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"According to the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team, "Passwords are a common form of authentication and are often the only barrier between a user and your personal information. There are several programs attackers can use to help guess or 'crack' passwords, but by choosing good passwords and keeping them confidential, you can make it more difficult for an unauthorized person to access your information.""

"According to the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team, "Passwords are a common form of authentication and are often the only barrier between a user and your personal information. There are several programs attackers can use to help guess or 'crack' passwords, but by choosing good passwords and keeping them confidential, you can make it more difficult for an unauthorized person to access your information.""

" Andy on May 12, 2016 C: 28 News Mega, the cloud storage site founded by Kim Dotcom, has been ordered to hand the IP addresses and personal details of some of its users to a U.S. court. The ruling follows the uploading of sensitive documents to Mega following a hack on a foreign government computer system. Speaking with TorrentFreak, Mega chairman Stephen Hall expressed concerns over the process."

" Andy on May 12, 2016 C: 28 News Mega, the cloud storage site founded by Kim Dotcom, has been ordered to hand the IP addresses and personal details of some of its users to a U.S. court. The ruling follows the uploading of sensitive documents to Mega following a hack on a foreign government computer system. Speaking with TorrentFreak, Mega chairman Stephen Hall expressed concerns over the process."

"Misbehaving hidden service directories are scattered around the world. Dan Goodin (US) - Jul 23, 2016 6:45 am UTC"

"Jul 06, 2016 By Doc Searls in Community Identity kernel Privacy I believe the best and worst thing about Linux is its hard distinction between kernel space and user space. Without that distinction, Linux never would have become the most leveraged operating system in the world. Today, Linux has the largest range of uses for the largest number of users-most of whom have no idea they are using Linux when they search for something on Google or poke at their Android phones. Even Apple stuff wouldn't be what it is (for example, using BSD in its computers) were it not for Linux's success. "

"Jul 06, 2016 By Doc Searls in Community Identity kernel Privacy I believe the best and worst thing about Linux is its hard distinction between kernel space and user space. Without that distinction, Linux never would have become the most leveraged operating system in the world. Today, Linux has the largest range of uses for the largest number of users-most of whom have no idea they are using Linux when they search for something on Google or poke at their Android phones. Even Apple stuff wouldn't be what it is (for example, using BSD in its computers) were it not for Linux's success. "

Opening and editing text documents is a daily task for the majority of computer users. Without doubt, the first word processing software that comes to mind is Microsoft Word. Indeed, this text editor is definitely one of a kind and … Continue reading →

Opening and editing text documents is a daily task for the majority of computer users. Without doubt, the first word processing software that comes to mind is Microsoft Word. Indeed, this text editor is definitely one of a kind and … Continue reading →

Yee-haw! E.U. sanctuary and rewards for NSA whistle-blowers. Mandatory warnings for customers of U.S. cloud services that their data may be turned over to the NSA. Pouring more gasoline on the NSA diplomatic fire. 

"from the and-its-'fix'-only-makes-things-worse dept When incumbents whose legislative future depends on the portrayal of piracy as the destroyer of worlds commission a report on infringement, you can be sure it will be light on info and heavy on implication. Cold, hard facts generally aren't as conducive to swaying political opinion as scare tactics are. So, instead of verifiable data, the public receives this sort of thing instead. "

"If there was ever any doubt about whether Microsoft or Google would win the war of office suites, there should be no longer. Within the last several weeks, Microsoft has pulled so far ahead that it's game over. Here's why. When it comes to which suite is more fully featured, there's never been any real debate: Microsoft Office wins hands down. Whether you're creating entire presentations, creating complicated word-processing documents, or even doing something as simple as handling text attributes, Office is a far better tool. Until the last few weeks, Google Docs had one significant advantage over Microsoft Office: It's available for Android and the iPad as well as PCs because it's Web-based. The same wasn't the case for Office. So if you wanted to use an office suite on all your mobile devices, Google Docs was the way to go. Google Docs lost that advantage when Microsoft released Office for the iPad. There's not yet a native version for Android tablets, but Microsoft is working on that, telling GeekWire, "Let me tell you conclusively: Yes, we are also building Android native applications for tablets for Word, Excel and PowerPoint." Google Docs is still superior to Office's Web-based version, but that's far less important than it used to be. There's no need to go with a Web-based office suite if a superior suite is available as a native apps on all platforms, mobile or otherwise. And Office's collaboration capabilities are quite considerable now. Of course, there's always the question of price. Google Docs is free. Microsoft Office isn't. But at $100 a year for up to five devices, or $70 a year for two, no one will be going broke paying for Microsoft Office. It's worth paying that relatively small price for a much better office suite. Google Docs won't die. It'll be around as second fiddle for a long time. But that's what it will always remain: a second fiddle to the better Microsoft Office."

Google acquired "Writely", a small company in Portola Valley that pioneered document editing in a browser. Writely was perhaps the first cloud computing editor to go beyond simple HTML; eventually crafting some really cool CSS-JavaScript-JSON document layout and editing methods. But it can't edit native MSOffice documents. It converts them. There are more than a few problems with the Google Docs approach to editing advanced "compound" documents, but two stick out and are certain to give pause to anyone making the great transition from local workgroup computing, to the highly mobile, always connected, cloud computing. The first problem certain to become a show stopper is that Google converts documents to their native on-line format for editing and collaboration. And then they convert back. To many this isn't a problem. But if the document is part of a workflow or business process, conversion is a killer. There is an old saw affectionately known as "Reuters Law", dating back to the ODF-OXML document wars, that emphatically states; "Conversion breaks documents." The breakage includes both the visual layout of the document, and, the "compound" aspects and data connections that are internal to the document. Think of this way. A business document that is part of a legacy Windows Workgroup workflow is opened up in gDocs. Google converts the document for editing purposes. The data and the workflow internals that bind the document to the local business system are broken on conversion. The look of the document is also visually shredded as the gDocs layout engine is applied. For all practical purposes, no matter what magic editing and collaboration value is added, a broken document means a broken business process. Let me say that again, with the emphasis of having witnessed this first hand during the year long ODF transition trials the Commonwealth of Massachusetts conducted in 2005 and 2006. The business process broke every time a conversion was conducted "on a busines

"by Richard Stallman (The first version was published in Boston Review.) On the Internet, proprietary software isn't the only way to lose your freedom. Service as a Software Substitute, or SaaSS, is another way to let someone else have power over your computing."

"by Richard Stallman (The first version was published in Boston Review.) On the Internet, proprietary software isn't the only way to lose your freedom. Service as a Software Substitute, or SaaSS, is another way to let someone else have power over your computing."

"Libertarians intuitively understand the case for patents: just as other property rights internalize the social benefits of improvements to land, automobile maintenance, or business investment, patents incentivize the creation of new inventions, which might otherwise be undersupplied. So far, so good. But it is important to recognize that the laws that govern property, intellectual or otherwise, do not arise out of thin air. Rather, our political institutions, with all their virtues and foibles, determine the contours of property-the exact bundle of rights that property holders possess, their extent, and their limitations. Outlining efficient property laws is not a trivial problem. The optimal contours of property are neither immutable nor knowable a priori. For example, in 1946, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the age-old common law doctrine that extended real property rights to the heavens without limit. The advent of air travel made such extensive property rights no longer practicable-airlines would have had to cobble together a patchwork of easements, acre by acre, for every corridor through which they flew, and they would have opened themselves up to lawsuits every time their planes deviated from the expected path. The Court rightly abridged property rights in light of these empirical realities. In defining the limits of patent rights, our political institutions have gotten an analogous question badly wrong. A single, politically captured circuit court with exclusive jurisdiction over patent appeals has consistently expanded the scope of patentable subject matter. This expansion has resulted in an explosion of both patents and patent litigation, with destructive consequences. "

I added a comment to the page's article. Patents are antithetical to the precepts of Libertarianism and do not involve Natural Law rights. But I agree with the author that the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit should be abolished. It's a failed experiment.

"Oct 02, 2014 By Doc Searls in Education Sometimes a gift just falls in your lap. This month, it came in the form of an e-mail out of the blue from Jared Nielsen, one of two brothers (the other is J.R. Nielsen) who created The Hello World Program, "an educational web series making computer science fun and accessible to all". If it had been just that, I might not have been interested. "

"Oct 02, 2014 By Doc Searls in Education Sometimes a gift just falls in your lap. This month, it came in the form of an e-mail out of the blue from Jared Nielsen, one of two brothers (the other is J.R. Nielsen) who created The Hello World Program, "an educational web series making computer science fun and accessible to all". If it had been just that, I might not have been interested. "

" Column Open source developments are at the heart of new cloud technologies, says Jim Zemlin By Jim Zemlin Fri May 29 2015, 12:00 Jim Zemlin NOWHERE are we seeing more open source and collaborative development than in cloud computing."

" Column Open source developments are at the heart of new cloud technologies, says Jim Zemlin By Jim Zemlin Fri May 29 2015, 12:00 Jim Zemlin NOWHERE are we seeing more open source and collaborative development than in cloud computing."

"Ah, Linux. The third of the holy triumvirate of PC operating systems, along with Windows and Mac OS. Each have their own pros and cons, and each has their own identity. Linux could probably be best described as the most rebellious of the three; it's malleable and customizable (as long as you have a strong understanding of computers and Linux), with dozens of different distros created by unique communities for different uses. "

Navigating a world that that demands APIs, not apps "... Despite this hype, I do think that coding will become a more widespread and routine skill in the years to come. Programmable technology will continue to pervade more parts of our life, computers will continue to become more accessible to a wider population, and the world will continue to become more complex. Understanding coding (and debugging) will naturally go with it. ..."

Navigating a world that that demands APIs, not apps "... Despite this hype, I do think that coding will become a more widespread and routine skill in the years to come. Programmable technology will continue to pervade more parts of our life, computers will continue to become more accessible to a wider population, and the world will continue to become more complex. Understanding coding (and debugging) will naturally go with it. ..."

"Products often open computers to hacks they otherwise wouldn't be vulnerable to. by Dan Goodin (US) - Sep 23, 2015 10:00pm CEST"

"uProxy is a browser extension that lets friends route their connection to their Internet through each other's computers. It can help people with restricted or insecure access to the Internet get to the content they care about safely. Learn more"

"uProxy is a browser extension that lets friends route their connection to their Internet through each other's computers. It can help people with restricted or insecure access to the Internet get to the content they care about safely. Learn more"

"Privacy advocates claim always-listening component was involuntarily activated within Chromium, potentially exposing private conversations"