March 15, 2008
General
No Comments
- iTWire – From Windows to Linux – and back again“when all staff got laptops at the end of 2007, it spelt the end of Linux desktops at the school. The laptops came with Windows and Office installed – this was not negotiable. And then came the direction that the school PCs, those used in the classroom, were to be identical to the set-up of the laptops.”
- (tags: linux windows migration)
Way to go on the short-sightedness – “we saved so much money using free software we can afford to pay for Windows again!”
(PS: anyone know how to stop del.icio.us chopping my summaries?)
March 14, 2008
General
12 Comments
Nespresso are cleaning up, with huge profit margins on their €0.31 per capsule coffee, not to mention the revenues from the coffee machines and stores.
Every other type of coffee has an alternative to the monopolist – you can buy relatively cheap pre-ground expresso coffee in the supermarket for traditional coffee machines, or you can get coffee capsules cheap for Senseo. But in spite of a wide search, I have not yet found anyone selling capsules compatible with Nespresso for €0.15 or €0.20 a capsule (a price at which, I think, you could make a fine profit margin).
There’s a bit of R&D, you’d need to get someone to do the foil & plastic covers for you, and you’d need to get the thickness & strength just right for the nespresso machines, but I figure that it wouldn’t be too difficult for someone with the competency in plastics already. Then all you need to do is come up with a decent coffee blend that’s not too expensive, set up the production line, and package & sell on the internet. You could even do just some prototypes, and commission some company with existing production lines to generate the volumes you need of capsules to handle orders JIT.
Nothing to do with free software, and all to do with my desire not to become the endentured servant of a monopolist. Please, someone, take advantage of this opportunity and give me cheaper coffee!
March 14, 2008
guadec
2 Comments
After my proposal to guadec-list got a decent response, I think it’s fair to say that we’re good to go for a GUADEC table quiz!
The table quiz will be one of the social events during GUADEC, I’ll be recruiting people to help with questions, corrections and livening up things. The details, obviously, all need to be worked out.
For those of you from Ireland and the UK, you probably already know what a table quiz is (also known coincidentally as a pub quiz – probably because of the participation of the public). For the rest of you, here’s the skinny.
People organise themselves into teams of 5 or 6 people, who then give themselves a team name to go with their table number. The quiz is organised in rounds of 10 questions, and I think we’ll run 5 or 6 rounds. Between rounds, fun and frolics can be expected with spot prizes, and fun will be had by all. Or else.
March 12, 2008
General
2 Comments
I just watched the presentation on the Microsoft Office ribbon that Miguel pointed to earlier and I have to agree with him that it’s a great presentation on application design methodology, well worth watching. There a related series of articles on the UI design in Jensen Harris’s blog which is also worth reading (at least, so far).
Some amazing stuff in the article in particular was the amount of data collection they have done over the years – millions of clicks and keystrokes, yielding some surprising results that reinforce once more the lesson “we are not our users” (striking example: 80% of people save by clicking the floppy disk in the toolbar, only 20% of saves happen with the Ctrl-S keystroke).
I spotted a familiar voice doing some fanboying at 1:22:43 or so 🙂
March 12, 2008
freesoftware, gimp, libre graphics meeting
2 Comments
That’s the only question I can think of when I come across this gem, from the wiki page collecting demos for Libre Graphics Meeting 2006 (I’ve put an archive of the old LGM page back online, minus the MySQL database which had the news items):
So, you’re an artist, and your favourite program (or combination of programs) isn’t in the programme. Why not offer yourself up as a sacrificial lamb on the altar of demos?
In Greek mythology, Deimos was the god of dread or panic, which seems strangely appropriate.
The word demonstration comes from the latin demonstrare, to explain completely. Monstrare in turn comes from monstrum, meaning “divine omen or wonder”. So we can think of a demonstration as a demystification.
The word shares its roots with monster, meaning something we don’t understand.
So demonstrations are dreadful affairs where we demystify monsters.
If you feel up to the task of scaring off other people’s monsters with a big flashlight, sign up here to give a demo. It could be as simple as using Blender to create an animation, or as complicated as drawing a square in the GIMP.
Can’t remember what I was up to when I wrote that, but it must have been late…
