Other operating systems
Is the consumer Internet appliance here at last?
For years I have been saying that millions of ordinary non-technical people needed an uncomplicated, low-cost device for doing things like surfing the Internet and getting email. Such a device has been possible for a long time but vested economic interests and the iron grip of the Windows ecosystem blocked the adoption of simple systems. [...]
A sign of things to come?
Is this a portent that consumers are learning to break away from Windows? What do you think is Amazon’s best selling laptop? Some Windows 8 system from HP or Dell or Lenovo? No, it’s a Chromebook from Samsung according to Amazon. The Chromebook is a nice 11.6″ box that runs Google’s Linux-based Chrome OS. What [...]
Religion comes to technology
America has its share of unusual religious cults but Sweden has come up with one for the age of technology. In a story titled In Sweden, Taking File Sharing to Heart. And to Church, the New York Times reports that a Swedish government agency recently registered as a bona fide religion a church whose central [...]
Linux is everywhere
If they think of it at all, most average PC users probably consider Linux to be some tekkie thing that only computer geeks use. In fact, Linux is all around us. It may have only a small share of the desktop computer market but Linux is a major player in many other computing areas. Android [...]
One laptop per child grows up
Five years ago I started posting about the non-profit “One Laptop Per Child” (OLPC) project initiated by Professor Nicholas Negroponte of MIT. It was an effort to provide low-cost PCs for children around the world. As I wrote back then Microsoft and Intel tried to kill the project. Bill Gates injected himself personally into trying [...]
Thursday links
Why Do Not Track is worse than a miserable failureIn theory, Do Not Track is a brilliant idea.It’s an elegant, simple bit of technology. A user-agent (typically a web browser, but it could be anything) that is compliant with the Do Not Track standard adds a tiny snippet of information in its header. DNT=1 means [...]
Monday links
Is Apple lost without Steve Jobs?At Computerworld, Mike Elgan says Apple is going to miss the unique qualities that Steve Jobs brought The role of tech journalism in a post-technology worldBy miopicly [sic] focusing on tech products, newsrooms are missing the bigger picture, that we are increasingly living in a post-technology world, where it’s what [...]
