evilzenscientist | Nothing of Any Quincyquonce

Microsoft Open Source Software labs

by ezs | Apr 6, 2006 | evilzenscientist, Uncategorized

–

Microsoft announced at Linux World this week that they would be ‘opening the doors’ of their Open Source Software Labs.

Early days – the site went live this afternoon and there is very little content (low signal:noise ratio – flames about Windows streaming video and Microsoft outnumber the useful information).

Overall I think this is probably a good idea – Novell has been using many forms of Open Source Software for years – most visibly with our use of Novell Linux Desktop and OpenOffice – but also with Bugzilla, various Wikis, development tools, test tools – even the software that runs these blogs.

Novell has certainly learned a lot about making software better; we’ve made our own proprietry offerings interoperate, we’ve adopted more open standards – and we’ve been active with many Open Source community projects.

(I’ll not forget that we also develop a broad portfolio of open source solutions – from OpenSUSE to iFolder – take a look on Novell Forge.)

Will Microsoft do the same? I hope so – even if it’s only about making their own proprietry offerings somewhat more interoperable.

Take a look at the Microsoft Open Source Software Labs here.

What do you think? Will this make Microsoft a better player? Are Microsoft running scared?

Written at: Provo, UT

Mac OS X Boot Camp

by ezs | Apr 5, 2006 | evilzenscientist, fun stuff, Technology, Uncategorized

Apple released Boot Camp.

Legally letting you dual boot your Intel based MacBook.

Very nice – more fuel to the “Why I want a MacBook” 🙂

CTO blog

by ezs | Apr 3, 2006 | evilzenscientist, Uncategorized

–

Novell’s CTO – Jeff Jaffe – is now blogging – http://www.novell.com/ctoblog/

His first post is now live – it’s pretty long – but an interesting read.

Written at: Draper, UT

Recycle Utah

by ezs | Apr 3, 2006 | evilzenscientist, Gonetoutah, Uncategorized, Utah

We joined Recycle Utah a month or so ago – supporting recycling locally.

We’ve now started composting again (a three year gap since we were in England), seperating recyclable glass and generally trying to cut down on the general trash we throw out.

I also signed up for the Utah Power green energy program – to power our web server farm.

Every little helps.

There was a thought provoking article in the Salt Lake Tribune today about this.

Books

by ezs | Apr 2, 2006 | Books, evilzenscientist, Uncategorized

I dug out a few old books that I want to re-read in the coming weeks:

253 – Geoff Ryman – here online.
Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow – Peter Høeg
The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks

I can’t find my copy of Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaardner – I’m trying to think who I lent it to..

Most of these books are from about ten years ago 🙂 I must be getting nostalgic.
The other thing I noticed – Amazon US has a very strange idea about books originally published in the UK. The dates and covers are all wrong!