Linux reaches Afghanistan

BBC story.”Afghanistan is being rebuilt with the help of the Linux operating system.

The United Nations is training civil servants in the intricacies of the software to help them get government computer systems up and running.

The first civil servants to complete their training in Linux went back to work earlier this month.

The UN hopes that training government workers to use Linux will help the country close the technology gap that separates it from many other countries…”

AOL is going to offer Blogging to its subscribers

Washington Post story. Apparently they’re going to call them ‘AOL Journals’ because AOLers are unsure about ‘Blogs’. Stand by for a massive expansion of the Blogosphere. I suppose it’ll be a good thing overall — though when I think of what AOL did to the News Group culture (it brought the Homer Simpsons of this world onto the Net), I wonder…

Windows Server 2003 is like “Swiss cheese”

That would be Emmentaler, I suppose.

Here’s the CBC News story:

“The software was the first product sold under the “Trustworthy Computing” intitiative launched last year by Microsoft founder Bill Gates. At the time, it was hailed as a “breakthrough in terms of built-in security and reliability.”

Now comes the really funny bit…

“The announcement comes just after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security awarded a multi-million dollar contract for Microsoft to supply software for the agency’s new computers.

“This is one of the worst Windows vulnerabilities ever,” said Marc Maiffret of eEye Digital Security in California. Maiffret warns customers that “until they have this patch installed, it will be Swiss cheese [~] anybody can walk in and out of their servers.”

Microsoft spent hundreds of millions on security improvements but Polish researchers managed to bypass the additional protections three months after the software went on sale in April. ”

Microsoft’s Munich sweeteners

There’s a riveting report on USA Today of the lengths to which Microsoft went to prevent the city of Munich defecting to Linux. Some details:

“Ballmer visited Mayor Christian Ude to assure him Microsoft would do what it takes to keep the city’s business. Documents obtained by USA TODAY show Microsoft subsequently lowered its pricing to $31.9 million and then to $23.7 million — an overall 35% price cut. The discounts were for naught.

On May 28, the city council approved a more expensive proposal — $35.7 million — from German Linux distributor SuSE and IBM, a big Linux backer.”

Note: the decision to go with Linux was not driven just by cost.

Apart from the whopping discounts, Microsoft also offered other inducements:

:For example, the company:

” * Agreed to let Munich go as long as six years, instead of the more normal three or four, without another expensive upgrade, a concession that runs against its bread-and-butter software upgrade strategy.

* Offered to let the city buy only Microsoft Word for some PCs and strip off other applications. Such unbundling cuts against Microsoft’s practice of selling PCs loaded with software.

* Offered millions of dollars worth of training and support services free.”

Quagmire News

Useful reality check from the new US commander in Iraq. Quick summary: we’re in a guerrilla war (aka quagmire) here, folks. Longer version from the NYT reads as follows:

“American troops in Iraq are under attack from “a classical guerrilla-type campaign” whose fighters, drawn from Saddam Hussein’s most unyielding loyalists and foreign terrorist groups, are increasingly organized, the new commander of allied forces in Iraq said today.

The commander, Gen. John P. Abizaid, pledged that the United States and its allies would not be driven from Iraq by the guerrilla attacks, which today killed one American soldier and wounded at least six others around Baghdad. But he cautioned that pacifying Iraq might require fresh American troops to spend yearlong tours there, double the normal duration of Army forces on peacekeeping duty.

The assessment of Iraqi resistance by General Abizaid was a significant change from previous comments by senior Pentagon officials, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who has said that the insurgents’ raids were too haphazard to qualify as a guerrilla war or organized resistance.”