Cuba and Venezuela decided to go open source and abandon our proprietary software and copyright laws. An interesting comment from the communications minister of Cuba equated the world’s information systems to a “battlefield” in which Cuba is the underdog fighting off imperialism.

Also interesting to note is that Richard Stallman, professional nerd and hippie, showed up to the announcement with his own analogy. He decided to take the risky domestic approach and equated software to recipes which should be altered however the user thinks would be best etc. etc. Very persuasive except that I don’t cook. Proprietary fast food ftw.

[Via ZDNet]

I’ve been working with Windows Vista, and other than a few niggly, minor problems (a number of downloadable casual titles aren’t compatible, but I’m not about to drop bombs like that when an OS is under a month old; we’ll talk in five months or so) it’s been running quite fast and clean. Imagine my surprise when it told me that an update was already available. I’m pretty used to seeing this in XP, but never in Vista. So I did a little research.

According to PC World, the patch isn’t really a patch. Well, it is a patch, but not really. Yeah, existential. Deal with it. Anyway, the biggest update – there are 12 of them, 11 of which are marked “critical” – is a part of the Microsoft malware detection code, rather than being an update of the underlying engine. See? It’s not that Vista’s messed up. However, given the fact that Vista was supposed to be bulletproof, it’s interesting that a vulnerability was caught so early in the OS’ lifecycle. Does this mean we should be worried yet? *duhn duhn duuuhnnnn!* (yes, that’s the scary music cue)

[via PCWorld.com]