Tonight, on the WFTL Linux Show http://flash9.ustream.tv:18881/broadcast/247959/247959_1220427291891.flv Marcel and I were talking about the number of Linux users that were out there. A prediction of 20% for Linux in 2008 was a bit high in my estimation because I saw another website that placed us around 2% http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php.
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This certainly qualifies as an interesting development. CBC is reporting that FACIL, a non-profit organization that promotes the adoption of free software in Quebec, is suing the provincial government for buying Microsoft software. More specifically, they are alleging that Quebec's provincial government refuses to allow competing bids (including bids from free software vendors) in preference of large players like Microsoft. Allow me to quote from the CBC article.

"Quebec's open-source software association is suing the provincial government, saying it is giving preferential treatment to Microsoft Corp. by buying the company's products rather than using free alternatives. The lawsuit by Facil was lodged with the Quebec Superior Court on July 15 and made public on Wednesday. In it, the group says the provincial government has refused to entertain competing bids from all software providers, opting instead to supply public-sector departments with products bought from proprietary vendors such as Microsoft and Oracle Corp."

You can read the entire article on the CBC Website. You will also want to read FACIL's press release on this suit.

What do you think? Is FACIL doing the right thing? I've said many times that it's very nearly a crime that our governments and schools cry poverty when they spend a veritable fortune on proprietary software and its trappings. Is FACIL's action what's needed to force government to play nice with our tax dollars?

Is it me? or has information security completely changed? Give you a bit of a background - I live, breathe, eat and sleep computer security. I'm not one of those"masturbating monkeys" as Linus puts it (I was gonna write this blog post, before Marcel told me about his rant about security guys).

I do; Intrusion Detection, Protocol Analysis, Threat and Risk Management - I also do digital forensics etc. I get my hands dirty where ever I can. I'm not one to point out an issue, and say fix it - I prefer to get in there and work with the people in the know to fix the issue as well.

I commend Dan Kaminsky for the epic work done on the DNS flaw - I only wish I had of sent that email to him the 2nd day after the biggest co-ordinated patch release in history. I had almost nailed the issue.

But, that's not what this rant is about.
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Creme Brule on 12seconds.tv

I've always felt that if you needed to comment on a story or blog post, you should take the time to register with the site, log in, and do things properly. Somewhere along the way, a handful of readers managed to convince me to at the very least, open up anonymous comments and see how it goes. That was the easy part. The hard part cost me a few hours and an eventual trip to the #drupal-support IRC channel where a user who goes by nick "nearlythere" got me there. Allow me to explain.

My sites run on Drupal and while I love the power and flexibility of Drupal, there are times . . . [ insert sounds of growling here ] Since I wanted to avoid a massive influx of comment spam, my first step was to add captchas with the aid of the reCaptcha module which makes use of the wonderful and superb reCAPTCHA system. I also wanted to force Anonymous users to include their names and email addresses, a common enough practice on blog sites around the Net. Here's what Drupal gave me to work with when I turned on anonymous comments.
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In my previous post I covered some tips about using apt and dpkg, Debian-based package tools. Red Hat/Fedora-based distributions also have useful sets of command line tools for package management, namely rpm and yum. Some of the tools work in a similar fashion, some have other features. I'm just going to cover the ones I've found handy.

Querying if a package is installed
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My first PC was an IBM XT clone that had 640KB of RAM and a 42MB hard drive that ran MS-DOS. I learned a bit about MS-DOS before graphical user interfaces came on the scene, so I've always had a soft spot for text-based tools. I've also found that when faced with over 200 updates (new machine install) it's often much faster to use apt to update a system. If you run a Debian-based distribution such as Ubuntu, Xandros, Morphix, you should be able to use these tips.
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Here is a tool that you will want to remember. By highlighting any part of a OpenOffice document and selecting Clear Formating as shown in the attachment "Clear.png", the formating will be removed. Today I was working on a document where some unwnated formating crept in. This was formating that could not be removed using the formating tools available. Then I stumbled upon this gem and I was no longer wishing for the reveal codes feature in WordPerfect. It would be nice if we could have that, but at least this feature quickly solves the problem (in this case I had double line spacing that would not just go away) and lets us carry on with our work.

Click the image for a larger screen capture.

Inside that distinctive, tall, Vin d'Alsace bottle, is a pretty fantastic little wine. Those of you who know me well will find it somewhat surprising that I would gush over a medium-dry wine, but gush I must. Intensely floral, moderately fruity with hints of peach and apricot, and deliciously golden in color, the 2006 Cuvée Bacchus Pfaffenheim Gewurztraminer is a pleasure to savour.
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So I just read that SCO owes Novell just over $2,000,000, a small victory for Novell. Of course Novell doesn't really expect to see any money, SCO has after all filed for bankruptcy. SCO apparently has no money and the bankruptcy court is "bending over backwards" to help SCO. Indications from the Groklaw article seem to indicate that SCO still has enough resources to continue in court. It's to the point of ridiculousness now.
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