Month: March 2014

To slightly misquote the Beatles at the beginning of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” “It was 25 years ago today, that Sir Tim Berners Lee taught the ‘net to play!” OK, that was lame, and it was yesterday that the 25th Anniversary actually occurred, but hey! I’m trying! Keep in mind that the World Wide Web, which Sir Tim came up with, is NOT the Internet, it is actually riding on top of the Internet. It is the whole hyperlink thang!

The idea came to him when he was working at CERN in Geneva. He wrote a paper called: “Information Management: A Proposal.” It didn’t sound exciting, but it was! Sir Tim says that after 25 years, he just would like to see the World Wide Web free, and available to all! So say we all, Sir Tim!

Wow! This is big!

Google drops price of all monthly Google Drive plans to $2/100GB, $10/1TB, $100/10TB

Written by:Jordan Kahn (Google 9to5) – “Google announced today on its blog that it’s lowering the monthly pricing plans it offers for users buying extra storage on Google Drive. Google attributes the changes to “recent infrastructure improvements” that is allowing it to offer more affordable storage options. Google reminds us that, as always, Drive storage purchased through the new plans counts towards storage for Drive, Gmail and Google+ Photos.

The new plans begin at just $1.99 for 100GB down from the previous $4.99 for the same amount of storage. There is also a new $10 plan for 1TB (down from $50 previously), and a 10TB and up option that starts at $99.99. Google will also continue offering the free 15GB option that comes with your Google account for Drive, Gmail and Google+.

How big is a terabyte anyway? Well, that’s enough storage for you to take a selfie twice a day for the next 200 years and still have room left over for… shall we say… less important things. Like before, storage continues to work across Drive, Gmail and Google+ Photos. And, of course, the 15GB plan remains free.

The new pricing plans for Google Drive are available now through www.google.com/settings/storage. Users that are already signed up for a monthly plan will be automatically switched to the new, better plans.”

Every year there are two hacking contests one is called “Pwnium” and the other is “Pwn2Own.” This year there is four million dollars in prize money between the two contests!

So far, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, Google Chrome, Adobe Flash and Adobe Reader have already been hacked. Now, at first, this may seem like really bad news! However, it really isn’t. The idea behind these hacking competitions is for top level hackers to come together in teams to try to hack the security of popular software packages. These hacking attempts, if successful, are then documented, and the vendors can quickly close those “holes.” So, in the long run, it hardens the software that we use as consumers, and makes it harder for regular hackers to break through the security of these packages.

Google Chrome and its Chromium operating system, used in their Chromebooks, proved to be very secure but still “hack-able.” However, Google moved quickly to close the holes that were found; making Google Chrome, and their Chromium operating system, still highly secure! This, combined with the fact that they update their software automatically, without user intervention, provides a very secure experience for the user.

The hacking team from China took down Safari and Adobe Flash on the second day of the Pwn2Own” event, and, they also completed the contest with a successful zero day exploit of Adobe Flash. Thier hacking team, called the “Keen team,” earned a $40,000 prize for Safari, and $75,000 for Flash. They said they’ll donate a portion of their winnings to charities representing families of the missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH 370.

These “white hat” hackers provide a service to the computing community to help us harden software. And this is just more evidence that their heart is in the right place!

Some rumors are coming up prior to Microsoft’s build 2014 conference which will be held in San Francisco. The code name for the next version of Windows, which will be called Windows 9 at release, is “Threshold.” The Windows PC client, the Windows server, and the Windows phone and Xbox are all integrated to a degree, and will be part of this release.

Windows 9 will come in three separate types: there will be a “modern” consumer SKU, a traditional PC SKU, and a traditional enterprise business SKU. The “modern” SKU will be focused on delivering Windows RT apps in this version will be available for ARM” and Intel-based devices but won’t be optimized to run desktop Win32 apps.

For those of us that were hoping that Windows 9 would free us from the evil “Metro” interface, don’t hold your breath! Microsoft is still trying to shove this down our throats, even though they will make it somewhat easier to have a more traditional interface; they are only tweaking Metro and adding an updated version to the Metro design language interface. So, Microsoft is still trying to force us to do their bidding when it comes to how we use our computers! Hopefully, the upshot of this is that we’ll see more people, and perhaps even more businesses, seriously consider Linux as an option for their desktops!

It amazes me that Microsoft is arrogant enough to believe that their customers will swallow anything that they throw out there, and not consider other options. Essentially, they’re digging their own grave! If they would just give us an interface that we can work with on a regular desktop, they could hold on to their large market share for PC operating systems. After all, all they would have to do is create an option within Control Panel to select a business desktop with a more Windows 7 like interface or, alternatively, provide an option for the fluffy, boxy, ugly “Metro” interface that they’re trying to foist upon us! But, apparently they’re not that smart.