Much like a pair of old hippie jeans, turns out open source software can be
full
of holes, too
. So Doug asked readers last week whether they'd still trust
open source -- and if they miss said hippie jeans:
I still have my old, patched, hippie pants. What I miss is being the
size I was when they fit.
As for trusting open source software, or any software for that matter,
my motto is "trust, but verify."
-Dave
I trust open source 100 percent. I have used Open Office for years, both
on Windows and Mac; I do not use MS Office. I also use Firefox on Windows
and have had no problems -- it's also much faster than IE. Nothing is 100
percent secure (I work in IT and manage Windows desktops/servers, Cisco, F5
Firepass -- they all need to be patched). But 100 percent for open source!
I introduced many people to OO and Firefox and haven't heard any complaints.
Do I miss my hippie jeans (and also my tie-dyed shirts and bell bottoms)?
Sure do...but I still have the long hair!
-Bob
Actually, I don't trust any computer, no matter who wrote the software.
I manage to make a pretty good living working on them, but I have no delusions
that they are making my life better. If you do trust them, don't cry about
how your life got screwed up. You messed it up putting your faith in a stupid
machine.
I will say that you can install any software in an exploitable manner.
Most software can also be installed in a reasonably secure manner. If you
do it right, it will work (yup, even Microsoft software); if you do it wrong,
it won't work well (yup, even Microsoft software). What would be helpful would
be to get past the name-calling and accusations and focus on getting a tool
that does what you need.
-Anonymous
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Posted by Doug Barney on July 28, 20080 comments
Kim Kido bought a Vista PC, presumably with the intention of using and enjoying
the new Microsoft operating system. But Kido hated Vista, and after carefully
reading the tiny print of the legalese-laden license agreement, Kido demanded
a refund from HP.
The bad news for HP? Kido is a blogger, and her entire story of two months
worth of e-mail and telephone calls
ended
up on Valleywag
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Posted by Doug Barney on July 28, 20080 comments
A few weeks ago, I had a nice sushi lunch with the folks from
DNSstuff
.
Their whole reason for being is that the Domain Name System (DNS) is the new
hacker target, and taking down DNS takes a whole heap of machines along with
it.
Those folks sure were prescient as Microsoft recently
had to patch its DNS implementation -- a patch that itself caused problems
such as Exchange outages.
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Posted by Doug Barney on July 28, 20080 comments
Sun and Microsoft get along fine now, thanks to a 2004 deal where Microsoft
paid the Mountain View computer concern some $1.8 billion to settle Sun's lawsuits.
That's why I'm sure that neither company is complaining about Transitive Corp.'s
QuickTransit software which allows Solaris apps -- even those written for SPARC
processors -- to
run
under Hyper-V
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Posted by Doug Barney on July 28, 20080 comments
OK or not, Steve Jobs' health and Apple's future are still on top of many people's
minds. Here are some of your thoughts:
Mr. Jobs IS a rather remarkable man, but every remarkable human in history
has had to retire at some point.
Organizations need to plan for the same and the rest of us can count
our blessings to have coincided in time with the lives of the living remarkable.
-Anonymous
I watched the iPhone 3G announcement video a while back and I was taken
aback at how gaunt Jobs looked. Not being an Apple customer, I don't keep
track of what happens there so I was not even aware he had been sick. After
reading that investors are dumping stock simply on the rumour of his ill-health,
I can't imagine what will happen if/when he passes away.
I agree with you. The industry will, eventually, lose one of the most
important figures in the history of personal computing. Get well, Steve!
-Dan
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Posted by Doug Barney on July 24, 20080 comments
Wall Street and Mac fans are biting their nails over
rumors
that Steve Jobs is in poor health after he made public appearances looking thin
and sickly.
The New York Times looked
into the matter and reporter John Markoff writes that Jobs himself has been
reassuring friends and Apple board members that he's just fine. There's apparently
a problem that caused him to lose weight, and he had surgery to straighten that
out (imagine that: surgery to actually gain weight!).
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Posted by Doug Barney on July 24, 20080 comments
Kevin Johnson, the former head of Microsoft's Platforms & Services Division,
has resigned, and his group -- which includes Vista as well as online services
-- has been
split
into two
.
When I first heard the news, I figured Johnson was taking the rap for the poor
market performance of Vista, and the fact that Microsoft lost
over a billion dollars in its online business.
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Posted by Doug Barney on July 24, 20080 comments
Just weeks after VMware
unceremoniously
ditched
founder and CEO Diane Greene, you'd think the company would report
poor financial results. But no; actually, the company
reported
great financial results. At least in my opinion.
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Posted by Doug Barney on July 23, 20080 comments
Critics love to slap Microsoft around for its security problems. And by admitting
its faults each and every Patch Tuesday, Redmond gives these nitpickers plenty
of ammo. The open source world tends to keep its flaws more on the down-low
-- not exactly hidden, but not exactly disclosed with fanfare, either.
That's why it may be a surprise to some that open source apps have more holes
than a pair of hippy jeans, and are far
less secure than commercial apps.
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Posted by Doug Barney on July 23, 20080 comments
Some folks are real dopes -- and there's no better way to discover that than
on the Internet. We have thugs posing with guns on MySpace, predators leaving
electronic trails of perversion, and now a
brand-new
idiot: Joshua Lipton
.
This 20-year-old moron was caught drunk driving (it's easy to get caught when
you crash and nearly kill someone). Then, two weeks later, someone posted Facebook
pictures of Lipton posing with a bunch of beer cans and wearing a striped prison
shirt. That's not going to look too good at trial.
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Posted by Doug Barney on July 23, 20080 comments
So is Google becoming
Microsoft's
evil twin
? Here's what a few readers thought:
You're dead-on with your assessment of Google. I've had the same concerns
myself for some time now.
-Paul
I have to echo your thoughts. I had rather positive feelings about Google
until I was invited to an interview at their shiny new datacenter in Central
Oregon last year. After a VERY bizarre interview -- unlike anything I had
ever experienced in 20 years in IT -- I did some more checking and had to
reach the same conclusion. I don't know for sure if Google is evil, but it
is certainly doing a lot to make me think so!
One example: The name of the fake company that it hides behind that houses
their datacenter (the sign outside) is "ValDeMoort Industries."
Now, I have to ask, who would name their datacenter after the ULTIMATE EVIL
character in Harry Potter? It was dumb, but maybe not. Maybe it is really
a message?
Honestly, I think Google just suffers from being an extremely immature
company run by extremely immature billionaires. Microsoft has had the advantage
of 30 years of experience, BG hired some of the top business managers in the
world right out of the gate, and he "grew into" his success.
-Jim
Nope, I totally agree with you. While I'm a MS partner and respect MS,
I don't always agree with them either -- but at least you can talk to someone.
Google bought Postini recently. If Postini weren't such a great product,
we would have dumped it 100 percent becuase of the crap we have been going
through. And this is an understatement.
-Don
Yes, I think Google has too much and it needs to be cut back. No one should
get any slice of Yahoo; it should stand on its own two feet. Ditto with MS
on the same subject, so yeah -- they are becoming the evil twins.
And do you think that MS buying Yahoo's search business will help MS?
I don't think it will help at all. MS will screw it up and it will burn. The
problem that I see is that what will Yahoo then get for income to do other
things such as its one-of-a-kind chat system which feature-for feature kills
anyone else? I would invest in Yahoo, but only if King Carl steps down and
leaves.
-Bruce
I guess I would rather opt for free services from a vendor that provides
open source options for those not willing to fork out money for an expensive
OS that is unreliable, less secure and a huge resource hog. I can't wait for
the Google phone.
-Nathan
I live in a Microsoft/Dynamics world all day long and I'm happy with that
world -- it keeps that regular paycheck coming. But I don't want to see a
monopolists dictating to that world, Microsoft, Google or anyone else.
-Ron
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Posted by Doug Barney on July 23, 20080 comments
In the weeks since he took over VMware, new CEO Paul Maritz has been pretty
darn quiet. My guess is he was huddling with EMC honchos figuring out what to
say. Well, they still haven't announced how independent VMware may or may not
be from EMC, and they still haven't announced a grand, new strategy, either.
Maritz did make some rather bold pronouncements in this week's earnings call.
First, he announced that ESXi, the embedded hypervisor, will
be free. With bundling deals with all the major server makers, this makes
ESXi almost part of the operating system.
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Posted by Doug Barney on July 23, 20080 comments