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When Canonical’s, the company behind Ubuntu, CEO Mark Shuttleworth stepped down and former COO (chief operating officer) Jane Silber moved up, there was concern that the popular Linux company might suffer from a lack of corporate leadership. Worry no more. Open source industry veteran and leader Matt Asay has joined Canonical as its new COO.
As the COO, his job will be make sure operational activities match up to the company’s strategic goals and make sure that day-to-day operations go smoothly. Asay will also head up Canonical’s marketing.
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As you surely know, Google has accused China of hacking into its systems and is considering pulling out of China altogether. The U.S. government is taking this seriously, and Google has partnered with the NSA (National Security Agency) to get to the bottom of this. What you may not know is that the United Kingdom’s MI5 — Americans can think of this as a combination of the FBI and CIA — has reported that the Chinese government has been giving UK executives electronics with built-in security holes.
According to the Sunday Times, “A leaked MI5 document says that undercover intelligence officers from the People’s Liberation Army and the Ministry of Public Security have also approached UK businessmen at trade fairs and exhibitions with the offer of ‘gifts’ and ‘lavish hospitality.’ The gifts — cameras and memory sticks — have been found to contain electronic Trojan bugs which provide the Chinese with remote access to users’ computers.”
That’s bad. But why, if these stories are true, should the Chinese government stop there? U.S. and British citizens buy billions of dollars every year of Chinese-made USB memory sticks, computers, hard drives, and cameras. Why not just add security holes as a matter of course to the firmware of all of them?
It’s not hard. Heck. It’s trivial.
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Historically, adopting the first version of any major Microsoft software release has been, well, a mistake. Sometimes, as with Windows NT, it took several iterations — until NT4 SP3 — before the operating system really worked well. And, with the far more recent Windows Vista fiasco in mind, no one could blame you for not aggressively looking into shifting your business desktops from Windows XP to Windows 7. But, more than six months after Windows 7 was released to manufacturing, it’s become clear that there’s no reason to wait for SP1 before moving up to Windows 7.
I’ve had little love for Windows over the years. But this time, while I can still give you chapter and verse on why a Linux desktop is worth considering, I have to say that I’m impressed by Windows 7. More to the point, after over a year of working with Windows 7 from late beta until now, I’ve found it more than stable enough to consider as a Windows XP replacement today.
People’s usual reasons for holding off on an upgrade until SP1 is fear that an early Windows version will break underneath them. That’s not the case here.
I have been beating the heck out of Windows 7 on a variety of systems and to coin a phrase, “It just works.” Along the way I have also run on the OS mainstream business software such as Microsoft Office, OpenOffice, QuickBooks, and dozens of other programs, and I’ve yet to find a need for Windows 7’s built-in XP virtualization. At the same time, I’ve also found that most everyday business peripherals such as printers, scanners, and the like also have no trouble with Windows 7.
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You haven’t seen any new stories from me for the last few days because I’ve been moving. I hate moving. With luck, I’ll never have to buy another house so long as I live. With that off my chest, along the way, I’ve been re-assembling my office-all 28 computers of it. I decided to update an Ubuntu 9.04 desktop to Ubuntu 9.10 and an openSUSE server from openSUSE 11.1 to openSUSE 11.2.
No, I’m not crazy. I know, all too well, that upgrading Windows, say from XP to Windows 7 is a big job. In fact, as far as I’m concerned, the best way to ‘upgrade’ from XP to Windows 7 is just to buy a new computer. It’s different with Linux. Or, to be more precise, it’s different with the newest versions of Ubuntu and openSUSE.
You could always upgrade Linux over the Internet if you knew exactly what you were doing. Now, Novell and Canonical have made it easier.
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The Apple iPad has finally arrived, and, as I predicted a while back, it’s really just a big iPod Touch. That’s great. I love my iPod Touch. But, really, is there anything here that Linux can’t do just as well for less money?
Now, I do think that the iPad might be a game-changer. But, I don’t see it as creating some kind of new kind of computing platform. It’s also not going to replace netbooks, notebooks, or PCs.
Sure, it will come with an iPad version of Apple’s iWork office suite, but tell me, have you ever tried to type on a tablet? I have. It doesn’t work. You need a real keyboard, and that’s why netbooks et. al. will continue to do just fine.
What it, and the Linux-powered tablets that will be its competition, are going to do is kill off every special purpose handheld device out there. GPS devices and eBook readers are now officially on their way to joining the Betamax and HD-DVD.
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