Author: Dr. Bill

According to the web site “The Wrap,” Microsoft has a surprise in store for Apple! A tablet to rival the iPad. Can they pull it off?

Microsoft Manufacturing Tablet to Rival Apple iPad, Says Insider (Exclusive)

“Microsoft is set to unveil a tablet next week that will mark its entry into rival Apple’s territory with its own branded product, TheWrap has learned.

The company has scheduled a secretive event for Monday at 3:30 p.m. June 18 in Los Angeles, where it will make a ‘major’ announcement whose nature has not been disclosed. Even the venue has not yet been announced.

But an individual with knowledge of the company said that Microsoft would introduce a Microsoft-manufactured tablet at the event, marking a foray into a new hardware category that would put the company in direct competition with giant rival Apple.”

Indeed! I love my notebook running Ubuntu 12.04 LTS… I use it as my primary system!

As I predicted in the last netcast, M$ backed off. I knew they would. It was a “trial balloon” to see what the industry would say.

IE 10’s ‘Do-Not-Track’ Default Dies Quick Death

“Well, that didn’t take long.

The latest proposed draft of the Do Not Track specification published Wednesday requires that users must choose to turn on the anti-behavioral tracking feature in their browsers and software.

That means that Microsoft IE 10, which the company announced last week will have Do Not Track turned on by default, won’t be compliant with the official spec. Which means that tech and ad companies who say they comply with Do Not Track could simply ignore the flag set by IE 10 and track those who use that browser. Which means Microsoft has no choice but to change the setting.

Microsoft’s surprise announcement last Thursday was interpreted by many as a way to gouge Google, which runs an ad system based on tracking cookies. But it also enraged many online ad companies and industry groups, who saw the move as overly aggressive and a threat to their business model.”

LinkedIn has been comfirmed, and security experts believe that the dating site, eHarmony may be involved in the password dump as well. An unknown hacker posted the cryptographic hashes for the passwords, and has asked for help in decrypting them. He said in his post, “These are the ones I can’t crack.”

Someone with the username “dwdm” posted the information and in less than two hours, 76% of the posted list was hacked.

If you have an account on LinkedIn… change it now. I changed mine! I don’t have (or need, since I am happily married!) an account on eHarmony, but if you have one, change that one as well!

Ta-da! IPv6 is here!

IPv6 Day: Only the Biggest Change to the Internet Since Its Inception

It’s only the most significant architectural development in the history of the Internet, and presto, it transpired last night at 00:01 GMT. Did you notice?

I’m betting not, and that you probably didn’t even know it was happening, which is precisely how things were supposed to go down. Don’t worry, you’re fine, you don’t need to do anything, and as far as most of the Internet is concerned, turning on IPv6 — of tectonic caliber at the architectural level, minus the earthquakes — won’t impact how you interact with the Internet any time soon. But it will eventually. And it was necessary, to prevent the Internet from running out of real estate.

Thus ‘IPv6 Day,’ which is what participants have dubbed June 6, 2012, the day some of the world’s biggest Internet service providers like AT&T, Cisco, Comcast, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and TIME’s own parent company, Time Warner, enable IPv6 permanently on their hardware. It’s the followup to World IPv6 Day, which occurred a year ago on June 8, 2011, when providers turned on IPv6 for a single day in a kind of symbolic ‘time to pay attention to this’ act.”

With IPv6, everything can have a unique address. In comparison to IPv4’s 4.3 billion IP addresses, IPv6 can assign about 340 trillion trillion trillion addresses. Or to be exact:
340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 IP addresses.

Iconic science fiction author, Ray Bradbury, is dead at the age of 91. He was born the same year as my father. I read his work as a kid. Wow.

Ray Bradbury Dead at 91

(CBS/AP) Ray Bradbury, the writer best known for his dystopian novel “Fahrenheit 451,” died Tuesday night in Los Angeles. He was 91.

Reached at Bradbury’s home, his daughter, Alexandra Bradbury, says her father died Tuesday night in Southern California. She did not have additional details.

Bradbury had a lengthy career of writing everything from science-fiction and mystery to humor. He transformed his childhood dreams and Cold War fears into telepathic Martians, lovesick sea monsters, and a high-tech, book-burning future in “Fahrenheit 451.”

He also scripted the 1956 film version of ‘Moby Dick’ and wrote for ‘The Twilight Zone.’

Bradbury’s series of stories in ‘The Martian Chronicles’ was a Cold War morality tale in which events on another planet served as a commentary on life on this planet. It has been published in more than 30 languages.

‘If I had to make any statement, it would be how much I love and miss him, and I look forward to hearing everyone’s memories about him, Danny Karapetian, Bradbury’s grandson, told science website io9. ‘He influenced so many artists, writers, teachers, scientists, and it’s always really touching and comforting to hear their stories.'”

QuickOffice is a simple, yet powerful office suite for mobile devices. Google has scooped them up in order to prepare for their “battle” to come with rival Microsoft once they start pushing Windows 8 on all devices.

Google buys QuickOffice: Mobile reinforcement ahead of Windows 8

“Google has acquired Quickoffice for an undisclosed sum and the move is billed as a way to bridge Google Apps, mobile and Quickoffice.

All of those points are true, but the timing of the Google-Quickoffice deal makes a lot of sense. Why? Microsoft has Windows 8 on the runway, is touting new form factors and Office will be the main productivity case for the company.

When you add up the moving parts, Microsoft Office is probably the most compelling reason to use a Windows 8 tablet going forward—at least for businesses. Microsoft is likely to integrate Windows 8 and Office in a big way. In other words, Microsoft’s big mobile plays will depend on Office.

From the Google side of the equation, the search giant has the following assets:

• Android devices everywhere.
• Google Apps integration with those devices.
• And now Quickoffice, which serves as an almost de facto office suite for many folks.”