Jason Brooks

A couple of days ago, my colleague Andrew Garcia forwarded me what seems like the 20th plea I’ve seen over the past couple of years to call or write my representatives in Congress to Save Net Radio. This latest plea came from Pandora.com, a fantastic Internet-based radio station that holds more claim on my online […]

It’s been nearly three years since Sun Microsystems kicked off its OpenSolaris project by releasing most of the code that comprises its Solaris operating system under an open-source license. And yet, it’s only just now, with the release of the first official distribution of OpenSolaris, that the project begins in earnest. I, like most people […]

While gathering support contract pricing information for my Ubuntu 8.04 review, I noticed a somewhat surprising item listed among the benefits of paying Canonical for a Linux distribution the company gives away for free: “Protect your business against IP infringement claimsThe Ubuntu Assurance from Canonical covers your business for claims of intellectual property infringements arising […]

Today while trolling around on Slashdot I came across this open-source development flareup tidbit: “Slashdot | Pidgin Controversy Triggers Fork “Pidgin, the premier multi-protocol instant messaging client, has been forked. This is the result of a heated, emotional, and very interesting debate over a controversial new feature: As of version 2.4, the ability to manually […]

Last week, Microsoft made two major online services announcements, both focused on initiatives intended to address data accessibility pain points by knitting together the devices you own with Web-based services that Microsoft provides and promises to maintain.What should be giving users and developers pause, however, is that only one of these two big bulletins, that […]

Canonical has marshaled the best of what the open-source world has to offer in Ubuntu 8.04, a Linux-based operating system that’s capable of mounting a serious challenge to Microsoft Windows on mainstream desktops and notebooks.During my tests of Ubuntu 8.04, both in its final form and in a series of test releases that led up […]

Due to the broadening popularity of Apple’s desktops and notebooks-and, to a growing extent, of its iPhone-IT administrators at many enterprises are faced with providing updates, core applications and network authentication services to greater numbers of Apple computers and devices. Fortunately, as Apple’s computing fortunes have risen, an array of options for integrating these systems […]

Now that Windows Vista Service Pack 1 has enjoyed a few weeks in the limelight in which to entice the “wait-for-SP1” IT shops to jump to Microsoft’s latest and greatest client operating system, it’s time to introduce the OS upgrade we’ve all been waiting for: Ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together for Windows XP […]

Recently, I came across a blog post about how to install a LiveCD version of Red Hat’s upcoming Fedora 9 release onto a USB stick, leaving space on the stick for data to persist between reboots. Impressed by the persistent USB LiveCD fun and partition encrypting installer improvements, I chose to throw caution to the […]

Gartner made news April 9 by contending that Windows is in danger of collapsing under its own weight. According to Gartner analysts Michael Silver and Neil MacDonald, radical changes to Windows are required. Their prescription: a more modular Windows. Windows is a massive piece of software, and even though it’s not presented as such externally, […]