Author: fozbaca

Free Film Project

The hard roots of open source software
How the road forked when proprietary software was invented

Kevin Mitnick was no hacker in testimony before the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee

“The human side of computer security is easily exploited and constantly overlooked,” Mitnick explained …”

The Sims Review
I want this one.

Jakob Nielsen Answers Usability Questions on slashdot

“Interestingly, research by Jack Carroll at IBM in the 1980s proved that a “training wheels” approach to computers makes people better at understanding the expert features once they get to them. The reason being that users learn the conceptual structure of the system better when they are presented with the smaller set of features first. Not seeing something during initial use of the system would result in better use of the hidden features later.

…In the old days, an operating system was designed to optimize the utilization of the computer’s resources. In the future, its main goal will be to optimize the user’s time.”

A Ralph Nader Plan That ‘Sucks’
Get your .sucks domain.

Zend.com is live.

Earthport claims prior art in Amazon patent
Thank god for prior art. The question “are patents really useful to society?” is not answered.

Storm Linux Review

“Storm Linux 2000 is a very nice distribution. Although it’s not as polished as Mandrake 7 in many aspects, Storm Linux is a nice, easy to use, solid distribution. I particularly recommend Storm Linux for anyone who wants to setup a small home network. Storm Linux isn’t as ready for the desktop as Mandrake is, but Storm would definitely feel right at home in just about any server/workstation. “

So far Stormix is my distribution of choice.