Technology
gregladen | June 13, 2009No, it is a typo by the BBC. The BBC RSS feed on this story:
No IE onboard Windows 7 in Europe
says, and I quote,
"Microsoft ships IE7 without browser"
Funny how the browser was integral and a drop dead feature when MS was being sued by Nestcape, and now it is something they can actually ship the OS without. Over and over again we see that the European courts are more sensible and in the anti-trust area powerful than the US courts.
European buyers of Windows 7 will have to download and install a web browser for themselves.
Bowing to European competition rules, Microsoft Windows 7 will…
hrynyshyn | June 12, 2009Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced Thursday that Canada is getting out of the medical isotope business. The implications of the decision, which appears to be motivated primarily by a desire to avoid further political embarrassment, go beyond the confines of the country's health-care system. It also hints at some tough times ahead for those responsible for overseeing the world's nuclear industries.
First, Canada until recently produced close to 40% of the world's supply molybdenum-99, a radioactive isotope that decays quickly to technetium-99, which is widely used to help diagnose cancers…
gregladen | June 10, 2009Minneapolis Mayor RT Rybak, who by the way is a very effective and popular mayor, has reached the official facebook limit of 5,000 friends. And the funny thing is, these really are his friends! In the sense that RT actually uses his facebook account to interact with people. One of our local meteorologists (Sven) has also reached his limit. Both are asking Facebook to raise the limit, which would be very much in line with something Facebook had considered doing at an earlier time.
As far as fighting Facebook's 5,000-friend limit, Rybak plans to continue his quest to get the company to…
drorzel | June 10, 2009Dear Email Recipients:
Thank you very much for responding rapidly to the question I sent you. Now, please go back to my original message, and respond to the other four questions that were in that message.
Thank you for your reading comprehension,
Annoyed Re-Sender of Emails
clock | June 9, 2009And it is good. Much longer than #1 and interesting to all of us who have kids heavily involved in playing computer games:
Whenever kids are involved in a violent crime, speculation about their upbringing inevitably takes center stage. Were they abused or neglected? Could their parents have prevented the tragedy? Most recently, video games have been targeted as the possible root of the problem. But are video games really to blame for horrific massacres like the shootings at Columbine and Virginia Tech? This month's report considers the growing role video games play in our kids' lives--and…
drorzel | June 7, 2009Two annoying technology moments yesterday:
1) Kate and I got cell phones when we bought this house, and have been overpaying for them for quite some time. We rarely use them (partly because we get no signal inside the house), and have never come close to using our monthly allocation of minutes.
Verizon now offers pre-paid plans, which would save us a good deal of money that could then be spent on baby toys, so we went to the local Verizon store to switch over. And immediately got told that they couldn't guarantee that we could keep the same numbers. And then that it would take an hour or so…
clock | June 5, 2009Of course the Course description for JOMC 449 - Virtual Communities, Smart Mobs, Citizen Journalism and Participatory Culture is made in video. All the 'readings' are viewings of video, all assignments are video-making. So cool!
Fall 2009 MW 3:30 - 4:45, UNC Chapel Hill, Instructor: Paul Jones
clock | June 4, 2009As you may have noticed if you saw this or you follow me on Twitter/FriendFeed/Facebook, I spent half of Tuesday and all of Wednesday at the XXVI International Association of Science Parks World Conference on Science & Technology Parks in Raleigh. The meeting was actually longer (starting on Sunday and ending today), but I was part of a team and we divided up our online coverage the best we could do.
Christopher Perrien assembled a team (including his son) to present (and represent) Science In The Triangle, the new local initiative. They manned a booth at which they not only showcased…
gregladen | June 1, 2009A repost, continuing along the lines of bashing the shell.
Having examined Learning the bash Shell (In a Nutshell (O'Reilly)) (see here, here, and here), it is now time to turn to a more advanced reference to help you geek out on your Linux computer. If you want to have only one book on bash, get Classic Shell Scripting by Robbins and Beebe. This book has an excellent mixture of history, philosophy, rigorously described details and creative solutions.
For instance, after giving a brief history of Unix (required in all such books) the authors layout the basic principles of what is…
clock | May 31, 2009In the beginning, blogs were mainly collections of links. With the development of blogging platforms, many bloggers moved on to long-form writing. But blogs were still places for a lot of linkfests, or link-plus-one-liner posts as well. My blog has always been a mix of both styles. Thus, my average of 8.2 posts per day.
But recently, you may have noticed the most definite reduction in the number of posts per day. Why?
First, because I heard some complaints about my blog being a firehose of stuff that is "boring, just links" (although others said that my role as a trusted filter was…
gregladen | May 31, 2009... and Ars has a look at it.
The latest alpha build of Chromium provides basic browsing functionality and a few of Chrome's other features. I was able to load pages, open new tabs and windows, use the browser's full-page zoom, download files, view and manage history, and run the Incognito privacy mode.
The rest of the features were only partially implemented. It is possible to reorder tabs in each window, but you can't snap out a tab yet or move tabs between windows. Bookmarking basically works, but with several limitations. Clicking on the bookmark star icon doesn't pop out the bookmark…
gregladen | May 30, 2009I swear, you are all a bunch of pod people, you consumers. You take whatever crap is dished out, and pay extra for it. When the DVD was produced to replace the tape (VHS) there was a significant down grade in performance in every single way but one. These downgrades were entirely unnecessary. The downgrades were implemented for two closely related purposes: Marketing and marketing.
You know what I'm talking about. You can't pop a DVD into a player and fast forward to a spot and watch the movie. You can't even watch the movie, in many cases, until you've watched ads. You can't que a…
gregladen | May 30, 2009The dust-up regarding Asus corp and Windows, recently discussed here, is definitely a (well-enough executed) hoax, acording to JH at Linux in Exile:
I got burned this week; I actually believed the hoax that ASUS and Microsoft teamed up, and that an Asus.co.uk page was linking to a It's Better With Windows site.
But looking at it again, I'm convinced it's a hoax. And you should be, too. Here are a few obvious telltales:
See JH's full explanation here.
pontiff | May 29, 2009Catch the wave. Long but worth watching:
I suspect that collaboration will never be the same after the wave.
Another observation is about gadgets and iphone apps. One beauty of iphone apps is how easy it is to write one. This has always been true of many gadgets (like gadgets for google's homepage.) But the later has always suffered, it seems to, in a lack of functionality. I think wave might push this problem in a very positive direction (see for example the yes/no/maybe widget.) Further having things server side is also allows for a sort of gadgetology with a large amount of power,…
gregladen | May 29, 2009From the BBC:
Genetically modified primates that glow green and pass the trait on to their offspring could aid the fight against human disease.
They will also be easier to find when they escape.
Though primates that make a glowing protein have been created before, these are the first to keep the change in their bloodlines.
Future modifications could lead to treatments for a range of diseases.
The "transgenic" marmosets, created by a Japanese team, have been described in the journal Nature.
This means the every generation, scientists can change the monkey more and more until they get ....…
gregladen | May 29, 2009Following on this earlier post, here are links to on line resources that would aid in building, configuring, and using a Linux based computer.
Hardware:
The 800 dollar killer PC. This is a "gaming" PC, but this set of guidelines is more broadly useful than just for games. Just don't forget to substitute Linux for Windows.
Linux-Friendly Hardware
More on Linux Friendly Hardware
Systems and related information:
The Windows to Linux Roadmap
Ubuntu
Xubuntu
Guide to Debian Linux
Open Source Resources Page
Just for fun: Linux from Scratch
Shell Scripting:
Linux Shortcuts and Commands…
gregladen | May 29, 2009... or so it would seem.... UPDATE: Or, this could be a fake. See comments.
The Asus PC Eee PC was designed specifically to run LInux. The idea is in part to make a very inexpensive globally (more or less) accessable open source system so all the poor children around the world who happen to have a hundred bucks could have a PC just like you do.
Now, Microsoft and Asus have teamed up to produce an ad campaing providing what amounts to a series of lies about the hardware/software combo, claiming that "Windows is Better" on this PC (better than Linux, that is).
Is it Ethical? No doubt.…