Tag: Interoperability

Posted inTechnology

Media coverage of BlackBerry’s end of support for legacy mobile services high on nostalgia, but low on accuracy and precision

by Andrew Villeneuve

Rather than gath­er­ing facts and then report­ing the more com­plex details of this event, a whole bunch of sto­ries appear to have been writ­ten on the basis of a press release and a com­pa­ny end of life doc­u­ment. A sim­plis­tic nar­ra­tive has once again pre­vailed over the more com­pli­cat­ed reality.

Posted inCelebrating Free Software, Policy Topics, Technology

Ubuntu and Kubuntu 15.04 “Vivid Vervet” released; Debian 8 “Jessie” due Saturday

by Andrew Villeneuve

Edi­tor’s note: If the terms GNU and Lin­ux don’t mean any­thing to you, this post is prob­a­bly going to read like a bunch of gib­ber­ish. Sor­ry. But do read on if you’re inter­est­ed in learn­ing more about the won­der­ful world of free soft­ware.  Free soft­ware enthu­si­asts, it’s time to rev up your Advanced Pack­ag­ing Tool […]

Posted inPolicy Topics, Technology

Raspberry Pi Foundation unveils new Pi that’s six times faster, will support Windows 10

by Andrew Villeneuve

Three years to the month after launch­ing the first Rasp­ber­ry Pi micro­com­put­er, the Rasp­ber­ry Pi Foun­da­tion has unveiled a new Pi that uses a more mod­ern proces­sor and has twice as much mem­o­ry onboard. The Rasp­ber­ry Pi 2, as it’s being called, will sell for $35, just like its pre­de­ces­sors (the first gen­er­a­tion Mod­el A […]

Posted inBreaking News, Policy Topics, Technology

BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) finally headed to Windows Phone; will debut this summer

by Andrew Villeneuve

Dis­pelling recent reports in the tech blo­gos­phere to the con­trary, Black­Ber­ry announced this morn­ing that it is work­ing to bring BBM, Black­Ber­ry’s pop­u­lar and increas­ing­ly cross-plat­­form mobile-to-mobile mes­sag­ing ser­vice, to Win­dows Phone, in part­ner­ship with Nokia. BBM will also be present on Noki­a’s new Android-based Nokia X smart­phone plat­form when it launch­es in a few […]

Posted inPolicy Topics, Technology

Join the fight against Internet censorship: An open letter to Senators Murray and Merkley

by Andrew Villeneuve

Edi­tor’s Note: The fol­low­ing is the text of a let­ter sent by NPI to the offices of U.S. Sen­a­tors Pat­ty Mur­ray of Wash­ing­ton and Jeff Merkley of Ore­gon this morn­ing. Dear Sen­a­tors Mur­ray and Merkley: On behalf of the team at the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute, I am writ­ing to express our strong oppo­si­tion to two […]

Posted inPolicy Topics, Technology

Support independent game studios by paying what you want for the fourth Humble Bundle

by Andrew Villeneuve

In our view, the big media con­glom­er­ates that own most of the radio sta­tions, tele­vi­sion net­works, and pub­lish­ing hous­es in this coun­try could just as accu­rate­ly be described as big enter­tain­ment con­glom­er­ates. They sell and dis­trib­ute most of the movies, music, games, books, and soft­ware that we buy, often under oner­ous terms and con­di­tions that […]

Posted inPolicy Topics, Technology

Ubuntu 11.04 “Natty Narwhal” released

by Andrew Villeneuve

For the last sev­er­al years, the end of April has meant anoth­er release of Ubun­tu (the world’s most pop­u­lar GNU/Linux dis­tri­b­u­tion), and 2011 is no excep­tion. Yes­ter­day, Canon­i­cal — which spon­sors the devel­op­ment of Ubun­tu — announced the release of Ver­sion 11.04, code­named “Nat­ty Nar­whal”. Nat­ty suc­ceeds Mav­er­ick Meerkat, which was released back in October […]

Posted inTechnology

Microsoft releases Internet Explorer 9

by Andrew Villeneuve

After many months of devel­op­ment, Microsoft has final­ly fin­ished work­ing on Inter­net Explor­er 9, which was released to mar­ket a cou­ple of hours ago (9 AM Pacif­ic Time). This iter­a­tion of the brows­er rep­re­sents Microsoft­’s first real attempt to make stan­dards sup­port a pri­or­i­ty, and sports some new use­ful fea­tures. If you’re run­ning Win­dows Vista […]