Education
Senior citizens and computers
One of my interests is teaching seniors to use computers and lately there have been several items in the news on the subject. The New York Times had a recent article on how learning to use computers was helping seniors find a job. The article mentions SeniorNet, with which I am affiliated:
NEVER-ENDING bad news [...]
The shame of Intel and Microsoft
Amidst all the news about the recent popularity of netbooks, we shouldn’t forget that it was Nicholas Negroponte at MIT who got the idea of a small inexpensive PC off the ground with his “One Laptop per Child” project. Nor should we forget the shameful behavior of Intel and Microsoft (actually, Bill Gates himself) in [...]
Introduction to 64-bit computing
It won’t be everybody’s cup of tea but, for the more technically minded, there is an article at Ars Technica with an informative little primer on 64-bit computing. Someday before too long, we will all be deciding whether to change from a 32-bit to a 64-bit operating system and it’s worth understanding what the possible [...]
Free Stanford University engineering courses online
More and more universities are offering free courses online and Stanford University is now offering some free engineering courses. Although most readers are probably not interested in learning about Fourier transforms or convex optimization, this is a great offering from one of the world’s best engineering schools.
Via AppScout.
New free newsletter
A few years back, email newsletters were common and there were a number of useful computer-related ones. Various factors, including the deleterious effects of spam on email, the rise of blogs, and consolidation, have greatly reduced the numbers and very few computing newsletters are left.
One of the veterans of computer newsletter publishing, Jack Teems, still [...]
How file compression works
Just about anyone using a computer will have encountered one of the compressed file formats, especially ZIP files. Have you ever wondered what is involved in compressing files so that they are smaller? Here’s a link to How Stuff Works that explains how it’s done.
One billion PCs and counting
Reuters reports:
The number of personal computers in use around the world has surpassed 1 billion, with strong growth in emerging markets set to double the number of PCs by early 2014, research firm Gartner said on Monday.
Mature markets accounted for 58 percent of the first billion installed PCs, but would only account for about [...]
Why home computing is a mess
A home computer is by far the most complex item that an average consumer is likely to own. Unfortunately, many of the possible uses of the standard home computer require a level of technical understanding that the average user does not have. Also a computer requires a level of routine maintenance that is [...]
Confusing jargon: Meaning of Web 2.0 is cloudy
Tuesday, I went to a presentation on Web 2.0. The audience was primarily senior citizens and many of them were mystified by the term “Web 2.0″. Not unreasonably, they thought that such a term should mean something new and different enough that it was tangibly and obviously different from Web 1.0. Being practical people, they [...]
Is the Web making us stupid?
Nicholas Carr has written an article in the Atlantic Monthly titled Is Google Making Us Stupid?. Actually, it is about the Web in general and not just Google. One of Carr’s points is that our attention span is getting shorter and shorter:
Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or [...]
Microsoft tries to block Linux on low cost PCs
For developing countries and even in the US, there have recently been a number of low-cost PCs being offered. Because it is free, some version of Linux was initially the operating system being used. Microsoft reacted by first doing its best to throw cold water on the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project and is [...]
