Month: December 2005

Microsoft is evil. I have mentioned this fact before in this Blog. One of their evil ways is to strongarm vendors into an official “Microsoft only” software policy. “We only recommend Microsoft!”, a vendor must say in order to maintain good relations (not to mention special incentives and discounts) with the Evil Empire! So, is Dell Computer breaking with Microsoft, ever so slightly? There have been rumors in the past that Dell was going to offer desktop system with Linux pre-installed. (Horrors!) Could they now be testing pre-installing Firefox on their systems?

Dell Pre-installed Firefox on some U.K. Systems

We can only hope the rumor is true! After all, it would make sense from a customer service point of view. If Dell can install a secure Web Browser (Firefox) on their systems before they get into the hands of their customers, then they will have less issues later with Spyware and Ad-Ware infections to deal with. It is just economics, and good customer service. But will the Evil Empire retaliate? Stay tuned!

Spyware and Ad-Ware is evil. They are beginning, more and more, to use rootkit technology to help them hide their evil work as they infect computers. Should the ANTI-Spyware vendors “fight fire with fire?” That’s the question posed by this eWeek article:

Anti-Spyware Battles Rootkits with Rootkit Tactics

Aluria is one company trying to design programs to fight the evildoers. Rick Carlson, a vice president for sales and marketing at Aluria says, “We’re hooking into the OS and monitoring every read and write command given to the file system by the operating system.”

Aluria is responding to a new generation of spyware that uses kernel rootkit features to avoid detection. Must you become the enemy to defeat the enemy? A question that will be debated from here on out, I am sure!

The speed of light is considered the one universal constant in the the universe. The speed of light in a vacuum is defined to be exactly 299,792,458 metres per second (or 1,079,252,848.8 km/h, which is approximately 186,282.397 miles per second, or 670,616,629.4 miles per hour). Whew! Exact, aren’t we? Anyway… what if you could slow it down? What if you could stop it? Well, a researcher (physicist Matt Sellars) has done it! Why? Imagine using pulses of light to transfer and store digital information as quantum bits, instead of bits of electric current as we do today. Dewd! We are talking mega-fast computers!

Slowing Down and Stopping Light!

“Quantum computers will one day exploit quantum mechanics to perform incredibly complex mathematical operations at high speed. And if the researchers can find a way to store the light pulses for a very long time, they will also have memory that operates on a quantum scale.” I can’t wait!

Novell announced that the Swiss government will be migrating 3000 of it’s servers to SuSE Linux!

Swiss to Embrace Linux

“Operational efficiency and cost were key factors driving the Swiss government’s decision to move to Linux, according to Novell.”

That, and they can depend on it not “bluescreening” every so often!

Well, it took SIX MONTHS of Internet Explorer being open and unpatched to the exploits that we mentioned before, but Microsoft has FINALLY released a patch for the problems on “Patch Tuesday.”

Patch Tuesday Release

Other “Patch Tuesday” patches fix the previously released “fix” to the Song BMG rootkit remover that M$ provided. Remember, SECURITY FIRST!

For the uninitiated, an “Easter Egg” is a hidden “treasure” in games that may be “mini-games,” or scrolling lists of game makers, and other odd things. You would not think that such a trivial, silly thing would be in an office suite, but you would be WRONG!

Mini-Game in OpenOffice 2.0

This is a “Space Invaders” type game, and is actually pretty cute! The “instructions” and other info appear to be in German… but it is playable… and just a mite weird that it is in OpenOffice! It just shows that the OpenOffice developers are whimsical!

CGI (Computer Generated Imagery, according to Wikipedia) is getting better and better. Take a look at this image:

Amazing CGI Image

Yes, that is a CGI image… NOT a photo. What can you say, but… wow!

Imagine the day when whole movies are made with NO actors… when Video Games are this photo-realistic. We are NOT that far away!

Linux Torvalds, original developer and “creator” of Linux, cuts to the chase on the KDE vs. Gnome debate of which major windowing environment to use with Linux. His suggestion… us KDE.

Linus Says Use KDE

And, the Doctor agrees with Linus… ’nuff said! KDE it is! (Grin!)

Linus’ Quote:

“I personally just encourage people to switch to KDE. This ‘users are idiots, and are confused by functionality’ mentality of Gnome is a disease. If you think your users are idiots, only idiots will use it. I don’t use Gnome, because in striving to be simple, it has long since reached the point where it simply doesn’t do what I need it to do. Please, just tell people to use KDE.”