Those of us who are active in the tech industry know that Microsoft has been throwing patent threats since late 2006. They claim that the GNU/Linux operating system as well as other free software packages like OpenOffice.org violate 235 patents, yet they refuse to show us the code. Why? I think because they are just trying to make us think they have some sort of power, and they are intimidating Linux distributors such as Novel, Linspire, and Xandros. The thing I find amusing is that they are calling these deals “cross-licensing and patent-liability indemnification pacts¹“, so it actually goes both ways. Microsoft agrees not to sue the above mentioned companies, but on the other hand, the above mentioned companies agrees not to sue Microsoft. My first theory about this hoopla is that Microsoft is trying to get as many companies in on this deal as they can before the open source community discover the patents that Microsoft is violating themselves. Why else would Microsoft have put that security for them in the deal if they had nothing to worry about? Clearly, they have some concerns there.

Another theory is that Microsoft could simply be trying to shove open source in the pits media-wise. They are trying to make them look like the victims and open source communities look like a bunch of hackers (the good kind) in their basements hacking together code and copying all Microsoft’s good ideas. Any time I see Steve Ballmer on the ‘net, he seems to be shedding negative light on something. I wouldn’t put it past him to be making all this up to put the negative vibe on open source to boost their own sales. Microsoft’s Get the Facts section of their website is proof that they are to the point on calling out Linux by name which means they are admitting that they are a competitor and threat to their future sales.

So what’s going to happen now? I don’t think Microsoft is going to have any patent lawsuits with companies or individuals because then they would actually have to have more than empty threats. Microsoft will continue to cry “no fair” while the open source community continues to grow, and Microsoft’s market share will continue to shrink. Do I think this is the beginning of the end for Microsoft? No. Although other people on the ‘net think it is, I believe the two entities can coexist. There is still a use for proprietary software, and they have proven that they can make it work.

¹ http://www.linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2007-07-02-019-26-OS-BZ-MS

The shell script below should be saved as time-lapse.sh if you decide to save it. The script must take three (3) parameters. The first one is the input file. The second one is the output file, and the third is the framerate. The lower the framerate, the faster the time lapse. Line 10 takes every ‘n’ frames per second from the video and saves them in a temporary folder in png format. Then, line 11 takes those png images, and converts it back into a video – without sound, and sped up. Easy, yes?

#!/bin/bash
# Description: make time lapse video
# Usage: time-lapse.sh <source-video> <destination-file> <frames>
# Source Video: the video that you are wanting to speed up
# Destination File: the file where the video will be saved
# Frames: the number of frames to pull per second (1 will speed it up the most, 10 will be slower)
mkdir ffmpeg_temp
ffmpeg -i $1 -r $3 -f image2 ffmpeg_temp/%05d.png
ffmpeg -i ffmpeg_temp/%05d.png -b 512 $2
rm -rf ./ffmpeg_temp

I am working on a Nautilus script, so it can show up in a popup menu, but I don’t have that mastered as of yet, so stay tuned. I will post it later.

My other favorite thing to do besides programming and computers would be watching the weather. Over the last couple seasons, I have gone storm chasing with a couple friends. One of them is studying to be a meteorologist, and we’ve been able to track down and catch storms pretty well. Although we have yet to see a tornado, we have ran into pretty much everything else including high winds, hail, lightning, and very heavy rain.

This video was from our last chase up around the Rockford, IL on June 7, 2007. We were hoping this storm was going to produce something, but it never did. This was the first time we did a time lapse video, so yes, that is us in the shot forgetting that the camera is still rolling. The was the first storm we tracked down. We deployed at a wonderful place with a great view for miles. As you can see in the video, we were able to watch that storm for quite some time.

After that storm passed, we dropped a few miles south because the next storm was going to cross over right over us if we didn’t move. We saw a wall cloud similar to the one in the footage, but it didn’t look that impressive, so we didn’t film it. We were sitting in the car when we realized it was still going to pass overhead even though we thought we were out of the way. Still this second storm didn’t seem that threatening so we stayed. We only got a few bursts of rain and possibly a funnel cloud out of that one.

I also added a second video that is a little slower, and thus, longer.

The following templates are ready to go after including it in the TBS class. If you require more help or even implementation code, scroll down beyond the template code.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="[var.info.charset]"?>
<rss version="2.0">
   
   <channel>
      <title>[var.info.title]</title>
      <link>[var.info.link]</link>
      <description>[var.info.description]</description>
      <language>[var.info.language]</language>
      <managingEditor>[var.info.email]</managingEditor>
                <copyright>Copyright [var.info.year]</copyright>
      <generator>[var.info.generator]</generator>
      <pubDate>[var.info.pub_date]</pubDate>
      <ttl>60</ttl>
      <image>
         <link>[var.info.link]</link>
         <title>[var.info.img_title]</title>
         <url>[var.info.img_url]</url>
      </image>
      
      [blkItems;block=begin]
      
      <item>
         <title>[blkItems.title]</title>
         <link>[blkItems.link]</link>
         <comments>[blkItems.comments]</comments>
                        <description><![CDATA[ [blkItems.description] ]]></description>
         <guid isPermaLink="false">[blkItems.guid]</guid>
         <category>[blkItems.category]</category>
         <pubDate>[blkItems.pub_date]</pubDate>
      </item>
      
      [blkItems;block=end]
      
   </channel>
</rss>
 

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="[var.info.charset]"?>
<feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xml:lang="[var.info.lang]">
   <title>[var.info.title]</title>
   <subtitle>[var.info.description]</subtitle>
        <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="[var.info.link]"/>
        <link rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" href="[var.info.atom_link]"/>
   <updated>[var.info.updated]</updated>
   <author>
   <name>[var.info.author_name]</name>
   <uri>[var.info.link]</uri>
   <email>[var.info.email]</email>
   </author>
   <id>[var.info.link]</id>
   <rights>Copyright© [var.info.year], [var.info.author_name]</rights>
   
   [blkItems;block=begin]
   
   <entry>
      <title>[blkItems.title]</title>
      <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="[blkItems.link]" />
      <updated>[blkItems.updated]</updated>
      <published>[blkItems.pub_date]</published>
      <id>[blkItems.link]</id>
      <summary type="text">[blkItems.summery]</summary>
        <content type="html" xml:lang="[blkItems.lang]" xml:base="[blkItems.link]"><![CDATA[
                [blkItems.content]
      ]]></content>
      <author>
         <name>[blkItems.author]</name>
      </author>
   </entry>
   
   [blkItems;block=end]
   
</feed>
 

Please note that in my examples, I don’t include classes before I define them because I make use if PHP’s __autoload() function. Since you probably don’t, insert the necessary include statement(s) before any object declaration statements. Most of the variables are self-explanatory in this file. Lines 12-23 define fields that are for the general feed, and data that does not pertain the the individual elements. Lines 30-48 take care of the feed items. In my example, I run a MySQL query, and feed that data into a complex array. You can populate that array any way you want as long as you keep those element names the same and keep that MergeBlock function alone online 48.

<?php
   /* make sure that we are sending the correct header /
   header(‘Content-type: application/rss+xml’);
   
   / create template object /
   $tbs = new clsTinyButStrong();
   
   / set main template /
   $tbs->LoadTemplate(‘rss_2_0.xml’, false);
   
   / define information fields /
   $info[‘charset’] = ‘utf-8’;
   $info[‘title’] = ‘’;
   $info[‘link’] = ‘’;
   $info[‘description’] = ‘’;
   $info[‘language’] = ‘en’;
   $info[‘email’] = ‘’;
   $info[‘year’] = ‘’;
   $info[‘generator’] = ‘’;
   $info[‘pub_date’] = date(‘r’);
   $info[‘img_link’] = ‘’;
   $info[‘img_title’] = ‘’;
   $info[‘img_url’] = ‘’;
   
   
   / for this section, you can include your entries through a query (if your column names 
      match up with the fields), or a data array /
   
   / I’m going to use a data array from a MySQL table.  The following is an example on how to do the data block  */
   $query = "SELECT * FROM Fields ORDER BY date DESC";
   $result = /* code to process your MySQL query /;
   
   for ($i = 0; $i < mysql_num_rows($result); $i++)
   {
      $row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result);
      
      $blkItems[] = array(
                           ‘title’ => ‘’,
                           ‘link’ => ‘’,
                           ‘comments’ => ‘’,
                           ‘description’ => ‘’,
                           ‘guid’ => ‘’ . ‘@’ . ‘http://your.site.here’,
                           ‘category’ => ‘’,
                           ‘pub_date’ => date(‘r’, )
                        );
   }
   
   $tbs->MergeBlock(‘blkItems’, $blkItems, true);
   
   / show output, but don’t stop the script */
   $tbs->Show(TBS_OUTPUT);
?>

Please note that in my examples, I don’t include classes before I define them because I make use if PHP’s __autoload() function. Since you probably don’t, insert the necessary include statement(s) before any object declaration statements. Most of the variables are self-explanatory in this file.
Lines 12-23 define fields that are for the general feed. Lines 30-50 take care of the feed items. In my example, I run a MySQL query, and feed that data into a complex array. You can populate that array any way you want as long as you keep those element names the same and keep that MergeBlock function alone online 52.

<?php
   /* make sure that we are sending the correct header /
   header(‘Content-type: application/atom+xml’);
   
   / create template object /
   $tbs = new clsTinyButStrong();
   
   / set main template /
   $tbs->LoadTemplate(‘atom.xml’, false);
   
   / define information fields /
   $info[‘lang’] = ‘en-US’;
   $info[‘charset’] = ‘utf-8’;
   $info[‘title’] = ‘’;
   $info[‘description’] = ‘’;
   $info[‘author_name’] = ‘’;
   $info[‘link’] = ‘’;
   $info[‘email’] = ‘’;
   $info[‘tag’] = ‘’;
   $info[‘pub_date’] = date(‘Y’);
   $info[‘updated’] = date(‘c’);
   $info[‘year’] = date(‘Y’);
   $info[‘atom_link’] = ‘http://’ . $_SERVER[‘HTTP_HOST’] . $_SERVER[‘REQUEST_URI’];
   
   
   / for this section, you can include your entries through a query (if your column names 
      match up with the fields), or a data array /
   
   / I’m going to use a data array from a MySQL table.  The following is an example on how to do the data block  */
   $query = "SELECT * FROM Fields ORDER BY date DESC";
   $result = /* code to process your MySQL query /;
   
   for ($i = 0; $i < mysql_num_rows($result); $i++)
   {
      $row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result);
      
      $blkItems[] = array(
                           ‘lang’ => ‘en-US’,
                           ‘author’ => ‘Andrew Wells’,
                           ‘title’ => htmlspecialchars($row[‘title’]),
                           ‘link’ => PATH_WEB_HOME . ‘fields/’ . $row[‘slug’] . ‘/’,
                           ‘comments’ => PATH_WEB_HOME . ‘fields/’ . $row[‘slug’] . ‘/’,
                           ‘summery’ => $row[‘intro’],
                           ‘content’ => $row[‘intro’],
                           ‘guid’ => $row[‘field_id’] . ‘@’ . PATH_WEB_HOME,
                           ‘category’ => ‘Fields’,
                           ‘updated’ => date(‘c’, strtotime($row[‘updated’])),
                           ‘pub_date’ => date(‘c’, strtotime($row[‘added’]))
                        );
   }
   
   $tbs->MergeBlock(‘blkItems’, $blkItems, true);
   
   / show output, but don’t stop the script */
   $tbs->Show(TBS_OUTPUT);;
?>

I have been avoiding using it as it always screwed up my HTML when I copied it out of an HTML editor, and it wasn’t because I was using code that shouldn’t be there. It was because I was using some inline CSS. Since we are now forced to use it, I have found a solution after some trial and error. I realized it was because I had tabs and extra spaces in the code (I don’t get it either). All I had to do to fix that was take out all the extra white space. If your don’t know how to do this and are having troubles with the new form, try running your html and copy the reformatted code into the description editor. You will hopefully have better luck.

See this tool at: http://www.pr0gr4mm3r.com/syi-format/

Editors

Netbeans – All Platforms

All the tools software developers need to create cross-platform Java desktop, enterprise and web applications. Runs on Windows, Linux, MacOS, as well as Solaris. It is easy to install and use, works right out of the box — and it is open-source and free!

Bluefish – GNU/Linux Only

Bluefish is a powerful editor targeted towards programmers and webdesigners, with many options to write websites, scripts and programming code. Bluefish supports many programming and markup languages, and it focuses on editing dynamic and interactive websites.

PSPad – Windows Only

This is one of the nest editors available on the Windows platform.

Notepad2 – Windows Only

Another great text editor for code, etc.

Scintilla – Windows Only

Yet another text editor for Windows and other platforms.

Notepad++ – Windows Only

Notepad++ is a free source code editor (and Notepad replacement), which supports several programming languages, running under the MS Windows environment.

MySQL Tools

phpMyAdmin – All Platforms (PHP & MySQL Required)

phpMyAdmin is a tool written in PHP intended to handle the administration of MySQL over the Web. Currently it can create and drop databases, create/drop/alter tables, delete/edit/add fields, execute any SQL statement, manage keys on fields, manage privileges,export data into various formats and is available in 52 languages.

MySQL Query Browser – All Platforms

MySQL Query Browser is the easiest visual tool for creating, executing, and optimizing SQL queries for your MySQL Database Server. The MySQL Query Browser gives you a complete set of drag-and-drop tools to visually build, analyze and manage your queries.

MySQL Administrator – All Platforms

MySQL Administrator is a powerful visual administration console that enables you to easily administer your MySQL environment and gain significantly better visibility into how your databases are operating. MySQL Administrator now integrates database management and maintenance into a single, seamless environment, with a clear and intuitive graphical user interface.

File Transfer

gFTP – GNU/Linux

Typical FTP transfer program; comparable to FileZilla. gFTP supports FTP, HTTP, SSH2, and FSP.

Filezilla – All Platforms

This is a powerful FTP client that is way more stable than using IE.

Server Software

Web Developer Server Suite – Windows

I haven’t used this suite itself, but I have used all the included packages on my Linux servers every day. Although this is Windows only, you don’t need something like this to set it up on a *NIX server because of all the package managers available.

Apache – All Platforms

With a market share of over 59%, Apache is the most popular software for serving web pages on the HTTP. Plus, it’s free software!

MySQL – All Platforms

The database system I use every day.

PHP – All Platforms

Web scripting language no server should be without.

PHP Backend Scripts

These scripts do not function on their own. They are to be used in your programming to make it easier and help you to avoid reinventing the wheel.

TinyButStrong

TinyButStrong is a library that enables you to create HTML pages dynamically. It’s a Template Engine for the PHP language. It enables you to easily display information from your database, but also to seriously harmonize and simplify your PHP programming.

htmlMimeMail

This is a PHP class which allows you to easily send email from your PHP scripts with attachments, HTML and embedded images.

lastRSS

This is a simple yet powerful PHP class to parse RSS.

Snoopy

Snoopy is a PHP class that simulates a web browser. It automates the task of retrieving web page content and posting forms, for example.

TextilePHP

TextilePHP is a PHP implementation of the Textile shorthand syntax. Textile is used to create valid (X)HTML output without using HTML markup. It was originally developed by Dean Allen of textism.com, and several different versions (in several different programming languages) have been created.

GeSHi

GeSHi started as an idea to create a generic syntax highlighter for the phpBB forum system, but has been generalised to this project. GeSHi aims to be a simple but powerful highlighting class.

PHP & MySQL Front-end Scripts

phpBB

Since its creation in 2000, phpBB has become the most widely used Open Source forum solution. Like its predecessors, phpBB 3.0 “Olympus” has an easy to use administration panel and a user friendly installation process, which allows you to have a forum set up in minutes.

Wordpress

WordPress is a state-of-the-art semantic personal publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. What a mouthful. WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.

Pivot

Pivot is a web-based tool to help you maintain dynamic sites, like weblogs or online journals. Pivot is released under the GPL so it is completely free to use. It is written in PHP, and does not require additional libraries or databases to function.

activeCollab

activeCollab is an easy to use, web based, open source collaboration and project management tool. Set up an environment where you, your team and your clients can collaborate on active projects using a set of simple, functional tools. 100% free!

Gallery

Gallery gives you an intuitive way to blend photo management seamlessly into your own website whether you’re running a small personal site or a large community site.

MyBackup

Enhance the power of phpMyAdmin’s export feature, and backup your database(s) and web files automatically using scheduled cronjobs. This script is great if you need to regularly backup your database and/or website files to a remote location, too, since you can FTP your backups to another server, or email them.

Office Software

OpenOffice.org

OpenOffice is the best alternative to MS Office and other proprietary solutions. This multi-platform office suite will open and save in virtually any format making it the most compatible suite out there.

Abiword

Abiword is a multi-platform word processing system that is comparable to MS Word yet extremely lightweight.

PDFCreator

PDFCreator easily creates PDFs from any Windows program. Use it like a printer in Word, StarCalc or any other Windows application.

System Tools

IZArc

IZArc is the ultimate freeware archive utility supporting many archive formats like: 7-ZIP, A, ACE, ARC, ARJ, B64, BH, BIN, BZ2, BZA, C2D, CAB, CDI, CPIO, DEB, ENC, GCA, GZ, GZA, HA, IMG, ISO, JAR, LHA, LIB, LZH, MDF, MBF, MIM, NRG, PAK, PDI, PK3, RAR, RPM, TAR, TAZ, TBZ, TGZ, TZ, UUE, WAR, XXE, YZ1, Z, ZIP, ZOO. With a modern easy-to-use interface, IZArc provides support for most compressed and encoded files, as well as access to many powerful features and tools. It allows you to drag and drop files from and to Windows Explorer, create and extract archives directly in Windows Explorer, create multiple archives spanning disks, creating self-extracting archives, repair damaged zip archives, converting from one archive type to another, view and write comments and many more.

7-Zip

This is a great tool to manage compressed archives in multiple formats.

TightVNC

This allows you to access your computer remotely. I use it all the time to access my computer away from the office.

Filezilla

This is a powerful FTP client that is way more stable than using IE.

Clamwin

A free anti virus for Windows

AVG Free Edition

It’s not open-source, but still a great anti-virus for personal use.

Web / Chat / Email

Pidgin

Formally called Gaim, Pidgin is the best IM client I’ve ever seen, as it’s compatible with virtually all protocols including AIM, MSN, Yahoo, Google (Jabber), Jabber, etc.

Firefox

The best web browser in my opinion with many customizations available.

Mozilla Thunderbird

My personal favorite for email. I have it manage all my company email, personal email, and RSS feeds.

Graphic Design

The Gimp

The Gimp is the free & open source solution comparable to Adobe Photoshop that’s perfect to any graphic designer. See gimp.org/windows for Windows installation packages.

Paint.net

Microsoft Paint…but souped up.

Text Editors

PSPad

This is one of the nest editors available on the Windows platform.

Notepad2

Another great text editor for code, etc.

Scintilla

Yet another text editor for Windows and other platforms.

Notepad++

Notepad++ is a free source code editor (and Notepad replacement), which supports several programming languages, running under the MS Windows environment.

Multimedia

Media Coder

MediaCoder is a free universal audio/video batch transcoder distributed under GPL license, which nicely integrates lots of excellent audio/video codecs and tools from the open source community into an all-in-one solution, capable of transcoding among different audio/video formats.

Audacity

Audacity is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds.

Web Server Related

Web Developer Server Suite

I haven’t used this suite itself, but I have used all the included packages on my Linux servers every day.

Apache

With a market share of over 59%, Apache is the most popular software for serving web pages on the HTTP. Plus, it’s free software!

MySQL

The database system I use every day.

PHP

Web scripting language no server should be without – even if it’s running Windows :).

It’s very possible that I missed something. Please write me or leave a comment if I missed a popular program.

First, I would like to start with some positive example before I get into the bad example. A good example of moderated forums is phpbb.com/community. Their moderators are extremely active in keeping topics on track, removing spam, and enforcing board policies. Furthermore, I have found that they do not delete topics, they just lock them and delete spam material as necessary (and replacing it with “[spam]”). I have found that this tremendously helps the forums maintain transparency.

Now for a bad example. I was Stumbling, when I came across getswiftfox.org. See for yourself, it’s pretty interesting, and there is definitely somebody unhappy with the product. This in itself didn’t make me stop using the program. I won’t do that based on one site’s (or person’s) opinion. I proceeded to the program’s main site for more information on what the issue was. It appeared that there was a hot topic about the closed source license of SwiftFox. I then went to this topic. One of the main phrases that stuck out was “He didn’t just close my two previous threads, but deleted my account and banned my IP.” Apparently, the site admin (and program writer) banned a user because they seemed to be asking questions he didn’t want to answer. Because I see somebody complaining of over-moderation, it makes me wonder what else this guy is deleting, and because of that, I no longer trust the program.

Final thoughts: if you have a forum for personal or business use, be careful on how you moderate them because it can easily backfire.

It is my best guess that the image verifications are the hardest to crack, so in theory, if you tweak that, the bots will not be able to adapt to it.

1. Make sure you have the latest version of phpBB installed (given)
2. Enable image verification, and user activation
3. Open up phpbb/includes/usercp_confirm.php
4. Find tweakable values. Some examples are $total_width, $total_height, $img_width, $img_height, $width, (you get the idea)
5. Preview as you tweak to make sure the images are still readable, yet make sure you are making noticeable changes.

I tweaked the $width variable on line 87 to the point where some of the letters were getting squished together and getting cut off by a few pixels, and that was enough for me.

I tried this method on a board that was getting 10-15 spam registrations a day. It’s been spam free for almost a month now.

If you find a method that woks, post it, but generalize it. If you get too many people start copying you exactly, it will make it work the spammer’s time to adapt to it. Remember, the key is to make your board different from all the others.

Since most of this entry is going to point out Microsoft’s flaws, I will start off by saying how Windows XP is better than the current GNU/Linux releases. Windows is currently more user friendly, and let me explain why. Both operating systems have come a long way, and both are pretty user friendly for every day use. The reason why I am giving Windows the point here is because Windows has a GUI solution for just about everything including configurations, and Linux does not. For example, when I set up dual display on my WinXP machine, I go to the display properties, click on the picture of the second monitor, and click “Extend my desktop to this monitor”, click Apply, and I’m golden. For my Ubuntu Installation, I have to fire up a terminal window, edit my /etc/X11/xorg.conf file, restart X server, realize I messed something up, edit the file again, restart the X server…you get the point. Getting dual head to work on my Linux box was one of the barriers that I had to overcome to get this working.

So that’s one point for Microsoft. Now let’s see why I like Linux better. I’m going to start with the practical solutions first and then get in depth on why I like one company more than the other.

Software Installation

Most popular versions of Linux have a repository system that makes it extremely easy to manage your software installation. These systems have package managers that download and install software for you. If you were looking for software for Windows, you would have to search the web for it, find a downloading site, maybe pay for it, install it, and possibly reboot your computer.

Even if the software you would want to install is on a CD, using the package manager is still more convenient. For example, let’s compare installing MS Office XP on Windows to OpenOffice.org on Linux.

MS Office:

1. Find your CD(s)
2. Find your license key
3. Insert your CD and open the installation program
4. Input your license key (repeat as needed if inputted incorrectly)
5. Select installation options
6. Go take a vacation until the installation is completed
7. Reboot your computer
8. Activate the software which requires an Internet connection or phone call

OpenOffice:

1. Open the Add/Remove Applications program from the Applications Menu (Ubuntu/Debian systems)
2. Find OpenOffice under the Office category
3. Click Apply
4. Wait for the packages to download and install

I don’t know about you, but I sometimes have a hard time keeping track of all of my software CDs. Using the package managers release me from the problems of hunting down software CDs, and since the software is free, you will never have to input another license key again. If you do not have a broadband connection, you can download the packages on a computer that does have a faster Internet connection and take them over to your computer on a CD.

Price

This is one of those “duh” reasons why Microsoft loses the point on this one. The new version of Windows Vista will ding you $500+, and the business version of MS Office will dent you $700+. The newest version of Ubuntu Linux (coming out in April ’07) will leave you exactly $0 lighter, and all the software that comes with it including OpenOffice, will add only $0 to your total cost.

Customizable

There are several desktops available to your Linux distribution. If you are using Ubuntu, you are most likely using the Gnome desktop. If you want to try out the KDE Desktop, all you have to do is fire up a terminal and type “sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop”, watch it download all the necessary packages, and restart the X Server. Since the operating system packages are written by the community, there are many options out there to choose from.

Spyware, Viruses, Etc.

Yes, all Windows users know (or should) about the risk of viruses, security updates and whatnot. You know that if you don’t keep your computer up to date, you will be facing some serious trouble in the near future. Guess what…I’ll admit that as I’m typing this article, I have no anti-virus software running, and I haven’t scanned my computer…ever. Furthermore, when I see a warning of a virus spreading, I ignore it. Why? Because they all target Windows users. Install Linux on your computer and never have to worry about a virus again…ever. We don’t have to worry about them for a couple reasons. 1) Linux users are less than 5% of the total computer market, so we are not targeted any more then the Macs are. 2) The Linux operating system (and the file system) has been designed so that viruses won’t be able to do any damage beyond the user’s home folder, so even if point 1 was no longer true, Linux is way more secure and viruses don’t have a chance.

Let me give an example on point number 2. (This is hypothetical, and you probably don’t want to really carry out these steps) If you are in Windows, fire up an explorer window, and go to c:\WIndows\Program Files. Then select any program folder and delete it (don’t really do it). The point is that the computer would let you delete it unless you are running as a guest user. That is what makes Windows vulnerable. It gives the average user access to critical files on the hard drive that the user has no business modifying. Linux doesn’t let the user outside their home folder. That’s why any virus at worst will only blow away the home folder, unless the user was dumb enough to run the malicious code as root.

Security

To put it simply, Linux has fewer security problems because more eyes see the code. You yourself can see the source code and see exactly how it works. Microsoft doesn’t release their source code, so the security holes are impossible for anyone to find but the company itself, and only they can fix it. See also point 2 on the section above.

Company Practices

Now, I don’t like Microsoft as a company either. They do provide a pretty good product. I am not here to tell you that Windows sucks and you should avoid it at all costs. You do need to be aware that there are other options, and that Windows is your only choice. Microsoft wants you to believe that there is no alternative. How else do you think they try to get away with selling software for $500+? I think we are pretty aware of the monopolistic practices that the company have been engaging in, and because of that history, I really don’t feel like supporting them in any way. If you want a better idea of what I’m talking about, Google search “microsoft monopoly”. I would elaborate, but I’m done typing for the day. :)

More Information

Linux For Anarchists
My Vista Upgrade Experience
Solutions from Microsoft. Can we trust them?
Stopping Vista adoption by promoting free software
Why Linux is Better

I would have loved to see some effective action taken against spam just because it’s annoying and an invasion of my inbox. Unfortunately, that hasn’t happened as we all still get it…until recently. SEC launched “Operation Spamalot” on Thursday, Marh 8, 2007². The reason they are taking this action is not because of the annoyance of spam. It’s because it is more of a scam. These unknown individuals are investing heavily in these penny stocks and then sending hundreds of millions of emails to investors trying to hype up the stock. When the stock goes up, the unknown individual then sells out and usually makes a good chunk of change. The reason why SEC is taking down these stocks is because some of the information spread about the companies are questionable. (See footnote #2 for examples).

I would think that it would be relatively simple to track down these…people that are committing these questionable activities. All one has to do is track down the person that sells out for a huge profit. Nobody else would have the motive. So far, I haven’t heard of anybody being caught, but at least they are being stopped.

¹ http://www.forbes.com/business/2007/03/08/spamalot-sec-penny-stocks-biz-cx_lm_0308spamalot.html

More Information:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/08/AR2007030802092.html
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/20070309-9999-1b9sec.html