By Andrew Min

Recently, there’s been a lot of talk about cloud computing. The CherryPal Linux-based machine got on both Slashdot and Digg when it announced it was shipping a machine with “Firefox as the OS”. The BBC ran an article that claimed that Microsoft was ending the Windows era with a new operating system, Midori, which would store almost all your information in the cloud, getting rid of you being tied to one machine. And the Red Hat CEO thinks that cloud computing is the way of the future. Unfortunately, they’re all wrong. For now, the computer is staying right where it is.

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By Andrew Min

Open source operating systems obviously give more bang for the buck than any other operating system in the world. After all, they’re free, and you can’t get lower than free (unless you’re Kaspersky). However, what about pre-installed Ubuntu machines? Do they beat their Windows and OS X competitors in the bang for the buck category? Dell got rid of the so-called Windows tax, so it’s obvious that pre-installed Ubuntu on Dells give more power than pre-installed Windows on Dells. But what about Macs?

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By Andrew Min

Recently, Gnome’s been gaining a lot of ground on its KDE counterpart in the desktop environment wars. The KDE developers were hoping to change this with KDE 4, the new radical release of KDE, but it was not to be. KDE 4.0 was buggy and unstable, leaving everyone except the hard-core KDE lovers unsatisfied. Mainly, this was because it just didn’t work most of the time. However, the developers were not without hope. They promised that KDE 4.1 would be more stable and fix all the holes and problems with KDE 4.0. That time is coming soon: in just four days, K Desktop Environment 4.1 will be released to the Linux masses.

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By Andrew Min

Ah Vim. You can’t live with it and you definitely can’t live without it. It’s the world’s most powerful (and arguably the most popular) text editor, yet it’s virtually impossible to understand. You start typing, and nothing happens. You look for the save button, and it isn’t there. You try and exit, and Ctrl-C won’t do it. Fear not! Vim is actually quite easy, once you know a few basics. Continue reading →

by Elliot Vos

With less than twenty-four hours before the launch of iPhone 3G, the hype is out of control. Lines are forming, Twitter is abuzz, the big three tech columnists have reviewed it, and bloggers can’t stop writing about it. The level of hysteria about this product which promises “Phone, iPod, and Internet in one fast 3G device” is intense. I’ve got my game plan down for tomorrow, and if all goes well, I will be a proud owner of another Apple product by the end of the day. And I am definitely pumped for it all; I’m eating up all of the hype.

Why all of this obsession over a phone? Continue reading →

By Kyle Baxter

The future of the web is within reach. The web is now primarily two things: a new platform for applications, and a means for distributing and consuming media.

Currently, due to the open standards which power the web, no one company or group controls it in any real sense. Google may dominate search and advertising and Microsoft may dominate the browser market, but neither company has any absolute control. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer market share has steadily declined as other convincing browsers, such as Firefox and Safari, have become available. Real control comes in owning the technology which powers the web.

Online video, though, largely because of YouTube’s success, is now mostly delivered in Flash format. Adobe Flash has become a de facto standard for online video, and is now being pushed as a web application platform in and of itself.

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By Andrew Min

Ubuntu is, according to DistroWatch, the #1 Linux distribution. That’s a huge feat in itself. However, once you realize that Ubuntu is only three and a half years old, the feat is much bigger. How did the Linux rookie beat out the nine-year-old Mandrake, the fourteen-year-old SUSE, or the fifteen-year-old Debian?

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By Andrew Min

I have this huge love/hate relationship with Firefox. It’s way too bloated and so much slower compared to the other browsers I’ve tried. But I can’t live without it, simply because I never found a decent alternative. I can’t use Internet Explorer or Safari simply because I run Linux. Besides, neither seemed extremely stellar to me. Konqueror won’t render everything. Sure, that’s the programmer’s fault and Konqueror is W3C compliant and all that, but that doesn’t help me read that site. Ditto for Opera. I also don’t need an email, BitTorrent, and feed client. All I need is a web browser. And Epiphany and Dillo are great, but I don’t like running Gnome apps in my KDE install. That’s why I was quite excited when I found Arora, a WebKit-powered Qt web browser.

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By Ryan Joseph

The teaching process has changed quite a lot over the past centuries. In the ancient Roman society, children were simply taught by their parents and the boys were brought up learning the trade of their father. In colonial America, children were generally either taught at home or in small, one room schoolhouses. Public education as we know it today has only been around for the last century or so. Even today, education is undergoing rapid changes. Homeschooling is on the rise, as are alternative education options like online learning and small charter schools. What will it look like in another 100 years?

Will education itself ever become obsolete or unnecessary? Continue reading →

By Andrew Min

One of the biggest arguments in the Linux world rages around proprietary software (software restricted by license and/or price). The majority of the Linux users out there are for pure FLOSS (Free Libre Open Source Software). That is, they only want FLOSS software on their machines. This movement really took off mostly because many of the original Linux and UNIX pioneers were firm FLOSS disciples. However, many users, especially the less philosophical and the more pragmatic, have gotten into the habit of simply wanting what works. Which is the right answer?

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