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A couple of interesting stories here. First of all, it takes about 4 minutes for an unpatched Windows machine connected to the Internet without a firewall to be compromised.

Last week, my laptop died a sudden, spectacular death by drowning as a full cup of coffee poured into its keyboard. It emitted a pop sound, and the screen and all power shut off.

What would be your reaction? Mine was to immediately unplug the power cord and remove the battery. Then I took it over to the sink and poured out the coffee. Remembering tales of people flushing keyboards with water, I ran some fresh water over the keys and then set to work. I removed the keyboard, the palm rest, a few of the inner cards, and let it sit without power for several hours. Apparently not long enough.

A Linux Journal article by Tom Adelstein argues that studies that show 6% of desktops to be run on Linux in the next three years doesn't take into account all the viruses, worms, and vulnerabilities of Windows. He predicts more like 25% market penetration in this space.

Tony Mobily writes, "The first issue of Free Software Magazine is out! Free Software Magazine is
a new magazine entirely dedicated to free software. It contains quality

LinuxPlanet has a review of open source and Linux accounting software. Unfortunately, they omitted what I consider to be the best for most small businesses, the fantastic SQL Ledger program.

Many small businesses are starting to use Linux and open source solutions without even realizing it. They're helped along by consultants who offer better solutions at lower costs, a nice combination for any business. Nice story at the MIT Enterprise Technology Review:

Tux magazine has a quick how-to about creating greeting cards in Linux using Scribus. Quick Do-It-Yourself Greeting Cards | TUX.

While reading a biography of Ben Franklin, I learned that Mr. Franklin routinely gave his inventions away to the public, without collecting a nickel.

There is now a tool that can easily crack PPTP authentication, which is what is used in the basic Virtual Private Networking standard included in Windows. Because of its wide deployment, PPTP is perhaps the easiest type of VPN to deploy--but it should no longer be considered secure.

Why use a strong password

In the online world, security plays a role in all online activities. Passwords are the most commonly used method to limit access to specific people. In last month's newsletter, we discussed assessing the relative value of systems protected by passwords, and grouping passwords across locations with similar trustworthiness.

In a nutshell, don't bother creating and remembering strong passwords for low value systems, and certainly don't use the same passwords for low value systems that you use in high value systems.

A four year analysis of the Linux source code conducted by five Stanford University computer science researchers found a tiny fraction of the number of security holes and bugs, compared to similar studies of proprietary software.

In Australia, at least, it appears that deploying Linux results in an overall cost savings of at least 27% in a medium-sized company over Microsoft solutions. And that's not even counting costs associated with viruses and downtime during reboots!