Month: August 2006

You’ve got to be kidding!!! Yet, in a perverse way, this would make some sense! Obviously, if true, it would mean that Microsoft is REALLY feeling the heat of upcoming Linux desktop systems like SuSE 10, Freespire, and Ubuntu. I can remember, many years ago, when Microsoft released an Office for the Apple Mac… and it slowed Mac sales… why? Because it slowed innovation in that arena, and gelled the Micorosoft dominance of the Office word processor, spreadsheet, etc. space.

Microsoft Office for Linux ‘inevitable’

“Microsoft within the ‘next couple of years’ will release a version of its Office productivity to run on Linux, Stuart Cohen, chief executive for the Open Source Development Labs, predicted in an interview with vnunet.com at the Linuxworld conference in San Francicso. ‘They did it once with Apple, they will do it again with Linux,’ Cohen said. The OSDL consortium aims to advance Linux and open source. The organization employs Linux founder Linus Torvalds and is funded by IT vendors including IBM, HP and Intel.The software developer will be compelled to create a Linux version in a move to preempt the further rise of the open source OpenOffice productivity suite, Cohen argued. ‘They’ll go fight the total cost of ownership with a very inexpensive office solution. I don’t think that they will open source Office , but they will make it available to run on Linux desktops.'”

That’s what a new report on “The State of Spyware” by Webroot indicates. Social Networking sites like “MySpace” are hotbeds for spyware infection “opportunities.”

Spyware Growing Arsenal

“Spyware’s threat is getting nastier. Infection rates are on the rise, in part thanks to the surging popularity of social-networking sites like MySpace.com. That’s the assessment of Webroot, a leading vendor of anti-spyware software, which released the latest quarterly update of its State of Spyware report. In order to keep its software up-to-date against the latest threats, the Colorado-based company constantly tracks the creation of new spyware—the programs that become embedded in computers and track users’ Web-surfing habits and generate annoying pop-up ads… To date, Webroot’s researchers have identified some 527,000 malicious Web sites, an increase of 100,000 from a year earlier. Overall, Molls says, 89% of consumer PCs are infected with some kind of spyware, a rate not seen in a year. And, on average, home computers contain 30 individual spyware programs.”

So… what would happen if the Enterprise ran off of Microsoft Windows? Data finds out! A nasty BSOD “Blue Screen of Death!” (Look closely at the reflection in the console!) Cute! Ya should’ve used Linux, guys! (Gee, Data, turn off the emotion chip, willya?!)

OK… these are kinda old (I can tell because DEC is in the list… among other things… but for you older geeks… check it out!)

PCMCIA => People Can’t Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms
ISDN => It Still Does Nothing
APPLE => Arrogance Produces Profit-Losing Entity
IBM => I Blame Microsoft
DEC => Do Expect Cuts
CA => Constant Acquisitions
CD-ROM => Consumer Device, Rendered Obsolete in Months
OS/2 => Obsolete Soon, Too.
SCSI => System Can’t See It
DOS => Defunct Operating System
BASIC => Bill’s Attempt to Seize Industry Control
WWW => World Wide Wait

Anybody got a newer list? Share and enjoy!

Geeks love comic books, and old geeks… well… you get it! Here is an on-line archive of comic books that are very cool! Check it out! The comics are archived as image files in a file with a “cbr” extension. Simply rename the extension to “rar” and they can be “uncompressed” with IZarc (one of my Geek Software of the Week files!) Then, you can view them with a good image viewer. Rock on!

Comic Book Archive!

From the site FAQ:

“The cbr format is simply a renamed winrar file. The cbr files are a series of jpg files (pictures), compressed into one file for easy storage and access. One comic equals one file. To view the comic you must either uncompress it with the correct software or use a viewing program like cdisplay.”

Remember the photos of the Dell laptop on fire I had in the blog some time back? Well, now Dell is recalling 4.1 million lithium-ion batteries for their notebooks made by Sony. Yike!

Dell To Announce Massive Laptop Battery Recall

“Under rare conditions, Dell said, the batteries could overheat, prompting a risk of fire. The batteries, manufactured by Sony, were found in 25 Dell laptops and eight Dell “mobile workstation”-class notebook PCs. Dell said that it would provide a Web site, www.dellbatteryprogram.com, with instructions on how to determine whether a notebook battery was affected by the recall, and if so, how to ship it back. The batteries are marked with a ‘Dell’ label and a label that says either ‘Made in Japan,”Made in China,’ or ‘Battery Cell Made in Japan Assembled in China.’ There is also a battery number listed on a white sticker. The affected notebook models were sold from April 1, 2004, through July 18, 2006.”

I heard a report on NPR that Dell states that this incident “will not effect it’s bottom line.” Uh huh, and I have some land in Florida you might be interested in too!

By the way, Apple Computer said that they are looking into similar problems with their batteries.

Dewd! This totally rocks! Now you can test your Internet connection speed, and the app that does it looks way cool at the same time! I love this!

SpeedTest.net Bandwidth Tester

Just choose a “pyramid” location and click on it. Then watch the “speedometer” and wait for your final speed report. Notice that your connection speed will vary depending on what test site your choose based on location, number of hops, etc. This is very cool! Even if you don’t care about knowing your Internet connection speed… it is just fun!

Do you have a DLink Router? Is it unsecured (ie., no WAP or WEP enabled?) Then you have a potential that anyone can take over your router! Check out this article:

D-Link Router UPNP Stack Overflow

Universal Plug and Play on the allows a simple string to give full control of the router to a user that has “inside the net” access (such as an open wireless router might have) and even allow them to overwrite the EPROM! Zowie!

Dewd! This is rad! (OK, OK, enough with me trying to be a gamer!) Microsoft annonced a new product that will be a boon to those of you that are gamers… and are creative! They are releasing a tool that will allow you to write your own Xbox games! You can develop them, sell them, trade them, post them to your web sites for folks to download and play… in short, Microsoft hopes that it will develop a whole new game development market with collaboration… like… dare I say it? Open Source? Wow. Who would have thought!?! This was even featured on NPR news yesterday. Zowie! M$ may be making some good moves here. After all, this will definitely add titles to it’s Xbox market!

Build Your Own Xbox Games!

“Microsoft plans to open up its Xbox 360 game development platform to the masses with the launch of XNA Game Studio Express, due out during the holiday season. The Redmond company says such an offering would benefit the entire gaming industry by nurturing the ideas of new development talent and providing beneficial experience in game creation. Anyone with a Windows XP computer would be able to use the software, available for an annual $99 fee. This fee would permit users to build, test and share their games on Xbox 360 consoles, as well as gain access to development resources. Microsoft says this is the first time novice developers would be able to enter the industry without a large initial investment.”