LinuxChix Los Angeles

The main LinuxChix website is hosted by the fine folk at Oregon State University Open Source Lab (OSUOSL), along with a host (pun intended) of other fine opensource communities like Apache, Debian, Gnome, KDE, and the LinuxFoundation. One of these, or any of the other communities helped out by OSUOSL, should give the encouragement you need to give $6 for 6 in honor of OSUOSL’s 6th year anniversary.

MIT. Unlocking Knowledge, Empowering Minds. Free lecture notes, exams, and videos from MIT OpenCourseWare. MIT Education without the MIT cost. I’ve gone through both the Algorithms and Physics courses and just these two are well worth a small donation.

EFF is the leading civil liberties group defending your rights in the digital world. Protecting our digital rights is an ongoing battle and funds are needed especially when the financial belt feels tightest. If possible consider giving yourself the gift of EFF membership, or at least some EFF swag.

Love this! Connecting to community through community. In the words of the Mozilla Foundation,

Mozilla Service Week is all about community – your community. We want you to find a way to use technology to make a difference in your neighborhood, your school, your library, your town, a fellow public benefit organization. We welcome any act of service, no matter how small.

How to participate? Visit the Mozilla Service week page for more information. Find a volunteer opportunity in your town, your city, your state, your country, or your world through the Idealist Mozilla partner listing of volunteer opportunities. You can search by location, field of interest, or desired skill set.

I’m off to see if someone needs a volunteer webmaster. I’ll let you know how it goes.

The Anita Borg Systers Pass-it-on Award applications for a financial stipend of $500-$1000 USD to women either in, or aspiring to be in, the field of computing. From the RFP page some possible uses for the stipend could include

• Small amount to help with studies, job transfers or other transitions in life.
• A broader project that benefits girls and women.
• Projects that seek to inspire more girls and women to go into the computing field.
• Assistance with educational fees and materials.
• Partial funding source for larger scholarship.
• Mentoring and other supportive groups for women in technology or computing.

Applications close November 4, 2009. More information and an application can be had here http://www.anitaborg.org/initiatives/systers/pass-it-on-grants-program

Ooooooooooooooooo. Google tweaks nose of ATT, Comcast, et all by (soon) making available tools which will allow non-technical consumers to see whether their ISP is throttling specific types of traffic. I realize that Google has a self-interest in trying to secure Net neutrality, but a nice side effect is an increase of consumer power.

In a move that’s sure to reignite the smoldering Net neutrality debate, Google has made it possible for Internet users to monitor the way their ISPs manage traffic. Google strongly favors Net neutrality, a principle that requires that no preference be given to one type of traffic over another.

One of the blogs I read regularly is from Matt Cutts, one of the Google Webspam people (some fluff, some stuff, and occasionally some really good tips on SEO).  A recent post delineated the browser stats for his blog visitors, and I was astonished at the almost 60% Firefox share.

Went to check the stats on a non-techy (restaurant) site and, while not in the 60% range, the growth of Firefox as a browser has been very strong and shows a jump from 5% to 27% usage. Are you seeing a similar trend on sites that you webmaster?

2004
MS Internet Explorer – 83.6 %
Safari – 5.5 %
Firefox – 4.6 %

2006
MS Internet Explorer – 66.9 %
Firefox – 17.6 %
Safari – 11.4 %

2008
MS Internet Explorer – 51.3 %
Firefox – 27.2 %
Safari – 18.4 %

I’m also seeing a 10% jump in Macintosh visitors (from 16% to 25%) with a corresponding drop in Windows (from 81% to 71%) in the same time period.

It really isn’t a Windows/IE only world out there anymore.

Email much into Asia? Expect some delays. There is news of a cable cut, actually 3 cables cut, in the Mediterranean as reported by, among others, PC Magazine and Bloomberg. I puzzled a bit that Bloomberg would cover tech news, but then remembered how much business is conducted over the internet.

This afternoon the Internet Traffic Report noted a 100% packet loss into Japan. Wow.