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[Think you can just plug a standard Linux live USB drive into your Mac and boot from it? Think again. You'll need to go out of your way to create a live Linux USB drive that will boot on a Mac. This can be quite a headache, but we've found a graphical utility that makes this easy. You'll be able to quickly boot Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Kali Linux, and other mainstream Linux distributions on your Mac.]

"Recently, a friend innocently asked me how many file formats there are. My semi-serious response was, "Think of a soup bowl filled with beach sand.""

"Recently, a friend innocently asked me how many file formats there are. My semi-serious response was, "Think of a soup bowl filled with beach sand.""

"Hip hop heads may think it's lame, but even the most progressive and influential hip hop artists have taken the cue -- rock is where it's at. By Russell Morse / Pacific News Service "

"Hip hop heads may think it's lame, but even the most progressive and influential hip hop artists have taken the cue -- rock is where it's at. By Russell Morse / Pacific News Service "

It’s finally summer, and it’s time to start thinking about your upcoming vacation. During the days off everybody wants to stay totally relaxed and peaceful. To get the most out of your trip, install some very helpful and handy travel … Continue reading →

It’s finally summer, and it’s time to start thinking about your upcoming vacation. During the days off everybody wants to stay totally relaxed and peaceful. To get the most out of your trip, install some very helpful and handy travel … Continue reading →

"from the urls-we-dig-up dept Publishing content digitally is a topic that comes up around here fairly regularly. If you're a longtime Techdirt reader, you'll know that we generally think digital publishing drives down the price of content to free (but that doesn't mean your work is worthless!) and giving away content is often a very effective promotional tactic for selling other things that can't be freely copied. Here are just a few interesting examples of free content you can peruse at your leisure. "

Music is not just a form of art, it is a great source of inspiration. Even if you think your day/week/current situation/life is the worst, find the right song that can captivate you and wind you up and all the … Continue reading →

Music is not just a form of art, it is a great source of inspiration. Even if you think your day/week/current situation/life is the worst, find the right song that can captivate you and wind you up and all the … Continue reading →

[https://www.linkedin.com/in/denisedema] "I was listening to a CD a friend/DJ made for me last night and started thinking about the power of music's influence on mood. "

[https://www.linkedin.com/in/denisedema] "I was listening to a CD a friend/DJ made for me last night and started thinking about the power of music's influence on mood. "

Navigating a world that that demands APIs, not apps "... Despite this hype, I do think that coding will become a more widespread and routine skill in the years to come. Programmable technology will continue to pervade more parts of our life, computers will continue to become more accessible to a wider population, and the world will continue to become more complex. Understanding coding (and debugging) will naturally go with it. ..."

Navigating a world that that demands APIs, not apps "... Despite this hype, I do think that coding will become a more widespread and routine skill in the years to come. Programmable technology will continue to pervade more parts of our life, computers will continue to become more accessible to a wider population, and the world will continue to become more complex. Understanding coding (and debugging) will naturally go with it. ..."

A CMS expert argues for HTML over XHTML, explaining his reasons for switching. Excellent read! He nails the basics. for similar reasons, we moved from ODF to ePUB and then to CDf and finally to the advanced WebKit document model, where wikiWORD will make it's stand.

See also my comment on the same web page that explains why HTML 5 is NOT it for document exchange between web editing applications. .

Response to marbux supporting the WebKit layout/document model. Marbux argues that HTML5 is not interoperable, and CSS2 near useless. HTML5 fails regarding the the interop web appplications need. I respond by arguing that the only way to look at web applications is to consider that the browser layout engine is the web application layout engine! Web applications are actually written to the browser layout/document model, OR, to take advantage of browser plug-in capabilities. The interoperability marbux seeks is tied directly to the browser layout engine. In this context, the web format is simply a reflection of that layout engine. If there's an interop problem, it comes from browser madness differentials. The good news is that there are all kinds of efforts to close the browser gap: including WHATWG - HTML5, CSS3, W3C DOM, JavaScript Libraries, Google GWT (Java to JavaScript), Yahoo GUI, and the my favorite; WebKit. The bad news is that the clock is ticking. Microsoft has pulled the trigger and the great migration of MSOffice client/server systems to the MS WebSTack-Mesh architecture has begun. Key to this transition are the WPF-.NET proprietary formats, protocols and interfaces such as XAML, Silverlight, LINQ, and Smart Tags. New business processes are being written, and old legacy desktop bound processes are being transitioned to this emerging platform. The fight for the Open Web is on, with Microsoft threatening to transtion their entire business desktop monopoly to a Web platfomr they own. ~ge~

A Computational Knowledge Engine for the Web In a nutshell, Wolfram and his team have built what he calls a "computational knowledge engine" for the Web. OK, so what does that really mean? Basically it means that you can ask it factual questions and it computes answers for you. It doesn't simply return documents that (might) contain the answers, like Google does, and it isn't just a giant database of knowledge, like the Wikipedia. It doesn't simply parse natural language and then use that to retrieve documents, like Powerset, for example. Instead, Wolfram Alpha actually computes the answers to a wide range of questions -- like questions that have factual answers such as "What country is Timbuktu in?" or "How many protons are in a hydrogen atom?" or "What is the average rainfall in Seattle this month?," "What is the 300th digit of Pi?," "where is the ISS?" or "When was GOOG worth more than $300?" Think about that for a minute. It computes the answers. Wolfram Alpha doesn't simply contain huge amounts of manually entered pairs of questions and answers, nor does it search for answers in a database of facts. Instead, it understands and then computes answers to certain kinds of questions.

"Anyone who thinks that net neutrality is a boring technical issue for computer geeks needs to look outside the U.S. Netizens around the world aren't fooled by the confusing misdirection of industry lobbyists-they're championing the cause of an open internet by pushing for laws and policies that protect the features that made the internet what it is today." [ # ! #Globalization'... # ! ... for a #Good #Cause. # ! #Participate.]

"Anyone who thinks that net neutrality is a boring technical issue for computer geeks needs to look outside the U.S. Netizens around the world aren't fooled by the confusing misdirection of industry lobbyists-they're championing the cause of an open internet by pushing for laws and policies that protect the features that made the internet what it is today."

"After a spate of news stories about alleged "astroturf" advocacy in a contentious U.S. net neutrality debate, the IDG News Service looked into the funding transparency of several think tanks and advocacy groups involved in the issue"

"After a spate of news stories about alleged "astroturf" advocacy in a contentious U.S. net neutrality debate, the IDG News Service looked into the funding transparency of several think tanks and advocacy groups involved in the issue"

[... copyright-induced stupidity...] "from the 'all-applicants-must-have-brain-wiped-before-leaving-testing-area' dept Today's copyright-induced stupidity is brought to you by… a whole host of regulatory institutions. An anonymous Techdirt reader sent in a pointer to this ridiculous warning that greets those accessing the National Association of Legal Assistants practice tests. (Press "Sign In" to view the legal threats pop-up.) "

[... copyright-induced stupidity...] "from the 'all-applicants-must-have-brain-wiped-before-leaving-testing-area' dept Today's copyright-induced stupidity is brought to you by… a whole host of regulatory institutions. An anonymous Techdirt reader sent in a pointer to this ridiculous warning that greets those accessing the National Association of Legal Assistants practice tests. (Press "Sign In" to view the legal threats pop-up.) "

"Writing software is too hard and it takes too long. It's time for a new way to write software - especially application software, the user-facing software we use every day to talk to people and keep track of things. This new way should be radically simple. It should make it possible to build a prototype in a day or two, and a real production app in a few weeks. It should make everyday things easy, even when those everyday things involve hundreds of servers, millions of users, and integration with dozens of other systems. It should be built on collaboration, specialization, and division of labor, and it should be accessible to the maximum number of people. Today, there's a chance to create this new way - to build a new platform for cloud applications that will become as ubiquitous as previous platforms such as Unix, HTTP, and the relational database. It is not a small project. There are many big problems to tackle, such as: How do we transition the web from a "dumb terminal" model that is based on serving HTML, to a client/server model that is based on exchanging data? How do we design software to run in a radically distributed environment, where even everyday database apps are spread over multiple data centers and hundreds of intelligent client devices, and must integrate with other software at dozens of other organizations? How do we prepare for a world where most web APIs will be push-based (realtime), rather than polling-driven? In the face of escalating complexity, how can we simplify software engineering so that more people can do it? How will software developers collaborate and share components in this new world? Meteor is our audacious attempt to solve all of these big problems, at least for a certain large class of everyday applications. We think that success will come from hard work, respect for history and "classically beautiful" engineering patterns, and a philosophy of generally open and collaborative development. " .............. "It is not a

"How do we transition the web from a "dumb terminal" model that is based on serving HTML, to a client/server model that is based on exchanging data?" From a litigation aspect, the best bet I know of is antitrust litigation against the W3C and the WHATWG Working Group for implementing a non-interoperable specification. See e.g., Commission v. Microsoft, No. T-167/08, European Community Court of First Instance (Grand Chamber Judgment of 17 September, 2007), para. 230, 374, 421, http://preview.tinyurl.com/chsdb4w (rejecting Microsoft's argument that "interoperability" has a 1-way rather than 2-way meaning; information technology specifications must be disclosed with sufficient specificity to place competitors on an "equal footing" in regard to interoperability; "the 12th recital to Directive 91/250 defines interoperability as 'the ability to exchange information and mutually to use the information which has been exchanged'"). Note that the Microsoft case was prosecuted on the E.U.'s "abuse of market power" law that corresponds to the U.S. Sherman Act § 2 (monopolies). But undoubtedly the E.U. courts would apply the same standard to "agreements among undertakings" in restraint of trade, counterpart to the Sherman Act's § 1 (conspiracies in restraint of trade), the branch that applies to development of voluntary standards by competitors. But better to innovate and obsolete HTML, I think. DG Competition and the DoJ won't prosecute such cases soon. For example, Obama ran for office promising to "reinvigorate antitrust enforcement" but his DoJ has yet to file its first antitrust case against a big company. Nb., virtually the same definition of interoperability announced by the Court of First Instance is provided by ISO/IEC JTC-1 Directives, annex I ("eye"), which is applicable to all international standards in the IT sector: "... interoperability is understood to be the ability of two or more IT systems to exchange information at one or more standardised interfaces

"19 year old, Andrew Watts, is a sophomore Management Information Systems major (marketing minor) at the University of Texas in Austin and penned an interesting glimpse into the world of teenage (and college) consumption (or lack thereof) of the biggest social networks."

"19 year old, Andrew Watts, is a sophomore Management Information Systems major (marketing minor) at the University of Texas in Austin and penned an interesting glimpse into the world of teenage (and college) consumption (or lack thereof) of the biggest social networks."

"Like most people, I find myself using the same VoIP options everyone else is using. Thankfully, these days there are far more options available than what we might think. Today, I'll look at these options and also explore up-and-coming alternatives as well."

"Like most people, I find myself using the same VoIP options everyone else is using. Thankfully, these days there are far more options available than what we might think. Today, I'll look at these options and also explore up-and-coming alternatives as well."

" Rick Falkvinge on June 29, 2014 C: 7 Opinion The past year, the copyright industry appears to have calmed down a bit, thinking it won the file-sharing wars. At the same time, people sharing culture and knowledge have done the same thing. This conflict is far from over."

" Rick Falkvinge on June 29, 2014 C: 7 Opinion The past year, the copyright industry appears to have calmed down a bit, thinking it won the file-sharing wars. At the same time, people sharing culture and knowledge have done the same thing. This conflict is far from over."