This week the Motorola Droid launched.  I made the switch from an AT&T IPhone to the Droid on Verizon.  Like when I switched from Windows to Linux on my desktop, I go into this change fully knowing that I am giving up some things in the process.  But here's why I'm doing it anyway:    Read more

This weekend, I installed Jolicloud on Leslee's netbook.  Jolicloud is currently in private alpha.  I put in for a key quite a long time ago.  A few months ago, I finally got accepted.  But....I've been really busy with the wedding and honeymoon, so it just sat there.  Now I regret it.  Wow, Jolicloud is phenominal.Read more

I do understand why companies often prefer BSD and Apache products to the GPL.  But what I don't understand is why companies prefer proprietary over GPL.  Let me emphasize, I'm talking about a product that is not related directly to core business secrets such as content management or a database.  Read more

I've been using Linux for six years, and I've seen the Linux desktop mature in amazing leaps and bounds.  It's maturing so fast, that in any given month, I often see maturation for core parts of the overall product. 

For some perspective, when I first started using Linux, you had to manually run a command to mount your CD.  You had to run another command to unmount the CD when you were finished with it, and a third to eject it.  In that order, exactly, or it would fail.  Often you had to reboot just to get the disk out of the tray. Read more

I welcome efforts by companies such as Microsoft and Sun to embrace openness.  Sun gets it.  They've released Java under the GPL license.  That's a significant contribution to my software freedom, and I will always appreciate Sun for doing so.  As a result, I know I can involve myself in Java as deeply as I need, and never fear my software freedoms can be taken. Read more

I was in the market for a laptop, and if I am anything, it's a frugal gadget geek.  I'm always buying gadgets, but I'm cheap about it.  Buy.com had a deal on refurbished HP DV9627CL laptops for $700.  While that's not cheap, it's a pretty loaded laptop, with a 17 inch widescreen, dual core 64bit processor, 2 GB memory, 200 GB HDD, and so on.  This thing isn't super portable, but it's well equipped for a developer like me. Read more

When I decided to buy an Asus Eee I had a hard time finding one.  Amazon was sold out.  Buy.com was sold out.  Many of the smaller websites I found were also sold out, and claimed they would be in stock again on some future date.Read more

For her birthday, I bought Leslee an Asus Eee (pronounced E).  I've had my eye out for an ultraportable laptop for her for a while.  So far, I'd only found very expensive ultraportables.  When this came out, and was available in the $350-400 range, I jumped at it.  For some, the fact that it runs Linux might be a deterrent, but definitely not for me.

Leslee's homework on her Asus Eee in Open OfficeRead more

Currently, I have a simple copyright at the bottom of my website.  I want to replace that with something like a Creative Commons license. Read more

I recently ran into this video on Gizmodo.  It was a promo video for an early version of Windows called Windows 386.  The ad is so funny, it's almost hard to believe it's supposed to be serious. Perhaps the advertising is the reason I never heard of Windows 386.  I thought I'd cross post it here so I can always go back to my blog when I want a good laugh.Read more