Yesterday was the (almost) annual OpenTech conference. For various reasons, the conference didn’t happen last year, so it was good to see it back this year. OpenTech is the conference where I most wish I could clone myself. There are three streams of talks and in pretty much every slot there are talks I’d like… Continue reading OpenTech 2013
Tag: open source
Showing Appreciation
I’ve mentioned here before that I run a small free software project which supplies simple web programs. The programs are quite widely used, but we generally only hear from the users when things go wrong. It was, therefore, nice to get a mail from someone who hadn’t had any problems and just wanted to say… Continue reading Showing Appreciation
Understatement
From a geek mailing list where they are currently retreading the endless arguments about why there aren’t more women in Open Source. Now arguably, “chick” is a bit derogatory. It’s not even ironic British understatement – the writer isn’t British. But it’s a good indication of just how far we still have to go.
More Blog Progress
Made some progress on restoring the old blog entries yesterday. I managed to get the old web server working long enough to export the blog data and I’ve successfully imported it into this installation. Over the next few hours I’ll try to get the pages rebuilt. At the same time (never let it be said… Continue reading More Blog Progress
Geeks Pulling Together
A heart-warming tale from Ben Goldacre, author of the Guardian‘s Bad Science column (and also a forthcoming book on the same subject). It seems that his web site had rather outgrown the limits placed on it by his current hosting plan and his hosting providers didn’t like that. At one point they pulled the plug… Continue reading Geeks Pulling Together
Another Country
A week ago I was really rather excited about Fedora 7. I’m less excited now. There seems to be a problem with the DVD drive in my laptop. Or, at least, an incompatitbility between it and the ISO images of the new version of Fedora. Over the last week, I’ve burnt several disks to us… Continue reading Another Country
Many Days Later
The perils of downloading the new version of Fedora on the day that it is released! Anyway, the release notes are online. What are you waiting for? Go get it. Update: It actually took about 18 hours. So I’ll be able to start playing with it on Sunday once the Perl Teach-In is over.
Linux on Dell
Dell are looking at increasing their support for Linux running on their hardware. As part of this initiative they have set up a survey where you can tell them what areas you would like them to concentrate on and which distribution of Linux you would rather see preinstalled on your next Dell. So if you… Continue reading Linux on Dell
Windows Refund
I thought that the Windows refund campaign had died in 1999. But the BBC are reporting that a Sheffield man has got a refund of £55.23 from Dell by refusing to accept the standard Windows licence that came with his new PC and installing Linux on it instead. PC manufacturers like Dell have a deal… Continue reading Windows Refund
Too Clever By Half
I’ve just noticed that Firefox 2.0 is a bit too clever for its own good. It’s the new RSS autosubscription feature that’s the problem. It’s great that when I click on an RSS feed, it gives me the chance to subscribe to that feed in Bloglines. But it insists on doing that whenever I try… Continue reading Too Clever By Half