Posts by lurker 82

Microsoft's cmd.exe deposed by PowerShell in Windows 10 preview

Re: MICROSOFT IS OUT OF CONTROL

Reminds me of the "See figure one" Usenet post about AT&T back in the days (1986).

http://www.dourish.com/goodies/see-figure-1.html

'I urge everyone to fight back' – woman wins $10k from Microsoft over Windows 10 misery

I was luckier

Little son's computer was the last box in the house still running Windows-7.

One day, before Microsoft started their auto-updates, the disk died. I didn't realize it at the time, but that turned out to be a fortunate event.

Rather than reinstall Windows-7, I replaced the hard drive and initialized it with Trusty (14.04, Ubuntu) .

Saved him from the Windows-10 upgrade and he seems very happy. I feel safer too.

LinkedIn mass hack reveals ... yup, you're all still crap at passwords

Official email from LinkedIn

FWIW: I just got this:

Subject: Important information about your LinkedIn account

Notice of Data Breach

You may have heard reports recently about a security issue involving LinkedIn. We would like to make sure you have the facts about what happened, what information was involved, and the steps we are taking to help protect you.

What Happened?

On May 17, 2016, we became aware that data stolen from LinkedIn in 2012 was being made available online. This was not a new security breach or hack. We took immediate steps to invalidate the passwords of all LinkedIn accounts that we believed

might be at risk. These were accounts created prior to the 2012 breach that had not reset their passwords since that breach.

What Information Was Involved?

Member email addresses, hashed passwords, and LinkedIn member IDs (an internal identifier LinkedIn assigns to each member profile) from 2012.

What We Are Doing

We invalidated passwords of all LinkedIn accounts created prior to the 2012 breach that had not reset their passwords since that breach. In addition, we are using automated tools to attempt to identify and block any suspicious activity that might

occur on LinkedIn accounts. We are also actively engaging with law enforcement authorities.

LinkedIn has taken significant steps to strengthen account security since 2012. For example, we now use salted hashes to store passwords and enable additional account security by offering our members the option to use two-step verification.

What You Can Do

We have several dedicated teams working diligently to ensure that the information members entrust to LinkedIn remains secure. While we do all we can, we always suggest that our members visit our Safety Center to learn about enabling two-step

verification, and implementing strong passwords in order to keep their accounts as safe as possible. We recommend that you regularly change your LinkedIn password and if you use the same or similar passwords on other online services, we recommend

you set new passwords on those accounts as well.

For More Information

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact our Trust & Safety team at [e-mail]. To learn more visit our official blog.

Miguel de Icaza on his journey from open source to Microsoft: 'It's a different company'

Re: @Teiwaz - It was about the patents

"On the other hand, Apple for example preferred the safety of the BSD license to build their multi billion dollars empire."

That's a great observation:

- Companies who distribute software via their hardware like Apple and Microsoft are GPL averse, and prefer licences like FreeBSD which allow them to benefit from FOSS and other people's work, without being forced to give back.

- Companies that offer services over the web (and FOSS platforms) like Google, Amazon, Netflix, Facebook are more GPL (and FOSS in general) friendly. They can use any form of FOSS licence, benefit tremendously. Giving back helps them save development/forking/merging costs.

But look at the behavioral difference between Apple and Microsoft/Oracle (for example): while being very litigious against hardware manufacturers like Samsung, Apple seem to avoid suing FOSS contributors or beneficiaries over patents related to software. They actually contribute back to FOSS (e.g. bonjour, avahi, clang) even when they aren't forced to. Microsoft OTOH, has always played the Embrace/Extend/Extinguish strategy and patent protection racket (FAT nonsense, supporting the SCO litigation, etc.) while benefiting in a one-way direction from FOSS. That's why FOSS community members are highly suspicious of their motives.

No doubt they became "more practical" under Satya Nadella, but have they fundamentally changed? Really?