Dr. Bill | The Computer Curmudgeon

Our friendly neighborhood graphics guru, Scott Redmon, has done it for us again! Check out the cool Christmas header! I love the Santa with attitude! Thanks, Scott!

Imagine Mario Bros. with the game maps always changing with a random pattern… you could play forever! Now imagine that you didn’t have to buy a game, or a console! (A big difference from all the folks that are standing in line for the Wii and the PS3!) This on-line game is written in Java and was part of a contest to write a Java based video game.

Infinite Mario Bros.

Controls:
Use the arrow keys to move Mario around.
Press A to run faster and to pick up shells.
Press S to jump.
Press F1 to toggle Scale 2x scaling.

Interesting from both a programming and gaming point of view!

So, obviously you should pay for a legitimate copy of anything that you install on your PC, but how many of you have had bogus “errors” of improperly authorized Microsoft products? That is, it it is a real, purchased package, but it fails authentication anyway. Well, if that happens with Office 2007… you are hosed, dewd!

Office 2007’s “secret kill switch”

“Microsoft’s battle with pirates, which started as early as 1975 with Bill Gates’ infamous ‘Open Letter to Hobbyists,’ continues on in 2007, as the company has built a feature into Office 2007: Reduced Functionality Mode. While Microsoft has been fairly coy about whether or not this feature exists in the latest Office release, a new Knowledge Base article on their site confirms that it will apply to all Office 2007 products. Reduced Functionality mode is triggered whenever Office 2k7 fails activation. This can happen when the program is initially run after installation, or if it fails a subsequent check following an Office update. Once the switch is thrown, Office continues to run, but with the following restrictions:

Despite what some media outlets are reporting, the Reduced Functionality Mode is not new. It already applies to Office 2003 and even Office XP versions. While the approach undoubtedly has at least some impact on piracy, the process is not 100 percent foolproof: some legitimate users have reported problems with the activation process.”

So, remember, “just say, ‘NO!'” to Office 2007! Use OpenOffice.org! Free, excellent, and no “kill switch” to contend with!

Microsoft is now saying that only Novell SUSE Linux customers are free from infringing on their intellectual property. Riiiight!

Novell disputes claim by Microsoft on patents

“In a twist that underscored the unlikely nature of their alliance, Novell Chief Executive Ron Hovsepian publicly distanced his company Monday from Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer’s statement last week that the open-source Linux operating system contains patented Microsoft technology. ‘Importantly, our agreement with Microsoft is in no way an acknowledgment that Linux infringes upon any Microsoft intellectual property,’ Hovsepian wrote in a letter to the open-source community, posted on Novell’s Web site. He added, ‘When we entered the patent-cooperation agreement with Microsoft, Novell did not agree or admit that Linux or any other Novell offering violates Microsoft patents.’ Responding to a question about the Novell deal at a conference in Seattle last week, Ballmer said that Linux ‘uses our patented intellectual property’ and that one result of the pact was to be ‘appropriately compensated’ for that intellectual property. Novell’s Suse Linux is one of many varieties of the open-source operating system, created by worldwide communities of programmers. In his remarks, Ballmer said that, because of the Novell deal, ‘only a customer who has Suse Linux actually has paid properly for the use of intellectual property from Microsoft.'”

FUD, or “Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt” is what Microsoft wants to spread about Linux, because they know it is their biggest true competitor. They are evil. Don’t be swayed.

The most famous “wiki” is probably Wikipedia. In case you don’t know, “wikis” are web sites that can be updated, essentially by anyone, to share collaborative information. Now, there is beginning to be a demand made on Enterprises (large businesses) to bring Wikis into the corporate world. And, there is resistance. Why? Can you say, “Lack of control?”

Wikis Are Alive and Kicking in the Enterprise

“If you haven’t heard that cry already, chances are you will soon, as the use of wikis in enterprise environments spreads like wildfire. Proliferating virally, wiki usage has grown exponentially in recent months, along with other consumer-centric technologies—including blogs, podcasts and RSS—that have made their way into the workplace thanks in part to the influx of the tech-savvy entry-level employees of so-called Generation Y. A wiki, which means ‘quick’ in Hawaiian, is a Web site that enables users to easily edit and update shared content. Computer programmer Ward Cunningham originated the wiki concept and gave it its name more than a decade ago. After slow growth initially, wiki use has exploded in the past couple of years. Wiki technology, which has been popularized by the widely used Web encyclopedia Wikipedia, took a big leap in mind share when Google purchased wiki software maker JotSpot for an undisclosed amount on Oct. 31.”

Have you noticed more spam lately? Well, it is real. Some Russians running a botnet network are pumping out way more spam than normal!

‘Pump-and-Dump’ Spam Surge Linked to Russian Bot Herders

“The recent surge in e-mail spam hawking penny stocks and penis enlargement pills is the handiwork of Russian hackers running a botnet powered by tens of thousands of hijacked computers. Internet security researchers and law enforcement authorities have traced the operation to a well-organized hacking gang controlling a 70,000-strong peer-to-peer botnet seeded with the SpamThru Trojan. According to Joe Stewart, senior security researcher at SecureWorks, in Atlanta, the gang functions with a level of sophistication rarely seen in the hacking underworld. For starters, the Trojan comes with its own anti-virus scanner—a pirated copy of Kaspersky’s security software—that removes competing malware files from the hijacked machine. Once a Windows machine is infected, it becomes a peer in a peer-to-peer botnet controlled by a central server. If the control server is disabled by botnet hunters, the spammer simply has to control a single peer to retain control of all the bots and send instructions on the location of a new control server.”

Please help eradicate spam! How? Never buy ANYTHING you get from an unsolicited message. Go out of your way not to. Once they can’t make money, they will stop. Do your part!

You HAVE to be kidding! You would think Microsoft would have “talked among themselves” and made sure that this embarrassing issue would not have happened!

It’s true: The Zune is incompatible with Vista

“I had heard the Windows Media Player DRM and the Zune DRM were not going to be compatible. (According to this Knowledge Base article, Zune supports Windows Media Player 10’s DRM, but not WMP 11’s. And ‘Zune software and devices only play protected music files from Zune Marketplace.’) That was bad enough. But there is absolutely no way Microsoft would allow the Zune to work only with Windows XP SP2 and Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 Update Rollup 2, I said. It is going to have to support Vista — or at least have a clear-cut upgrade path and timetable as to when Vista support will be provided. But on November 14, Microsoft rolled out the Zune player, which doesn’t work with Vista. And so far, the Softies haven’t provided any public info (that I’ve heard/seen) about when the company will introduce a patch or update enabling the Zune to work with Vista. I already know Microsoft’s justification: Vista only RTM’d on November 8. So there was no way that the Zune team could have made sure the final Vista bits would work with Zunes. All I can say is Microsoft really needs to have a Vista update — or at least a public Vista support strategy — for Zune by the time the company does the business launch of Vista on November 30.”

This is one of those, “I gotta get one” things! A T-Shirt that you can wear that actually allows your “air guitar” playing to generate sound. Whoa!

Australian air guitar T-shirt actually rocks

Australian scientists have invented a T-shirt that allows air guitarists to play actual music as they strum the air. The T-shirt, created by scientists from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), is called a ‘wearable instrument shirt.’ The shirt has censors in each elbow and sleeves to detect and interpret the air guitarist’s arm movements — one arm chooses chords and the other strums imaginary strings. The gestures are then connected wirelessly to guitar audio samples to generate the music. ‘It’s an easy to use, virtual instrument that allows real time music making, even by players without significant musical or computing skills,’ said CSIRO engineer Richard Helmer. ‘It allows you to jump around and the sound generated is just like an original mp3,’ Helmer said in a statement on Monday.”