The free software movement, which in many respects means the Linux operating system, is a puzzle to those accustomed to paying for things. Software is expensive stuff — how good can the stuff be if it doesn't cost anything?
Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds was so omnipresent during the 1990s that I’m sure many fans of pop and R&B were sick of him. The soundtracks, the monster hits for every artist from Boyz II Men to Madonna to Toni Braxton to the 1996 Olympic theme song – he owned the music world. So, why did some of his best work ever end up never being released?
It was bound to happen, sometime. Indeed, two-thirds of the way through my sixth decade, with most of it spent near them, it surprises me it didn’t happen sooner.
OFB's Ed Hurst continues his quest for the perfect UNIX or Linux operating system by looking at a recently released beta of Red Hat's upcoming Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. Is it the Linux nirvana? Read on to find out.
Six months ago, Verizon Wireless launched the Droid, built by Motorola, as its flagship Android device. At the time, it was a formidable device, but development of the platform is moving rapidly and the Droid was eclipsed in capabilities, albeit not sales, by Google and HTC’s Nexus One, which was not available for Verizon. With the Droid Incredible, Verizon seeks to take the Android lead again.
In mid-April the President of the United States announced his “space program.” It purports to move us toward sending human beings to Mars in a quarter century or so. It won’t do this. Instead, it merely the throws enough money at NASA and space contractors to keep their respective congressional districts happy. It’s a small amount by this administration’s standards of spending. It won’t take us to Mars or anywhere else.
OFB has learned that the cellular enabled version of Apple’s iPad tablet device is still scheduled to ship to customers by the end of April. UPDATED.
There’s something about mining, and miners. We view those who go deep in the ground in a certain way, the way the Irish think of the men who go to sea.
The digital age is weird – twenty years ago, organizing a few thousand photographs was a daunting project that could take hours to do right. Today, I have been reorganizing 61,000 digital photos, or, rather, the computer is organizing them while I do something else. When it finishes after a day's worth of work, it will have my photos far better organized than I would have had I spent exponentially more time doing so by hand. I wish it would hurry up.
The truth is I liked Tiger too much. I liked his youth, his ethnicity, his arrogance. Call me one who simply favors a front-runner, but I like excellence. At the least, I admire dominant athletes and teams as much as I hate them.