Monday, August 27, 2007

The invisible desktop

IF you go by what the mainstream press reports, you’d think there were only two computer desktop operating systems in the world—Windows and Mac OS.  This is unfortunate because it might keep you or your company from exploring Linux as a reliable, secure and powerful desktop operating system for your PC that’s cheaper than the two proprietary platforms. In fact, it’s often free.

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Snafu labels legit Windows users criminals

This just in from TG Daily. Redmond (WA) – Some Microsoft customers received a huge shock this weekend after they unsuccessfully tried to validate their Windows XP, Vista and Microsoft Office products.  Microsoft says its Windows Genuine Advantage servers crashed over the weekend which inadvertently labeled genuine versions of Windows as “counterfeit”. Monsters and Critics said the WGA failure made legit users criminals. So what did I say about WGA two years ago?

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Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Best of many worlds

Windows Vista runs inside a virtual machine in Ubuntu Linux.

VirtualBox enables you to create virtual machines inside your host PC running any of the following “guest” operating systems: Windows Vista, XP, Server 2003, 2000, NT 4.0, 98, 95, ME and 3.1; Linux; FreeBSD; Open BSD; NetBSD; Solaris; and even OS2 Warp. This means you can have Windows XP running in its own window on your Linux PC or Intel-based Mac. Or, if you’re a Windows user, you could have your choice of Linux flavor running in a window. The guest operating system works like the real thing—you can install and run Windows programs on a virtual machine in the same way you would on a PC with Windows XP installed. 

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Monday, August 13, 2007

Linux in my pocket

For the longest time, I’d heard of people running Damn Small Linux (only 50 megabytes!) or PuppyLinux on flash drives. But a cursory look at these distributions convinced me they were a bit more spartan than I would like. Recently, I found an easier way to install a full-featured Linux operating system, and all you need are three things: a USB 2.0 flash drive with at least 1 gigabyte, a copy of Pen Drive Linux (a variant of Debian); and a Linux PC.

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Monday, August 06, 2007

CIC-What?

THE President last week appointed a new chairman of the Commission on Information and Communication Technology or CICT. That might have meant something in the past, but right now the announcement doesn’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy mixed up world we call the government. The best proof of this was that the post had gone vacant for more than three months—and nobody noticed. While one might be tempted to write that off to the uninspiring leadership of the previous chairman, the problem--unfortunately--is more serious than that.

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