Practical Technology

Bad standards and standard wars are an all too common part of modern information technology. Now, IBM has announced that it’s not going to put up with them anymore. And, yes, Microsoft, IBM is looking at you. In a statement, Ari Fishkind, public affairs manager for IBM Research’s Development and Intellectual Property section, says that [...]

[Read more →]

A few years ago, we knew exactly what the future of mobile computing software development would be like. It would be powered by WAP (Wireless Application Protocol), a set of specifications designed to provide low-speed wireless devices with limited screen space, with a means to access information and to communicate and interact with Web services [...]

[Read more →]

OpenOffice 3′s release candidate is here and ready for download for Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris, and Windows. This is more than a little cool. Those of us who don’t like paying the Microsoft Office suite tax have been waiting for the next version of OpenOffice for some time now and it’s almost ready to [...]

[Read more →]

When faced with using open-source software in your company should your first reaction be: 1 )Run in terror. 2) Pick up and cuddle your stuffed Steve Ballmer doll while shouting “No!” 3) Refuse to even consider it 4) Deal with it. Even if you think open source is the dumbest idea to hit IT since [...]

[Read more →]

I’m not sure when the fights over how to install programs started in Linux, but it was probably not longer after there were three Linux users on the planet. Things haven’t gotten any better. In part that’s because people never recall their history. For example, when Denis Washington, a Fedora developer suggested on the Linux [...]

[Read more →]