2011 January 05 archive at Robert Pogson

Archive for January 5th, 2011

Tablet with Physical Keyboard from ASUS

Published by Robert Pogson January 5th, 2011 in technology. 4 Comments

For all the doubters who claim ARM will never compete with Wintel/x86, take a look at what ASUS has wrought:

Android 3
Snapdragon CPU
several models

The gadget-geeks will freak over this thing and it will be much more functional having a proper keyboard. Consumers will have choices to make. Perhaps they will buy one of everything. That will put GNU/Linux in a leading share sooner or later.

- Robert Pogson

Untrustworthy Computing

Published by Robert Pogson January 5th, 2011 in technology. 4 Comments

“To target this vulnerability, an attacker must convince a user to visit a specially crafted malicious Web page, or to open a malicious Word or PowerPoint file.
…
Angela Gunn

Sr. Marketing Communications Manager, Trustworthy Computing”

So, using the web as intended by visiting websites or using productivity software as intended by opening documents gets your computer owned by badguys. How is that “trustworthy” computing? Seem “untrustworthy” to me.

This is the latest example of how that other OS hides an endless stream of problems in its bloat. This is about displaying an image on your computer screen and compromising security. It is another example of how an OS designed by salesmen to sell in a desktop monopoly was not designed to deal with a hostile environment on the network and should be avoided like the plague.

At the same time, IE has been blown wide open. Using that other OS and M$’s software is like smoking inside a huge keg of black powder. No good comes of it. Use Free Software designed to work for you and not some corporation that does not care about your security.
“We will be guided by the needs of our users and the free software community. We will place their interests first in our priorities. We will support the needs of our users for operation in many different kinds of computing environments.”

see The Debian Social Contract

Isn’t that how you would like to do your computing?

- Robert Pogson

My Mission

My observations and opinions about IT are based on 40 years of use in science and technology and lately, in education. I like IT that is fast, cost-effective and reliable. I do not care whether my solution is the same as yours. I like to think for myself.

My first use of GNU/Linux in 2001 was so remarkably better than what I had been using, I feel it is important work to share GNU/Linux with the world. I have been blessed by working in schools where students and school systems have benefited by good, modular software easily installed in most systems.

I have shown GNU/Linux to thousands of students and hundreds of teachers over the years and will continue in some way doing that until I die in spite of the opposition.