Computing

face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">Microsoft (the company, not the cat) is planning to introduce a free, href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070801/tc_nm/microsoft_works_dc_1;_ylt=AvNzaQ0YzHMN8HgffxSZzmYE1vAI">adware version of Microsoft Works.  Works is their stripped-down version of Microsoft Office.  Works already comes bundled with many newly-purchased Windows machines.  Most people are not aware of paying for it anyway.  The version they are planning come conveniently pre-loaded with advertisements stored on the hard drive.  When the user connects to the Internet, more ads are…
HR 2102 IH -- Free Flow of Information Act of 2007 US Reps Rick Boucher, href="http://mikepence.house.gov/">Mike Pence, rel="tag" href="http://www.house.gov/conyers/">John Conyers, rel="tag">Howard Coble, href="http://yarmuth.house.gov/" rel="tag">John Yarmuth, and rel="tag">Greg Walden have introduced a bill that would provide some protections to blogger-journalists.   HR 2102 IH, the href="http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c110%3AH.R.2102%3A">Free Flow of Information Act of 2007, so far has only been approved by the House Judiciary Committee. The…
face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif"> href="http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070608-afirst-look-at-firefox-3-alpha-5-gran-paradiso.html">Firefox 3 ( href="http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/3.0a1/releasenotes/">Gran Paradiso) should be available in beta form in late July 2007.  There is no firm release schedule for the gold version. The most anticipated feature will be a new way to store bookmarks.  Both the interface and the internal code will be changed. Sort of like in del.ico.us, bookmarks can be given tags.  Unlike del.ico.us, you will still use folders.   Such a…
Problem: Flat tire, wheel won't come off.Backgound: This problem came my way today.  A friend had a flat tire, but was not able to get the wheel off.   The solution... Solution: Turn on computer.  Google "remove stuck car wheel". Find advice: loosen lug nuts by 4 or 5 turns.  Drive car back and forth a few feet, a few times.  Get out and change tire.Outcome: Happy motoring!
I am not skilled enough to do this, but maybe someone out there is.  What I want is a utility that will take a bit of html, such as for the sidebar in a blog, generate a image file that looks just like the html would if it were rendered on a web page, then find all the links and map them to that image file. Then when a blog page loads, instead of calling up a gazillion little picture files and running a bunch of little java scripts, it would just need to load that one image.  It seems as though that would be a lot faster.  Of course it should be smart enough to know when it needs to…
I am working on my next post, the one about amoxapine. But sssshhhh, I'm using Kubuntu. Heresy, I know, but what do you expect? It's Sunday.
Speaking of open-source software, I recall posting a while back when the percentage of visits to Corpus Callosum, by users of Internet Explorer, dropped below 50%. Now, it is 24%.  Roughly parallels President Bush's approval rating.  I wonder what those two stats would look like on a graph over time.
From CNN Money: href="http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/05/28/100033867/">Microsoft takes on the free worldMicrosoft claims that free software like Linux, which runs a big chunk of corporate America, violates 235 of its patents. It wants royalties from distributors and users. Users like you, maybe. Fortune's Roger Parloff reports. FORTUNE Magazine By Roger Parloff, Fortune senior editor May 13 2007: 1:06 PM EDTFree software is great, and corporate America loves it. It's often high-quality stuff that can be downloaded free off the Internet and then copied at…
This was at Barnes and Noble, in href="http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/">Linux User & Developer.  I learned that href="http://www.peugeot.com/">Peugot (the second-largest auto maker in Europe) plans to install Linux for their 2,500 servers.  That is not particularly surprising.  What is more, they plan to install Linux on their 20,000 desktop machines! The href="http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/ict/studies/publications.htm" rel="tag">European Commission has published a study: href="http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/ict/policy/doc/2006-11-20-flossimpact.pdf">Study on the…
Obviously a follow-up to my last post, href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2007/04/why_blog.php">Why Blog? Like the Why Blog? post, this is partly a repetition of something I posted before, at least once.  But some of these points bear repeating, if only to remind myself. One thing is that I always use an href="http://www.nvu.com/index.php">free-standing editor to write posts.  The reason is simple: it lets me save frequently, and to save to my own disk.  I'm less likely to lose something I'd rather not lose.  Of course I also use Firefox, too.  No need to elaborate on…
I was just reading about href="http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2109401,00.asp">Firefox 3.0, which is supposed to have features that would simplify building and using web-based applications.  I'll be curious to see how this plays out.  Will it make things leaner and more efficient, or just lead to more bloated stuff?  Could go either way.  With planning, it could be flexible.  If you want bells and whistles, you can get them.  If not, leave them out.  That is how software ought to be.  Half to wait until the second half of the year just to see the beta, though, and longer to see if…
What would happen if Tux went to a famous portrait artist to get a makeover? href="http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/modigliani/">Modigliani href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botticelli">Botticelli This was done using the method href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2006/07/patches_modiglianized.php">described previously.
I've heard of case modding, but this is just going too far: What is this?  It is a full-featured web server in a compact case.  How is this possible? ...(below the fold) Basically, it is a one-chip solution.  Not entirely, the server runs on one chip and there are a couple of memory chips to support it.  Here is the back view, in case you don't believe it's possible: Details here.  It's really that simple.
I know that the SB site can be overwhelming; there is a lot here, and it can take a lot of time to go through it all.  Now, for those of you who like to use feeds, e.g. Google Reader, you can get a "Select" view of what might be the best posts.  The method for choosing them is secret.  But unlike other "Select" services, this one is free.http://feeds.feedburner.com/scienceblogs/ScienceblogsSelect If unsure how to use this, try going to www.google.com/reader, either sign in or create an account, then click Add Subscription, then copy and past the link above. There are many other ways to do it…
I am still trying to figure out what this means: "Available under the GPL Licence and in exclusivity for Mandriva Linux, Metisse differs from a classic 3D desktop ..."  Usually you don't see the terms "GPL" and "exclusivity" in the same sentence.  Anyway, Mandriva appears to be on the verge of some innovative ways of using the computer workspace. The story is here; the videos are more informative than the static images.  I haven't tried it, but anyone can try it by downloading and burning the live CD.   The folks at Mandriva may be on to something here.  They say it enforces work…
If this makes no sense to you, never mind.
You might think that developing a system for EMR would be fairly straightforward.  After all, some of the things that computers are really good for, are the storing, retrieval, and display of information.  But somehow, developing a system that actually works AND is easy to use in a hospital environment, has proven to be rather challenging.   Reading a post on the blog, href="http://infoisfree.blogspot.com/2006/12/it-in-hospital-main-hospital-i-work-at.html">Information is Free (so help yourself.) I was reminded of a few thoughts I've been meaning to disseminate.  This is on the topic of…
It's kind of technical, but interesting if you care about the inner workings of the machine you are using to read this post.  Microsoft Vista has built in an elaborate system to prevent copying of protected digital content.  In so doing, Microsoft has imposted stringent requirements on hardware manufacturers.  They also have created a system that will have built-in performance penalties.  The digital content will have to be encrypted and decrypted many times, as it passes from the DVD drive, to the CPU, the sound card, the video card.  All that adds overhead to the various processors.  It…
Our system, who art on raised tile, Hallowed be thy OS. Thy portage come, thy emerge be done, On servers, as it is on workstations. Give us this day, our daily sync, And forgive us our broken ebuilds, As we forgive those who break ebuilds against us. Lead us not into dependency frustration, But deliver us from rpm evil. For thine is the make.conf, the USE flags, And the profile forever... Gentoo. Sincerely, Jason Johnson Unix Systems Admin Oracle Corporation href="http://www.sabayonlinux.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=245&Itemid=2">source
In June, I put up a post noting that open-source browsers accounted for more than 50% of the hits at ScienceBlogs.  At that time, Firefox was 48.17%.  Since then, Microsoft released IE7, which includes a tabbed interface, and other enhancements that Firefox (and others, e.g. Opera and Safari) have had for a long time.  I wondered if Microsoft would get some of their market share back. href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2006/06/scienceblogs_browser_share_fir.php">ScienceBlogs Browser Share as of June 2006 Now, six months later, we see that Microsoft continues its slump...…