Opinions

opinions

Free networks

I returned from a wonderful vacation in Florida to discover that my broadband cable service was no longer working. After some troubleshooting, replacing some coax lines and connectors, I ended up havi ...

by Jeremy Turner – 6/12/2006

opinions

Any way the wind SCOs...

OK, so I admit: I can’t get enough news about SCO. It’s like the best and worst parts of a soap opera, train wreck, and slapstick comedy all rolled up into one big, sticky ball. This week’s entry into ...

by Kirk Strauser – 6/11/2006

opinions

Premature synchronicity

I have noticed in life when you have issues that often a solution appears from the same environment at the same moment. Synchronicity challenges you to move to the next level of efficiency and quality ...

by Alan Berg – 6/11/2006

opinions

Microsoft Research India: friend or foe?

I’m going to make no excuses here—I was a chardonnay socialist and it’s time I came out and everyone gathered together and gave me some support. I have, from the time I was a little child been dreamin ...

by Bridget Kulakauskas – 6/11/2006

opinions

I am a technical writer, and I am using FOSS

This story, Why technical writers aren’t using FOSS, appeared in on Newsforge in April, and I have to take issue with some of the assumptions. First of all, I am technical writer, and I do use FOSS—in ...

by Martin Brown – 6/10/2006

opinions

Control of where I browse

I have a car, and I pay car tax that, in theory at least, pays for the roads that I drive on. I can don my driver’s gloves, expensive sun-glasses and cool-looking cap and motor anywhere on the road ne ...

by Edward Macnaghten – 6/9/2006

opinions

Lenovo and Linux support

On Monday, I commented on reports of Lenovo dropping support for Linux. Ryan Cartwright was quick to comment that Lenovo have since denied that any such announcement was made. Others around the blogos ...

by Martin Brown – 6/8/2006

opinions

Google's Spreadsheet

Sometimes I get the notion that everytime someone sneezes at Google, the snot shows up in 50 blogs the next day. Everyone seems to love imagining Google as the underdog in a boxing match with Microsof ...

by Matt Barton – 6/7/2006

opinions

Broadband, standards, and a web of little white lies

One of the frustrating things about standards is that so few people really follow them. Engineers, of course, like to stick to standards, and they understand the importance of explaining things in ter ...

by Terry Hancock – 6/7/2006

opinions

In the Linux comfort zone...

When I go to visit my mother (as I will be doing shortly) I feel like tearing my hair out. "Oh," I hear you say, "one of THOSE stories". But no, it's not. She lets me enjoy my usual sleeping habits, l ...

by Bridget Kulakauskas – 6/6/2006

opinions

More on Adobe, Microsoft and the PDF standard

I have been doing a small amount of research on the latest Adobe/Microsoft tussle, as brought to my notice by Matt Barton’s blog entry (thanks Matt). The first thing I found slightly frustrating was t ...

by Edward Macnaghten – 6/6/2006

opinions

Lenovo to drop Linux support

Many of the MySQL team use IBM computers by preference to do their developing on; and I know that, for some, a lot of the reason was the support for Linux. Now Lenovo owns IBM's hardware business, but ...

by Martin Brown – 6/5/2006

opinions

Vistarization

I have always wanted to invent a new word. Not any old word, but a word that would gets used even in the deepest, darkest corners of coffee shops in Amsterdam. Not that I would ever get to hear the wo ...

by Alan Berg – 6/4/2006

opinions

Adobe and Microsoft tussle over PDF

Well, I hate to say "I told you so", but it looks like Adobe has finally revealed that its "open" standard for PDFs was, in fact, a double standard. I've been warning colleagues for years about PDFs a ...

by Matt Barton – 6/3/2006

opinions

Are GNU/Linux distribution choices a fad, or favouritism?

Over the years I’ve tried numerous distributions, and there’s been a gradual progression from what were probably the early leaders in the Linux market—RedHat for example—through to the some recent and ...

by Martin Brown – 6/3/2006

opinions

The case for a Creative Commons 'sunset' Non-Commercial license module

Creative Commons is jumping on the license-rewrite bandwagon and planning to publish a draft of version 3.0 of their license modules. This has occasioned some discussion of the ways in which CC licens ...

by Terry Hancock – 5/31/2006

opinions

Pirate Bay raided: fuels Swedish "Pirate Party"

Those familiar with the world of torrents may be disappointed today to hear that Pirate Bay has been raided by some 50 Swedish police. While it's certainly not unusual for torrent sites hosting links ...

by Matt Barton – 5/31/2006

opinions

Low cost computing for emerging communities

While many people have been working on the technical challenges of providing low cost computing to emerging communities, a couple of months back I had proposed a different and related challenge to my ...

by David Sugar – 5/30/2006

opinions

How many meters in elegance?

It is raining in Amsterdam and I have a nice warm feeling in my stomach from a glass of red wine. I am lucky; I am forced to contemplate the wine for the next five minutes instead of doing any real wo ...

by Alan Berg – 5/28/2006

opinions

Editorial

The IT world has a reputation of being extremely fast-paced. And it is: an accounting program in the ’80s would have been written in COBOL. In the ’90s it would have been written with a RAD (Rapid App ...

by Tony Mobily – 5/24/2006