Leopard on the LAN
Well, we’ve installed Leopard on the spouse’s Mac (a dual G5, no less), which is always a challenge, given that I’m the help desk around here. So far, so good: a little grumping about the slow, beach-ball-spinning first log-in, but otherwise the process - including showing Linda how to change her desktop and screensaver - […]
How Far Behind Is Linux?
…asks the Wall Street Journal’s Lee Gomes, referring to Linux as a desktop OS. As he points out, nearly everyone uses Linux (if you use Google, you use Linux) but not as a replacement for Windows. Gomes also has an interview with Linus Torvalds….
NYT weighs in on Linux
I somehow missed this Larry Magid report on Linux in the NYT last week. I think his conclusions are fair… LInux continues to give savvy users a viable, stable platform for most common computer chores, certainly for email, web-browsing et al. Where it may fall down is with issues like hooking up cameras, music […]
New gmail in the works?
Slashdot has a tip. The current interface is not the best of the webmail offerings IMHO…
A giant New Yorker with a big shoe on the cover
…showed up in the mail yesterday. I suspect this is a gift from friend Michael Rosenberg, who is perhaps leary that I’ll jut be laying about in my new life (I only wish, Michael - Linda will never allow that particulare scenario).
I am trying to polish my journalistic skills as part of the new regime, […]
A simple podcast about… podcasting
So, we have been determined to learn about podcasting, and the audio recording that goes along with the deal. We have just been too busy with the ‘new life’ (and dealing with spouse’s long lists of ‘to-dos’ now that she has a mate that she regards as otherwise not gainfully employed).
Anyway, yesterday we hooked up […]
iLife ‘08: completely useless?
The screen shot above shows what iLife ‘08 did to a 7-year-old collection of photos and albums - some 30,000 pictures that used to work flawlessly in iPhoto ‘06 are just unrecognized by iPhoto ‘08. Dozens, if not a hundred albums, including thigs like John and Julie’s wedding just show blank squares where thumbnails once […]
We have met the enemy, and it is us
As a NYT story “Who Needs Hackers?” points out, increasingly major computer disruptions are being caused by the complexity of the systems themselves, not by rogue hackers. LAX, for example, was shut down for hours this past August, stranding 17,000 passengers because of a single NIC card failure.
In 2003 I wrote about events that led […]
Mossberg: thumbs down on Ubuntu
CNET’s Stephen Shankland blogs Walt Mossberg’s opinion that much-heralded Ubuntu Linux, now avaiailable as an option on Dell Machines, isn’t ready for prime-time. My experience is that if you can keep users in Firefox, Thunderbird or Evolution, even OpenOffice.org, things are OK.
Once they stray and start trying to open packages listed under the apps menus, […]
The Singularity Summit
In Darwin among the Machines, George B. Dyson predicts that the development of machine intelligence is inevitable, Darwinian and will proceed without human guidance or intervention.
Ray Kurzweil sees an approaching ’singulariy,’ an era in which humans will choose to enhance themselves by adopting non-biological substrates and merging human intelligence with the capacity, speed and knowledge-sharing […]