Showing headlines posted by theBeez

Recently RTL (a Dutch commercial television network) relaunched their website, moving entirely from classical Windows media to Microsoft Silverlight. However, Silverlight poses many problems. Few Linux users are able to play anything at all, even after installing the patent-infested Moonlight plugin. But also Windows users are experiencing problems, especially with Firefox and Chrome. The only combination that seems to work reasonably is Internet Explorer 8 with Silverlight 4.0.

In the Netherlands virtually every single company uses Windows. Windows is not a very secure Operating System, so everything is bolted down. I cannot install new programs, I cannot kill system processes, I cannot add any buttons or change the menu. The whole thing usually boots from the network. During the day, these are some of the annoyances I have to deal with.

You will notice that a "printer queue" refers to the number of persons waiting before their print jobs have finished and if it doesn't that's because the device in question is either out of paper or simply jammed beyond repair. So wouldn't it be nice if you could simply put all these documents on your Ben Nanonote and carry them along? Sure it would.

I've had a serial terminal connected to my Linux box for as long as I can remember. Unfortunately, my old Wyse 25 is slowly giving up. Then I got my Ben Nanonote. The Ben features an Ethernet-over-USB gadget, which I could use to connect it to my OpenSuSE machine. So, my Ben Nanonote became a console. If my Wyse 25 finally goes to that big computer center in the sky, the only thing I have to do is to order another Ben Nanonote and hook it up.

I've been using (and abusing) my Ben Nanonote daily now for several weeks, simply to find out whether this little machine is just a little gadget or really a useful device. There is no word processing package available for the Nanonote. Just a few editors. However, while looking for a "curses" based word processor I stumbled upon "txt2tags", a formatting program written in Python - which is supported by the Nanonote.

The Ben Nanonote is a Linux computer the size of a pack of cigarettes. It looks like a toy laptop, but it isn't. It's fully functional. And best of all, it was only $99. I decided I had to have one.

The only conclusion I can draw is that the audience that Ubuntu attracts are not your usual "computer-savvy" user who has no problem reinstalling something, switching distros or even forking a distribution. They obviously seem to want something that just works, which is not the product Mark Shuttleworth supplies.

First, relax. The new baby is called "WePad" and it's an Android device. Or, as the developers put it: The WePad is an open platform and everybody can contribute. It's based on established technologies like Linux, Android and Adobe AIR. Every developer in the world can create applications for this device. And you can also use existing Android applications. It also features multitasking, a webcam, Flash, two USB ports and can "play anything you throw at it". Some sources claim you can also make phone calls, but I have no confirmation for this.

As you may remember from my previous post, I simply wanted to import three spreadsheets into an MS-Access equivalent, use the "Query By Example" (QBE) mode to create a simple report and export the result to another spreadsheet. I did the whole thing in MS-Access as well and it took me about twenty minutes. This time I decided to give Kexi 1.1.3 and Knoda 0.8.3 a go. Not that I really needed to, but just to see if they were up to it if I needed to execute another odd job like this.

I won't touch OOo Base with a poke anymore. It looks very nice, but it doesn't handle real world workloads. I have to try Kexi and Knoda. I sincerely hope it will be much better than my latest experiences, because I can't allow myself to lose valuable time over this. When I'm working at home, I simply don't have the time for experiments: I need things that just work. Like LyX. Like OOo Impress. OOo Base just falls short.

Chris Green, a Microsoft employee who appears to use his MSDN blog here-and-there, posted a rather telling product support lifecycle update on December 2, 2009. In it, he details not only the public information found on Microsoft’s product support lifecycle site, but he boldly goes where no one has gone before by mentioning not only Windows 8, but Windows Server “2012? (Windows 8 Server) and Office “2012? (Office 15)… with dates.

The scientists at IBM Research – Zurich, in cooperation with the FUJIFILM Corporation of Japan, recorded data onto an advanced prototype tape, at a density of 29.5 billion bits per square inch — about 39 times the areal data density of today's most popular industry-standard magnetic tape product.

A couple of days ago we wrote that the German Federal Office for Security in Information Technology advised German citizens to switch from Internet Explorer (regardless of the version they use) to an alternative browser for security reasons. Now, the French government has issued a similar advisory.

Several times in the last few months, I’ve closed discussion on one of my blogs. Each time, some people have howled in outrage. Their anger makes them nearly inarticulate, but their position is apparently that I have no right to stop discussion. I am an enemy of free speech, they proclaim, a censor and cowardly, and downright evil as well. I don’t see that, myself.

Writing an opinion piece is like throwing a stone in a pond: you're bound to produce ripples. Writing an opinion piece is taking sides, otherwise it wouldn't be an opinion piece. It also implies that there is another side to consider. Writing an opinion piece is also an ego thing: my opinion is important.

Almost everywhere I go I find MS-Outlook, MS-Office, MS-IExplorer and Adobe Acrobat reader. Some of these installations even lack MS-Project, MS-Visio and in some cases even MS-Access. If those really were the only tools at my disposal, I would call it working with "stone axes and bear skins".

Carla Schroder recently published an article called "Hug your favorite FOSS contributors today". I have a problem with both that title and the intention. I don't feel like hugging some bearded nerd and if they're anything like me, I don't think they really want to be hugged anyway. Some of them are really grumpy old geeks..

What most people are still unable to understand is that the FOSS community is the FOSS community. There is no central body that governs it. Bruce Byfield is completely unaware of this too. In his latest misguided rambling 'Open Source Projects and the Meritocracy Myth' he lists a number of major projects with paid developers. As if meritocracy is and should only be applied there.

If Microsoft had come out with a free service pack to Vista and called it “Windows 7” it would be one thing. But we just don’t see enough of a change to warrant the purchase of an entirely new operating system. Windows XP Service Pack 2 changed that operating system a lot more than moving from Vista to W7 will.

"Almost Live Comedy Show" was announced earlier this month as part of a major marketing partnership Microsoft had sealed with a wide range of News Corp. properties to promote the launch of the computer giant's Windows 7 operating system. As part of the deal, "Almost Live Comedy Show" was set to run commercial-free, with Microsoft marketing messages built into the special instead. But that was before Microsoft execs attended the special's taping Oct. 16. The program included MacFarlane and Alex Borstein -- the voice of "Family Guy" matriarch Lois -- pitching Windows 7.