Monthly Archives: July 2013

High Prices For IT

Posted on July 31, 2013 by Robert Pogson

M$’s business plan is to tax IT and it has worked for decades. Now, Australians are mad as Hell and tired of taking it: “Windows costing too much? Switch to a free operating system like GNU/Linux or any of the … Continue reading →

Posted in technology | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

M$, Trying To Work For A Living

Posted on July 31, 2013 by Robert Pogson

M$ has been living off its desktop OS and office suite cows for more than a decade. The desktop OS cash cow has dried up considerably. Indeed, “Further down in its 10-K filing, Redmond reports that it upped its sales … Continue reading →

Posted in technology | Tagged , , | 10 Comments

Wintel Going Down The Drain – Shipments of Tablets

Posted on July 30, 2013 by Robert Pogson

Wintel depends on a constantly increasing sale of personal computers using Intel processors and M$’s OS. That’s history, according to Display Search. Shipments of legacy PCs are declining and shipments of tablets are exploding. The power and influence of M$ … Continue reading →

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Police In Toronto Are Public Enemy Number One

Posted on July 29, 2013 by Robert Pogson

The shooting of a young man with a knife on the weekend in Toronto just makes me shake my head. Is it possible in 2013, after years of high profile given to “gun-control” that policemen are so out of control? … Continue reading →

Posted in firearms | Tagged | 9 Comments

Competition and Free Software

Posted on July 29, 2013 by Robert Pogson

Free Software is all about competition. Free Software is software that allows anyone to run, examine, modify, and distribute software A market containing Free Software cannot get any more competitive than that. Anyone can use and produce Free Software. Anyone … Continue reading →

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Beggar Varghese

Posted on July 28, 2013 by Robert Pogson

Sam Varghese is a respected commentator on IT but even he begs the question on this one: Sarah: “80 percent of the kernel contributors are paid by companies. So that means that the Linux kernel really has a lot of … Continue reading →

Posted in technology | Tagged | 8 Comments

OEMs Are Seeing The Light

Posted on July 26, 2013 by Robert Pogson

“Acer and Asustek have been pushing forward in marketing hardware/software-integrated cloud computing solutions focusing on educational applications and web storage, respectively, according to the companies.” see Acer, Asustek actively marketing cloud computing solutions. For more than a decade, OEMs have … Continue reading →

Posted in technology | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 36 Comments

Small, Cheap, Nearly Perfect Home Server

Posted on July 26, 2013 by Robert Pogson

These days homes may have many client computers. There is a need for small cheap home servers for backup, file-serving, collaboration, etc. “If you’ve got several different computers in need of a consistent and automated backup strategy, the RPi can … Continue reading →

Posted in technology | Tagged , , , | 6 Comments

OMG! Now We Have Small Cheap Supercomputer Boards

Posted on July 26, 2013 by Robert Pogson

A shaky start with a Kickstarter project has brought a small cheap supercomputer node to market. Stack them up and you have a lot of computing power in one box… “Olofsson grabbed two 24-port Gigabit Ethernet switches and 42 of … Continue reading →

Posted in technology | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Government For Which People?

Posted on July 25, 2013 by Robert Pogson

Government is a necessity in the modern world. It provides infrastructure and sets the rules in modern society. When it comes to information technology, governments should use what works for them. Since governments tend to be larger than any business, … Continue reading →

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FLOSS Is A Winner For Education

Posted on July 24, 2013 by Robert Pogson

You know how it is. You are part of a large hierarchical organization and some boss sends a memo that makes your day… “In 2010, after being told that the current commercial Student Information System (called BCeSIS) used by 95% … Continue reading →

Posted in Linux in Education, Teaching, technology | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

An Experiment in Linux-land

Posted on July 24, 2013 by Robert Pogson

I keep looking for new uses for GNU/Linux but searching is difficult. There are so many uses and it is hard to pick one out to discuss. For example, today, I typed in “linux” to the Google search window and … Continue reading →

Posted in technology | Tagged , , | 3 Comments