Category: Computers, Science & Technology

The Department of Homeland Security wants you! (To install your Windows’ security patches, that is!)

Official warning on Windows bugs

“In particular it warned about one bug fixed in the latest batch of security updates that, if exploited, could put a PC under the control of an attacker. Microsoft’s recent update fixed 23 flaws found in Windows software. Many of these bugs are known to malicious hackers and some are already actively exploited on the net.” (Emphasis mine.)

So do your patriotic duty… run Windows Update! If only Windows wasn’t as full of holes as swiss cheese! Yeesh!

A study in Switzerland seems to indicate that most folks only call about four people on their cellphones. Regularly, for me, that sounds about right… maybe even a little high! (I know, I don’t get out much!) I know that I am not a teenager, or even a “twenty-something,” but I just don’t get the “implanted-in-the-ear cellphone” deal! And, surely, if you go to supper with someone, shouldn’t you be talking to them… not someone on a cellphone? But… I guess I curmudgeon! Anyway, the article says that since we have “regular” home phones, and now cell phones, and e-mail… how do we use all these communications tools?

How About an E-mail On That?

“Are people ‘specializing’ their use of different communication channels? For example, do mobile-phone, fixed-line, and e-mail users differentiate their usage of those tools in terms of content, communication partners, and habits? Are new channels affecting how existing channels are used?”

The official, final release of Freespire to 1.0 status is here! With little, or no fanfare, the release went from release candidate, to final version! I installed it, and I am impressed… give it a shot!

You know I don’t like AOL at all. Well, I was watching DL.TV recently and they reported that 25% of AOL employees will soon be laid off! Bad for employees (sorry, dewds!) … but the good news is that AOL is dying! And meanwhile… it was in the news that AOL had released the search histories of many of their customers. I am sure that you may have searched for something you consider private, right? Well, not if you are an AOL customer! AOL stinks!

AOL Apologizes to Customers

“AOL issued an apology yesterday for posting on a public Web site 20 million keyword searches conducted by hundreds of thousands of its subscribers from March to May. But the company’s admission that it made a mistake did little to quell a barrage of criticism from bloggers and privacy advocates who questioned the company’s security practices and said the data breach raised the risk of identity theft. ‘This was a screw-up and we’re angry and upset about it,” the company said in a statement. “Although there was no personally-identifiable data linked to these accounts, we’re absolutely not defending this. It was a mistake, and we apologize.'”

OK, now I feel better about AOL, don’t you?! NOT!!!

Wow! That’s a lot of bloggers! Are there that many readers? Hummmmm….

There’s a blog born every half second

“According to recent statistics from blog-tracking site Technorati, the blogosphere has doubled every six months for the last three years. That’s 175,000 new blogs per day worldwide. Technorati added its 50 millionth blog on July 31, 2006. The site’s State of the Blogosphere report is released every three months by Technorati CEO Dave Sifry. Sifry has been tracking the blogosphere since 2002, and even he’s surprised at the tremendous rate of growth for this quarter. ‘It is over 100 times bigger than it was just 3 years ago,’ Sifry said on his own blog. ‘Whenever I write about these statistics, I’m always asked by people, ‘Can it continue to grow this quickly?’ Frankly, I can’t possibly imagine it continuing to grow at this pace–after all, there are only so many human beings in the world! It has to slow down.'”

Yesterday, August 6th, was the 15th Birthday of the World Wide Web! Wow! Hard to believe the web is only 15 years old… huh? (NOT the Internet, remember… we had e-mail and newsgroups LONG before we had pretty web sites!)

Happy Birthday WWW!

“15 years ago today, Tim Berners-Lee publicly released his WWW project onto the Internet. According to Wikipedia: ‘On August 6, 1991, he [TBL] posted a short summary of the World Wide Web project on the alt.hypertext newsgroup. This date also marked the debut of the Web as a publicly available service on the Internet.’ As the Wikipedia states, this was the point when hypertext was married to the Internet.”

Here’s a cool tip! If you have ANY experience at any programming language… or, even if you are a total noob, you can learn C++ from this tutorial.

C++ Tutorial

“These tutorials explain the C++ language from its basics up to the newest features of ANSI-C++, including basic concepts such as arrays or classes and advanced concepts such as polymorphism or templates. The tutorial is oriented in a practical way, with working example programs in all sections to start practicing each lesson right away.

By the way… I have been on vacation ALL week… that is why I am “catching up” with these little tidbits this evening!

Ubuntu Linux is for servers and human beings!

First Ubuntu Billboard Seen!

I have been playing around with the Kubuntu version (KDE User Interface version) and it is really cool! as desktop Linuxes go, it is one of the best! I still prefer Freespire… but Ubuntu has a LOT going for it! And, it is getting some good publicity and “spin!”

It is time to celebrate! There have been 200 Million downloads of Firefox! Wow! Rock on folks! The Internet world is a safer place to surf!

200,000,000 Downloads of Firefox!

For HTML coders, I have two EXCELLENT Firefox extensions that really show the power of extensions in this AWESOME Web Browser! What if, as a web designer, you could do a quick click in your browser and resize the window to represent the major settings for different resolutions of screens? Well, with the extension called “Yet Another Window Resizer,” you can. You can also add specific resolutions to the standard one’s available. Here’s where to get it:

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2498/

Then, what about a way to do quick page edit in an HTML Editor that is part of Firefox? It is called Codetch. It is nice and kinda like Dreamweaver! Very, very cool! You can get Codetch here:

https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1002/