Case for Linux is a Cultural One - Thus Far
The great Linux conversion continues apace, with the latest entry being my Dell Latitude X-200, an ultra-slim and ultra-modern laptop with wireless access built in. This computer became the next choice in much the way the last one did; something didn't work in Windows, so I decided to try it with Linux. The results were the same. More...

Is Spam Arrest Resorting to... Spamming?
SpamArrest seems like such a cool service. If you send an email to someone using SpamArrent, it directs you to a page (that looks like this) and asks that you type in a word to prove that you're human, and not an automatic emailling program. I was going to list this last week. But it's just as well that I didn't. It turns out that SpamArrest - get ready for it - collects the email addresses of people sending mail verified by the service and sends them spam. More...

Linguists Are Mixed About Text Messages
As the old quote goes, it's a pretty unimaginative mind that can think of only one way to spell a word. At least, that's what I say when someone points out the inevitable typos on OLDaily (Rod counted five yesterday, but I don't think an extra space counts as a spelling mistake). Out of deference to my readers, I don't use the SMS abbreviations described in this article, though. More...

5 Things To Know About Users
"The user's intentions, context, knowledge, skills, and experience are the essential things that every designer needs to know. Without this, the team is going to design something that seems useful, but they'll never know if it actually helps the user... Unfortunately, these five things are beyond what normal market research can tell us. Market research can tell us age groups, income levels, geographic regions, even purchase behavior. But it can't tell us the key things we need to know." Via elearningpost. More...

How to Save the Music Industry
Though this article is about the music industry, educational content vendors would do well to take note. Jimmy Guterman, himself a veteran of the paid content wars, writes that the music industry should "Reduce CD prices, abandon copy protection and invest in consumer-friendly technologies, [and] abandon current online efforts and buy Kazaa." Quite right. More...

The Law Against Sharing Knowledge

Ironically, the full text of this article is available to paid subscribers only (one of the dumber content decisions the Chronicle editors have made); this link is to a mirror of parts of the article posted by Peter Suber. More...

MS patents .Everything

More on the Microsoft .Net patents, discussed yesterday. As the title suggests, this article expresses the concern that the Microsoft patents cut a wide swatch through web services, threatening the entire standards effort. More...

My Short Life As An Unintentional Spammer
The event described in this article has happened to me as well - it's one of the things that happens when your email address is widely posted. More...