Category: Computers, Science & Technology

This is the official statement from Apple:

“October 5, 2011

Statement by Apple’s Board of Directors

We are deeply saddened to announce that Steve Jobs passed away today.

Steve’s brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that
enrich and improve all of our lives. The world is immeasurably better because of Steve.

His greatest love was for his wife, Laurene, and his family. Our hearts go out to them and to all who were touched by his extraordinary gifts.”

This is very sad news. I was not really an Apple customer, but I admired their hardware, and have always wanted a MacBook Pro. Steve was definitely a visionary that greatly impacted the computer world, and has a hugely prominent place in computer history. May he rest in peace.

My favorite Office Suite is one year old!

LibreOffice, TDF Mark First Anniversary of Office Productivity Suite

“The Document Foundation marks the first anniversary of the day developers broke away from Oracle-controlled OpenOffice.org to launch the LibreOffice office productivity suite.

A year after forking the OpenOffice.org project to create a community-driven office productivity suite, The Document Foundation estimated that LibreOffice has 25 million users worldwide.

The Document Foundation and the LibreOffice marked their first anniversary on Sept. 28.

OpenOffice.org developers originally created LibreOffice to break the software away from Oracle’s control after it appeared that the database giant was not interested in working with the open-source community. The Document Foundation was founded to make the project truly vendor-neutral. Google was among the first companies to support the new project.

Oracle responded to the split by forcing TDF members who were also participating on the OpenOffice community council to step down. Despite not having Oracle support, LibreOffice has thrived in the past year, with more than 25,000 code ‘commits’ submitted by 330 contributors. Code commits reflect major changes to code, the addition of new features and bug fixes.

‘The Document Foundation has attracted more developers with commits in the first year than the OpenOffice.org project in the first decade,’ said Norbert Thiebaud, a member of TDF Engineering Steering Committee.

LibreOffice has been downloaded about 7.5 million times since the first stable launch in January, TDF estimated. However, another 10 million users have installed the code via USB stick or CD burned by one of these downloads. Most Linux users get LibreOffice directly from their distribution’s software repositories.

As expected, a bulk of LibreOffice’s popularity comes from Linux users, primarily because major Linux distributions favor LibreOffice over OpenOffice.org. Approximately 60 percent of the installed base use Linux, 36 percent use Windows and the remaining 4 percent use Mac OS X, according to statistics collected by TDF.

The developer community is ‘well balanced’ between company-sponsored contributors and independent volunteers, Italo Vignoli, a member of the TDF Steering Committee, wrote on The Document Foundation blog. SuSE and Red Hat are major contributors to the project, and organizations such as Canonical have dedicated LibreOffice developers on staff.”

Oops! M$ may have had a Freudian slip of sorts! It seems that a Microsoft Security Essentials anti-virus update identifies good ol’ Google Chrome as a virus and removes it!

Faulty Microsoft AV update nukes Chrome browser

Summary: Microsoft has confirmed that its security tools erroneously removed the Google Chrome browser from Windows machines, marking it as a variant of the notorious Zeus (Zbot) malware family.

UPDATE: Microsoft has confirmed that this was caused by a faulty anti-virus definition update that affected about 3,000 Windows users.

Here’s Microsoft’s statement:

‘On September 30th, 2011, an incorrect detection for PWS:Win32/Zbot was identified and as a result, Google Chrome was inadvertently blocked and in some cases removed from customers PCs. We have already fixed the issue — we released an updated signature (1.113.672.0) at 9:57 am PDT — but approximately 3,000 customers were impacted.’

A Microsoft spokesperson says affected users should manually update Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) with the latest signatures.

‘To do this, simply launch MSE, go to the update tab and click the Update button, and then reinstall Google Chrome. We apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused our customers,’ the spokesperson said.

Yeah, right!

I pretty much buy all my computer’y stuff from TigerDirect! A few exceptions… but they always have good prices and great service! So, I was pleased when I had the chance to ad them as an advertiser on the Blog and Netcast… very cool! Click on the ad at the right and save beau coups on laptops! Dewd! Brand new laptops from $259.99? Awesome! Anyway, I am stoked that they are here… click away!

What is your favorite, “I use it everyday” computer utility? One of mine is DropBox! If you have never downloaded it and set it up, click this abbreviated link: https://db.tt/TXuyPie

Dewd! It is awesome! Storage “in the Cloud!” Once you start using it on all your PCs… you will never want to go back from a time when your most used files aren’t always available at your fingertips!

They will be selling out, just as the original Kindle did. If you want one, get in line now!

Amazon’s $199 Fire sparks supply, margin questions

“(Reuters) – The rock-bottom price of the new Kindle Fire tablet computer is raising questions about Amazon.com Inc’s ability to keep up with demand and the device’s effect on the company’s already razor-thin profit margins.

Amazon’s billionaire Chief Executive Jeff Bezos unveiled the Fire on Wednesday at a lower-than-expected price of $199.

Bezos said Amazon is making ‘millions’ of the tablets, without being more specific. However, he urged customers to pre-order the device early.

‘When Bezos quipped that people should get their pre-orders in quick, that wasn’t just a sales pitch,’ said Brian Blair, an analyst at Wedge Partners. ‘That was him warning this will sell out.’

When the first Kindle came out in 2007, Amazon hadn’t made enough and the e-reader sold out in less than a week. That meant the company missed out on sales and got the device into fewer customers’ hands, limiting quick adoption.

‘I hope they learned their lesson from the last time,’ said Vinita Jakhanwal, an analyst at IHS iSuppli, which tracks electronic component supply chains.

Amazon spokeswomen didn’t respond to a request for comment on Thursday.

Amazon has lined up about four to five million screens for the Fire in the fourth quarter, which is a ‘fairly significant’ amount, Jakhanwal added.

The technology that is being used for the Fire’s screen has been around for at least a year and already has been produced in high volume, reducing the chances of supply shortages, Jakhanwal said.

One of the components that was in shorter supply in the first half of 2011 was the 10-inch screen, mostly because of Apple Inc’s blockbuster-selling iPad, according to Bradley Gastwirth of technology research firm ABR Investment Strategy.”

This is cross-posted from my VirtZine Blog:

This changes everything! It will truly be the replacement for Citrix XenApp! Imagine a system that delivers any Windows app to ANY OS (it truly doesn’t matter, Linux, Unix, Windows, the Cloud, etc.) all you need is a HTML 5 browser… with NO client installed. You hit a web site, click on the icon, and bang! The app runs exactly as it would normally run in Windows. This is coming soon from VMware. It was the hottest thing seen at VMworld. Watch this video:

Check out Gabe Knuth’s thoughts on this in his Blog at Brian Madden’s site:

After the VMworld buzz, a look at VMware AppBlast

So, the Amazon tablet is almost here… and it will be the big news this week. Sounds like it will be pretty cool. But, to really set the “world on fire.” (Couldn’t resist.) It would have to be a bit less expensive.

On Wednesday, Amazon Will Unveil The “Kindle Fire”

“Last Friday, Amazon sent out invites to a press conference being held this coming Wednesday. They didn’t give away any details in the invite, but given our scoop earlier this month, everyone assumed it was to unveil the new Kindle tablet. We can now confirm this is correct. And we know a bit more.

On Wednesday morning in New York City, Amazon will unveil the Kindle Fire. Yes, this is the name Amazon has settled on, to help differentiate the product from the e-ink Kindles, which will still be very much alive and for sale. And while Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos will show off the Fire on stage, it won’t be ready to ship until the second week of November, we’ve learned.

Everything we’ve previously reported on the hardware remains the same. It will be a 7-inch backlit display tablet that looks similar to the BlackBerry PlayBook. Gdgt’s Ryan Block was able to dig up a bit more about the connection. Apparently, the Kindle Fire looks like a PlayBook because it was designed and built by the same original design manufacturer (ODM), Quanta. Even though Amazon has their own team dedicated to Kindle design and development, Lab 126, they wanted to get the Fire out there in time for this holiday season so they outsourced most of it as a shortcut.

Block’s sources seem very wary of this shortcut move. But having played with a DVT model myself, I can assure you that it’s better than the PlayBook because the software is better and, more importantly, the content available is much better. Amazon has built their own custom version of Android (that looks nothing like Android) and it utilizes their own Android Appstore. While that store doesn’t offer all the apps found in Google’s Android Market, Amazon has been rounding up the big app makers to get them on board for the Fire launch, I’m told.”

e-Sword is the VERY BEST electronic Bible, and you know that I use it ALL the time! Well, thanks to a special deal with Codeweavers, you can get a 25% discount off their “Crossover” product to allow e-Sword to work on Linux and on the Macintosh! Neat! Check it out at the link below!

Codeweavers e-Sword Deal

For those of you that use a Mac, or have made the transition to Ubuntu, or other distros of Linux, this is GREAT news, and, of course, Crossover will allow you to use other Windows software as well as e-Sword!

– Dr. Bill

Amazon had this on their web site today:

“Dear Customer,

I have big news for Amazon Prime members – we’ve just signed a deal with FOX to add a broad selection of movies and TV shows to our unlimited instant streaming service later this fall. The new additions from the FOX library include 24, Arrested Development, The X-Files, Ally McBeal, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and – available on digital video for the first time – The Wonder Years. We now have deals with CBS, NBCUniversal, Sony, and Warner Bros, and adding FOX will bring the total to more than 11,000 movies and TV shows available for unlimited instant streaming.

Since launching earlier this year, we have now doubled the number of titles available in Prime instant videos, and there’s still more to come. Prime membership remains $79 a year, and of course features our unlimited free two-day shipping on millions of products. Prime is one of the best values anywhere.

Prime instant videos can be played on more than 300 HDTVs, Blu-ray players, and set-top boxes.

If you’re a Prime member, start watching now. If not, start your one-month free trial today.

Thanks for being a customer,

Jeff Bezos
Founder & CEO
P.S. You can also watch movies and TV shows instantly at our Amazon Instant Video Store, where we offer more than 100,000 movies and TV shows for rent or purchase, no Prime membership required.”