Dave's Tech Blog
A Third Eye on Technology

Cisco, the most famous manufacturer of enterprise and consumer networking devices, has been known to use source code from open-source projects like Linux and other related software to run on their hardware.  Using free software for commercial gain is not against the law.  What is against the law is ignoring the GPL (GNU Public License) which states that you must publish any changes or modifications you make to the source code if you’re going to continue using it for commercial purposes.  In other words, you can’t take code that is more or less owned by the public, modify it, and then lock those modifications away from public sight and say that the code is now your own unique, proprietary creation.  Cisco has been accused of doing this since 2004, but now the Free Software Foundation has had enough.  The FSF has never sought any sort of royalties or money from Cisco for using open-source software (it would be impossible to do that).  What they want is for them to abide by the GPL and keep their source code public.

You can read a little more about Cisco’s incompetent and/or deliberately obstructive behavior here.

As much as it would probably sooth the stiffness in my neck and shoulders from doing busy work inventorying computer equipment today, I’m going to try to not turn this into a sarcastic sounding slam against Microsoft… although they damn well deserve it.

I’ll just keep this very short.  Internet Explorer has once again dropped the ball in the realm of Internet security and it’s something that’s been present for over 48 hours already.  You can read about the problem via BBC’s website by clicking here.

The article states in bold letters at the top, “Security experts recommend switching to a rival browser until the problem is fixed.”  Need a rival web browser?  Download Firefox at www.firefox.com.  It’s free, faster and much more secure than Internet Explorer ever will be.  Seriously.  Why is it more secure, you ask?  Because it’s open-source, just like Linux.  But again… don’t wanna turn this into a “Microsoft sucks” bashing post.

Also, on the side, I should mention that I’ve see a LOT of Windows systems get hit with viruses in the last 3 weeks, a good chunk of which have come in from emails on Facebook.  Which isn’t to say that Facebook is bad.  It just doesn’t have much of an effective spam filter or virus scanner built into it.  You would think that after a few people have recieved the same spam from their friend whose computer was compromised, they’d start filtering messages with the same links, the same stupid subject line, and all the rest that comes along with basic social engineering-based viruses.  It’s what Yahoo and Google do.  So to you Facebook/Myspace users out there (and everyone else who doesn’t uses these services), be VERY cautious about clicking on links to websites you’ve never visited to before in email sent to you by a friend.  They may not have actually sent you something.  In fact, it’s possible their account password was phished, changed, and their account used as a lauch pad for spreading the same infection to other people (like you).  So be careful.