Windows

The Linux Insurgency

Insurgent methodology clearly fascinates master tactician Peter Mandelson who recently urged the UK Government to behave more like insurgents in order to beat the Conservative Party in the forthcoming election. Superficially, it is a mildly bizarre statement but maybe not.

General McChrsytal no less believes that the US is in real danger of never being able to beat the Talebs... unless they find the 'right strategy'. Pretty shocking statement that.

Selling Open Source software into the Public Sector

Why is it so hard to sell Free, Open Source solutions into the Public Sector especially Local Authorities?

You would have thought that it would be easy - after all FOSS solutions for services such as e-mail, collaboration software, and learning platforms are demonstrably cheaper and more effective than their proprietary equivalents.

You would also be encouraged by the Government mandating that all public sector IT procurements show that due consideration has been given to Open Source solutions alongside proprietary ones.

Windows in Schools, Open Source at Home

Anyone remember Computer Assisted Learning or CAL? No? Well it's back.

Ever since the first computer to draw a graph or do that parsing thing to allow kids to fill in missing words, ICT has been the 'Great Beige Hope' that would revolutionise teaching and learning.

Windows in Schools, Open Source at Home

Anyone remember Computer Assisted Learning or CAL? No? Well it's back.

Ever since the first computer to draw a graph or do that parsing thing to allow kids to fill in missing words, ICT has been the 'Great Beige Hope' that would revolutionise teaching and learning.

It's all tosh by the way. Ignore the fake stats and the deluded evangelists. CAL (or interactive computer lead learning) is simply a gimmick perpetuated by the faux trendsetters with good hair that stalk education.

Death of Linux Desktops

There is sad news from the USA: 95% of netbooks (ie the likes of the Asus EeePC, the Dell Mini etc) are being now supplied with Windows XP rather than Linux pre-installed. Why?  Cos' the Americans don't like Linux; the number of returns spoke for itself, they hated Linux...or maybe just the variants they were exposed to... so, like the venerable Terminator itself, XP is back*.

Linux Desktops... too much too late

My marketing director's twitteration induced me to click on a link to a ZDNet article which asserted that Linux desktops, have missed the boat; Good though they are, blah. The article was fine, but what is this obsession with the GUI?

I have clicked a lot of mice since that rainy day in 1985 when I wandered past a department store and saw a funny little one-piece computer being demonstrated by a girl (gasp had computers come to this) clicking away on what was, it turned out, a knitting pattern program (double gasp). Of course I had to have a go and clicked away on words and menus and icons.

The Future of Thin-Client Computing

An obesity crisis in the making: thin is good, slim is better, fat is best

For years I have been a fan of the ‘free, open source software/terminal server/disk-less terminal’ model of computing. I am obsessed with the  absurdly large savings on software, licences, maintenance and energy consumption that are there for the having.

I am not alone. Since January, more and more recession-driven education and public sector personnel have been asking me about the latest 'new' (and now fully buzzword-compliant) computing paradigm known as 'thin-client'. I guess the word has got out at last that PCs are a tad overkill.

Eucalyptus: the unsung hero of Open Source?

Eucalyptus is an open-source infrastructure for the implementation of cloud computing on computer clusters. Its name is an acronym for "Elastic Utility Computing Architecture for Linking Your Programs To Useful Systems". The current interface is compatible with Amazon's EC2 cloud computing interface. Tom Callway speaks to Rich Wolski, the project's director, about how Eucalyptus can be leveraged by enterprises and where it sits along side proprietary alternatives like Windows Azure.

The Cloning of Open Source

The success of the Open Source software development model, with its culture of 'gift giving' has undoubtedly taken the world by storm. It has inspired both the anthropologist and business guru to pontificate endlessly on 'non-hierarchical loose networks collaborating towards common goals'.

Open Source ideas have been cloned and cloned again in different contexts. It has even inspired a generation of criminals and insurgent terror groups, leading to the coining of terms like 'open source cyber crime' and 'open source warfare' which are now appearing in US judicial reviews and learned papers. Apparently individual hackers tweak each other code (for free) and fighters help improve each other weapons and strategies. All very criminal.

Linux in Schools (Gaza Style)

A January Journey into Wonderland

From an Open Source perspective January has been a very busy, if slightly surreal, start to 2009 and from a blogging perspective it has been not dissimilar to Alice in Wonderland. By this I mean that like Alice, if you follow a rabbit pel mel into a hole you cannot be sure what will emerge.

To illustrate:

Last week we were at the UK's biggest education technology event (BETT) where we found huge amounts of interest in Open Source software, Netbooks and Thin-Client computing; all very gratifying as I have been banging on about this for ages, but events soon took on an unreal feel.