Super scary new computer game trilogy ported to Linux

Christian Einfeldt — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 04:22:48 +0100

Halloween has come early for Linux-loving gamers in the form of the scary Penumbra game trilogy, which has just recently been ported natively to GNU-Linux by the manufacturer, Frictional Games. The Penumbra games, named Overture, Black Plague, and Requiem, respectively, are first person survival horror and physics puzzle games which challenge the player to survive in a mine in Greenland which has been taken over by a monstrous infection/demon/cthulhu-esque thing. The graphics, souRead More...

The ghost of Marc Andreessen comes back as Google Chrome OS to haunt Microsoft

Christian Einfeldt — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 03:45:02 +0100

This news is one of the biggest digital tipping points that has occurred since Munich announced that it was moving its 14,000 desktop machines to Linux. Google announced on 8 July 2009 that it would produce an operating system for netbook computers based on the Linux kernel. The name of the operating system is Google Chrome OS, similar in name to its Google Chrome browser. This is the very first time that it has been announced that the titan of the Internet (Google) would taRead More...

Brazilian President Lula da Silva brings international attention to Free Software

Christian Einfeldt — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 22:10:04 +0100

In a symbolic show of support for Free Open Source Software and the OpenDocument Format, Brazilian President Lula da Silva recently attended the Linux-related FISL 10 conference in Porto Alegre, Brazil, where he gave an address underscoring the importance of Free Open Source Software to Brazilian national interests. He appears here wearing a hat with the ODF logo (the OpenDocument Format is a legally unencumbered document format upon which any company or community project can easily build.)

Linux Netbooks now almost as cheap as cell phones

Christian Einfeldt — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 23:46:01 +0100

Computer manufacturer Acer is now offering the Acer Aspire One A150-Aw in the UK for just £149.99, which is not much more than the cost of advanced smart phones such as the iPhone. In fact, Acer promotes the Aspire One A150-Aw as a communication device, more so than a general purpose computer, as shown below. Linux netbooks are changing the rules of the game in the PC market. Consumers are learning that they can get decent basic computing services inexpensively and they don't nRead More...

Austrian capitol Vienna familiarizing employees about Linux

Christian Einfeldt — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 07:00:00 +0100

On 24 June 2009, it was announced that the city administration of Vienna will begin teaching its employees about open source so they will better understand an eventual move to this type of software on the desktop, according to reporter Gijs Hillenius writing for the European Open Source Observatory and Repository (OSOR.eu). According to Hillenius, the purpose of the training will be to prepare end users for a migration to FOSS on the desktop:
"In an emailed statement, Marie RinglRead More...

LiMux: Where the Linux (R)evolution is today

Christian Einfeldt — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 07:00:00 +0100

Note: the following is a translation of an article written in German by reporter Michael Kieffer published in Heise On-Line on 2009-06-24. You can read the original article in German here:

http://bit.ly/u4tRk

When the third largest city in Germany rebuffed Microsoft, even people in the US were talking about it. The Munich city council's decision some years ago to gradually banish Microsoft software from City Hall computers made news in American newspaRead More...

Bing is not Google, but it is a spin engine.

Christian Einfeldt — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 07:00:00 +0100

Microsoft is at the beginning of a major product launch, called Bing, in an attempt to catch up to Google in search, following the collapse of Microsoft's take-over attempt of Yahoo. While Bing is a re-branding of Microsoft's clunky distant third place "Live Search" search service, Bing is also an attempt to add new features to search. Microsoft calls Bing a decision engine, in that it purports to offer more comparisons in its search results, rather than the simple blue Read More...

Wolfram Alpha can't vouch for OOXML legitimacy

Christian Einfeldt — Sat, 16 May 2009 07:00:00 +0100

Wolfram Alpha went public today, and there is a lot to like about it. For example, Caterina Fake, the co-founder of Flickr and Hunch, wanted to see if W-A could calculate her body mass index, and so she typed in BMI 5'2'', 115lb (her weight and height). Following her lead, I did the same thing for her BMI, and W-A returned a body mass index of 21.

So I thought I would ask W-A a similarly profound and useful question. I wanted to know if Microsoft's so-called Office Open XML Read More...

Blog entries from Christian Einfeldt