November 6, 2008 – 12:16 am
In this post, I wrote about the issue of using the white spaces freed up by the switch to digital TV to enable wide-spread affordable high speed internet (especially in rural areas).
The FCC just voted to do that!
As I noted in the previous post, this is not some issue that only technophiles should care about. [...]
October 27, 2008 – 10:58 am
Here’s a good discussion about how eVoting should be done.
Of particular interest, is the case made for using an open source software for the electronic voting machines.
With closed-source, proprietary software a company has the perfect cover to pull some cloak-and-dagger stuff (e.g., insert a backdoor program that allows for the creator to manually change results, [...]
October 24, 2008 – 10:53 am
Last week I wrote about the Open Office 3.0 note feature. If you have students submit papers electronically - OpenOffice 3.0 is a big improvement - because you can type notes and comments that appear in colored bubbles in the margins.
The problem is that in OpenOffice 3.0 these comment bubbles appear outside the printable margin. [...]
October 16, 2008 – 9:00 am
Here’s a reason for academics to be interested in OpenOffice 3.0 - It has a much improved notes feature.
Recent version of MS Word enables users to include notes in the margins. I rely on that feature a lot to write up comments on papers from my colleagues or my students. MS Word always had a [...]
October 15, 2008 – 1:12 pm
I’ve been going on and on about how wonderful I think the open source movement is, but not everyone is so enthusiastic.
One of the biggest obstacles to the open source movement is whether or not there is a viable open source business model - How can you make money on software if you’re giving it [...]
October 15, 2008 – 8:56 am
So, three things have happened that should have open source software enthusiasts excited.
The new Ubuntu is coming out soon (OK, that’s not news - but I had to mention it)
OpenOffice 3.0 was released yesterday. It was so popular the website crashed! Check out there website - they’re still running super-downgraded version to control for demand.
The [...]
October 13, 2008 – 11:54 am
Ubuntu’s newest version will be released at the end of October! That will also mark my 6 month of being almost entirely Windows free!
I’ve decided to do my part in helping promote Ubuntu by posting their countdown on the blog here.
I’m also posting a list of some of my favorite posts related to Ubuntu and [...]
October 12, 2008 – 7:35 pm
I’ve ranted a lot about how awesome I think Ubuntu (a super user friendly Linux alternative to Mac and Windows).
One of the benefits that I like to emphasize when I try to persuade someone that they should consider Linux has to do with social justice. There is good reason to believe that Linux (and supporting [...]
September 30, 2008 – 11:58 pm
Two very good discussions regarding the recent lawsuit that EndNote makers filed against the makers of Zotero - here and here.
Stop using EndNote.
[HT: Mark Eli Kalderon]