Happy Birthday Linux-20Years-Thanks Linus

by xmBill

September 17th 2011

0110010101110101001101001011101010110110110001101100100001010

Back almost 30 years ago, I was into OS9 (no not Apples OS9) which is a multiuser, multiprocessing, operating system based off of Unix from AT&T. It was a very powerful OS for 8-bit computers initially using the Motorola 6809 processor. If you were even into computers back in the early 80’s when I first got introduced to computing and programming, you were probably into CP/M or worse yet MS-DOS. I read about those but was more intrigued with the power of the OS9 Level 1 and 2 operating systems. Having friends and working in retail selling computers and electronic devices, we were always arguing about which system was better. In my research, I was finding out that the Radio Shack Color Computer was not much compared to the other 8 bit computers popular at the time like the Commodore 64. However, when you booted up with an old 5-1/4” floppy that only held 160K, that had the OS9 Operating System on it, you were in another league. The Commodore 64 and any MS-DOS machine and later the earlier versions of Windows up to say 3.0, were no comparison as features (power) goes. OS9 RULED !!!

OS9 soon was ported to the more powerful 16 and 32 bit computers using the 68000 CPU and has since dominated the Industrial embedded chips used in manufacturing and other complex systems. It is very reliable and is still a major operating system.

However, in the early 90’s came along Linus Torvalds – The Creator Of Linux. In 1991 he made his soon to be know Linux Operating System public and the result is an operating system that in my opinion has the best of Unix and OS9 combined making it the worlds BEST Operating System. Fighting off the popularity of Microsoft’s Windows Operating System, Linux has established itself behind the backs of people unfamiliar with Linux. To most, they aren’t even aware of what Linux is, let alone what it is used for. But Linux is now used in many devices that everyone uses everyday. They are just now becoming more aware of it thanks to great articles published by Mashable.com and others. Google now with the worlds most popular phone OS, Android, is bringing more attention to Linux as Linux today is celebrating it 20th Birthday.

Happy 20th Birthday Linux !

Here is a graphic showing some of the milestones for Linux

source: LinuxFoundation.org

Here is a great article by Mashable.com

The Linux operating system is not just for nerds. Even though you may not realize it, chances are you probably have a version of Linux running right under your nose. It’s found its way into a multitude of devices, both large and small.

Today, Sept. 17, 2011, is the 20th anniversary of the date when the first Linux kernel (version 0.01) was released and uploaded to an FTP server by Linus Torvalds in Helsinki. Although Torvalds had been working on the code since April, 1991 (recognized by some as the birthday of Linux), it wasn’t until September of that year that he released the first Linux kernel to the world. That early iteration consisted of a mere 10,239 lines of code.

Fast-forward to the present day, where the Linux kernel 2.6.35 contains more than 13.5 million lines of code, and controls gadgets, devices and instruments you might never have expected. Take a look at our gallery below and be surprised by the ubiquity of this useful, versatile and compact operating system on its 20th birthday:

View As Slideshow »

1. TiVo

Underneath the digital video recorder TiVo’s user-friendly and popular interface is a modified version of Linux. We have a hunch that those Linux underpinnings are responsible for TiVo’s snappy response and smooth video playback.

---

2. Android

The Android operating system is showing up in multitudes of handheld devices. It was created by the Open Handset Alliance, headed up by Google. Lots of smartphone providers place their own brand of user interface enhancements on top of Android, and there’s a lot of tricky programming called middleware in between, but underneath? Good old Linux.

---

3. AT&T MiFi

This pocket-sized device gives users a mobile access point that makes it so multiple people can use a single 3G connection. That gives any Wi-Fi device the ability to go online practically anywhere. What’s in it for you? Imagine never having to pay a $12.95 Wi-Fi charge in a hotel again, thanks to Linux.

---

4. Large Hadron Collider

When it’s time to answer big questions, physicists are turning to Linux to run the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest and highest-energy particle accelerator. Just what questions are they trying to answer with this $9 billion scientific instrument? They’re trying to understand some of the deepest and most fundamental laws of physics, such as the structure of space and time.

---

5. Refrigerator (Electrolux Infinity I-Kitchen)

Why would you need Linux in your refrigerator? How about running a touchscreen on the front, storing your contacts and calendars, recipes and reminders, and letting you keep your family organized with electronic Post-it notes? And, some refrigerators are smart enough to remind you that it’s time to buy more milk.

---

6. Sony Bravia HDTV

We tested the latest Sony Bravia connected TV, which brings you your favorite video-on-demand service from Netflix or Amazon and a lot more. That’s thanks (in part) to its Linux underpinnings. Of course, it can show you the latest 3-D video, and the one we tested was even smart enough to turn itself off if there was no one sitting in the room.

---

7. Chumby

This little supersmart alarm clock runs more than 1,000 apps, and it’s all made possible by Linux under the hood. Don’t let its diminutive size fool you — this gadget can display video, call up your favorite Pandora Radio channels and remind you of appointments. Best of all, it’s fun.

---

8. GPS (Tom Tom)

Bet you didn’t know that GPS unit on your car’s dashboard was running Linux. Humming away inside many Garmin, Tom Tom (and other) GPS navigators are versions of Linux. Now if the accuracy of the maps could measure up to that sharp Linux code running inside, we wouldn’t have to recalculate so often.

---

9. Kindle

The electronics reader that made e-reading famous is the Amazon Kindle, and displaying its E-Ink screen with enough speed to make it a pleasure to use is — you guess it — starts with an "L."

---

10. Self-Driving Car

Self-driving cars, otherwise known as autonomous vehicles, are not perfect yet, but they’re getting there. Many of them are running Linux, and researchers are using the operating system to find their way toward someday eliminating the need for traffic signals, driver’s licenses, and maybe even rules of the road.

source: Mashable.com

A Message From Hacker Group Anonymous

Hacker Group Anonymous Brings Peaceful Revolution To America: Will Engage In Civil Disobedience Until Bernanke Steps Down

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 03/12/2011 22:30 -0400

The world’s most (in)famous hacker group – Anonymous – known for effectively shutting down their hacking nemesis security firm (with clients such as Morgan Stanley and, unfortunately for them, Bank of America)- HBGary, advocating the cause of Wikileaks, and the threat made by one of its members that evidence of fraud by Bank of America will be released on Monday, has just launched communication #1 in its Operation "Empire State Rebellion." The goal – engage in "a relentless campaign of non-violent, peaceful, civil disobedience" until Ben Bernanke steps down and the "Primary Dealers within the Federal Reserve banking system be broken up and held accountable for rigging markets and destroying the global economy effective immediately."

The Anonymous manifesto:

• We are a decentralized non-violent resistance movement, which seeks to restore the rule of law and fight back against the organized criminal class.
• One-tenth of one percent of the population has consolidated wealth in unprecedented fashion and launched an all-out economic war against 99.9% of the population.
• We are not affiliated with either wing of the two-party oligarchy. We seek an end to the corrupted two-party system by ending the campaign finance and lobbying racket.
• Above all, we aim to break up the global banking cartel centered at the Federal Reserve, International Monetary Fund, Bank of International Settlement and World Bank.
• We demand that the primary dealers within the Federal Reserve banking system be broken up and held accountable for rigging markets and destroying the global economy, effective immediately.
• As a first sign of good faith we demand Ben Bernanke step down as Federal Reserve chairman.
• Until our demands are met and a rule of law is restored, we will engage in a relentless campaign of non-violent, peaceful, civil disobedience.
• In our next communication we will announce Operation Empire State Rebellion.

Glorious Chairman Ben – our free advice to you: change your e-mail password stat…

Jailbreak tool for iPhone 4, 3GS, 3G on iOS 4/4.0.1 and iPad on iOS 3.2.1 released

 

by Jeremy Sikora, Sunday, Aug 1, 2010, 158 Comments

For those of you who were patiently waiting to jailbreak your iPhone running either iOS 4 or 4.0.1, your wait is finally over as iPhone hacker Comex has released a tool to get the job done. It is a web based jailbreak so simply point your mobile safari browser towww.jailbreakme.com and your wait will be over. Heck, you can even use this tool to jailbreak your iPad running 3.2.1.

The servers seemed to be overwhelmed currently but keep checking the link above and let us know how it goes for you! If you have questions and want to learn more about jailbreaking be sure to visit our forum dedicated to the topic here.

WoW ! Feds say mobile-phone jailbreaking is OK

All I can say is that it is about time we are ALLOWED to purchase a product and USE it the way we want. However, I will say, that I can understand Apple and others position as far as customer service problems go that might arise from the jailbreaking of an iPhone  or rooting of Android phones. If you are going to (and I have already rooted my HTC Droid Incredible) then you should no longer depend on Apple, HTC, Google,AT&T, Verizon, or whatever vendor you purchased or expect support from. They can only support products that conform to what they developed and sold you. When you jailbreak or root the phone, they have lost control over the software and hardware, thus the support for it, too.

Besides, if you jailbroke or rooted your phone, then you probably went to a forum or website to get the info on how to do it and the guys that “crack” the code are very knowledgeable and in most cases will be more than glad to help you with your “hacked” phone. In other words, there is plenty of support forums out there  with guys who are MORE knowledgeable that the big guys support call centers who are normally reading from a script anyway. So, do your own support if you are having a problem and enjoy your “new” hacked phone with more features and options now and not have to worry about any ridiculous copyright laws.

Below, is an excellent article by Declan McCullagh about the new decision by the U.S. Copyright Office.

 

Jailbreaking your iPhone or other mobile device will no longer violate federal copyright law, the U.S. Copyright Office ruled Monday.

The decision, part of a process that takes place every three years, said that bypassing a manufacturer’s protection mechanisms to allow "handsets to execute software applications" is permissible.

The Copyright Office also allowed bypassing the anticopying technology used in DVDs, but only for "documentary filmmaking," noncommercial videos, and educational uses–a ruling that stopped short of allowing Americans to legally make a backup copy for their own use, in case the original DVD gets damaged. It also doesn’t apply to making backup copies of videogame discs or Blu-Ray discs.

Apple, the maker of the iPhone, had objected to the exemption for jailbreaking phones. A letter that the company sent to the Copyright Office argued that allowing jailbreaking would result "in copyright infringement, potential damage to the device and other potential harmful physical effects, adverse effects on the functioning of the device, and breach of contract."

Apple’s support department already receives "literally millions of reported instances of problems flowing from jailbroken phones," the company said, and legitimizing the practice of jailbreaking would result in more malware being delivered outside of the App Store, other security problems, and even physical damage to the iPhone.

Monday’s announcement certainly counts as a political victory for jailbreaking enthusiasts and critics of the anti-circumvention portions the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, but it may not have much of a practical effect.

Apple has never sued any of its customers on grounds that their jailbreaking violates the DMCA, even though a February 2009 estimate suggested that over 400,000 U.S. iPhone owners have done so. Nor has it filed any breach-of-contract lawsuits claiming that the software license agreement was violated.

Section 2(c) of the Apple iPhone Software License Agreement (PDF) bans any attempt to "modify" the iPhone software or to reverse-engineer it.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, the San Francisco-based civil liberties group, had requested that the Copyright Office expand the number of exceptions in the DMCA, which has been a focus of controversy among programmers, hackers, and security researchers for over a decade. The DMCA broadly restricts, but does not flatly ban, bypassing copy protection technology.

"The Copyright Office and Librarian of Congress have taken three important steps today to mitigate some of the harms caused by the DMCA," Jennifer Granick, EFF’s civil-liberties director, said in a statement Monday. "We are thrilled to have helped free jailbreakers, unlockers, and vidders from this law’s overbroad reach."

KB971003 – Do Not Install This Update (unless?)

WARNING!!!

For Windows 7 Users

Microsoft came out last week with an update KB971003 that tries to validate Windows 7 upon install and if you don’t have a legitimate validated version, then it will change your wallpaper to black and start shutting you down if you can’t provide it with a legitimate validated key. It checks for several cracks that get around the validation and tries to remove them. If it prompts to restart, then it has probably already done it. All this is done in the background. What makes it worse is that it will keep checking your validation about every 90 days.

Windows Activation Technologies check your systems file and tell you whether the Windows you are using is Genuine Or not. Windows Activation Technologies protect against the risks of counterfeit . Windows Activation Technologies in Windows 7 consists of activation and validation components that contain anti-piracy features.

• Activation is an anti-piracy technology that verifies the key for the copy of Windows 7 that is running on your computer. The product key is a 25-character code that is on the Certificate of Authenticity label or on the proof of license label. These labels are included with each genuine copy of Windows. A genuine product key can only be used on the number of computers that are specified in a software license.
• Validation is an process that enables you to verify that the copy of Windows 7 that is running on your computer is activated correctly and is genuine.

Microsoft is well known for it’s constant tricks to make sure you are running a legitimate (according to them) copy of Windows. There have been numerous problems in the past with legitimate copies failing their validation process for numerous reasons that are well documented elsewhere. This is another one with the exception that this one will reside on your system running in the background and checking about every 90 days to make sure you copy is still “Genuine” (according to them).

The Fix

Just don’t install the update. Due to people really getting upset about them putting things on like this, they are making it an optional update so just check your updates and make sure you haven’t already installed it. Hopefully, you probably wouldn’t have if you pay any attention to what updates you get. They will probably be putting it out throughout the month or else their servers would probably go crazy with all the validation checks. Hopefully, you don’t have it yet. If you already do have it but everything still seems fine, then it just hasn’t activated yet and you should still be about to remove it from add/remove programs.

This update applies on Windows 7 Enterprise,Windows 7 Home Basic,Windows 7 Home Premium,Windows 7 Professional,Windows 7 Ultimate

However

If you do want to validate your install and risk being told that the Windows 7 software you spent over $100 for is not Genuine, then this update package is available through Windows Update and Microsoft Download Center.You may use following link to download it:-

Download link for 32 bit (x86)

Download link for 64 bit (x64)

Do NOT Download Unless You Do Want To Validate Your Copy

1024-bit RSA Encryption Cracked Using 81 p4’s

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—The most common digital security technique used to protect both media copyright and Internet communications has a major weakness, University of Michigan computer scientists have discovered.

Since 1977, RSA public-key encryption has protected privacy and verified authenticity when using computers, gadgets and web browsers around the globe, with only the most brutish of brute force efforts (and 1,500 years of processing time) felling its 768-bit variety earlier this year. Now, three eggheads (or Wolverines, as it were) at the University of Michigan claim they can break it simply by tweaking a device’s power supply. By fluctuating the voltage to the CPU such that it generated a single hardware error per clock cycle, they found that they could cause the server to flip single bits of the private key at a time, allowing them to slowly piece together the password. With a small cluster of 81 Pentium 4 chips and 104 hours of processing time, they were able to successfully hack 1024-bit encryption in OpenSSL on a SPARC-based system, without damaging the computer, leaving a single trace or ending human life as we know it. That’s why they’re presenting a paper at the Design, Automation and Test conference this week in Europe, and that’s why — until RSA hopefully fixes the flaw — you should keep a close eye on your server room’s power supply.

The RSA algorithm gives security under the assumption that as long as the private key is private, you can’t break in unless you guess it. We’ve shown that that’s not true," said Valeria Bertacco, an associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
These private keys contain more than 1,000 digits of binary code. To guess a number that large would take longer than the age of the universe, Pellegrini said. Using their voltage tweaking scheme, the University of Michagan researchers were able to extract the private key in approximately 100 hours.

University of Michigan

DoD Takes Steps to Defend Cyberspace Warfighting Domain

By Jim Garamone
American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, Nov. 21, 2008 – Cyberspace is a warfighting domain, and the Defense Department is taking steps to defend this crucial capability, a Pentagon spokesman said today.

 

“We are aware of a global virus for which there are some public alerts, and we’ve seen some of these on our networks, and we are taking steps to identify and mitigate the virus,” Bryan Whitman said. “We do aggressively monitor our networks for intrusions and take adequate steps to protect them.”
Public alerts on this global virus threat urge all computer users to take precautions. Users should have current anti-viral software programs and anti-spyware installed in their computers, and information technology specialists should ensure that no infected hardware can breach DoD systems, Whitman said.
Whitman would not go into specifics about what the department is doing about the virus. “We don’t discuss any specific defensive measures that we are taking or may be taking to protect and defend our networks,” he said.
DoD’s global information grid includes more than 15,000 networks and about 7 million information technology devices, Pentagon officials said.
Grid defenders regularly send guidance to commands about current threats and measures for users to take to ensure information systems remain secure. “It’s the responsibility of every user to help protect the network,” Whitman said. “This is something that requires us to have constant vigilance.”
The threat comes from a variety of sources, the spokesman said. “It includes everything from recreational hackers to the self-styled cyber-vigilantes,” Whitman said. It also emanates from various groups with nationalistic or ideological agendas, as well as “transnational actors or transnational states,” he added.
“This is not a Defense Department issue. It’s not even a government issue. It is an international issue – a world issue,” Whitman said. “Anyone who uses computers and is on a network is susceptible.”
U.S. Strategic Command is the lead agency for DoD’s computer network defense effort. Under Stratcom, the Joint Task Force Global Network Operations handles protection. That group interfaces with other agencies.