Published by Robert Pogson June 1st, 2012
in technology.
Venezuela has one of the highest murder-rates in the world and firearms are involved often enough. With an election looming the government has decided to ban all private ownership of firearms. That’s a convenient tool of dictators… In any event farmers are having problems with puma and jaguar killing cattle. What are they to do now? Raise more dogs?
Clearly, the government does not respect the right of citizens to keep and bear arms. As usual, this move will keep firearms out of the hands of decent people and give the criminals a monopoly on firearms just as the war on drugs did. The result will likely be an increase in crime, including murder as criminals gain power by decree.
see BBC News – Venezuela bans private gun ownership.
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson June 1st, 2012
in technology.
The USA and Israel are reported to have released Stuxnet malware in Iran and did not intend the malware to escape a secure network. It did and now the world knows that USA has declared war via malware. The problem for the USA is that this strategy will backfire. Not only will a malware-arms-race develop but USA, being huge in IT and largely a monoculture of that other OS is ripe for the picking.
Malware has been shown to be effective and cheap at copying information/secrets/passwords, fraud, and other crimes but, in war, nothing prevents participants from going further, sabotaging IT. Combatants can plant IT bombs to go off at precisely-defined times to do the most damage. Think erased hard-drives, modified messages, bit-rot, DDOS, and all that. If the USA is not yet tired of war they certainly are doing their best to provoke another waste of resources. They will do more harm to themselves than all the terrorists have ever done in history, and they are virtually defenceless because hundreds of millions of PCs use x86 and XP or “7″. The USA has painted a bull’s eye on its back.
see Confirmed: US and Israel created Stuxnet, lost control of it | Ars Technica.
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson June 1st, 2012
in technology.
Wintel has tried to upsell notebooks to kill netbooks and promote growth in sales of notebooks but it’s not working. Ultrabooks are doomed to take only a tiny sliver of market-share because they are small but not nearly cheap enough in price. The real growth is in small cheap computers and neither Intel nor M$ are having much fun there.
Soon, OEMs will realize the way to sell more notebooks and to increase margins on notebooks is to ship GNU/Linux, cutting out M$. They can increase margins further cutting out Intel with ARM. The netbook was a great idea but the OEMs stopped too soon, at 10 inches. There’s no reason the technology could not support larger, more practical notebooks at reasonable and attractive prices. The market knows what it wants and it’s not more expensive notebooks.
see Ultrabooks: objects of desire but just too darn expensive • Reg Hardware.
- Robert Pogson
Published by Robert Pogson June 1st, 2012
in technology.
European governments are taking FLOSS seriously. Every day there are new announcements about some law being passed or some IT project being announced for eGovernment that involves FLOSS:
That list is just from the last couple of days. There are a steady stream of announcements of progress or support of FLOSS in government in the EU. It’s not just discussion in the back rooms. Some of these are projects implemented and others are public pronouncements. They are far ahead of Canada, I am afraid, but at least FLOSS is on the radar here.
see Find News | Joinup.
- Robert Pogson
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