Month: January 2009

Have you ever planned and worked, and worked and planned to do something, and when you were finished, you almost couldn’t believe that it was complete? Well, that’s where I find myself. I have been hosting my own web sites since way, way, way back in the past… about 1998. And, after all these years I have finally moved my infrastructure to a separate hosting company… Bluehost.com. I gotta admit, they rock! I moved ALL my sites (78!) And, of course, I had to coordinate, and notify everyone that it was happening. It was a HUGE project! But, it is done, an now I am relaxing a bit. Sigh! Here’s the tally:

Email Accounts – 65
Subdomains – 78
Parked Domains – 4
Addon Domains – 70
FTP Accounts – 3
SQL Databases – 19
Disk Space Usage – 32,738.38 MB

Given that we are now connected to the web via an OC-48 connection (2+ gig) and the fact that Bluehost uses solid state disks for the MySQL databases… plus, of course, good ol’ CentOS Linux… things are “smokin’ fast!” Enjoy the new speed!

The lack of knowledge about Linux is mind-boggling! This story is about a girl that dropped out of college “because of Ubuntu Linux.” Right. She bought a Dell computer with Ubuntu on it, then was frustrated that her Verizon CD from her ISP wouldn’t load on it, so she “couldn’t connect to the Internet.” And, horror of horrors, it wouldn’t run Microsoft Word! So, I mean, how COULD she go to college! What a crock! A) I could get her on the Internet in minutes, with no CD, B) OpenOffice opens, reads, and writes Word documents. So, there you go, more evidence that Linux is evil and is a scheme to make everyone a college dropout! Please.

Woman blames Dell for missing online classes

“Abbie Schubert paid more than $1,100 for a Dell laptop hoping to enroll in online classes at MATC. But something stopped her: Ubuntu. That’s an operating system for your computer similar to Windows that runs off the Linux system. Schubert says she ordered her laptop online at Dell.com expecting to buy your classic bread-and-butter computer. She didn’t realize until the next morning her laptop defaulted to the Ubuntu operating system. ‘It’s been a mess,’ she said. ‘I regret ordering the computer.’ Schubert says she never heard of Ubuntu before learning that’s when she accidentally bought. She called Dell the very next day and says the representative told her there was still time to change back to Windows. But she says Dell discouraged her. ‘The person I was talking to said Ubuntu was great, college students loved it, it was compatible with everything I needed,’ said Schubert. So she stuck with it. Later, she discovered Ubuntu might look like Windows, but it doesn’t always act like it. Her Verizon High-Speed Internet CD won’t load, so she can’t access the internet. She also can’t install Microsoft Word, which she says is a requirement for MATC’s online classes. As a result, with no internet and no Microsoft Word, Schubert dropped out of MATC’s fall and spring semesters.”

I guess the Dell guy she called had never heard of the “ID 10 T” issue with users.

Ouch! 1.1 Million in 24 hours! That is one busy little worm!

Researcher: Worm infects 1.1M Windows PCs in 24 hours

“The computer worm, that exploits a months-old Windows bug has infected more than a million PCs in the past 24 hours, a security company said today. Early Wednesday, Helsinki, Finland-based security firm F-Secure Corp. estimated that 3.5 million PCs have been compromised by the ‘Downadup’ worm, an increase of more than 1.1 million since Tuesday. ‘[And] we still consider this to be a conservative estimate,’ said Sean Sullivan, a researcher at F-Secure, in an entry to the company’s Security Lab blog. Yesterday, F-Secure said the worm had infected an estimated 2.4 million machines.”

Now, you can feel like Dick Tracy! (I am dating myself, I know!) Anyway, weird, but will it catch on?

LG feeds wrist watch talk wish

“Is it that at any other CES, we’d all be chirping about the advent of a working, non-hideous wrist phone? Or are we all just too jaded to believe? Either way, LG may have lost a perfectly reasonable wrist-mounted mobile phone in the stampede. LG is a mighty big company, in the vicinity of which we are told Life’s Good. What that means, practically speaking at a madhouse such as CES, is that there among the washers and dryers and huge flat-panel screens and touchscreen handsets and consumer diversions of every kind in their suburban-home-sized ‘booth,’ LG is apt to tuck in a few little flights of whimsy. A weary reporter appreciates the change of pace, LG appreciates the attention, and so it’s all, as half the name suggests, Good. he problem is the waiting for the flights of whimsy to take off — especially in a year where attention coalesced around another phone, the one that’s near to not only launch but, maybe, to saving its parent company’s bacon. LG showed a prototype of the Touch Watch Phone last year. This year, it’s operable…but LG reps told us that it won’t be for sale until the second half of the year, and even then only in Europe to start. And just like that, press attention turned elsewhere. Whatever the technical achievements tucked into the 68g / 13.9mm chassis of the timepiece, its greatest achievement may be that it didn’t look utterly ridiculous. Though most tech folk above the age of 20 can remember multiple attempts at this sort of thing (your reporter’s personally still waiting for one of those bone-conduction fingerphones), LG chose to pare down the features and maintain sensible styling. The resulting gadget looks clean and not terribly mobile-phone-like; we saw several of the 13 offered interfaces that looked like perfectly acceptable face design. (Fashion tip: If you find you must own one of these things, stay with the analog dial.)”