Microsoft Windows Vista came out just a few days ago. This is a major update to the world’s most popular Operating System and comes with numerous ‘improvements’ in both its underlying frameworks and components and its appearance and user-oriented features. One of the hightlights of Windows Vista, according to Microsoft, has been its renewed æsthetics […]
Errr, right. Despite his --- numerous --- amazingly bad evaluations (e.g. the importance of the 'net in the mid-1990s), his volatile opinions on important matters (e.g. patents), lack of ethics and piss-poor software, Bill Gates has time and again proven to be an important thinker when it comes to technology and its importance in society. It's a shame to see he's lost it. In this latest interview in Newsweek it's actually surprising to see how he can be so off-base. While there's no doubt that Apple is king in catchy marketing and shameless exaggeration of its value and its products' {importance, features} in its marketing campaigns, Microsoft is no spring chicken either ('Get the Facts' campaign anyone?). Its funny how Gates tries to engage in the pompous reality skewing and typical polemic that his once-ideologically-charged-turned-loser-turned-mighty-tech-salesman rival, the mercurial Steve Jobs, is famous for. Unfortunately for him Gates lacks the 'Charisma +834' rating that Jobs seems to possess. :) I’ve been meaning to do this since mid-November 2006, but only got to do it some days ago. I created a OLPC virtual appliance for my VMWare Workstation 5.5.3 and gave Sugar, the OLPC UI a try. Here’s a short list of what I think of it after a very quick run through its functionality. […]
Διάβασα στο το blog του Παναγιώτη Βρυώνη σχετικά με μια συζήτηση στην οποία συμμετείχε πριν από μερικές ημέρες στο δικτυακό ραδιόφωνο του ελληνικού κόμματος ΠαΣοΚ σχετικά με το πρόγραμμα του MIT Media Lab, One Laptop Per Child (OLPC). Ιδού οι απόψεις μου σχετικά. Αγνοώντας την αρχική πολιτική φλυαρία είναι εύλογο που ασχολείται κάποιο κόμμα με […]
Linux on the desktop has come a long way and for a significant number of desktop uses (e.g. secretarial work, enterprise desktop, among others) it is a cheap, viable, high quality and usable platform. For many years there was a considerable difference in the multimedia, graphics and user-friendly feature support between Windows/OS X and linux. […]
About a month ago I wrote to Creative Labs, whose products I’ve been using for more than a decade regarding their arguable support for OSS and more specifically linux. Their response to my comments, although lukewarm, assured me that Creative is serious about supporting OSS, and is contemplating ways in which is can step up […]