Just to avoid labeling myself as a fan, I'll just say I use linux on my desktop, notebook, and my small home server, have done so for over a decade, and I like it a lot :-)

I think "the year of Linux" will not happen either, but for different reasons. Because it's all about evolution, not revolution. Who thought these netbooks would turn an entire new market into Linux users simply looked at a single population at a given time and drew conclusions from it, underestimating Microsoft's ability to catch up quickly.

I'd say that the simple fact that Linux *was* there first is quite nice by itself. Furthermore they're *still* selling 10% of these netbooks with linux while there's now also a Windows option available... which is still a progress in the larger process, these people are now using linux while otherwise they wouldn't. Also, it helped gain Linux more attention, both in media and in personal contacts. People sometimes go like, oh nice small notebook... interesting... what's it running... and so on. That's a "possible linux-user" virus being spread through the population ;-)

Sometimes it's also trivial things why people switch. A girl I know studies to become a dentist, and she bought an asus eee netbook with linux. It runs Xandros, based on Debian 4.0, with fluxbox as window manager I think. It looked to be designed to give easy access to commonly used programs and configuration, while hiding everything else under a nice shiny hood. I had to search the web to find out how to get a terminal emulator running on the thing (control-alt-t)

Asking her how she liked the linux environment, she was pretty enthusiastic, it ran solid, responded fast, worked great for her and did everything she wanted to... except that she couldnt access the wifi network at school, the helpdesk didn't support Linux at all, and someone was going to install windows XP on it the next day just so she could get connected at school.

That hurt...

Someone put up a pdf with instructions how to access their school's network with linux, using either the gnome network manager (she had a network manager... but wasn't sure if it was the right one) or shell commands, but she couldn't figure out how to get a shell. She's an intelligent girl, just not so computer/linux savvy, and working with her I got the idea that the fact that wpasupplicant on xandros is called xandros-wpasupplicant might have been just enough to prevent her from succeeding.

Needless to say I installed the certificate and got the stuff going... I hope it worked out, I just had one shot, without the wifi network to test it... if it didn't work the next day at school she'd install xp... :-/ This was past weekend, I haven't heard about the results yet. Even if she replaced linux with xp tho, I don't think this whole experience would really wreck linux' reputation with her, her overall impression of Linux as operating system for her netbook was so good that this one problem would not keep her from trying linux again in the future.

Linux *is* about doing things different, whether or not some or all UI elements are "copied" from Windows. There's just so many ways you can present a solitaire game, you know? The file manager has an icon representing an actual file cabinet on many operating systems including phones... Did they all copy that from Microsoft? I don't think so.

All these illusions and delusions put aside... as far as I can see Linux is still infecting the world at a nice evolutionary pace ;-) The more infections... the bigger the chance will be that the next new thing *will* be running on linux first.

Hmm... credit monitoring (monitoring your credit reports for changes) would increase the chance of detection tho, not decrease the chance of fraud. If the detection rate increases and the chance of fraud is the same, the fraud rate found for the breached data would increase since logically there's only detected fraud in the numbers, not undetected.

That would have the same effect as the credit monitoring I guess.

Well being more careful might decrease the chance of their cards being abused somewhat indeed...

... guess that's more likely tho :-) Well if you change "unused" to "unwanted" or something... Unused accounts probably wouldn't have their data stolen in the first place ;-) So people were notified of the breach and closed down accounts... and now these closed accounts are polluting the attackers data... while the "overall fraud rate" only includes working accounts.

I also found the written testimony of ID Analytics these numbers originate from.

It makes an interesting read... there's just so many things affecting the fraud rate. For example, the report estimates it'd take a single person about 10 years to use a million breached accounts. Perhaps this one data set was stolen by a smaller group of attackers. Or just one, and a lazy one at that... ;-)

There's something wrong with the math in the report tho... they estimate: 5 minutes per application, 6.5 hours a day, 5 days a week, 50 days a year. That's 12 applications per hour * 6.5 * 5 * 50 = 19500 applications per year, or roughly 51 years for a single person, not the 10 they write about.

The report then goes on saying that you'd have to hire 51 workers to complete all that in one year -- which actually triggered my curiosity about these numbers because it matches my 51 years but not their 10 ;-) -- which would cost over $830,000 at $10 an hour... quite the operation ;-)

My conclusion is that we can't compare the results of this one study to the overall fraud rate at all. I do agree with jambarama's comment tho that these companies selling credit monitoring services and "fraud protection" try very hard to hype the fraud fear.

So what you're saying is that I should give my data to these thugs and *decrease* the chance of fraud? How's that logical? I'd guess the stolen accounts should have at least the same chance of fraud as any other... why does this not add up?

HUH?!?!

It was *seriously* showing a right hand on the right hand side of the keyboard... I didn't believe they'd make a mistake like that and checked it, hold my hand up etc... :P It's the same picture but reversed... The arm also was on the left side of the picture while it's on the right side now... I guess someone saw it and told them...

Look at the picture, there's a long key on the side you're looking at... that's the enter key on the *right* side of a keyboard!

Also look at the shade between the keys, a few keys from the side of the keyboard. It is caused by some extra space between the keys. If you look at the distance from that shade to the side of the keyboard, you'll see it's all the same for the top row (supposedly the function keys), the second and third row... Further down, the finger makes it hard to see more. Anyways, for as far as we can see, the shade runs down in a straight line.

Now look at the left side of your (any!) keyboard, and at the right side of your keyboard, and decide where you could see straight lines like those...

It could have been a keyboard like this The left side of such a keyboard will always resemble something like this... but with all the thousands of photos of keyboards you can find on that side... you won't find *one* matching the one in the picture currently at newsvine, unless you reverse it ;)

Sooo funny :P