Lumpy asks: "Lately there has been a HUGE push by Certified Microsoft Professionals and their companies to call clients and warn them of the dangers of open source. This week I received calls from 4 different customers that they were warned that they are dangerously insecure because they run Open Source Operating systems or Software because 'anyone can read the code and hack you with ease' they are being told. Other colleagues in the area also have noticed this about 3 Microsoft Partners or so they claim have been going out of their way to strike fear of OSS in companies that respond with 'yes we use Open source or Linux' when the sales call comes in. I know this is simply a sales tactic by these companies that will remain nameless, but how do I fix the damage caused by these sales tactics? I have several customers that now want more than my word about the security of the systems that have worked for them flawlessly for over 5-6 years now with minimal expense outside of upgrades and patching for security. Does anyone have a good plan or sources of reliable information that can be used to inform the customer?"

At a dinner honoring those who stand up for freedom of speech, former House speaker Newt Gingrich issued his opinion that the idea of free speech in the U.S. needs to be re-examined in the interest of fighting terrorism. Gingrich said a "different set of rules" may be needed to reduce terrorists' ability to use the Internet and free speech to recruit and get out their message. The article has few details of what Gingrich actually said beyond the summary above, and no analysis pointing out how utterly clueless the suggestion is given the Internet's nature and trans-national reach.

Perhaps one of the more overlooked problems that could arise out of a bad Net Neutrality decision is the impact to online gaming. In fact, any interactive communications could stand to take a dive (VOIP, streaming video, etc) with the advent of Net Neutrality legislation. RampRate has an interesting look at the possible fallout and where we are headed. From the article: "What will be murdered with no fallback or replacement is the nascent market of interactive entertainment - particularly online gaming. Companies like Blizzard Entertainment, Electronic Arts, Sony Online Entertainment, and countless others, have built a business on the fundamental assumption of relatively low latency bandwidth being available to large numbers of consumers. Furthermore, a large -- even overwhelming -- portion of the value of these offerings comes from their 'network effects' -- the tendency for the game to become more enjoyable and valuable as larger number of players joins the gaming network."

nd01 writes "According to Gamepolitics.com, Bill OReilly has a few choice words for gamers and computer geeks in general. The well-known conservative pundit has harsh words for iPod owners, gamers, the PS3, and all of us 'disconnected from reality' by modern technological contrivances." From the article: "Basically what you have is a large portion of the population, mostly younger people under the age of 45, who don't deal with reality — ever. So they don't know what day it is; they don't know temperature it is; they don't know what their neighbor looks like. They don't know anything... because they are constantly diverted by a machine. Now what this does is it takes a person away from reality because they've created their own reality..."

ccozan writes to tell us of a law being rushed through the Australian legislature that would criminalize great swaths of the citizenry. The Internet Industry Association of Australia is posting warning scenarios spelling out how far-reaching this law would be. From the release: "A family who holds a birthday picnic in a place of public entertainment (for example, the grounds of a zoo) and sings 'Happy Birthday' in a manner that can be heard by others, risks an infringement notice carrying a fine of up to $1,320. If they make a video recording of the event, they risk a further fine for the possession of a device for the purpose of making an infringing copy of a song... The US Free Trade Agreement does not require Australia to go down this path, and neither US nor European law contain such far-reaching measures. We are at a total loss to understand how this policy has developed, who is behind it and why there is such haste in enacting it into law — with little if any public debate."

F.M. Petain writes, "It looks like Microsoft's first move in the 'Linux owes us' game is to move a Pawn. A few days ago, a Novell programmer, Noel Power, submitted patches to add VBA compatibility to Open Office's spreadsheet module. This is great for people trying to convert the business desktop from closed source to open source, but is this gift really a ticking time bomb? What happens when Microsoft declares that the VBA code was stolen?" The patches may have been submitted only a few days ago, but the code must be considerably older; the article claims that nine distros in adition to SUSE already support the VBA extensions in their versions of Open Office. (Linux.com and Slashdot are both part of OSTG.)

Max Fomitchev writes "Looks like Apple is going to reveal its new cool and fast Mac OS code-named 'Leopard' in the upcoming World Developer's Conference in August. Good news for Apple! And terrible news for Microsoft. If 'Leopard' is really what it claims to be, i.e. fast and efficient, in sharp contrast to slow and resource hungry Windows Vista, we certainly would see Apple's remarkable market share gain next year."

Bruce Perens writes "We've warned you for a decade. Now the monster has finally arrived: patent holders are filing suit against OSS developers." From the article: "We should not be confident that we will continue to have the right to use and develop Open Source software. A coordinated patent attack by a few companies, or even one large company, could completely destroy Open Source in the United States and cripple it in other nations. Funds and patent portfolios that have been established to help defend Open Source would not be sufficient to defend it. Only legislative changes to the patent system can fully protect Open Source and maintain it as a viable source of innovation for our future."

An anonymous reader writes "eWeek is reporting on a new continuous open-source support system that helps to keep tabs on your mission-critical applications by providing constant diagnostic monitoring. The system is designed to match specific 'signatures' from your applications to a database of over 200,000 possible 'problem' signatures and alert the user for correction or analysis. From the article: 'SourceLabs' Continuous Support System features what Sebastian calls "adaptive diagnostic probes" that are fully integrated and configured for customer environments. The probes identify production issues and begin to gather diagnostic information to help get to the root of the problem, he said. Indeed, the probes can be configured so that as soon as a problem occurs, the SourceLabs support team extracts system information to find and resolve the problem. And the system includes a database of more than 200,000 signatures of problems that might occur.'"