When I was a media specialist (school librarian), I used to read a book called The Toll-Bridge Troll (say that three times fast). It was about a mean little troll that would stop people, usually poor innocent children, at his bridge and demand they pay him a fee for crossing. One smart little boy decided […]
The world is open source.
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Argh! Pirates Going to Jail
It looks like the three men held responsible for The Pirate Bay torrent file sharing site are going to prison. A Sweedish court of appeals upheld the judgement against them, which includes a $6.7 million judgement (as if those men really can afford to pay it) and a sentence of one year in prison. On […]
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Wikipedia’s Extortionist Fundraising
Wikipedia is trying to raise money. That is nothing new. It is run by a non-profit organization called the Wikimedia Foundation. Ever so often, they have fundraisers, much in the same way PBS or NPR might truncate your favorite show with a pledge drive. This is normal and an acceptable part of non-profit media. This […]
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Jupiter, Netbooks, and Super Hybrid Engines
One of the unique features of the Asus Eee PC is a function called Super Hybrid Engine (or what I like to call SHE) , which I’m told has nothing to do with the hybrid engine pictured above. On a Windows-powered machine, simply press Fn+Space to send your Eee PC into super speed (High Performance) […]
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Easy Samba Setup with KDE
As promised, I wrote an article about setting up Samba in KDE. It is not immediately obvious how to set it up in KDE, but it is easy if you follow the steps I have illustrated. I have tested this method, so it should work for most Linux distributions and other Unix variants, as long […]
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Network Shares for Boxee: Samba Beats UPnP
The Boxee Box is making big news, but for those of us who are not rushing out to spend $200 on a new device for our TVs, Boxee is free to download and install on any computer. I have it installed on my Asus EeePC 1201n running Kubuntu, which has an HDMI output, along with […]
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Hulu Plus: Close But Not Quite
I just finished watching the latest episode of The Event on my Sony Blu-ray Disc player, using Hulu Plus streaming video. It played well with a clear HD picture, and it was nice to sit in front of the TV to watch it, rather than at a computer. Despite that good experience, Hulu Plus falls […]
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Truly Readable E-Books (Thanks to HTML5)
Reading a book on a website is a bit like holding a book upside down and turning pages with your nose. Because most websites are designed with standard HTML, there is no easy way to give a user true page-by-page performance. The result is the incessant scrolling and clicking that you do with normal web […]
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Hulu Plus, Sony Bluray
This morning, Hulu Plus seems to be available on our Sony Bluray Disc Player. I watched a sample video without any problems (other than our bad DSL connection – thanks AT&T), but the quality was good. I have not actually signed up, but it appears as though the app is ready. Just two days ago, […]