Category: Computers, Science & Technology

Will Japan increase it’s declining citizenry with humans or robots? Some seem to prefer the latter!

Domo arigato, Mr Roboto

“General Motors introduced the first industrial robots in 1961. Since then, Japan’s largest companies have competed to make robots as human as possible. On December 6th Toyota went one step further. After showing off a white android that played a meek rendition of ‘Pomp and Circumstance’ on the violin, Toyota’s boss, Katsuaki Watanabe, announced that the company would make electro-mechanical critters a core business. Four areas look promising: nursing, cleaning homes, manufacturing and ferrying people short distances (in a sort of automatic wheelchair)… Isaac Asimov, a science-fiction writer, famously created the ‘Three Laws of Robotics’ which defined the primacy of man relative to machine. Robots may not injure humans, must obey them, and must protect themselves without violating the first two rules. These sound minatory, but as Japan’s population starts to decline due to the low birth-rate, and its number of elderly swell, robots are seen as a solution.”

The word is, of course, “w00t.” (Spelled with two zeroes.) Check out this interesting article:

“w00t” crowned word of year by U.S. dictionary

“‘w00t,’ an expression of joy coined by online gamers, was crowned word of the year on Tuesday by the publisher of a leading U.S. dictionary. Massachusetts-based Merriam-Webster Inc. said ‘w00t’ — typically spelled with two zeros — reflects a new direction in the American language led by a generation raised on video games and cell phone text-messaging. It’s like saying ‘yay,’ the dictionary said. ‘It could be after a triumph or for no reason at all,’ Merriam-Webster said. Visitors to Merriam-Webster’s Web site were invited to vote for one of 20 words and phrases culled from the most frequently looked-up words on the site and submitted by readers. Runner-up was ‘facebook’ as a new verb meaning to add someone to a list of friends on the Web site Facebook.com or to search for people on the social networking site. Merriam-Webster President John Morse said ‘w00t’ reflected the growing use of numeric keyboards to type words. ‘People look for self-evident numeral-letter substitutions: 0 for O; 3 for E; 7 for T; and 4 for A,’ he said. ‘This is simply a different and more efficient way of representing the alphabetical character.'”

You want to share a file, so you upload it to Microsoft’s FolderShare Site… and, under certain conditions… poof! It deletes the file instead of sharing it! So, the biggest, richest computer software company in the world, deletes your files due to a bug! So, you gotta love the irony of that!

Microsoft bug deletes files instead of sharing them

“The company’s FolderShare application is intended to allow customers to synchronize files across multiple machines, but a bug has ended up deleting them. According to a statement from Microsoft sent to users of the service, an issue with FolderShare deleted files that contained special characters, such as trademark signs, accents and tildas, and the like. The company has asked that users do not empty their FolderShare trash folders until they have verified they had not been affected by the issue. The problem occurred over a three day period from December 3 to 6, it said. Microsoft said it had fixed the issue, however it wanted to alert users to the problem to prevent any lost data. In some cases, the folder containing the files may have been deleted as well, and the company said affected users would have to recreate that folder.”

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Here’s what Ben put in his blog at his new URL, check it out below:

https://www.BenSpin.com

The GameMaster’s BenSpin – 1 – (12/10/07)
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Today is a most exciting day. It is both the restart of my blog and the official start of the BenSpin podcast! I say restart because there was an earlier, failed attempt to start this blog. That failed. Earlier. Right, anyway, point is, look forward to more podcasts and blog entries!

So… check out Ben’s spin on life, the multiverse, and everything at BenSpin.com! Also, you can subscribe to the podcast at:

https://podcast.BenSpin.com

Well, OK, the first one I ever received… you may have been getting them for a long time. But, I was amazed and ticked off this morning that I got an “Invest in this lame stock” stupid spam message on my phone! (I still can’t believe anyone is stupid enough to fall for these things… sigh.) And… yes… I am in the Federal “Do Not Call” Register. You can sign up for that here:

Federal “Do Not Call” Registry Web Site

Of course, it isn’t perfect… obviously. Did I mention all spammers should be lined up and shot? Sigh.

Microsoft has the worse security record in the industry… but at least when they find a fix, they do publish it! Tale advantage of the patches, so you won’t get “pwned!”

Three critical patches on tap from Microsoft

“Next Tuesday’s regular monthly distribution of security patches will include three for DirectX, Windows Media, and Internet Explorer. Of the seven patches in the next Patch Tuesday package from Microsoft, all three critical patches will be for remote code execution issues. The first two, for DirectX and DirectShow as well as the Windows Media Format Runtime, will not require a restart. The final critical patch, intended for Internet Explorer, will require a restart. It is also somewhat likely that this patch may be a cumulative one: Often when Microsoft patches issues with its browsers, it fixes several problems at once. Of the important updates, two are for remote code execution problems within Windows, and require a restart. The other two are for various elevation of privilege issues, and also are intended for Windows itself.”

Sad news for me… CompUSA is dying. They began in 1984… and I was there! At that time I lived in Garland, TX, a suburb of Dallas. CompUSA was “Software House” and was just a local computer and software store. It was very geeky and WAY ahead of it’s time! When they started expanding, they found that someone else already had the “Software House” name in other states, so they became “CompUSA.” Over the years I have gotten some great deals from them, (as long as you don’t buy their “insurance plans!”)

RIP CompUSA 1984-2008

So… goodbye CompUSA… sa-lute! (They will be open until after Christmas… watch for sales!)

OK, so I am not a big Windows Server fan… and all my servers are running CentOS Linux 5.1, BUT I do use Windows Server in my “day job,” and I must admit, this one is looking pretty good. Much better than Vista turned out for the client!

Windows Server 2008 moves to RC1 status

“The second release candidate (thus the number ‘1’) for Windows Server 2008 is slated for availability this afternoon (December 5, 2007), and this version will finally include a new tool that Microsoft took an interest in back in 2005. The latest RC1 for Windows Server 2008 will finally incorporate a tool Microsoft has had in its stable by way of acquisition for well over a year: What was once sold separately as PolicyMaker Standard Edition — a tool for extending the range and function of group policy objects — will now be incorporated into Windows Server, as Group Policy Preferences. Microsoft started actively investing in productivity tools company DesktopStandard back in the spring of 2005, and acquired the company outright in October 2006. Now, Microsoft feels the time is finally ripe to deploy a radical extension to GPO functionality that DesktopStandard had created, as a built-in feature of Windows. If you’ve administered a modern Windows Server for any length of time, you know that GPOs typically set permissions and restrictions that are enforced for designated users or groups of users, or for groups of systems — resources that are identifiable and securable by way of Active Directory. They’re the rules of the network, essentially — those which let you say that users in one group have access by default to one set of printers and are closed off to another, or that certain users can’t add their own macros to Office applications.”

Cool! The new Adobe Flash Player will have streaming HD support, which will benefit our own Dr. Bill.TV Videoblog! Very cool! The better the streaming video gets, the better and more comprehensive the content will become! The future IS IPTV! (Internet Protocol Television)

New Flash player brings streaming HD video support

“The final build of Adobe Flash Player 9 Update 3 — or more affectionately known as ‘Moviestar’ — has been released, adding support for high-definition content. It’s been a long time since YouTube first brought online video to the masses, and now its users are clamoring for better quality. The last couple years have seen an uptick in broadband speeds as well, meaning it’s only logical that Adobe would expand the capabilities of Flash, which has become the dominant delivery method for Web video.But the high-definition support in Flash Player 9 Update 3 is actually a side effect of adding a new video codec called H.264. This is the same standard employed by by Apple’s QuickTime and the video content it sells, and supported as a encoding choice for Blu-ray and HD DVD movies. On the audio said, Flash now supports High Efficiency AAC. Perhaps more importantly, Adobe has enabled the hardware acceleration mode of many graphics cards, when going to full-screen mode. Earlier Flash versions relied on software acceleration, which hindered the player’s ability to scale a video in the best quality possible. In addition, full-screen mode is now enabled on Linux platforms for the first time. NBC Universal and News Corp’s online video startup Hulu is the first partner to offer Flash video in high-definition, although its HD library is currently limited to trailers and sample clips from Universal and Fox Studios. Adobe’s upcoming Media Player software will arrive early next year, once more HD content is available. Adobe Media Player is designed to let users find and watch streaming Flash video outside the Web browser.”

Honestly, no… but, I can dream! Why, you ask? Well, in a recent TWiT, Leo LaPorte mentioned in an offhanded way that if you put his name in Google… misspelled… it will ask you, “Did you mean ‘Leo LapPorte?” and it will have the main link to his site. The conversation implied that if Google corrected your name, and pointed to your site, then you might be an “Internet celebrity!” So, you know what I did! I entered my name misspelled as “Dr. Bill Bayley” (very wrong… not an Irish spelling.) And, viola! Here is the result:

So, hope springs eternal!