Are virus going towards Facebook? Welcome to the black death, 2.0

Nowadays computer systems with a good set-up (I’m saying a good set-up, not a relationship with UNIX) are going to be less and less virus prone. In my opinion today only a stupid cold download some files from its favorite peer to peer network, don’t recognize that the porn he wanted can’t be stored  in an executable file. Since he is such a stupid that would underperform even in the Linux Girl-test, he is going to type the administrator password and make something that will make him gain a place in the hall of fame of stupidity.

A quick look at the previous paragraph may reveal a really high stupid/(number of words) rate.

A clever reader and a fucking annoying virus writer may have noticed that on Facebook the rate stupidity/(Things done) is too high to be computed. But this is not the most important factor. Facebook is a network and it is easy to send your friends an invitation. This mean a really quick spreading of whatever you are showing your friends (Never heard of the snowball effect?).

Wait! We have people acting in a stupid way and stupid things passing form a user to another, very very quickly. Now imagine to have something malicious that is passing form a friend to another: welcome to the black death, 2.0.

With this premise this was only a matter of time before something bad was coming out. This example is still relying on users stupidity (Once again), but considering the amount of data stored on the social network and the ease of access for user authorized application (Don’t trust everything, it’s a matter of life and death) making something dangerous, able to get information and even to spread to your contacts. Is that enough?

To my friend that are reading this post (but also to the others). Send me something bad and you will be no more a friend of mine, not only on Facebook but also in real life! I told you, be careful on what you are doing, or be sure you can hide yourself in a safe place, without writing on Facebook where you are.

P.S.

A couple of my readers should enjoy the picture I used in this post. Please give me a feedback on that (And obviously also on the whole post).

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iPhone OS surpasses Windows Mobile

MacDailyNews has posted an article comparing current market share and year-per-year growth of the most used mobile operating systems.

Current marketshare
Symbian 63%
RIM at 16%
iPhone OS 13%
Windows Mobile at 11%

Year-per-year growth
iPhone OS +328%
RIM at +83%
Windows Mobile at -3%
Symbian -12%

As you can see the growth of the iPhone OS marketshare is impressive: I guess it's time to recall Steve Ballmer's predictions about the success of iPhone!

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Mr. President and the Zune

Unfortunately we have to trust what Neal Santos of City Paper is telling us, but why not to trust him? Actually he said he saw Barak Obama (Yes the elected president of the United States).

Do you still have any doubt on what is the best music player?

:-)

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The Simpsons Mock Apple!

If you're a tech guy and you like The Simpsons, you will certainly love this video!

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Is Linux passing the girlfriend test? No, thanks to Free Software Foundation

Guys at TechRadar UK made a girlfriend of one of them playing with Linux, in their girlfriend test.

They told some simple tasks to the girl and looked how she was accomplishing the “challenge” using Linux.

This test aim is to demonstrate that Linux is noob-proof when it is about to deal with basic tasks:

• Bookmark a website in Firefox: is it the same thing that doing it in every operating system with Firefox.
• Write and print a letter in OpenOffice.org: same as the previous. It is still not demonstrating anything but the availability of common software for Linux and Windows.
• Rip a CD: different system, same behavior of the GUI that let the girl do what se wanted. But are you sure she won’t have any troubles?
• Send an instant message: here things are getting quite harder. The girl wanted to use Windows Live Messenger and had to use Pidign. She can nearly the same things after some trials. It is not Linux fault but the experience is losing some of its initial appeal.
• Create a pie chart in OpenOffice.org: other OpenOffice stuff, same consideration I made on the second task.
• Put the ripped CD on to her iPod: thank you Apple, thank you Free Software Foundation for the choice of OGG. The poor girl is not smiling anymore.
• Photoshop her head on to my body: she found GIMP and get it to work. At least the girl should receive a standing ovation since she managed to deal with the unusual interface. She is not a regular noob. Definitely.
• Watch a video on YouTube: my dear package manager, having flash installed is a thing that users want to do in a click or two. I know flash is evil, but the web is heavily relying on it. And using the web is more interesting than having a pure 100% free system.
• Make a phone call using Skype: problems are coming out. And in this case I can’t tell you this is not a Linux fault. An 'audio playback problem' needs to be fixed before noobs are going to consider using Linux.

A noob that has to deal only with browsing on nearly pure HTML/CSS sites that has to do some office work with OpenOffice could consider using Linux.

If the user wants to do more multimedia related stuff the situation is getting terribly worst. Maybe you are wondering about the responsible for this fall of Linux perceived usability

I’m pointing my finger against the Free Software Foundation that is trying to prevent anything not open being installed in the system. In my opinion this is a really bad choice.

The girl would have a better opinion of Linux if she could have out of the box working MP3, Flash and Skype support. Losing users in the name of an ideal is not a clever choice in my opinion. Maybe it is the right choice from the moral perspective. But an ideal without users is not going anywhere.

Just my 2 cents, as usual.

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