Robert Strohmeyer has recently proclaimed the death of the dream of Desktop Linux, after himself being an author of one of those infamous “This is The Year of Linux Desktop” articles in 2008. Frankly, I would not quite say that the dream is dead, since many people probably keep on dreaming about it. As far as the reality goes however, it probably is dead, and I would not argue otherwise. The trouble is, this does not really mean much as far as the overall success of Linux as an operating Read More

Steve Jobs died about three weeks ago, but the web is still very much buzzing about him. It’s hard to read tech news without running into literally dozens of stories about him, and in recent days much of it is fueled by the just released biography by Walter Isaacson. However, I would like to go back to something Richard Stallman said about him within days of his death, and which caused a fair bit of ruckus in the Linux and FOSS communities. The reason I feel compelled to comment, albeit Read More

After having trouble competing with Android and Apple smartphones Nokia today came out with the new Nokia Lumia phones in hopes of bringing back some of its former glory. Nokia calls these the first “real” Windows Phones, and they’re a product of a partnership it recently struck with Microsoft. The star of the Lumia line is Lumia 800 with an almost identical design to that of N9, a 3.7-inch screen, a single-core 1.4Ghz CPU, 512Mb of RAM, 16GB of storage (no SD card slot), and an 8 megapixel camera capable Read More

Google just released the Android 4.0 mobile operating system, and launched Galaxy Nexus, the first smartphone to be powered by the new OS. Android 4.0 is a major revision bringing a large number of new features and changes giving it a slicker user interface, more functionality, and some improvements to existing functionality. It is the first Android version meant to support both tablets and smartphones, and has some similarities to the existing Android Honeycomb tablet-oriented OS. Unfortunately, I couldn’t play with it, despite being an Android user. My HTC Desire Read More

Anonymous has recently been conducting what they call an "Operation Payback", a series of DDOS, defacement and other attacks at web sites of anti-piracy organizations including some content industry organizations such as MPAA and RIAA. Three of such attacks have been conducted just in the last week including DDOS and defacement of MPAA's CopyProtected.com which promotes DRM (Digital Rights Management) technology on DVDs and Blu-ray, DDOS on UK's Intellectual Property Office web site, and the latest, a DDOS attack and defacement of Portuguese Movie Rental Outfit ACAPOR. In this latest Read More

As Mac and iPhone users play with their new iOS5 and iCloud, Linux users get to play with a brand new release of the most popular Linux OS. Ubuntu 11.10, also known as Oneiric Ocelot, has arrived. Unlike the last release, which featured a switch to an entirely new Unity user interface, this one is a fairly incremental upgrade. What most of us expected were further refinements to this new user interface, and Ubuntu more or less delivered on that, but let’s get into the nitty gritty. Here are the Read More

Apple enthusiasts across the world are having a big week as Apple releases the long awaited iOS5 update, and the iCloud service in one go. Apple also released a fairly bulky Mac OS X upgrade, which in addition to iCloud support also includes a few other improvements, like the ability to rearrange spaces in Mission Control, and bigger icons in Launchpad. Both iOS5 and the iCloud are major milestones for Apple. In addition to the iCloud support the iOS5 brings with it over 200 new features, most popular of which Read More

Zorin OS caught my attention through an attractive web site and an interesting video presentation. It is based on Ubuntu Linux and its aim appears to be to offer a friendly user experience to everyone, including those coming from Windows and Mac OS. The way it is presented implies the kind of professionalism that I typically expect to see from those who take building a good user experience and a quality product seriously. Zorin OS is available in Free and Premium versions, but the only difference between them is that Read More

Google silently released Panda 2.5 this week, and the smell has polluted the web.  This latest revision of Google’s much-maligned machine learning algorithm has identified and punished such evil spammers as Technorati, GamerPro, and MotorTrend. According to SearchMetrics, Technorati lost 73% of it’s search engine visibility in Google, GamePro lost 65%, and MotorTrend lost 31%.  Obviously these sites are not spammers.  Google’s little machine is seriously broken and no one inside the GooglePlex seems serious about fixing it. Panda 1.0 rolled out in February with serious bugs, notably decimating quality Read More