Category: Computers, Science & Technology

Who’d “thunk” it? With only two satellite radio companies out there, who would have thought that they would approve of this merger?

Justice Dept. approves XM + Sirius merger

The US Justice Department has approved the merger between XM and Sirius satellite radio services, stating that it could not find any evidence that the combination would substantially reduce competition. In what has seemed like an eternity, the first steps towards a single satellite radio entity began Monday as the DOJ approved the $13 billion deal. XM and Sirius first announced their ‘merger of equals’ last February, with Sirius’ Mel Karmazin assuming the role of CEO, and XM’s chairman Gary Parsons taking the chairman’s position. The two companies had hoped at the time to finish the merger by the end of 2007. However, both the Justice Department and the FCC took their time in studying the merger — even causing the two sides to extend the agreement through May 1 (it was set to expire in February). Broadcast industry groups such as the National Association of Broadcasters had voiced their opposition to the deal, saying it was anti-competitive. In its defense the two companies argued that since satellite radio’s creation, the entertainment industry had changed. Satellite radio was now competing with devices such as music players and other entertainment devices, they claimed. From the DOJ Antitrust Division’s statement, it appears as if regulators agreed, adding other factors played into their decision. The reasons for the approval included ‘a lack of competition between the parties in important segments even without the merger; the competitive alternative services available to consumers; technological change that is expected to make those alternatives increasingly attractive over time; and efficiencies likely to flow from the transaction that could benefit consumers,’ according to the statement.”

Mozilla Firefox Version 3 is just about ready according to Mozilla’s VP!

Mozilla says Firefox 3 ready for prime-time

“A new version of Mozilla’s popular Firefox Web browser is ready for download with improved security and memory use as the tiny company takes a stab at Microsoft Corp’s dominant Internet Explorer. The program’s creators told Reuters on Thursday that the privately-held company’s trial version of Firefox 3 browser is ready for the masses to use after months of development. Until now, the company has discouraged average Internet users from moving on from Firefox 2, which was launched in October 2006. ‘In many ways it (Firefox 3) is much more stable than anything else out there,’ Mozilla Corp Vice President of Engineering Mike Schroepfer said in an interview. Key rivals to Firefox are market leader Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Apple Inc’s Safari browser. Engineers at Mozilla are still putting the finishing touches on the software and hope to release the final version of Firefox 3 by the end of June, Schroepfer said.”

One of the great “hard science” science fiction writers passed away today… Arthur C. Clarke. He wrote science fiction that had a lot of clear, exacting science fact in it, that made his flights of fancy more believable. He was also credited with the “invention” of the earth orbiting satellites that make the communications that we take for granted today, possible. He will be missed.

Arthur C. Clarke, science fiction author, dies at 90

“Arthur C. Clarke, a writer whose seamless blend of scientific expertise and poetic imagination helped usher in the space age, died Wednesday in Colombo, where he had lived since 1956. He was 90. The author of almost 100 books, Clarke was an ardent promoter of the idea that humanity’s destiny lay beyond the confines of Earth. It was a vision served most vividly by ‘2001: A Space Odyssey,’ the classic 1968 science-fiction film he created with the director Stanley Kubrick and the novel of the same title that he wrote as part of the project. His work was also prophetic: His detailed forecast of telecommunications satellites in 1945 came more than a decade before the first orbital rocket flight. Clarke’s influence on public attitudes toward space was acknowledged by U.S. astronauts and Russian cosmonauts, by scientists like Carl Sagan and by movie and television producers. Gene Roddenberry credited Clarke’s writings with encouraging him to pursue his ‘Star Trek’ project in the face of indifference from television executives. In his later years, after settling in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Clarke continued to bask in worldwide acclaim as both a scientific sage and the pre-eminent science fiction writer of the 20th century. In 1998, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. Clarke played down his success in foretelling a globe-spanning network of communication satellites. ‘No one can predict the future,’ he always maintained. But as a science fiction writer he could not resist drawing up timelines for what he called ‘possible futures.’ Far from displaying uncanny prescience, these conjectures mainly demonstrated his lifelong, and often disappointed, optimism about the peaceful uses of technology – from his calculation in 1945 that atomic-fueled rockets could be no more than 20 years away to his conviction in 1999 that ‘clean, safe power’ from ‘cold fusion’ would be commercially available in the first years of the new millennium.”

My early science fiction habit was cut on books by Arthur C. Clarke, Issac Asimov, and Larry Niven. To know that Sir Arthur was also an inspiration to Gene Roddenberry to develop Star Trek ties him even more to my favorite avocation of reading Star Trek books, and enjoying the latest versions of Star Trek lore, like Star Trek Phase II (formerly Star Trek: New Voyages.)

I mentioned on the podcast this weekend that if you wanted to update Microsoft Office then you had to more than go to Windows Update. Well, you can update it all, by going to this link (using Internet Explorer, of course.)

Microsoft Update

Pretty cool. Microsoft Update. Give it a shot!

So, Happy St. Patty’s Day! Being of Irish extraction (Bailey, come on!) I appreciate St. Patty’s Day… but I always forget to wear green! Sigh! Anyway, Google today is doing it’s logo change thing. Kinda cool!

So, have a great St. Patrick’s day… and enjoy the green of Spring as well!

If you use Office (and, why aren’t you using OpenOffice!?), you need to apply some patches from Microsoft!

Four critical Office issues patched

“Microsoft has addressed critical issues in Office and Office Web Components, as well as specific issues within Excel and Outlook. All the issues deal with some type of remote code execution risk, according to Microsoft. The first, dealing with the entire suite, is a critical issue for Office 2008 and an important one for XP and 2003 SP2, as well as Office for Mac 2004. Two flaws address memory corruption problems, including an issue with cell parsing. A specially crafted Excel file could take advantage of the latter, while the former attends to an overall problem with malformed Office files. In Office’s Web Components feature, URL parsing and DataSource security holes have been patched. A total of seven different flaws within Excel were patched in that applications security patch, which deal with problems the company previously highlighted in an off-cycle advisory issued in January. The issues affect Office 2000, XP, 2003, and 2007, and are rated Critical in Office 2000. Altogether the patch fixes data validation record, file import, style record, formula parsing, rich text validation, conditional formating, and macro validation problems within the software.”

And, we are not talking some guys in the mail room! These are folks that should be very competent Windows users. Check out the article excerpt below…

Microsoft emails reveal problems with Vista

“Senior Microsoft staff complained about misleading advertising and Windows Vista incompatibility issues in a series of embarrassing emails made public during a court case. In the emails, published online by The New York Times, corporate vice president for Windows product management Mike Nash said he ‘got burned’ after purchasing a notebook computer advertised as ‘Vista Capable’ that was incapable of running the full version of the operating system. Even more embarrassingly, Microsoft chief operating officer Jon A. Shirley chose not to upgrade one of his computers to Vista after discovering it was not compatible with several of his peripheral devices including a printer and two scanners. Microsoft staff also discussed a decision to lower Vista’s hardware requirements to encourage sales, with one manager warning the move would result in ‘a complete tragedy.’ In one email sent to senior Microsoft staff including general manager for Windows Brad Brooks, Mr Nash said he had wound up with a ‘$2100 email machine’ after buying a notebook that was incapable of running the full version of Windows Vista. ‘Are we seeing this from a lot of customers?’ Mr. Nash asked in the email. ‘I know that I chose my laptop (a Sony TX770P) because it had the vista (sic) logo and was pretty disappointed that it not only wouldn’t run Glass, but more importantly wouldn’t run Movie Maker.’ ‘Glass’ is an internal code-name for the standard Windows Vista user interface shown in advertisements, officially called Aero. Movie Maker is a video editing program that comes with the operating system. The messages, which reveal senior Microsoft executives suffered the same problems with Windows Vista reported by consumers, were made public as a US judge granted class-action status to a lawsuit filed against the company.”

Whoa! No wonder so many businesses are telling suppliers to take Vista off the new computers they order! No driver support, ton’s of issues, and a sorry excuse for an operating system… yep, sounds like M$!

This is, without doubt, the easiest way to install Apache, MySQL and PHP on Microsoft Windows! I have used it in both test and production environments, and it is rock solid… now, there is a new, updated version.

WAMPserver Web Site

If you haven’t tried it… go for it! If you already use it, it is time to upgrade, the versions of the software included are:

• Apache 2.2.8
• MySQL 5.0.51a
• PHP 5.2.5

A new communications suite called: “Unison” was introduced at CeBIT this week. It combines Open Source technologies and offers both Windows clients and a single, unified Linux-based server.

Everything in Unison on Linux

“Software developer Unison has launched what it claimed is the world’s first fully-unified communications suite based on Linux. Announced at CeBIT, the suite (also simply called Unison) combines IP telephony, email and instant messaging with diary, address book and presence capabilities, all in a single Linux server. It is available free as a public beta. ‘You can get all these elements separately on Linux, but this is the first time they have all been in one server,’ said Rurik Bradbury, Unison’s chief marketing officer. Other unified communications (UC) schemes, such as Microsoft’s Office Communications Server (OCS) can require three or more servers to do the same thing, he added. ‘If you’re reasonably familiar with Linux, you can deploy Unison in a couple of hours, and have a complete system running for a company of perhaps 50 or 60 people in half a day,’ he said. The server software works with a Unison client program for Windows PCs. This provides a genuine alternative to Microsoft’s combination of Exchange and Outlook, Bradbury claimed. ‘We’re amazed no-one has done this before – build both a client and a server. Others have either one or the other,’ he said. He added that a Linux version of the client will come later this year. Unison is aimed at 20- to 300-seat organizations, but the US-based company plans to add server clustering in the future to support more. It is partly based on open source technology, such as Thunderbird for email and Jabber for instant messaging, and partly developed by Unison’s own programmers.”

IE has been one of the worst browsers insofar as adhering to Internet standards. Try, it doesn’t at all! Microsoft has had the attitude, “Dewd, we MAKE the standards, suck it up!” But now they MAY be getting in line… I sure hope so! Designing web sites and having to “allow” for IE is getting old!

Microsoft’s IE architect: IE8 is what we’ve been building up to

BetaNews: “FROM MIX 08 – For Internet Explorer platform architect Chris Wilson, IE8 is more than just a new version. It’s the realization of an effort that began with IE7 to build the best Web browser for both developers and consumers. ‘IE7 was the start to IE8,’ Wilson told BetaNews this afternoon in Las Vegas. It’s not a secret that Microsoft largely abandoned its browser after IE6 and rebuilt the development team from scratch for IE7. Although it brought a number of much-needed improvements, version 7 was only a stepping stone for the company on the road to IE8. According to Wilson, IE8 will deliver everything that Microsoft has wanted to do from the beginning, and in turn finally get Internet Explorer back to the same level as its competitors in terms of features, performance and standards support. That’s not going to be an easy job, but the company says it remains committed to the task. ‘We have to rebuild our credibility on the Web,’ Tim O’Brien, director of the Platform Strategy Group at Microsoft, acknowledged to BetaNews. A key component of this is reaching out to the Internet community and listening to feedback — much of which revolves around the pain developers experience when trying to make their Web sites and applications compatible with IE. To that end, Microsoft has introduced a minor but far-reaching change in the way IE8 will render sites, adhering to stricter Web standards than IE7, which vastly improved upon IE6 but still had quirks in its standards implementation. The goal is to deliver full CSS 2.1 support in the final release of IE8, Microsoft has said. While it seems a logical shift, especially when considering that Microsoft wants its own online services to work for the growing number of Firefox and Safari users, the move is an about-face from a decision in January in which Wilson explained IE8’s standards mode would require a special HTML tag to activate. Microsoft was worried about breaking existing sites designed for IE7’s standards mode.”