You’ve already seen Johnny’s Wii Remote Hacks … and if you have not go and look. This is not about Wii, or video game, or anything like that. This is about transforming the relationship between technology and society. So if you missed Johnny Lee: Wii Remote hacks please go have a look. It is the TED Talk with a record number of interruptions and the largest standing ovation.Then, com back here and have a look at this other video from my new hero, Johnny Lee:Tracking Your Fingers with the Wiimote Continue reading Johnny Lee is TechnoMan (The world’s newest super hero).
Tag Archives: OpenSource
What To Do when your DVD Video Goes Missing
Linux to the rescue!
Have you ever recorded an important video on a home DVD recorder? Do you use a camcorder that records directly on DVD disks? If you have had a recording fail to finalize properly, rendering it unusable, this post may help you.
Not THIS post. … THIS post.
Mark Shuttleworth: Playing Nicely with Windows
Shuttleworth is the man behind Ubuntu. He has written an essay on his blog (Here be Dragons) on playing nice with windows.
Windows is a very important platform, and our justifiable pride in Linux and the GNU stack shouldn’t blind us to the importance of delivering software that is widely useful. I believe in bringing free software to people in a way that is exciting and empowering to them, and one of the key ways to do that is to show them amazing free software running on their familiar platform, whether that’s Windows or the MacOS.
Read the rest here.
The Pros and Cons of Linux, Windows, and OSX.
A must read for those in the midsts of a decision about their operating system.
All your choices have their technical merits but, you really shouldn’t select an operating system based solely on it technical merits. You should instead select one that best suits your usage case. To that end I have done my best to summarize the pros and cons of each operating system from the point of view of the average end user.
Learning the bash shell, third look
Time for another installment of our look at the book Learning the bash Shell (In a Nutshell (O’Reilly)). Today’s foray into Linux Land: Unix Command Substitution. Continue reading Learning the bash shell, third look
Gnome 2.22
Gnome 2.22 was just released (a few days ago). This is not the big-bang major overhaul type of release we have just seen with KDE, but it is worth nothing. Continue reading Gnome 2.22
Planetarium On Your Computer
If you are interested in astronomy, you know that there are a lot of Planetarium applications that you can install on your computer in order to find your way around the night sky. Kstars is a well known standby for KDE (but of course it will run under Gnome as well). Search for “stars” in your package manager and you’ll see quite a few other pieces of software as well.But when you get to “Stellarium” … stop and install that one. Continue reading Planetarium On Your Computer
Info, Review of Latest Firefox 3 Beta
Firefox 3 is in testing, with the latest build, beta 4, released Monday. Mozilla is aiming for a final release of its flagship product before the end of the first quarter of 2008. Let’s take a look at the changes coming down the pike.You can grab a copy of the latest Firefox 3 beta from mozilla.com. Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X Universal Binaries are provided in more than 40 languages. The Linux version is a bzip2-compressed tar archive. You can unpack into any location on your system.
The Browser Acid Test
The Acid Test is a webs standards test to which browsers can be subjected to see which is best. Here are some of the current results for browsers that are released (the one you are likely to use if your software is reasonably well updated):Konqueror on Ubuntu 7.10: 62%Epiphany on Ubuntu 8.04: 59%Camino on a Mac and Firefox on Mac, Windows XP, or Windows Vista: 52%The list that I’m looking at then has fourteen combinations of different browsers, versions, and operating systems ranging from 39% to 52%Then, way down the list, we get:INternet Exporer 5.50 on Windows XP at 14%Then a bunch of combinations of IE and various windows versions ranging from 11 to 14%.So, we may conclude the following: Continue reading The Browser Acid Test
Microsoft Softening Up India
Microsoft is encouraging its business partners to promote its Office Open XML specification (OOXML) to the Indian Bureau of Standards (BIS) and Ministry of IT. This move has incensed supporters of the rival OpenDocument Format (ODF) who fear that the “soft” Indian state may not be able to stand up to Microsoft pressure tactics.Open Source Initiative (OSI) board member Raj Mathur claims to have a copy of the Microsoft letter to NGOs. “Microsoft has ‘persuaded’ several non-profit organizations,” Mathur writes, “to bombard the Indian IT Secretary and the Additional Director General of the Bureau of Indian Standards with letters supporting its OOXML proposal.”Mathur describes the letters as “form letters” due to their template-like nature. “As per our discussion,” the letter says, “please find attached the draft letters — please cut/edit/ delete and change it any which way you find useful. Also attached is the list of NGOs who have sent the letters. And attached is also a document that details wht [sic] this debate is all about. Look forward to hear from you in this regard. In case you decide to send the letters, can you please send me a scan of the singed [sic] letters that you send out. Thanks this will help me track the process.”
Does Apple Throttle The Competition, Microsoft Style?
The developers of Firefox ran into an interesting situation with Firefox 3.0 (in production). There are reasons for it to have run faster than Firefox 2.0 on a Mac, but in some ways it ran more slowly.After a great deal of research, they figured out why. Essentially, there is a thing that happens to software running on a Mac that does not use certain native Apple system software … causing it to run much more slowly. But a very simple change (which is somewhere between undocumented and very very poorly documented) in the software can fix it easily. Continue reading Does Apple Throttle The Competition, Microsoft Style?
Best Buy will Sell Linux Computers
The Asus Eee Laptops being sold by Best Buy come featured with an Intel Celeron M Processor, 512 MB of DDR2 memory, 7″ widescreen display, 4GB solid state drive, built-in webcam, and the Linux operating system. Weighing in at only 2lbs, the laptop is great for day-to-day traveling. The hardware might not seem much, if you’re used to the high demands of a Windows-based PC, but for Linux, 512 MB of memory and a 4GB hard drive is plenty. You won’t be using the laptop for much server-based work or playing any 3D accelerated games, but that’s not what the laptop is about. It’s about having e-mail, internet, chat, word processors, and other applications that you need day-to-day while traveling, or working out of an office, or while on a trip.[Source]
Sunday Script-Yours
What is your favorite scripting language?
(I don’t think I can do polls on this site … but if you click on this picture of a poll, you can go to that site and take the poll)
Linux and Instant Messaging
I don’t do much instant messaging, although I have found it useful for communicating with colleagues overseas for free. But, in the ongoing quest for the answer to the question “Right, but can I do that in Linux?” I offer the following link on Three alternative Linux instant messaging applications.Do I need to point out that “instant messaging” (communication across a network between different computers was invented on, by, and for Unix type machines. So of course, IM would be a natural with Linux. Not only that, but if you are sitting at your Mac communicating with someone half way around the world sitting at their PC, there are numerous Unix/Linux machines linking you up and doing the real work.
The Google Summer of Code is Up and Running
Google Summer of Code 2008 is on! Over the past three years, the program has brought together over 1500 students and 2000 mentors from 90 countries worldwide, all for the love of code. We look forward to welcoming more new contributors and projects this year. We’ll begin accepting applications from mentoring organizations on Monday, March 3, 2008, and student applications on Monday, March 24th.