Blog

Wired magazine is running a story about "bluesnarfing," the practice of sniffing out your address book or calendar, making calls with your phone, and other more nefarious activity, hijacking your phone via Bluetooth. A must read.

In an interesting story in Fast Company, competition favors the generous. An interesting take on Darwinism and Open Source.
Only the Pronoid Survive.

The problem with weak passwords

Your dog's name. Your anniversary. Your childrens' initials, birthday, or birth weight. Your favorite hobby, or the name of your boat. Which one do you use for your password? Network Administrators and hackers know that most people choose passwords like these to protect anything from logging into web-based bulletin boards to buying things online.

Why does it matter? Identity theft. Corporate espionage. Loss of your data, or digital photos. Do you want to risk these things? In many cases, a weak password is all that separates your data from any bad guy who chooses to impersonate you online, or worse.

If you would like a good detailed overview for trying out Linux on a desktop, check out this story: Flexbeta - Fedora vs Mandrake vs Suse: Linux Distros Compared.

Robin Miller has written an interesting essay about providing network and desktop services based on open source software in NewsForge | Where is the 'plug-and-play' Linux office system? We find this story especially interestin

A long, comprehensive, numbers-based look at the arguments against open source software, and persuasive debunking of them. Why Open Source Software / Free Software (OSS/FS)? Look at the Numbers!

Shlomi Fish has written a summary of a few Wiki Web engines based on Perl, Python, or PHP. This is a good starting point for identifying a good Wiki for your purposes.

Open Source isn't just about code. It's a philosophy that has broad implications for all kinds of institutions. The Nation has a story describing how the ideas of open source are starting to have an impact on politics. The Rise of Open-Source Politics.

Novell has launched a marketing effort to counter the Microsoft "Get the Facts" campaign, spinning the studies to show a favorable total cost of ownership of using Linux. But we knew that already! NOVELL: Unbending the Truth

Buster Ellis has written a review of Simply Mepis, a bootable Linux CD that easily installs on your computer if you like it. See why at Ten Reasons For Trying SimplyMepis by Buster Ellis.

Desktop Linux has a good article about Mepis Linux, a distribution that can run from a CD-ROM and be easily installed (while running) on your hard drive. Great introduction to the variety of applications freely available in the open source world!

Just found this: SugarCRM - Commercial Open Source CRM Software . It looks like there's finally a decent CRM application out there... This project looks complete enough to drop the RetrieverCRM project, before we even get going!