture of our favorite penguin on them. It was timely, since it was a year ago today that I wrote another blog entry about Tux and "Penguin Awareness Day" (January 20th) and "World Penguin... more »
End of the year, a decade and an era.
Jan 01, 2010 GMT
In 1999 I was working for Digital Equipment Corporation's Unix group as a technical marketing manager, making a "six-figure salary". I had met Linus Torvalds in May of 1994, and had recognized Linux and Free Software as something whose time had come. While most of the world in 1994 thought of Free Software only for technical people, educators and hobbyists, I felt that Free Software had commercial value, and I helped start and drive the acceptance of Free Software, and particularly Linux into the commercial marketplace.
By 1994 I had fairly extensive... more »
Mean Time To Repair
Dec 21, 2009 GMT
The other day I read an article on the web that said that "Firefox, Adobe top buggiest-software list" and which stated that Firefox had reported the most "vulnerabilities" of all the "application programs".
The article admitted that the #2 and #3 "application programs" ("Adobe" and "Microsoft") reported were "closed source" and that "open source" programs tend to show all the blemishes, not just the ones reported by their customers, and reflected back through visible reports by the companies. To be even... more »
