Dr. Bill | The Computer Curmudgeon

Wow! This is big!

Google drops price of all monthly Google Drive plans to $2/100GB, $10/1TB, $100/10TB

Written by:Jordan Kahn (Google 9to5) – “Google announced today on its blog that it’s lowering the monthly pricing plans it offers for users buying extra storage on Google Drive. Google attributes the changes to “recent infrastructure improvements” that is allowing it to offer more affordable storage options. Google reminds us that, as always, Drive storage purchased through the new plans counts towards storage for Drive, Gmail and Google+ Photos.

The new plans begin at just $1.99 for 100GB down from the previous $4.99 for the same amount of storage. There is also a new $10 plan for 1TB (down from $50 previously), and a 10TB and up option that starts at $99.99. Google will also continue offering the free 15GB option that comes with your Google account for Drive, Gmail and Google+.

How big is a terabyte anyway? Well, that’s enough storage for you to take a selfie twice a day for the next 200 years and still have room left over for… shall we say… less important things. Like before, storage continues to work across Drive, Gmail and Google+ Photos. And, of course, the 15GB plan remains free.

The new pricing plans for Google Drive are available now through www.google.com/settings/storage. Users that are already signed up for a monthly plan will be automatically switched to the new, better plans.”

Every year there are two hacking contests one is called “Pwnium” and the other is “Pwn2Own.” This year there is four million dollars in prize money between the two contests!

So far, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, Google Chrome, Adobe Flash and Adobe Reader have already been hacked. Now, at first, this may seem like really bad news! However, it really isn’t. The idea behind these hacking competitions is for top level hackers to come together in teams to try to hack the security of popular software packages. These hacking attempts, if successful, are then documented, and the vendors can quickly close those “holes.” So, in the long run, it hardens the software that we use as consumers, and makes it harder for regular hackers to break through the security of these packages.

Google Chrome and its Chromium operating system, used in their Chromebooks, proved to be very secure but still “hack-able.” However, Google moved quickly to close the holes that were found; making Google Chrome, and their Chromium operating system, still highly secure! This, combined with the fact that they update their software automatically, without user intervention, provides a very secure experience for the user.

The hacking team from China took down Safari and Adobe Flash on the second day of the Pwn2Own” event, and, they also completed the contest with a successful zero day exploit of Adobe Flash. Thier hacking team, called the “Keen team,” earned a $40,000 prize for Safari, and $75,000 for Flash. They said they’ll donate a portion of their winnings to charities representing families of the missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH 370.

These “white hat” hackers provide a service to the computing community to help us harden software. And this is just more evidence that their heart is in the right place!

Some rumors are coming up prior to Microsoft’s build 2014 conference which will be held in San Francisco. The code name for the next version of Windows, which will be called Windows 9 at release, is “Threshold.” The Windows PC client, the Windows server, and the Windows phone and Xbox are all integrated to a degree, and will be part of this release.

Windows 9 will come in three separate types: there will be a “modern” consumer SKU, a traditional PC SKU, and a traditional enterprise business SKU. The “modern” SKU will be focused on delivering Windows RT apps in this version will be available for ARM” and Intel-based devices but won’t be optimized to run desktop Win32 apps.

For those of us that were hoping that Windows 9 would free us from the evil “Metro” interface, don’t hold your breath! Microsoft is still trying to shove this down our throats, even though they will make it somewhat easier to have a more traditional interface; they are only tweaking Metro and adding an updated version to the Metro design language interface. So, Microsoft is still trying to force us to do their bidding when it comes to how we use our computers! Hopefully, the upshot of this is that we’ll see more people, and perhaps even more businesses, seriously consider Linux as an option for their desktops!

It amazes me that Microsoft is arrogant enough to believe that their customers will swallow anything that they throw out there, and not consider other options. Essentially, they’re digging their own grave! If they would just give us an interface that we can work with on a regular desktop, they could hold on to their large market share for PC operating systems. After all, all they would have to do is create an option within Control Panel to select a business desktop with a more Windows 7 like interface or, alternatively, provide an option for the fluffy, boxy, ugly “Metro” interface that they’re trying to foist upon us! But, apparently they’re not that smart.

Google Play is having it’s second anniversary this week as well, and to celebrate, Google is having a sale on some Play Store items. Check them out! They are different depending on where you live, so you will have to check it out yourself!

And, I know, some of you don’t care. Like, mainly the Gamemaster!

The Raspberry Pi computer had its second birthday this week. The Raspberry Pi Foundation, with help from Broadcom, is working toward an Open Source graphics driver for the Raspberry Pi computer.

This new graphics driver is supposed to enable hardware-accelerated graphics for Linux, Android and other operating systems, running on the Raspberry Pi. The Raspberry Pi Foundation is promising a $10,000 reward for the first person making Quake III run at a decent framerate on its hardware.

I also saw an article this week that reported that someone had hooked a lot of Raspberry Pi machines together into one array that allowed that new configuration to be essentially a supercomputer. There’s a lot of cool stuff happening in the Raspberry Pi computing space.

As I’ve mentioned, I’ve ordered the Raspberry Pi, and it came in… I just haven’t had a chance to play with it yet; and when I do, I hope to do a walk-through report on that, either on the Dr. Bill show or on the Hand Held Hack… I’m not sure which. So, stay tuned for that!

So, it was announced this week that Windows 8.1, Update 1 has leaked into the public. The odd thing is, it seems to have been leaked by Microsoft… from their servers! How does that work?

On Wednesday of this week, Microsoft released the RTM of Windows 8.1, Update 1; the update includes changes to the Metro UI, the taskbar bar appearing in the Modern environment with a permanent shutdown button on the start screen, and some other minor fixes.

Microsoft is also ending support for Windows XP next month, which means that Microsoft will not be providing any further security updates for Windows XP.

So, now’s the time to move on to a more secure operating system! Since Windows XP currently holds just under 33% of the market share of all operating systems, obviously, a large group of users are at risk! This means that this group of users had better move on to either a later version of Windows, or move to the free Linux operating system, of which there are many distributions, but as you know, my favorite is Linux Mint!

Though, I must it admit that with my new MacBook Pro, I’m getting very close to recommending that people move to Mac as heartily as I recommend that they moved to Linux! (What can I say? I’m excited!)