Category Archives: Free Software

What I learned from reading the Android user manual

Posted on 9/3/2010 by Ben

I love my Nexus One Android phone and, in general, I’ve found the user interface to be very intuitive. However, I recently discovered that there’s a 340-page user manual for Android. I decided to read the whole damn thing and … Continue reading →

Posted in Computers and Internet, Free Software, Technology | Leave a comment

Stephen Fry wishes GNU a happy birthday

Posted on 9/3/2008 by Ben

Stephen Fry made an excellent video explaining Free Software and wishing the GNU project a happy 25th birthday.

Posted in Free Software, Humor | Leave a comment

How to improve Free Software usability

Posted on 8/3/2008 by Ben

Matthew Paul Thomas is back with an article about why Free Software has poor usability, with concrete suggestions for how to solve the problems. Thomas is an interaction designer who works for Canonical. You might remember his list of 69 … Continue reading →

Posted in Free Software, Linux, Programming, Ubuntu | Leave a comment

Mozilla Messaging

Posted on 2/19/2008 by Ben

The new Mozilla organization dedicated to developing Thunderbird, Mozilla Messaging, has launched. They will also be developing Lightning, Sunbird, and an IM client, which is all very exciting. I’m using Lightning as my calendar at work now and it is … Continue reading →

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Yahoo and Microsoft

Posted on 2/1/2008 by Ben

Many people have pointed out that the scary thing about Microsoft potentially buying Yahoo is that Yahoo owns many important web sites (Flickr, del.icio.us, upcoming.org, etc.) and supports many important open source projects (PHP, FreeBSD, YUI, Hadoop, Squid, etc.) I’m … Continue reading →

Posted in Free Software, Humor, MSFT | Leave a comment

Intel leaves OLPC project

Posted on 1/4/2008 by Ben

As a follow-up to the previous story about the many competitors OLPC has faced, Intel has now left the project and is continuing with its Classmate laptops.

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OLPC’s Many Misfortunes

Posted on 11/27/2007 by Ben

The Wall Street Journal has a sort of tragic story about the trouble the One Laptop Per Child project has had selling its XO laptop to developing nations. OLPC has faced competition from Intel and other low-cost laptop manufacturers and … Continue reading →

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Open Source SimCity

Posted on 11/13/2007 by Ben

A Linux port of the original SimCity source code is being open sourced for use on the One Laptop Per Child. There are already a couple of open source clones of SimCity for Linux, Lincity and LinCity-NG, but it’s nice … Continue reading →

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Google’s Phone Plans

Posted on 11/9/2007 by Ben

It strikes me that the problem with Google’s open phone plans is that the carriers all still suck and are the opposite of open. Google should just buy one of the carriers and run it in a reasonable manner. If … Continue reading →

Posted in Business, Computers and Internet, Free Software, Linux | Leave a comment

Jeremy Allison on OOXML

Posted on 9/15/2007 by Ben

Jeremy Allison of Samba fame has some interesting comments and historical perspectives on the standards process for Microsoft’s XML Office format.

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Mass Adopts OOXML

Posted on 8/2/2007 by Ben

The Massachusetts Information Technology Department received 460 public comments on its recent policy document which adopted Microsoft’s OOXML format as an acceptable format for state documents. The comments appear to be almost unanimously anti-OOXML, but yesterday the ITD announced that … Continue reading →

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Comments on Mass. IT Policy Due Tomorrow

Posted on 7/19/2007 by Ben

The Massachusetts Information Technology Division recently announced its intention to add Microsoft’s OfficeOpen XML specification to its list of approved open formats. The ITD created a firestorm in 2005 when it announced that the state would standardize on ODF as … Continue reading →

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Connector and Slingshot Open-sourced and Free

Posted on 7/16/2007 by Ben

Joyent’s Connector web-based groupware has been open sourced. You now have a few options for open source, web-based calendar and email. I’m sure Chandler Server will be nice when it’s finished, which should be any year now, and Novell has … Continue reading →

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SixApart to Open Source Blog Platform

Posted on 6/5/2007 by Ben

SixApart is finally open sourcing Movable Type. Feels about three years too late.

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Cost Analysis of Vista Content Protection Greatest Hits

Posted on 5/8/2007 by Ben

I listened to Cory Doctorow’s reading of A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection by Peter Gutmann. There are so many jaw-dropping passages in this paper that I thought a little collection of quotes would be useful for people … Continue reading →

Posted in Copyfight, DRM, Free Software | Leave a comment