INE is one among various projects that enable Windows programs to run on Linux and other UNIX derivatives. While Wine is probably the most mature and best known ‘emulator’ (WINE truly stands for Wine Is Not an Emulator since it uses an abstraction layer cunningly), there is also the commercial tool called Win4Lin, which snatched a few headlines recently.

The Wine team has just released another version of their software, as reported by broad media, The Inquirer included.

The people behind Wine, some clever software that tries to get Windows to run on Unix and Linux machines, have released another version.

Wine is a translation layer capable of running Windows applications on Linux and other POSIX compatible operating systems.

It seeks to get Windows programs running in Wine to behave normally, without suffering the performance problems of an emulator.

On top of it all, IBM have recently become obliged to OpenDocument, which eliminates Microsoft Office dependencies. No wonder IBM are perceived as the most daunting rival to Microsoft. IBM further ease the transition from Windows to Linux (and Java), either by using portability through IDE packages for Linux (Mono) or by teaming up with other companies. This makes any transition and penetration to Linux as smooth as necessary, even without prior familiarity with Linux. Windows becomes a a transparent layer, much like a man on laxatives and milk!

Related item: Free Emulators

Yet another day in La-La Land®

ILLED with frustration over some recent rotten conducts, I once assembled a few streams of consciousness to compose a bitter essay. It was saturated with citations on the way Microsoft continues to exploit its desktop monopoly-like state-of-affairs. I titled the essay On Operating Systems Monoculture and it spanned 4 pages. Today I would like to elaborate on that matter, whilst venting some anger (rant alert) and pointing out facts that Microsoft prefer to hide from their users, owing to Vista’s prematurity.

In a world where a desktop monopoly prevails, there is also mental manipulation of minds. Innocent people are (mis-)led to believe they are IT-proficient when they manage to change font size in Word. Skills are not sufficiently generalised and MSCE qualifications are a glaringly-obvious example of this. Advice must be taken from people who live in a broader reality and are neither delusional nor biased.

To take an overview, as well as a look into the future, Microsoft continue to use dirty tactics to push away any type of rivalry. They also propagate some hackney myths. Microsoft cried “Wolf” whenever someone criticised Windows Vista. Yet, based on some recent screenshots, Vista Starter Edition will allow only 3 processes to run at any one time. It is one among the numerous ‘penalties’ that will force a paid-for upgrade.

Then comes the issue of desktop environment visualisation. Graphics in Vista are unimpressive, assuming Aero cannot be run. Aero is the glass-like component in Vista’s window rendering, which enables translucency (as in Linux and Mac OSX). Aero is estimated to be properly-supported by 50% of today’s hardware. So, is Microsoft taking a step backwards, both in terms of hardware support and functionality? Even when Aero is enabled, it offers nothing out of the ordinary. LiteStep can already enrich the looks of Windows, so Vista offers nothing innovative. Aero only suffocates the CPU. The 3-D effects make the system choke. Vista is the same product which is known as XP Service Pack II (or Windows Server 2003), but it was put in a new dress. It is no surprise given the recent major fallback in terms of the codebase.

Microsoft employ a famous composer to work on sounds in Vista. Judging by what the O/S has to offer and rave about, Microsoft could take the easier route and just go with Mozart’s Requiem. It may soon be “Hasta la Vista“.

A major takeover was announced last night, which is difficult to ignore.

AT&T said Sunday it will acquire fellow phone company BellSouth in a stock deal worth $67 billion, creating a telecommunications giant that dwarfs its nearest competitor, Verizon Communications.

Related, Older items

Other takeovers and acquisitions: Adobe-Macromedia, eBay-Skype.

Recent partnerships, mended or broken: Google joins forced with AOL whereas Microsoft drifts away from NBC.

My old del.icio.us bookmark

previously mentioned del.icio.us, back in the days when it was a fairly new and hot phenomenon. The context and points of focus were ways of escaping it (exporting), along with all the acquired data, which had of course been put on a third party. I mentioned the dangers of ‘offshoring’ data once in the past; quite explicitly and bluntly so as a matter of fact.

Matters can be simplified however, assuming you have systems administration skills. There is a polished new tool called Scuttle, which enables any Webmaster to set up his/her little, super-flexible and highly-functional del.icio.us clone (social boomarks with bookmarklets to be precise) on a personal site. The software requires PHP support from the Web server and it can use MySQL, among many other database types. Here is an installation of mine. It is less than a day old, so it is naturally immature and somewhat depleted. Feel free to join in and add your bookmarks to this pool. The installation is here to stay and my site is registerted until 2014.

The WordPress dashboard, as secure as ever

ORDPRESS continues to be a secure and robust piece of Web-based software. Rumours, however, sometimes stand in its way. Below is one example among several, which have been ‘severe’ enough to trigger high-profile advisories. All the hoi polloi was, needless to mention, in vain.

It sometimes appears as though such rants are desperate attempt to stir up a hornet’s nest. WordPress has become a prime target due to its popularity and existence as Web-based software, making it more exposed to the factor of traffic en masse. Google have become a target for rumours, the reasons being very similar.

Apart from minor wishlist items or bugs, such as one that I recently filed, there are more pressing issues that need resolving and require open clarifications from the community. More latterly, a concern was raised over the visibility of WordPress plug-ins to all site visitors. My opinion on the matter was phrased therein (see full thread for context).

Directory listing, which in turn exposes plug-in names, is never being linked to. Thus, it will not be indexed by search engines and flawed plug-ins will not be easily discoverable.

You could trivially scan many blogs using a script in attempts to find vulnerabilities. PHP-Nuke, Advanced Guestbook and Coppermine are notorious in that respect.

All in all, getting a list of plug-ins may be a convenient way for learning the blog’s composition. If you target a particular vulnerability (due to third-party code), it gives the hacker no advantage. That, marke1, is why your argument and its ludicrous, overstated backing are void.

Backed by an ambitious contention, one Web site calls for the halt of Web privatisation.

You think the Internet will always be the great freewheeling information superhighway you’ve grown to love? Well, think again. Media giants want to privatize our Internet.

As one among several threats, consider Google Groups. Under the magnifying glass is accumulation of over 20 years worth of forums conversations (full names included). To make matters worse, consider the practice of appending “Copyright Google Groups” to each of these pages. Then comes the contribution (or lack therefore) from those who post from Google Groups without quoting, which merely leads to clutter in UseNet. It sometimes seems as though UseNet has evolved into ‘Google Chat’, which is worrisome.

Another matter to consider is charging for E-mail traffic, as means of crippling spam. It comes to show that corporations can instate and manipulate ‘Net politics’.

Beyond these facts, rumours are formed and echoed as regards a Google Web or even the newly-proposed ‘Chinese Web’. Then, of course, there is the issue of censorship, aimed to better suit the interest of governments– either through blocking of sites or filtering of search results.

The future of the Web looks not bright. Given present trends, the outlook is rather grim.

HE notion of community-driven decisions is not a foreign one. Voting is just one among many examples. The power of a broad audience should be ascribed to handling of large samples of data, thereby making cohesive — sometimes conflicting — and yet reasonable choices.

The ideas were embraced by Google (no other precedence I am aware of) to filtering of E-mail, albeit other anti-spam initiative and services like spamcop.net began to accumulate and share knowledge as regards origins of spam. In Google Mail, it is the users who help one another in discerning ham from spam. In the latter case, sharing of data (primarily blacklist) shapes the core of of the methodology.

The technique which involves blacklists can be rather powerful. SpamAssassin, for instance, which I happily use as a second gate for my E-mail accounts, has never yet marked genuine messages as spam (false positives). This comes as an astounding statistic. SpamAssassin processes close to 200 messages per day and has been activated for about a year. Worth mentioning is the fact that SpamAssassin is free and Open software.

The more interesting technique involves identification and flagging of spam by many individuals. Algorithms can be further extended to take advantage of machine learning approaches such boosting and support vector machines, which are excellent classifiers capable of generalising while retaining good specificity. Let us consider this a case where science meets industry (somewhat of a rarity).

More recently, such ideas were considered a possible cure to a Web 2.0 epidemic: comment spam. To recite, the key idea is one which involves collaborative spam flagging and assemblage of newly-acquired knowledge in a centralised database. The back end of this service remains obscure, for security purposes. The approach has been facing barriers and various problems such as knowledgebase/learner poisoning using training data which is bogus. This led to some doubts and skepticism in the past.

All in all, I am left wondering: what if Google Mail filters were extrapolated to the benefit of everyone? People already use Google Mail as a spam filter, peripherally, but they cannot contribute. The relationship is not truly reciprocal. Moreover, should such services ideally be handled and governed by one particular company? It boggles the mind. Proposition for adoption of the methods, then making them publicly available, is definitely worthwhile. The Akismet spam stopper, for instance, provides hooks for third-party software, which I think is a wonderful demonstration of communal spirit and openness.

A shot in the dark perhaps, but it would be nice to have the Akismet approach applied to E-mail as well (a la Google Mail). API‘s are merely analogous, but with subject lines and headers included, which helps further. Maybe it can outperform SpamAssassin some day? We shall wait and see how spam can be combatted — spam in its entirely, that is, as opposed to just E-mail.