Will Microsoft be compelled to open source its Windows operating system? Yes, says Charles Babcock in his informationweek.com article, Why Windows Must Go Open Source. He posits that Microsoft is facing serious competition from Linux on netbooks and other low-end computers, such that if it wishes to protect its application market (mostly Office), it had […]
Negroponte vs. the Open-Source Fundamentalists
Rumblings of discontent within the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project erupted to the surface last week with the resignation of chief software architect, Walter Bender. A split has formed between those, like Bender, who see the project as primarily educational, and OLPC leader Nicholas Negroponte, who wants to push as many laptops into the […]
Mom and the MacBook
My mom is a Linux-using grandma who travels a lot. Recently she required medical attention while in another city, and wound up in hospital for several weeks. I felt very sorry for her. Yes, for the medical concerns, of course, but also because she was cut off from the internet. Even her brother, my octogenarian […]
Windows? Linux? OS/X? Why choose?
What the devil are we going to do with all the power that the latest computers offer, given that soon you won’t be able to buy a machine with less than two cores on the CPU and less than a gigabyte of RAM? Well, one possibility that more and more people are taking advantage of […]
The data that got away
How can we safely destroy our data? The simplest thing is to not produce any. Then there won’t be any to destroy. Too late? You already have data? Ok, then follow these 4 steps. Never share or lose control of your data. Become a multibillionaire. Create a facility for launching things into the sun. Launch […]
A tale of two ethics
The wide release of Windows Vista this week, and the billions that will be spent to buy it over the next few years, prompts one to ask: how exactly did we get into this mess? Once upon a time, not so long ago, computers were big things owned by businesses, governments, and universities. That changed […]
Damn the Nephews for All Spam
Sing, ye gods, the anger of us all, for countless spams that fill our in-boxes. Many a brave soul has attempted to filter them to a junk folder, only to have filters fail in the face of bogus text. And who is it who must bear the blame? It is the nephews, the brothers-in-law, the […]
Tech Predictions for 2007
Can’t really put off the “tech predictions for 2007” bit much longer . . . Could do it tomorrow . . . No, let’s quit the boozing for a sec and just knock something off . . . Okay, I fearlessly predict that things will be the same as in 2006, but with bigger numbers. […]
