PlasticBoy

School kids in the Norwegian city of Bergen’s Linux migration pilot program enjoyed using Linux more than Windows.

“The pupils didn’t get any kind of instructions before the tests, we simply said ‘These are Windows, these are Linux — just try them’,” says Tuftedal. “They preferred the Linux desktop — they liked the look of KDE and said it was more fun to use than Windows.”

They also failed to hack the Linux boxes.

Wow, you kind of have to read sci-fi author and computer scientist Rudy Rucker’s blog just for this sentence:

In the context of the theory I suggested in an earlier entry, God could be a deterministic non-reversible class four paratime metaphysical cellular automaton.

Cory Doctorow now has a regular column in Popular Science. In his first article he explains we you can’t back up your DVDs.

Loki Torrent, one of the BitTorrent sites being sued by the MPAA, is standing up to the studio bullies and mounting a legal defense. They need to raise $30,000.

MSNBC has a comprehensive list of charities providing aid to the tsunami victims. Amazon also has 1-Click Red Cross donations. [via rc3.org]

Netcraft has introduced an anti-phishing browser toolbar. It displays the hosting country and provider of the site you’re viewing and allows you to submit suspicious sites to a collaborative blocking system. They’re handing out prizes to people who report sites that are eventually blocked. Windows/IE only.

Reuters covers the growth of the home Linux market.

“Once you have about 8 to 10 percent of the market, you will see somewhat an explosion of people running it at home,” said Timothy Tuck, owner of computer services provider Pervasive Netwerks. “Once they see all the problems going away on their work computer, they want a system as stable and secure as they use at work.” Pervasive helped a Hayward, California, pharmacy switch to Linux to avoid an expensive Windows upgrade. After a while, the drugstore owner adopted Linux at home when he saw that he no longer was plagued by computer viruses at work.

The Utne Reader has a short article on Whuffie and reputation economies.

Cyber-Claus by William Gibson.

CNET has a great interview with Steve Ballmer for anyone who thinks Microsoft has Changed and is no longer Evil. In it, Ballmer comes right out and says that if he could go back eight years he’d do it all over again. For extra amusement he even goes on to claim that Windows is more open than open source and equate “open” with “popular”.

The album of the week is the only Christmas album you should ever need, Vince Guaraldi’s A Charlie Brown Christmas.

Nice, Thunderbird is getting tightly-integrated calendar features. I just hope it gets Palm-syncing in some reasonable timeframe.

And if Scoble does decide to quit Windows, here’s a nice little guide.

Ugh, Scoble says he won’t switch to Linux because it’s too unfamiliar:

Sorry, I am so used to Word/Excel/Powerpoint/Access/OneNote that I’m not going to easily switch.

Well, sorry Scoble, I won’t buy a Tablet PC becuase it’s strange and different. We fear change.

A new Linux-targeted music download service offers DRM-free tracks on Ogg Vorbis and FLAC formats. Very little selection so far.