Dr. Bill | The Computer Curmudgeon

Geeks love comic books, and old geeks… well… you get it! Here is an on-line archive of comic books that are very cool! Check it out! The comics are archived as image files in a file with a “cbr” extension. Simply rename the extension to “rar” and they can be “uncompressed” with IZarc (one of my Geek Software of the Week files!) Then, you can view them with a good image viewer. Rock on!

Comic Book Archive!

From the site FAQ:

“The cbr format is simply a renamed winrar file. The cbr files are a series of jpg files (pictures), compressed into one file for easy storage and access. One comic equals one file. To view the comic you must either uncompress it with the correct software or use a viewing program like cdisplay.”

Remember the photos of the Dell laptop on fire I had in the blog some time back? Well, now Dell is recalling 4.1 million lithium-ion batteries for their notebooks made by Sony. Yike!

Dell To Announce Massive Laptop Battery Recall

“Under rare conditions, Dell said, the batteries could overheat, prompting a risk of fire. The batteries, manufactured by Sony, were found in 25 Dell laptops and eight Dell “mobile workstation”-class notebook PCs. Dell said that it would provide a Web site, www.dellbatteryprogram.com, with instructions on how to determine whether a notebook battery was affected by the recall, and if so, how to ship it back. The batteries are marked with a ‘Dell’ label and a label that says either ‘Made in Japan,”Made in China,’ or ‘Battery Cell Made in Japan Assembled in China.’ There is also a battery number listed on a white sticker. The affected notebook models were sold from April 1, 2004, through July 18, 2006.”

I heard a report on NPR that Dell states that this incident “will not effect it’s bottom line.” Uh huh, and I have some land in Florida you might be interested in too!

By the way, Apple Computer said that they are looking into similar problems with their batteries.

Dewd! This totally rocks! Now you can test your Internet connection speed, and the app that does it looks way cool at the same time! I love this!

SpeedTest.net Bandwidth Tester

Just choose a “pyramid” location and click on it. Then watch the “speedometer” and wait for your final speed report. Notice that your connection speed will vary depending on what test site your choose based on location, number of hops, etc. This is very cool! Even if you don’t care about knowing your Internet connection speed… it is just fun!

Do you have a DLink Router? Is it unsecured (ie., no WAP or WEP enabled?) Then you have a potential that anyone can take over your router! Check out this article:

D-Link Router UPNP Stack Overflow

Universal Plug and Play on the allows a simple string to give full control of the router to a user that has “inside the net” access (such as an open wireless router might have) and even allow them to overwrite the EPROM! Zowie!

Dewd! This is rad! (OK, OK, enough with me trying to be a gamer!) Microsoft annonced a new product that will be a boon to those of you that are gamers… and are creative! They are releasing a tool that will allow you to write your own Xbox games! You can develop them, sell them, trade them, post them to your web sites for folks to download and play… in short, Microsoft hopes that it will develop a whole new game development market with collaboration… like… dare I say it? Open Source? Wow. Who would have thought!?! This was even featured on NPR news yesterday. Zowie! M$ may be making some good moves here. After all, this will definitely add titles to it’s Xbox market!

Build Your Own Xbox Games!

“Microsoft plans to open up its Xbox 360 game development platform to the masses with the launch of XNA Game Studio Express, due out during the holiday season. The Redmond company says such an offering would benefit the entire gaming industry by nurturing the ideas of new development talent and providing beneficial experience in game creation. Anyone with a Windows XP computer would be able to use the software, available for an annual $99 fee. This fee would permit users to build, test and share their games on Xbox 360 consoles, as well as gain access to development resources. Microsoft says this is the first time novice developers would be able to enter the industry without a large initial investment.”

System 76, a company in Colorado, is giving away a strip of four cool looking “Powered by Ubuntu” stickers! All you have to do a send s SASE (Self Addressed Stamped Envelope, for those of you in Rio Linda) to them, and badda-bing… you getta the stickers! Cool!

Free Ubuntu Stickers!

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!