September 07, 2008
0 to 17,600,000 in 10 days!
Well the 0 is low but I'll bet real money that we weren't even at the the first million on Aug 28th.
Posted by Peter at 09:03 AM
It only takes a few min to be infected
Any customer who's ever talked to me on the phone knows I say there are three things that can wreck a computer:
1. Overheating2. Electrical Surge
3. Teenagers and relatives
Well yesterday my youngest proved it, I was cooking Brisole (I don't use the sauce I bake it) and left my laptop on.
My youngest jumped on the account for a few min since it was already up, when I noticed that at the stove I spoke up and he got off.
After dinner I checked the computer and lo and behold there issues where there and waiting for me that I spent most of the night fixing. He couldn't have been on for more than 5 min.
If I had put on a passworded screen saver he would have had to reboot and go into his own account with limited rights and I would have saved my evening.
So remember only a few minutes separates a clean machine and an infected one.
Posted by Peter at 08:46 AM
September 05, 2008
The fine print is there for a reason
As you might have heard Google has started a browser, as you might not have heard the EULA that you have to agree to for downloading and using it was somewhat what is the word? Interesting:
bloggers soon started to report that some things contained in Chrome’s EULA (especially in section 11) were at the very least worrisome with Google receiving the rights to do anything it chooses with any content we transfer to the WWW via Google’s browser. And of course when people started reading the document they could not help but notice very inappropriate terms in the license.
Well the folks at Little Green Footballs report that the ELUA will be modified:
Google's Rebecca Ward, Senior Product Counsel for Google Chrome, now tells Ars Technica that the company tries to reuse these licenses as much as possible, "in order to keep things simple for our users." Ward admits that sometimes "this means that the legal terms for a specific product may include terms that don't apply well to the use of that product" and says that Google is "working quickly to remove language from Section 11 of the current Google Chrome terms of service. This change will apply retroactively to all users who have downloaded Google Chrome."
That's nice but I'll wait till it is actually changed before I bother to download anything. I also think the next statement is particularly disingenuous;
It's worth noting that the EULA is largely unenforceable because the source code of Chrome is distributed under an open license. Users could simply download the source code, compile it themselves, and use it without having to agree to Google's EULA. The terms of the BSD license under which the source code is distributed are highly permissive and impose virtually no conditions or requirements on end users.
You tell me how many avg folk who are going to be bothering to download and compile source.
Posted by Peter at 10:23 PM
September 04, 2008
Hope for Cards fans
You might remember two years back there was an odd reverse correlation between the fortunes of Sony and the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team.
Well in St. Louis where they are 10 games out they must hope it is still true.
Posted by Peter at 02:06 PM
September 03, 2008
A real game of Monnopoly
Microsoft is often critiqued for being a heavy handed monopoly and this is not an unfair statement. What happens now when the other great monopoly on the internet decides to take them on head on?
Yesterday's frenzied launch of Chrome, Google's new Web browser, was the company's powerful but understated salvo to gain more influence inside people's computers.Rather than being just a program to view websites, Chrome behaves a lot like a desktop operating system. A welcome page lists your most visited websites with thumbnails that you click to open. You can also create a shortcut for favourite online destinations right on the desktop, as opposed to a bookmark.
It will be very interesting to see this fight.
Posted by Peter at 07:29 AM
August 31, 2008
xp3 + IE8 + wrong order = trouble
Well this just makes we want to run out and install them:
The warning was released on the IE blog today that if you install IE8 and then add the service pack 3 to Windows and then update IE to Beta 2 released today, that neither SP# nor IE8 can be uninstalled.
Joy.
Posted by Peter at 11:11 PM
August 30, 2008
A practical demonstration for a better search
It can be very annoying to try to do a search and end up with a bunch of unrelated pages that you don't want.
One of the tricks of the trade when trying to generate hits on a web site is coming up with a combination of words that people are searching for so that search engines pick them up. For example if you put the words "swimsuit issue" into a post then it will show up when the annual Sports Illustrated issue is searched for.
Over the last few days several web sites that commented on the relatively unknown vice presidental Pick Sarah Palin and mentioned that she had been a contestant in a beauty contest found their hits going through the roof as pretty much the whole world is doing a search for info on her and their word combos matched the searches.
The big question for someone trying to actually find something is to try to avoid those unneeded sites.
The solution to this problem is twofold:
1. put relevant items in quotes.
Hard quote will force an actual match rather than two words that appear in different spots in a post.
2. use combinations with the + sign to force specific combinations
This will make sure that you actually get the subject you want instead of tangential ones.
Remember the smarter your search the more likely you will find what you want.
Posted by Peter at 11:11 AM
August 29, 2008
Unauthorized? I hope you like black
Looks like Microsoft intends to mark pirated versions of their software with the Scarlet Letter, well maybe not Scarlet as such...
Microsoft explains that if a copy of Windows fails the validation process ‘users will discover on their next logon that their desktop has changed to a plain black background from whatever was there previously.’ You’ll be able to change the background back to whatever you want, but it will revert to a black screen again after an hour. As well as this, copies of Windows deemed to not be genuine will also have a translucent watermark above the system tray, which Microsoft calls a ‘persistent desktop notification.’
Hey it makes sense, in olden days Pirates who weren't hung were branded too.
An aside, does it bother anyone other than me that the #1 google search for Hawthorne's book was a crib notes type site?
Posted by Peter at 03:39 PM
August 28, 2008
Jeromy Patriquin saves the day again!
You know your vacation has ended when everything breaks. Yesterday the back sliding door started having problems, my son pinged me at work to say the oven is broken and in the middle of talking to a super my other Power Supply for my Dell E1505 died.
Since I have to work today at 1 p.m.and got home at 2:30 a.m. this morning I didn't have a lot of time for a replacement so eBay wasn't an option this time so I checked locally.
Well the closest laptop repair shop under a mile was closed, 500 yards from it is a Staples, as they carry Dells I figured I'd try there.
Well they had a universal power supply for only $105 (a new power supply from dell is $70), however their clerk couldn't say that it would charge the machine only that it power it.
Well with under two hours left before the start of the shift I took a trip to Gardner to see Jeromy Patriquin from our old podcast.
I should have gone there first, for $45 he had a new compatible power supply in stock and even now I'm typing this post on my now working laptop.
So three cheers for Jeromy again and if you are in the Gardner Mass area and need physical pc repair or a part keep him in mind.
Posted by Peter at 12:19 PM
August 26, 2008
I guess she needs to get a 3rd life
This story gives the phrase "get a life' a whole new meaning:
A woman is charged with plotting the real-life abduction of a boyfriend she met through the virtual reality Web site "Second Life."
I guess the suggestion to my son that he avoids 2nd life is a better one than I thought
Posted by Peter at 05:20 PM
August 25, 2008
Hiwired in St. Georges
Here are a few shots of St. Georges Bermuda from Wednesday of last week:
That is the outside of the post office at St. Georges. That was taken after we returned by ferry from Hamilton.
This is from the ferry as we went into Hamilton for the street fair that day.
This is a singer from the Harbor Nights.
One thing about that post office in St. Georges...
There is a free internet terminal that is for public use 15 min at a time. This was the only time in the entire week that I actually touched a computer.
Posted by Peter at 10:02 AM
August 24, 2008
who's got the XP Amazon's got the XP
I see that during my week in Bermuda some things haven't changed as the Amazon blog point out:
In the past few weeks things reached a sort of fever pitch. There was this survey, revealing a third of Vista users downgraded to XP. Taiwan is now looking into a lawsuit to hold onto the old OS. Microsoft is playing both sides. On the one hand they’re after naysayers with the “Mojave Experiment” campaign, which Mike Elgan compares to being “punk’d” by Ashton Kutcher here. On the other hand they’ve started a blog to keep track of Windows 7 developments, fueling speculation that the software giant is nearly ready to forget about Vista itself.
Well it is still for sale at Amazon.
Via Glenn whose blog I'm slowing catching up on.
Posted by Peter at 01:57 PM
Back from Berumda
Just back in the door from the island with an awful lot of e-mails to catch up with.
I'll be posting some photos over the next few weeks as the wife and I finish unpacking.
As you will see i was only anywhere near a computer twice so I haven't the faintest idea what has gone on in technology this week, in fact We were so relaxed I couldn't remember the number day it was.
Anyways I'll be back to work by Wednesday and semi-regular blogging will return once I finish trading my sea legs for pc legs.
Posted by Peter at 01:03 PM