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Recent Posts
- Another chapter in my 11-year struggle to secure basic email services from my university: 2022
- Mini-Review of Lenovo T14s Gen 3 Intel under Ubuntu 22.04
- Respect for suicide
- Using Email at McGill university: Ongoing suffering of an open-source user, year 9
- National Carbon Price in Canada: give private industry entrepreneurs the clarity they crave [Sep 2016]
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Category Archives: software
iClicker under GNU/Linux
Electronic “clickers” are personal wireless transceivers carried by every student in a lecture hall and are used for in-class feedback and assessment in teaching. At McGill, we have just switched to a new clicker system that is all about integration with … Continue reading
Posted in GNU/linux, McGill University, Microsoft, software
2 Comments
How-to: Alpine and maildir (and offlineimap (and GMail)) — no more maildir patches!
Abstract If you think non-graphical email clients are efficient or otherwise desirable, and want offline access to your email, this post describes a step forward. In particular, it describes the set-up of offline-accessible mail through the Alpine (formerly Pine, shortly … Continue reading
McGill University firmly embedded with Microsoft
This is the nearly incredible story of how one of Canada’s great universities has become such a buttress of the Microsoft monopoly that it cannot even provide for a new faculty member the normal ability to send and receive email. … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, GNU/linux, McGill University, Microsoft, software
Tagged email, McGill Unversity, Microsoft monopoly
12 Comments
Annotating PDFs in GNU/Linux
After years of waiting for a top-quality open source PDF editor/markup tool, and being baffled why they don’t exist… I’ve given up. What I’ve settled on for the moment performs rather well: At a command line, I type pdfedit <pdffilename> … Continue reading
Bounties for Gnome (Compiz?) window behaviour improvements
Back in 1993 on the student computer network at MIT it seems we had window managers (I used vtwm.gamma) and broadcast instant message systems (zephyr, ridiculously customisable) running on Unix(es) that still compete very favourably with features offered today by … Continue reading
Posted in Gnome, GNU/linux, software, Ubuntu
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Tied selling of Windows O/S with computer hardware in Canada: a complaint to the Competition Bureau
To follow up on my recent victimization by the “Microsoft Tax”, I filed a complaint with the Canadian Competition Bureau, the federal agency charged with investigating anti-competitive behaviour. I think I understand their response, which I’m including below, but there … Continue reading
Posted in GNU/linux, Microsoft, software
Tagged anti-competitive, Canada, GNU/linux, Lenovo, Microsoft, monopoly, Windows refund
5 Comments
Lenovo Thinkpad T410s and Ubuntu 10.10
This is a review, of sorts, though it will grow as I need/test features. I received my T410s and recorded a video of myself rejecting the Microsoft EULA, and erasing the harddrive. Good riddance, Windows 7. The keyboard feels really … Continue reading
The Microsoft tax and Windows refund in Canada: Lenovo
I am one of those (quietly) rabid Microsoft opponents. I believe Microsoft represents a collossal market failure, in that it has added very little in innovation towards making better software. Instead, its innovation has nearly entirely been in capturing and … Continue reading
Posted in GNU/linux, Microsoft, software
Tagged anti-competitive, Canada, Lenovo, Microsoft, monopolist, Windows refund
4 Comments
UBC thesis under LyX; manuscript-based thesis under LaTeX
A year ago when I finished my dissertation at UBC I posted a complete set of LaTeX files for generating a manuscript-based thesis (bibliographies separate for each chapter, etc) in which each chapter is a separate file in LaTeX. (This … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, LaTeX, LaTeX, LyX, software
Tagged LaTeX, LyX, UBC dissertation, UBC thesis, ubcthesis
48 Comments
GNU/Linux on HP Mini 1116NR
I got an HP Mini 1116NR. It has a solid state drive (16GB), so I hope I can commute more easily with it, even if I’m cycling or even running (it fits snugly in my very small camelbak-like pocket!). It … Continue reading
The Red Pen 