Category Archives: Software

The marvelous Eszter Hargittai askes an important question: what are the un(?)intended consequences of online courseware?

Continue reading →

NOVELL: Novell Announces Agreement to Acquire Leading Enterprise Linux Technology Company SUSE LINUX. (Via Slashdot.)

Ok, this is going to get interesting. Now Novell , which recently acquired one of the best MS Exchange-compatible desktops for linux (Ximian), adds one of the top business-oriented Linux distributions. SUSE is dominant in the European business market, sort of like Redhat is here (although I'm attracted to Mandrake for home use. as it supposedly has the most and easiest drivers). Roll it with Novell's network software and you have the makings of a super business package I might even be able to sell to the nobody-ever-got-fired-for-buying-Microsoft crowd here.

If only Novell had kept WordPerfect and could release an updated Linux version.

Top vendors fail on top Linux notebook support.

Is this because

1. It's too hard — the hardware isn't compatible?
2. The market is mostly people who do it themselves, so the demand is low?
3. There is intense pressure from the Borg?

I'm generally surprised at how few firms sell pre-configured linux machines. Even desktops. And even fewer sell dual boot (Linux & Windows) machines. You'd think there would be a market for those.

The faculty is getting set to produce, G*d help us, a mission statement. The chance that this will be a pointless waste of time is high, much higher than a Retreat. But the downside is also bounded; the odds that anyone will get mad about this seem low. Unfortunately, we can't simply decide not to do it, as the central administration hath sent out a decree unto all parts of the University, yea even unto the most autonomous of Schools, that There Shall Be Mission Statements. And so there shall be.

So I thought I should try to make lemonade from this lemon. Why not use this as an excuse to introduce the faculty to the wonders of collaborative drafting software?

Continue reading →

If you have no interest in learning better Linux or Perl, skip this. If you are a Linux or Perl Deity, skip this. If, like me, you want to improve your basic Linux and pidgin Pearl to, say, halting fluency, help is a download away. Get the The Regex Coach – interactive regular expressions. Download it, and rejoice to live in a world in which people just make free useful goodies available for the rest of us.

Mozilla.org released Mozilla 1.5 and the faster, newer, not-quite-yet-better Mozilla Firebird 0.7 today. I've been using Moz 1.5 betas and I like them enormously, except that they are a little slow in closing down windows. Firebird's earlier versions show enormous promise, but so far I'm not ready to make the switch. Although, since Moz 1.5 is said to be the last version of the integrated suite, I expect I'll be switching to Firebird as it gets close to 1.0.