Open Source Subnet: An independent Open Source community

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  Open Source Fact and Fiction

  Windows 8? How About Windows 95 by Alan Shimel

  With all of the excitement over the release of Windows 8 (that is excitement right?) I took a moment to reflect back (I do a lot of that lately) on when was the last time I was actually excited about a new version of Windows.  No doubt about it, hands down, nothing compared to the release of Windows 95 back in August, 1995.  For me anyway, the "Start Me Up" release was a defining moment in my computing evolution. I had started my first computer business about a year earlier with a...

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  Open Source Fact and Fiction

  Why did the U.S. government sell out against Open Source? by Alan Shimel

  The U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) just announced that they have replaced over 17,000 Blackberry phones with Apple's iPhones. While I can understand the reasoning behind replacing the BlackBerry phones, I don't quite get the logic on going to another closed system like Apple's iOS. It seems that the ICE did not want Android because of its open nature. The report says that the "strict control of the hardware platform and operating system" that Apple provides was a plus. Wasn't...

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  Open Source Community

  Windows 8: Already mastered by a 3-year-old by Colin Neagle

  Meet Julian, the three-year-old who has mastered Windows 8 and in turn rebutted the many complaints that Microsoft's newest operating system strays too far from the Windows on which computer users were raised for widespread adoption.Designed for the impending multi-device world, Windows 8 tries to strike a balance between navigating an OS on a PC, tablet, or smartphone. So far, it's been a risky venture. Even the New York Times and Associated Press have reported mass confusion.Julian begs to...

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  Linux Tycoon

  The Four Freedoms of Free Software are broken, Part 0 by Bryan Lunduke

  "Free Software" (with a capital "F"), and the GPL are core components of the Linux - and broader Open Source - world. In order for software to qualify as being “Free,” it must adhere to a list of four criteria - "The 4 Freedoms."Unfortunately, those four “Freedoms” suffer from some serious logic problems that any good compiler would throw an error on. Or, in some cases, result in a kernel panic.In this four part series, we are going to pick apart these four “Freedoms,” one-by-one, and attempt...

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  Linux Tycoon

  Ubuntu 12.10 review: Quantal Quetzal is quite adequate by Bryan Lunduke

  Let's cut right to the chase: Ubuntu 12.10 is a totally, 100%, utterly, completely acceptable release.It has some new features. It has some bug fixes. In almost every way, it is very, very similar to Ubuntu 12.04 - which makes a great deal of sense, considering that the two releases are only six months apart.Over the next few days you are going to read a number of articles on this wonderful internet of ours about how Ubuntu has now integrated Amazon shopping into the desktop. This is, in no...

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  Open Source Fact and Fiction

  Are You Ready For A Cloud Security Officer? by Alan Shimel

  GRC has always been a solution for big companies. Governance, Risk and Compliance pulls together lots of disparate data and seeks to give a broader picture of an organization's Risk posture, where it stands on compliance with various rules and regulations and its own thresholds for security. The problem is putting all of that together is a big job that only a big company could handle. Now TraceCSO wants to bring GRC to the mid-market. TraceCSO is a cloud-delivered GRC-as-a-Service solution, if...

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  Open Source Fact and Fiction

  Managed Private Cloud-as-a-Service via Metacloud by Alan Shimel

  It seems today everyone wants their own cloud, but how many can actually set them up and run them well? Now you can have managed private Cloud-as-a-Service, thanks to a new company recently out of stealth called Metacloud. You provide the hardware and data center and they will supply the OpenStack and manage it for you. The people behind Metacloud have a lot of experience in managing clouds. Co-founder Sean Lynch managed the private cloud for Ticketmaster. CEO and co-founder Steve Curry ran...

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  Open Source Fact and Fiction

  Salesforce.com Looks Ready To Dump Oracle by Alan Shimel

  Last Friday the NY Times Bit blog ran a story about some hiring news at Salesforce.com. The company is looking for four or five PostgreSQL developers, but also took the unusual step of announcing that his was just a first step towards hiring 40 or 50 more developers next year who are proficient on PostgreSQL, the open source database. With Oracle competing with Salesforce.com, it doesn't take too much imagination to connect the dots and assume Salesforce.com is looking to replace the Oracle DB...

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  Open Source Fact and Fiction

  Kicking the Xobni Habit by Alan Shimel

  Hi my name is Alan and I am an Xobni addict. I am clean now for two days. I am thrilled with the power my computer has gained since I've broken my habit. I am amazed at how fast Outlook really is. I had no idea that Microsoft's Social Connector can do almost everything Xobni did without bringing my computer to a crawl. I am thrilled with how much more productive I am now. For a long time I was a huge advocate and user of Xobni. Inbox spelled backwards, Xobni is an Outlook plugin that indexes...

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  Open Source Fact and Fiction

  A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To Encrypting The VA by Alan Shimel

  Back in 2006 the Department of Veterans Affairs had one of the "mothers of all data breaches." A laptop was stolen that contained 26.5 million records of confidential and/or personally identifiable information (PII). Among the data stolen were the records of over 1 million military members. Of course, this kind of incident attracts headlines like moths to the flame. With all of the bad publicity it was not long until the VA announced that it was buying encryption software to encrypt all data...

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