August 14, 2008
An interesting problem
These days laptop are much more common and must less expensive but even so a budget is a budget as this ZD Net story explains:
as I watch my high school budget dwindle for last-minute summer purchases in favor of a desperately-needed elementary and middle school tech refresh, I have to ask myself, should I buy 20 laptops for 40 desktops? People can argue the math, but when it comes down to it, I can still buy a lot more reasonably-equipped desktops for the same amount I’d pay for 20 laptops. In fact, looking at the state contract pricing, with my current budget, I can put a new desktop computer in every classroom. On the other hand, I can replace roughly half of my teachers’ aging laptops.
He agonizes of this a bit but In my opinion the bottom line comes at the end of the story:
Of course, I also know that all of the desktops we purchased three years ago are running like champs. The laptops we purchased at the same time are generally in dismal shape. I feel purchase orders for desktops coming on…I just hope they’re headed for the desks of understanding teachers.
Hey I live in Massachusetts save your budget its going to be a long ride.
Posted by Peter at 03:21 PM | Comments (0)
August 12, 2008
I hope they do a better job then John Bell Hood
Google maps are very popular and useful things that are used regularly in news stories, however their use doesn't preclude actually knowing geography. Because apparently according to this map the Russians are following Sherman's route through Georgia:
Did you know that Russian troops are thrusting into the outskirts of Savannah, Georgia? That's what readers will learn from a Google Maps graphic accompanying a news story about Russian incursions into Georgia — the nation-state in the Caucasus, not the Caucasian-pride-ridden state in the southern United States.
Then again maybe its because as of today Google Maps shows Georgia as blank.
A closer look shows that Azerbaijan and Armenia are just as blank. Was that the case last week or does google know something we don't?
Posted by Peter at 10:00 AM
July 25, 2008
And the money just clicks away....
One of the big disadvantages to the internet is the ease of it. For example it is very easy to give out info, it is very easy (in some cases downright hard) to avoid porn and popups but the thing that can really nail you is how easy it is to spend money.
As you might guess from previous posts I'm a fan of the Doctor Who audios at Big Finish. Unfortunately with the dollar weak these days the new ones run nearly $30 each with shipping. I bough a sub which gives a discount on new ones but for the 110+ back issues $30 each is but kinda pricey for me. Even US sites are in the $20-25 range with shipping so I've been checking out ebay.
For the last two months I've been a flurry of bidding. This week some fellow in Florida was selling a couple of dozen of them at $13-15 each so I pounced. Felt really good about it, saved 67% off the list price and have enjoyed the stuff I got. Then the credit card bill came in....
I found that I literally spent hundreds of dollars in 60 days that I normally would never spend. What's worse I had teased my wife about the very same thing over Pfaltzgraff items just a couple of months ago. They were all just 10 or 15 dollar charges but add up dozens and viola there goes a bunch of money that isn't paying the electric and cable bills.
So her is my advice. When you buy something online either using paper and pen or using notepad write down the amount you have spent and keep a running total. Keep it next to your pc and you will be less likely to bust your budget online.
...Oh PS the wife insists I say that pfaltzgraff makes high quality stuff that is worth having. Just watch the budget.
Posted by Peter at 09:48 PM
July 20, 2008
He who lives by the suit dies by the suit
I'll wager that a lot of our customers will get a kick out of this story:
Stephanie Lenz is an angry Pennsylvania mother who refuses to back down from the music industry.Lenz's attorneys were in federal district court on Friday morning, trying to thwart a motion to dismiss her lawsuit against Universal Music Group. A year ago, the music label ordered YouTube to pull down a 30-second video she shot of her infant son dancing to Prince's song "Let's Go Crazy."
Lenz, who resides in a rural Pennsylvania area, claims that her video is protected under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the Fair Use provision in copyright law. She fought the order, and eventually, Universal Music abandoned any claim that she violated Prince's copyright. YouTube has since reposted her clip.
Now Lenz is out to teach the music industry a lesson.
I suspect that there will be a lot of cheering if she wins?
Posted by Peter at 02:33 PM
July 14, 2008
The end of an era on eBay?
Everybody knows eBay the online store where you can get anything from a power supply for a laptop to a Doctor Who scarf.
Well it looks like eBay has decided to shift away from the standard auction model pairing with buy.com to offer Amazon like products and services in a big store style format. This hasn't pleased the small seller that was the eBay bread and butter for years:
To accommodate Buy.com and other large sellers in the future, eBay last month announced a new "Diamond" level for its power sellers. Unlike its other classes of sellers, which pay eBay fees to list each item and share a percentage of each sale, Diamond sellers can negotiate their own fee arrangements with eBay.Details of eBay's deal with Buy.com are being kept private, though it appears from the sheer number of Buy.com listings flooding the site that Buy.com is not paying listing fees.
That has enraged many sellers, who have uncorked a wave of vitriol on eBay's community forums about this and other changes. Many believe that eBay has violated the sacred tenet of the "level playing field," which its founder, Pierre Omidyar, established as one of the company's basic principles.
I guess the day of the little man on the net may be fading, well there is always craigslist.
Posted by Peter at 01:41 PM | Comments (0)
July 07, 2008
Ego Surfing what is it?
I was bopping around Slashdot today and found this interesting post:
I was ego-surfing the other day, and was surprised to discover that I was listed as a member of an on-line dating service. It turns out these scamsters generate web pages for lots of (FirstName, LastName) combos, each claiming that the named individual is a member of their service.
There is more than one way to use an identity, but that raised an interesting point.
"Ego surfing" is doing a search of your name on the internet. There are doubtless many people with the same name as you but it is worthwhile to do so just to see if something that doesn't have anything to do with your might come up. I discovered that the top 4 results pertain to me but then it is mixed with many others.
It is worth noting that somethings I posed comments on nearly a decade ago are in the top 20 list, so remember what you say in the past will define you in the future.
Posted by Peter at 01:01 PM
July 02, 2008
Why delete the spam mails? Here is why.
Ever wonder what would happen if you answer spam, Network World has the answer:
What would be the experience in 10 countries when everyday people, armed with a PC and e-mail account McAfee provided for the Global S.P.A.M. Diaries project, clicked through the spam and chronicled the results?
Remember this when you get that e-mail that is too good to be true.
My guess is they would become very popular very fast
Overall, the most obvious result of the S.P.A.M. experiment was that the PC that McAfee had provided for the project noticeably slowed down, clogged up with spyware, Mooney says.
That was to be expected, another result might not have expected is this:
the effect of entering a home address was extreme. Immediately, a deluge of mail landed at her doorstep, directed to the attention of Penelope Retch.
Posted by Peter at 12:58 PM
June 29, 2008
Caveat Emptor , particularly on the net
Slashdot reports that those words are well founded particularly when referencing Godady:
Adam Dicker isn't just any GoDaddy employee; he's head of the GoDaddy subsidiary that controls the auctions. Dicker won some of the domains he bid for, and pushed up the bid price on auctions he didn't win. The conflict of interest is unethical, but could this practice also be illegal?
That goes for political stuff too.
read the whole thing and remember that when there are so many different businesses that can make a play for your business its a bad move to be low.
Posted by Peter at 11:20 PM
June 25, 2008
Take it from the boss
If you want to lowdown on Teleworkers don't take my word for it. Network World interviews the boss Michael Wexler on the subject. You can listen to the podcast here.
Posted by Peter at 09:23 PM
June 20, 2008
We still see them infected either way
There are many things that people don't like about Vista UAC is one of them. I just didn't realize that people took it so seriously:
Until recently, all I had was a hunch that most Vista users either wanted UAC, or at least passively left it turned on. In an MSDN blog entry by Chris Jackson, I found some hard data. In that post, Jackson mentions that the Vista installed base that has UAC disabled is "currently hovering around 12 percent, but on the scale of Windows that's pretty huge."
He asks the relevant question concerning this data:
If you're using Vista, have you disabled UAC on your own computer? If not, why? Now, if you have deployed Vista as part of your job in computer support for your company, have you disabled UAC on those computers? If so, are you crazy?
Well have you? I wouldn't.
Posted by Peter at 10:47 PM
June 19, 2008
Just remember they aren't all this nice
When you think of leaving your wi-fi open or grabbing others keep this in mind:
For the next three years, I didn't pay for Internet access. Instead, I got online via the unsecured wireless networks of my neighbors. This didn't seem illegal at the time--I mean, those signals were streaming through my apartment--but it is an actual, bona fide crime. Last year a man in Cedar Springs, Mich., was fined $400 for mooching off somebody else's wi-fi--a police officer spotted him laptop-surfing in a parked car. Apparently that violates Title 18, Part 1, Chapter 47 of the United States Code, which covers anybody who "intentionally accesses a computer without authorization or exceeds authorized access."
Read the whole thing.
Posted by Peter at 01:42 PM
June 02, 2008
Seeing is believing?
When I got my first Windows 95 system it came with Compton's Encyclopedia. I remembered thinking how cool it was to have some of the great speeches of history in audio at my fingertips, but it occurred to me at the time that some people might not understand that there was no such thing as recording devices at the time of Washington's farewell speech.
Today's photo software makes it even worse as you can play with an image any way you want these days? So how do you tell what is real and what is not? Scientific American has some answers:
Barely a month goes by without some newly uncovered fraudulent image making it into the news. In February, for instance, an award-winning photograph depicting a herd of endangered Tibetan antelope apparently undisturbed by a new high-speed train racing nearby was uncovered to be a fake. The photograph had appeared in hundreds of newspapers in China after the controversial train line was opened with much patriotic fanfare in mid-2006. A few people had noticed oddities immediately, such as how some of the antelope were pregnant, but there were no young, as should have been the case at the time of year the train began running. Doubts finally became public when the picture was featured in the Beijing subway this year and other flaws came to light, such as a join line where two images had been stitched together. The photographer, Liu Weiqing, and his newspaper editor resigned; Chinese government news agencies apologized for distributing the image and promised to delete all of Liu’s photographs from their databases.In that case, as with many of the most publicized instances of fraudulent images, the fakery was detected by alert people studying a copy of the image and seeing flaws of one kind or another. But there are many other cases when examining an image with the naked eye is not enough to demonstrate the presence of tampering, so more technical, computer-based methods—digital image forensics—must be brought to bear.
Read the whole thing it is a real page turner. I wonder however if you can program a machine to generate an image specifically designed to beat such software as mentioned.
Posted by Peter at 05:56 PM
May 07, 2008
p2p too much
Geek Press asks the question just how much of the traffic on the web in P2p file sharing and downloading? The answer seems to depend on the the study and the location of the user:
Ellacoya, since acquired by Arbor Networks for its traffic-shaping technology, pegged http traffic at 46 percent of the net's volume, with P2P traffic close by at 37 percent.The company says the data was based on about 1 million North American broadband subscribers.
Or maybe much less:
The last time Sprint published an analysis of 30 large internet links (January 10, 2005), it found that file sharing accounted for less than 6 percent of the packets in the tube, with regular web traffic clocking in at more than 50 percent of the flow.
Or maybe much more:
According to their report, P2P traffic accounted for between 49% and 83 % of internet traffic in these regions. Using deep packet inspection techniques, the company says it could identify the types of files being traded, as well as unique hashes that pinpointed unique files.
What was that famous line about statistics?
Posted by Peter at 11:29 PM
April 16, 2008
The cons are on
Slashdot reports a very specialized batch of malware attacks.
We've gotten a few reports that some CEOs have received what purports to be a federal subpoena via e-mail ordering their testimony in a case. It then asks them to click a link and download the case history and associated information. One problem, it's total bogus. It's a "click-the-link-for-malware" typical spammer stunt. So, first and foremost, don't click on such links. An interesting component of this scam was that it did properly identify the CEO and send it to his e-mail directly. It's very highly targeted that way.
You would think a CEO type would know that subpoena's don't come via e-mail but then again that is what legal departments are for.
Then again another slashdot story suggests we shouldn't be surprised by these concerns:
I see our customers turn a blind eye to blatant security issues, in the name of the application or business requirements. I see our own senior officers reduce the risk ratings of internal findings, and even strong-arm 3rd party auditors/testers to reduce their risk ratings on the threat of losing our business.
Sounds a bit like Brezhnev on the train to me.
Posted by Peter at 07:31 AM
April 06, 2008
Silly on its face
The NYT Goes on about the health risks of blogging today:
To be sure, there is no official diagnosis of death by blogging, and the premature demise of two people obviously does not qualify as an epidemic. There is also no certainty that the stress of the work contributed to their deaths. But friends and family of the deceased, and fellow information workers, say those deaths have them thinking about the dangers of their work style.The pressure even gets to those who work for themselves — and are being well-compensated for it.
“I haven’t died yet,” said Michael Arrington, the founder and co-editor of TechCrunch, a popular technology blog. The site has brought in millions in advertising revenue, but there has been a hefty cost. Mr. Arrington says he has gained 30 pounds in the last three years, developed a severe sleeping disorder and turned his home into an office for him and four employees. “At some point, I’ll have a nervous breakdown and be admitted to the hospital, or something else will happen.”
As usual Glenn Reynolds hits the nail on the head:
Blogging can be stressful, but it's not digging ditches. If you think otherwise, you've never dug a ditch.
That right, whenever I think my job has stress I think about my father who never even got into high school but worked during the depression very hard at a local paper factory, then the navy then at his own business. I don't think I've worked a day in my life as hard as he did.
Stuff like this is a matter of perspective again.
Posted by Peter at 02:28 PM
March 29, 2008
When is a friend not a friend? When its on facebook
At least that's what a British court says...
The magistrate was presiding over a harassment case in which a woman accused her former boyfriend of hounding her by sending her a "friend request" on the popular social networking site on January 21.The ex-boyfriend, Michael Hurst, 34, was cleared of the charge after the magistrate accepted his argument that the contact was highly innocuous because being "Facebook friends" could not be defined as "friendship in the traditional sense".
Look for a lot more cases like this as tech continues to become the norm.
Posted by Peter at 02:17 PM
March 25, 2008
Don't believe everything you hear
In these days of the internet where one can reach thousands, a practical joke on the net can clear someone of house and home:
Police say belongings removed from a Southern Oregon man's property have begun slowly reappearing at his home, a day after a pair of hoax ads on Craigslist cost Robert Salisbury much of what he owned.
The idea that people would automatically believe an ad on Craig's list to just go to someone property to take stuff is really beyond me. If it hadn't been for a person alerting the owner when he saw something odd he might have come home to a totally empty house. As it is he will likely have as much grief as Mr. Baggins did on his return getting his things back.
Posted by Peter at 11:37 AM
March 21, 2008
The Microsoft 's of spam
The Tech Don vis Marshal reports that 6 particular bots are responsible for 85% of all the spam you will see and that 40% comes from one source, Srizbi. As Marshal reports:
Analysis of Srizbi indicates it is extremely stealthy, operating in full kernel mode, which, among other things, allows it to hide its network activities and bypass sniffer tools. One interesting thing we noticed about Srizbi is that it provides continuous feedback and statistics to control servers about which email addresses were good, and which were bad.
I was actually surprised that Turkey was the #2 country of source for spam, I wouldn't have guessed it myself.
Posted by Peter at 10:14 AM
March 19, 2008
Big Mac Attack
Glenn Links today to the question of if Mac users should use anti-virus protection. It covers ground that we have covered before but is worth a look:
It's not that Mac OS X is inherently more secure against viruses than current versions of Windows (although it was clearly more secure than Windows prior to XP SP2); the numerous vulnerabilities reported and patched in recent years are just as exploitable as their Windows equivalents. But most security experts agree that malicious software these days is driven by financial incentives, and it's far more profitable to target the most dominant platform.
The whole thing is worth a read but the statement above leads me to empathize three points:
1. As Mac use increases it will be targeted more
2. As virus' writers realize Macs are unprotected they will be targeted more.
3. The mistaken belief on the behalf of Mac users that they are invulnerable to virus' lead to risky behavior that will make them exploitable.
Finally please DON'T EMULATE THE AUTHOR'S NON USE OF ANTI-VIRUS ON YOUR VISTA SYSTEM! It's true that infection is largely behavior driven and anti-virus does use some oomph but with the increased variation and the smarter use of phony screens even an experienced user can be fooled. I’ve seen enough infected vista systems to know that your author by not using virus protection on vista is just asking for it. And remember he is an experienced professional, can you say the same?
Posted by Peter at 12:22 PM
March 13, 2008
The world's newest Internet Millionare
People say that you can get rich off music on the net, I guess is true according to LGF:
It looks like the big winner in the Eliot Spitzer scandal isn’t David Paterson—it’s “Kristen,” aka Ashley Alexandra Dupre, whose song has been downloaded more than a million times from MySpace in the past few days at $0.98 a pop, with 70% going to her.
That is over $700,000 in under 48 hours. Of course once it gets to limewire they will all be free but her boodle will be made.
Posted by Peter at 08:49 PM | Comments (0)
March 05, 2008
A perfect laptop for that Arctic trip
Need a laptop that that's tough, the Latitude XFR D630 seems to be it:
Dell said its Latitude XFR D630 meets the Department of Defense's MIL-STD 810F standard for enduring extreme conditions. That means enduring temperature ranges from 60 below to 205 degrees Fahrenheit; rain lashing it at up to four inches per hour and being dropped up to three feet.Because it's expected to be used outdoors, the XFR has a sealed keyboard to protect against rain and sand and the screen is extra bright compared to standard laptops to make it easier to read. All of the components have shock isolated mounting to handle rough treatment.
All this starting at $3899, a mere pittance.
Posted by Peter at 08:08 PM
A perfect laptop for that Arctic trip
Need a laptop that that's tough, the Latitude XFR D630 seems to be it:
Dell said its Latitude XFR D630 meets the Department of Defense's MIL-STD 810F standard for enduring extreme conditions. That means enduring temperature ranges from 60 below to 205 degrees Fahrenheit; rain lashing it at up to four inches per hour and being dropped up to three feet.Because it's expected to be used outdoors, the XFR has a sealed keyboard to protect against rain and sand and the screen is extra bright compared to standard laptops to make it easier to read. All of the components have shock isolated mounting to handle rough treatment.
All this starting at $3899, a mere pittance.
Posted by Peter at 08:08 PM
March 04, 2008
Live by the net break up by the net
This is one of the reasons why you don't see me on the social sites of the web:
A public breakup on the web is not a fun thing, at least not for the people involved, the rest of the web seems to be having a ball with it.
P.S. (Another reason being it is not in the nature of Sicilian Americans)
Posted by Peter at 10:23 AM
February 12, 2008
Backup on bad facts
When we said that attacks on a systems are a source of income that people will fight for we weren't kidding:
The study finds that a complex and sophisticated criminal economy has developed to capitalise <sic> on Web vulnerabilities. Underground brokers are delivering tools to aid in obfuscation, or camouflaging attacks on browsers, so cybercriminals can avoid detection by security software. In 2006, only a small percentage of attackers employed camouflaging techniques, but this number soared to 80 percent during the first half of 2007, and reached nearly 100 percent by the end of the year. The X-Force believes the criminal element will contribute to a proliferation of attacks in 2008.Using these techniques, cybercriminals can infiltrate a user's system and steal their IDs and passwords or obtain personal information like National Identification numbers, Social Security numbers and credit card information. When attackers invade an enterprise machine, they could steal sensitive company information or use the compromised machine to gain access to other corporate assets behind the firewall.
This is only going to get worse.
Posted by Peter at 09:08 PM | Comments (0)
February 10, 2008
Here is your answer David
A few days ago a fellow named David asked a question in the comments, a pretty basic one:
How does a Microchip work?
The funny thing is for a complicated device the answer is pretty basic. It's all comes down to zeros and ones...
(This is a pretty simple answer you can find more complicated stuff online or in a good encyclopedia.)
A microchip is simply an electrical circuit that performs functions. The idea is that in a microchip the functions are integrated and made smaller the idea begin that a single chip can preform many electrical functions and even specialized functions depending on the type an use, but it its most basic form it is creating a "0" or a "1" state based on flow.
That basic 0 or 1 (bit) is the basis for everything you see in a computer or something that uses a computer from the clock on your microwave to the TiVo and your PC and even the blog that you are now reading. The Youtube video from the visual basic to the C language to the machine language to the Hex Value to the bytes all come down to the single 0 / 1 bit from the electrical flow, and that is how a microchip and frankly our modern society works.
It's really something isn't it?
Posted by Peter at 01:11 PM | Comments (0)
January 21, 2008
Save the OS
In info world an impassioned speech to save an endangered OS:
We're going for the loud-and-clear option. Join us, and tell Microsoft that you want to keep XP available indefinitely. Not for another six months or a year, but indefinitely. Sign InfoWorld's petition today. And consider submitting a "Save XP" video to our site to help spread the word.And ask your friends and colleagues to join in, too. Just point them to SaveXP.com.
Don't think Microsoft will listen? Consider this: Although Microsoft denies that anything is wrong with Vista or that most people don't want it, the company has already postponed XP's demise by six months. That's a start, but it's not good enough.
Microsoft doesn't have to admit failure; it can just say it will keep XP available indefinitely due to customer demand. It can take that opportunity to try again with a better Vista, or just move on to the next version that maybe this time we'll all actually want.
There is a precedent for that, too: In many respects, Vista is like the Windows Millennium Edition that was meant to replace Windows 98 in 2000 but caused more trouble than it was worth. At that time, Windows 2000 was promising but didn't support a lot of hardware, so users were stuck between two bad choices. Without admitting Millennium's failure, Microsoft quietly put Windows 98 back on the market until the fixed version of Windows 2000 (SP1) was available. Microsoft needs to do something like that again today.
There is nothing like customer demand to change a rock solid corporate position.
Posted by Peter at 07:42 PM | Comments (0)
January 17, 2008
Technology will not increase your IQ
This story confirms that no matter how technology changes people remain what they are:
Well, the police went and got it, and turned out that Villanueva is a repeat offender who isn’t legally allowed to even own a gun. His YouTube video wasn’t just a taunt and a threat then, but actual evidence of a crime. And the two uploaded it of their own free will.
There are whole web sites dedicated to telling the story of stupid criminals. Almost as bad as the story above is the tech support story:
The printer, along with a PC, were stolen on the evening of Oct. 5 from the St. Charles contract office of the Missouri Department of Revenue, said Trish Vincent, director of the department. These offices are run by individuals who are subcontracted by the department to issue driver's licenses, Vincent said. The pilfered printer could be used to produce a license, Vincent said.The PC, however, was locked with a key and because the key was stored in a secure location, the PC was unusable to the thief, said Vincent.
So what do you do when you have a stolen driver's license printer, but can't use the PC that goes with it? Enter Digimarc's tech support line.
According to a sworn statement by Secret Service Special Agent John Bush, someone who identified himself as "Scott" called Digimarc two days later and asked if he could buy printer drivers for the model of printer that had been swiped from the St. Charles office.
Technology enables many great things, but apparently it also enables stupid criminals' stupidity.
Posted by Peter at 06:29 PM | Comments (0)
January 12, 2008
The real Iphone question
Many questions have been asked about the iphone. This wired story tells much of its history but it doesn't answer the big question. Will it blend?
Posted by Peter at 08:19 PM | Comments (0)
January 11, 2008
Vista and Leopard
I finally have installed OS X 10.5 aka Leopard on my Mac and after a week of using it and having used Vista since early August it beats Vista hands down. I have tried in vain to give Vista a fair shake in the past few months but Microsoft really took a giant step backwards on it. There are just too many steps involved with Vista to do daily tasks or even to get file sharing between 2 computers. There has been some issues with Leopard but for the most part they have been resolved after only a few months and a minor update. There was complaints by users that after UPGRADING to Leopard the machines would not boot properly. That has been an issue with every operating system since upgrades came out. Which is why most techs will never recommend and upgrade over a fresh install. Boot times are much faster in Leopard and programs respond and launch much quicker. The Time Machine option is great for recovering lost items, programs, and even emails but it does require a rather large external hard drive to run. Vista does have a backup option but it is nothing like time machine. I will say it again, OS X is the best operating system out there.
Posted by Chrisk at 10:41 AM | Comments (0)
January 07, 2008
Technology makes EVERYTHING easier
An interesting case in Egypt concerning Sharia Law and text messaging via Media Blog.
Under Sharia Law A universal declaration by a man three times is a legal divorce. The question is this can that declaration be made by texting?
Malaysia and Dubai have permitted text message divorce for years Singapore has not.
Just goes to show technology might change but people remain the same.
Posted by Peter at 09:47 AM | Comments (1)
January 06, 2008
Two incredible silent voices
One of the things the internet does best is give voice where there was once silence, the front lines of the battlefield is a great example of this. The first now silent voice is from the far past:
In the past year, the writings of Private Harry Lamin from the Yorkshire and Lancashire Regiment have come to compete with the diaries of call girls, policemen and politicos. The travails of this soldier, set down on the front line in France and Italy in letters to his family, are being posted online 90 years to the day after they were written.Like the family who anxiously awaited his letters in 1918, thousands of readers keenly await his next post. In the comments section, readers worry over whether he will make it home alive, as he passes through the battles of Messines Ridge and Passchendaele.
His fate has been kept a secret by Bill Lamin, his 59-year-old grandson, who runs the blog and adds photographs and maps he has found while researching the path that his grandfather took through the war.
The "blog" of this tommy of World War I is here. It's an amazing read as we wait to discover if he will make it to the end of the war to end wars on November 11th 1918.
The second silent voice from the battlefield was only silenced a few days ago. Major Andrew Olmsted blogged the war he was fighting on both his own site and at the Rocky Mountain News site. Two days ago he was killed as his unit was ambushed. However the silencing of his voice was delayed as he left a final entry to be posted in the event of his death:
I wish I could say I'd at least started to get it right. Although, in my defense, I think I batted a solid .250 or so. Not a superstar, but at least able to play in the big leagues. I'm afraid I can't really offer any deep secrets or wisdom. I lived my life better than some, worse than others, and I like to think that the world was a little better off for my having been here. Not very much, but then, few of us are destined to make more than a tiny dent in history's Green Monster. I would be lying if I didn't admit I would have liked to have done more, but it's a bit too late for that now, eh? The bottom line, for me, is that I think I can look back at my life and at least see a few areas where I may have made a tiny difference, and massive ego aside, that's probably not too bad.
Major Olmstead served his country in two ways. First as a soldier and second by giving a first hand glimpse of what is going on in Iraq. For both of these services we are in his debt. We offer our condolences to his family at this trying time.
Posted by Peter at 12:37 AM | Comments (0)
January 04, 2008
New year I'm under the weather but XP isn't
Well all the snow and all the rush of the New Year and Christmas has finally caught up to me on this 11th day of Christmas. However it still hasn't caught up to windows XP.
Supposedly XP was to be no longer available after the first of the year. But at Dell they are still selling XP desktops and laptops this morning. In fact ordered one with my brother on Saturday last.
We are still waiting for sp1 on Vista. As long as we keep waiting Microsoft will have to count on attrition to force people into Vista.
Posted by Peter at 10:34 AM | Comments (0)
January 02, 2008
New Year same thugs
A new year has dawned but the old problem of internet free speech is still among us:
Saudi Arabia's most popular blogger, Fouad al-Farhan, has been detained for questioning, an Interior Ministry spokesman confirmed Monday. It was the first known arrest of an online critic in the kingdom.Farhan, 32, who used his blog to criticize corruption and call for political reform, was detained "for violating rules not related to state security,"
Unlike many bloggers critical of the Government in Saudi Arabia Farhan used his true name when blogging. It really sticks in the craw to see someone arrested for doing something we take for granted, but in the end the genie of internet speech is just not going back in the bottle and woe betide the the verdict of history to him who tries to stop it.
Posted by Peter at 12:27 PM | Comments (0)
December 30, 2007
Not quite the way I'd put it but very true
Well the phraseology is a tad sacriligious for me but the idea expressed by Jeff Jarvis in this post is very true.
Posted by Peter at 09:09 PM | Comments (0)
December 28, 2007
I guess a third of the computers in the world are vulnerable
Slashdot links to a report saying that over 36% of the computers in the world have limewire on them. This doesn't even count other P2P's.
If filling up that iPod is worth the risks of P2P to you then so be it. Each time your system gets re-infected we will work very hard to re-clean it for a very reasonable fee. And you can be very happy that for the price of saving .99 per song you are helping the economy by through your repeated purchase of virus cleaning services.
Posted by Peter at 01:29 AM | Comments (0)
December 23, 2007
Not quite a flash of greatness
The Register (via slashdot) tells us about adobe flash vulnerabilities that might make a very grumpy Christmas for users.
The security bugs reside in Flash applets, the ubiquitous building blocks for movies and graphics that animate sites across the web. Also known as SWF files, they are vulnerable to attacks in which malicious strings are injected into the legitimate code through a technique known as cross-site scripting, or XSS. Currently there are no patches for the vulnerabilities, which are found in sites operated by financial institutions, government agencies and other organizations.The vulnerabilities are laid out in the book Hacking Exposed Web 2.0: Web 2.0 Security Secrets and Solutions. It is due to hit store shelves soon, but is already in the hands of many security professionals. The book's authors, who work for penetration testing firm iSEC Partners as well as for Google, say a web search reveals more than 500,000 vulnerable applets on major corporate, government and media sites.
At the speed that the internet moves the question is will the "secrets" exposed in this book be obsolete by the time it hits stores?
Posted by Peter at 09:40 AM | Comments (0)
Wii will Wii will gouge you?
Free enterprise is a great thing but via slashdot we find it does have its drawbacks:
"In the past year, none of the 12 [Slackers locations] have sold any Wiis except for a one-time promotional deal, where we did force customers to buy a game with it," the employee told Ars Technica. "The real crime is that we get Wii shipments regularly. In fact, right now we have about 20, but none of them make it to the store front. They all get put on the store's eBay site at a minimum $499.99 buying price."Our source then told us that the price has since been lowered to $399.99, (they weren't moving at $499) and sure enough, there are three Wiis available through Slackers' eBay storefront at $399.99. Looking back in the store's history, one can find other Wii sales in its feedback, with the auction advertising "NEW WITH GAME." The game of course being the bundled Wii Sports.
Unless there is a contract preventing them from doing so, these business have a perfect right to sell things any way they want. Likewise Nintendo has a perfect right to decide that they don't want to ship them new games or systems anymore if they don't respect their price points. As a customer you have a perfect right to either pay the higher price or tell this or any such retailer to take a flying leap.
Contrary to Cartman's belief system Nintendo Wii is a luxury, not a necessity.
I should point out that Slackers has put out the following denial that says in part:
Does Slackers’ sell Wii systems on eBay? Yes. This holiday season, Slackers has sold a total of 5 Wii systems on eBay at a price of $399.99, while a couple units remain in stock. Why do we sell the Wii systems on eBay? Like all small retailers we are trying to improve our profile on the web. We have a website and an eBay store site. By offering even a small quantity of a hot system like the Wii on-line drives many hits to our sites. As for the price, Mr. Kuchera claims we are “scalping.” At the price Slackers offers on-line, when you factor our cost for the unit and shipping, and after eBay and PayPal take their cut, Slackers makes less than $75 per unit we sell on-line. For this holiday season, we made a whopping $375 from the eBay sales – that’s it. We gave away 2 systems at a cost of $500, and on every other system, we either broke even or lost money. Slackers does not make money on the sale of Wii systems.
Read both stories, we report you can decide.
Posted by Peter at 07:33 AM | Comments (0)
December 21, 2007
Online gift report
Well the last days of shipping have arrived and its time to rate the online companies.
AMAZON.COM
By any objective standard they were golden. Every item I ordered came with free shipping the final order showing up today. The online tracking system allowed me to track all the orders in transit. Being the cheap guy that I am there wasn't any thought of two day or standard shipping.In fairness I also made it a point to only order items that shipped directly from Amazon.com rather than third party suppliers.
My wife also ordered from Amazon.com.uk for an item for me. All of her orders showed up in plenty of time.
US Mint:
All the orders needed for the US mint arrived with plenty of time to spare, but the cut-off date for guaranteed by Christmas shipping was before Amazon's Nevertheless the mint provided what I wanted with a minimum of fuss. I would highly recommend them as a source for any item.
British Royal Mint:
Here we crash and burn. My initial order was in the middle of the year and came promptly. After some issues with an order last year I placed a small order in October. I've received two notices telling me that items will be showing up late, at least 30 days later. This places my Christmas order around late January or February. Now there are 12 days to Christmas but this is just bad form. (A real shame since the British have some really cool coins).If you are thinking royal mint for Christmas make sure you order in June. This makes two out of three years that my Christmas gives from them will be late.
Bottom line AMAZON AMAZON AMAZON!
Posted by Peter at 03:38 PM | Comments (0)
December 19, 2007
And you thought Gas was a lot
Via Slashdot we see that Staples and HP are getting some heat over very expensive ink:
A Boston man has filed a class-action lawsuit accusing hardware maker HP and office supply retailer Staples of colluding to inflate the price of printer ink cartridges in violation of federal antitrust law. According to the suit, HP allegedly paid Staples $100 million to refrain from selling inexpensive third-party ink cartridges, although the suit doesn't make it clear how plaintiff Ranjit Bedi arrived at that figure.For most printer companies, ink is the bread and butter of their business. The price of ink for HP ink-jet printers can be as much as $8,000 per gallon (emphasis mine) , a figure that makes gas-pump price gouging look tame. HP is currently the dominant company in the printing market, and a considerable portion of the company's profits come from ink.
We may be in Boston but it wasn't us, cross my heart. I must confess I hadn't heard of the use of Microchips to prevent 3rd party ink use but with the amount of money at stake we can be sure that manufacturers will fight to keep it, meanwhile consider a few things that might save you a buck or two on ink:
1. Print Preview is your friend:
Remember that print preview is there to keep you from having to make multiple attempts to get it right. Use this tool you'll save money on both ink and paper.
2. Draft quality is your friend.
If you don't need the higher quality don't use it, if a draft copy will do then by all means use a draft quality copy.
3. Web sites and FTP sites are your friends.
Remember that if you can store a shared document or announcement online you can always communicate that via a link sent via e-mail to a central site. This also has the advantage of something that can be edited if plans change.
4. Wait till the ink is actually out before replacing the cartridges.
It a good idea to have an extra set of cartridges available but don't run to replace them at the first "ink warning" message. That message might not be what it seems.
5. Pencils and Pens are your friend.
Remember that a printer is not vital for everything that is necessary for communication. Of course if your handwriting is as bad as mine you may think differently but a handwritten note conveys that personal style that the printed page does not.
Of course it is your money to spend and it up to you to spend it any way you want. Also remember that this advice is how to save on ink not that printing is evil.
Oh and full disclosure; HiWired has a relationship with Office Max, a competator of Staples.
Posted by Peter at 10:20 AM | Comments (0)
December 16, 2007
You gotta laugh unless you are Microsoft
This blog entry (via Glenn) just has me smiling ear to ear:
Review: Windows XPI have finally decided to take the plunge. Last night I upgraded my Vista desktop machine to Windows XP, and this afternoon I will be doing the same to my laptop.
He then goes on to review the "New" Xp system that he had replace his old vista system and comes to this final conclusion:
ConclusionTo be honest there is only one conclusion to be made; Microsoft has really outdone themselves in delivering a brand new operating system that really excels in all the areas where Vista was sub-optimal. From my testing, discussions with friends and colleagues, and a review of the material out there on the web there seems to be no doubt whatsoever that that upgrade to XP is well worth the money. Microsoft can really pat themselves on the back for a job well done, delivering an operating system which is much faster and far more reliable than its predecessor. Anyone who thinks there are problems in the Microsoft Windows team need only point to this fantastic release and scoff loudly.
Well done Microsoft!
If I wasn't so busy I'd be splitting my sides. Seriously I noticed while I was still doing some in person shopping several stores offering Dell PCS in house. I asked the people there if they were selling any of the dell xp systems. They said not with great regret saying that they would be able to sell a ton of XP systems.
It remains to be seen if this will continue. My next system will very likely be a vista one, but once i have it I will almost certainly restore this system to the XP that it came with.
Posted by Peter at 04:10 PM | Comments (0)
December 13, 2007
Damn that net for its free shipping!
Looks like this the last chance for free shipping for the readers of Paris from Amazon:
The court gave Amazon 10 days to start charging for the delivery of books, which should at least allow the company to maintain the offer through the end-of-year gift-giving season. After that, it must pay a fine of €1,000 (US$1,470) per day that it continues to offer free delivery. It must also pay €100,000 in compensation to the booksellers' union.Retail prices, particularly of books, are tightly regulated in France.
The only way to stop the net is to Lawyer it to death.
Posted by Peter at 03:41 PM | Comments (0)
December 12, 2007
I give up
Well I went to local stores to find the last couple of things for Christmas but low and behold I couldn't find those last few things. And if that isn't enough I ended up finding it online.
In the end only some gift certificates for restaurants and lottery tickets were all I purchased locally.
I might still go local to grab s stocking stuffer or two but I think my storefront days at Christmas are pretty much over.
Posted by Peter at 12:08 PM | Comments (0)
December 09, 2007
PC Floozy? Nope a real cyber Gold Digger
This would be really funny if the phishing part of it wasn't so dangerous:
Those entering online dating forums risk having more than their hearts stolen.A program that can mimic online flirtation and then extract personal information from its unsuspecting conversation partners is making the rounds in Russian chat forums, according to security software firm PC Tools.
The artificial intelligence of CyberLover's automated chats is good enough that victims have a tough time distinguishing the "bot" from a real potential suitor, PC Tools said. The software can work quickly too, establishing up to 10 relationships in 30 minutes, PC Tools said. It compiles a report on every person it meets complete with name, contact information, and photos.
10 relationships in 30 min sounds like the ultimate in speed dating but this is a really nasty phishing scheme for people who are likely already lonely and looking for someone to talk to.
Remember that a bot is designed to fool you beware and be wary online. Via Glenn who sees all and knows all eventually.
Posted by Peter at 02:31 PM | Comments (0)
Didn't Wii see this last year?
You might remember the Wii was in very high demand last year. My kids didn't get one until long after Christmas. Well it looks like you can't keep a good game system down, or at least not in stock:
During the same CNN article a couple of analysts give their respective views on the shortage: Gartner analyst Van Baker believes the shortage keeps the Nintendo buzz high, whilst giving consumers that much vaunted “must have” feeling about the product."There's enough inventory out there that people don't quit shopping for them. They may have to go to three or four different locations before they find one, but ultimately they do," Baker said.
Meanwhile Brian O’Rouke, analyst for research firm In-Stat sits on the other side of the conspiracy fence;"They outsource their manufacturing. And qualifying contract manufacturers is a fairly time-consuming process," he said. It takes Nintendo five months to increase production from the time it makes the decision to do so, Harrison says.
Via Slashdot. I'm sure it's unique gameplay and lower price doesn't hurt demand either.
Posted by Peter at 01:58 PM | Comments (0)
November 24, 2007
Bad form SF Gate and how we do it.
Let me start this post by restating our comment policy.
Comments are monitored. No comment makes it up until I have approved it. I usually do this once per day at the beginning of my shift or when I get around to it on my days off (like today). If I see a comment that needs a reply I will usually reply with a further comment and check for further stuff later in the day.
Your comment may not make it up if:
#1. If they are spam or "please link to me" comments.
#2 If they are not germane to the discussion. A comment of "Hi Mom" on a thread about spyware won't make it up.
#3 Comments might go up edited if they contain vulgarity but are germane.
Disagreements, corrections and ridicule are not grounds for excluding a comment.
Apparently the San Francisco Gate has a more devious policy:
If you make a comment on an article posted at SFGate, and if the site moderators then subsequently delete your comment for whatever reason, it will only appear as deleted to the other readers. HOWEVER, your comment will NOT appear to be deleted if viewed from your own computer! The Chronicle's goal is to trick deleted commenters into not knowing their comments were in fact deleted. I'll give evidence below showing how they do this.
Glenn Reynolds has the best comment on the subject:
I'm torn between disgust and admiration for their cleverness . . .
I'm not; its bad form all around. Particularly from a newspaper.
Posted by Peter at 05:01 PM | Comments (0)
November 19, 2007
Ming shows you
Ever wonder what is inside a pc? Well wonder no further:
Although this is a server the basics are the same. The big difference is this one might have an embedded operating system.
Posted by Peter at 08:18 PM | Comments (0)
November 14, 2007
OS X 10.5 Leopard dominates Vista in Japan
Saw this while over at Macrumors
Apple's Mac OS 10.5 Leopard launch will go down in history as record-breaking, both internal and external. In Japan, sales went up to 60.5% market share year-on year in the month of October, which was enough to bump Microsoft from the top spot (reports Macworld.co.uk citing a Japanese Business Computer News report)
In the six days after Leopard's 26 October launch, combined single-user licence (46 per cent) and family pack (7.9 per cent) sales accounted for 53.9 per cent of the total OS-only market in Japan.
However, at Microsoft, Windows sales fell from 75.3 per cent to 28.7 per cent
Apple had already indicated that the Leopard launch was highly successful, with two million copies sold in the first weekend alone.
Posted by Chrisk at 04:59 PM | Comments (0)
November 07, 2007
Why Intel didnt build the first PC
Some interesting history worth a read HERE.
Enjoy!
Posted by Hector at 06:49 PM | Comments (0)
November 04, 2007
We be Jammin
As one of the last cell phone holdouts in the world I certainly nodded my head when I read this story (via Glenn):
Individuals using jammers express some guilt about their sabotage, but some clearly have a prankster side, along with some mean-spirited cellphone schadenfreude. “Just watching those dumb teens at the mall get their calls dropped is worth it. Can you hear me now? NO! Good,” the purchaser of a jammer wrote last month in a review on a Web site called DealExtreme.
I can certainly sympathize with the thought but this ignores the fact that A: It's illegal and B: You might be jamming that annoying teen but you also might be jamming that emergency call that a few feet away is making.
Posted by Peter at 12:58 PM | Comments (0)
November 02, 2007
Who says cheap is bad
Via Glenn Vodka pundit notices a chance in the Blu Ray vs HD-DVD wars with a new player in the game...Walmart:
The HD-DVD side has been concentrating on price, and they're taking a huge swing for the fences with today's sale. It's a gigantic risk financially. Either Toshiba or Wal-Mart or both are absorbing a very substantial loss by selling these units for $98 (I'd guess just Toshiba, Wal-Mart is too smart to take a hit this big). The HD-DVD drive inside the HD-A2 all by itself is worth more than $98, even without all the associated technology and packaging.So why are they doing it? To capture the market. I heard people saying it in line this morning: "Hey, for $100, if Blu-Ray winds up winning, so what? This one's almost disposable." That argument certainly worked on me; after years of dissing both formats (or more specifically the format war itself), I was up early and at my local 'Mart my own self.
As he says multiply 25 x Wallmarts and that a ton of market.
Posted by Peter at 07:01 PM | Comments (0)
October 22, 2007
Silly Internet Polls
Ever wonder why internet polls are always referred to as unscientific? Charles Johnson who has run his share of polls has the explains it all:
Most online polls, like the ones at CNN and MSNBC, don’t use IP addresses to block multiple votes. They set a cookie in the user’s browser; so to vote multiple times all you have to do is delete the cookie. Voila! Vote as often as you like.Some polls use a combination of IP and cookie, or the IP address alone; for those it’s a little more difficult. But most of the IP addresses I’ve seen voting for Ron Paul at my site trace to universities, which commonly use a dynamic IP allocation method for the school’s ISP. So again, it’s very easy to vote multiple times, simply by clearing cookies, then logging off and back on to the system — which allocates a new IP address. You can also do this by using a dial-up account, which assigns a dynamic IP address from a pool of available addresses.
Internet polls are fun but not very informative, take them for what they are.
Posted by Peter at 01:06 PM | Comments (0)
October 21, 2007
Viacom sees the light
Looks like Viacom has figured out what others have not, YouTube can really drive the popularity of a show and if it is free so much the better.
Following up yesterday’s item that Jon Stewart has extended his contract to host The Daily Show until the end of 2010, Viacom has unveiled a new website that will offer every minute of The Daily Show since it began in 1999 — and for free.That’s 13,000 video clips in all, so the most avid fans of the satirical news show are unlikely to leave their computers for a very long time.
Even smarter is the new use of ads:
Viacom’s designers have been experimenting with ads that appear for two or three seconds at the start of a clip, recede, then emerge briefly from a corner of the picture like a network-TV promo while the video continues playing.
This is EXACTLY the formula that people have been waiting for.
Posted by Peter at 04:43 PM | Comments (0)
October 16, 2007
Remember Napster?
Looks like Napster is trying something a little different ( besides selling out and letting the RIAA make them become a pay service.. cough cough)
G4 the feed - Napster announced today it plans to lure in more customers by moving to a Web-based platform, allowing users to play their music from any computer without having to download additional software.
I think that this is a really good idea, The napster to go service was really good and I think that if they keep adding cool features they may some day take the lead over I tunes. Of corse they still need the ability to stream and movies would be nice.. and tv shows.. and games.. and, ok well I tunes is still #1 sorry Napster.
For more information please click the link below
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071016/wr_nm/napster_relaunch_dc;_ylt=aj8vxv3bo9uuhbwpzljqbwz6vbif
Posted by Dustin at 11:43 PM | Comments (1)
October 15, 2007
George OU right but missing something
Geroge Ou takes those of us who have taken Vista to task over and over again. As usual he has some good hard facts on his side:
Even if a whopping 20% of computer buyers downgrade and revert to Windows XP for whatever reason, that still leaves 80% who stay with Windows Vista. That means hardware makers and ISVs (Independent Software Vendors) have to deal with Windows Vista now or later whether they like it or not if they want to stay in business. The fact that 60 million copies were sold in the first 6 months since launch pretty much confirms Vista will become the dominant OS by default.
He points out flaws as well:
On the whole, Vista is a bit on the bloated side for my taste compared to Windows XP and Microsoft should do something to streamline Vista and make it run smoother. Windows Vista SP1 seems to be on track to do some of this but Microsoft really needs to do more. This is why I tell people never to upgrade an older PC unless they’re sure it’s powerful enough and it has all the drivers available. The poor retail box sales of Vista pretty much prove this assessment is universal but it doesn’t change the fact that almost every new retail PC ships with Windows Vista and the vast majority of them will stay Vista.
The article is very much worth a read but I think he really misses a critical point. The reason why the inevitable trek to Vista won't be so inevitable is the fact that business don't CARE that the growth issues are not as bad as they seem. The reason they have the computer is to run the application not the other way around. As long as their business applications will do what they need they aren't interested in upgrading. That means money. And from a tech support stance, I've seen plenty of vista systems that are infected.
XP has been around for almost 5 years, applications for it are pretty stable and users and business' KNOW that their stuff works with it. The tech side might mean something to George or myself or guys who are into PC but until you can demonstrate an actual cost benefit to move to vista I don't see the big guns doing it. And If I was advising them I'd say the benefits just don't cut it, at least not yet.
I might be wrong and if George thinks so his arguments will be strong, but no matter how good that tech argument is the business argument will and the customer decision for now anyway will trump it. At least until the developers for the issue for their customers.
Posted by Peter at 10:27 PM | Comments (3)
October 05, 2007
$222,000 to save .99
Well we knew this was coming sooner or later at least I did:
a federal jury in Duluth on Thursday found that a Brainerd, Minn., woman violated the copyrights of six recording companies and should pay them $222,000.The jury of six men and six women deliberated less than five hours before deciding that Jammie Thomas, operating under the user name "Tereastarr" on the Kazaa file-sharing network, copied or distributed all 24 songs for which the companies sought compensation, and it set damages at $9,250 per song.
Now you can make the argument that the law should be changed but until or unless it is changed; this is reality. The same 24 songs from iTunes would have cost $8.76. $23.76 (never blog when distracted). This doesn't even count the lawyers fees if she had won.
Its your choice of course and its your computer, but its also your money.
Posted by Peter at 08:44 AM | Comments (1)
October 03, 2007
Maybe he doesn't get the picture
An interesting phenom was noted on a site called lostremote concerning the Drudge report:
I’ve noticed for the past two or three days, Drudge Report has not posted any photos. This could be for a variety of reasons, but I’ve always wondered if he owned the rights to the photos he posted or pulled from another domain.
I checked Drudge's site today and sure enough the only images are from the ads.
It was speculated that the site had been basically linking pictures that were hosted somewhere else. This adds up to the site (say yahoo photo) paying for bandwidth of people viewing the photo elsewhere, much like when somebody piggybacks off a wireless signal you have. This is considered very bad form in the blogging field.
Then again, a lot of those photos might not otherwise have been seen as Drudge the avg number of visits Drudge had over the past year was over 10 million per day. I don't know if I want to lose that kind of exposure if I'm the owner of the picture particularly since it means that a potential memorable picture will be seen and purchased by other important media players (such as newspapers and tv) who use Drudge as a resource.
Personally I prefer this lack of photos since it makes the page loads faster and leads to less gunk in my temp files but my view are unlikely to carry the day.
I'll be keeping an eye on his site for the next few days and see what happens.
Posted by Peter at 11:06 AM | Comments (0)
September 18, 2007
An icon's birthday
Everything has a beginning:
It was a serious contribution to the electronic lexicon. :-) Twenty-five years ago, Carnegie Mellon University professor Scott E. Fahlman says, he was the first to use three keystrokes — a colon followed by a hyphen and a parenthesis — as a horizontal "smiley face" in a computer message.
And thus pieces of culture are born.
Posted by Peter at 01:29 PM | Comments (0)
September 15, 2007
Now this is more realistic
You might remember a while back I compared the Zune vs Ipod to an established ace closer and a new rookie closer for the same price.
(Jonathan Papelbon vs Mariano Rivera)
Well I was checking out prices on Amazon.com and noticed the following:
Zune 30 gig White is $159 at Amazon ($192 in black)
Meanwhile on the Ipod End
The 80 gig is $249 for any color Meanwhile the 16 gig touch is $399.
Nanos are running all over the place
4 gig with video $149
4 gig no video varies by color (as low as $179 pink to $250 blue)
8 gig with video $199
2 gig no video $146
8 gig no video $242, (why more than with video?)
The bottom line is depending on color you can get a 30 gigs zune for the price of a 2-8 gig ipod. Meanwhile for an extra $200 you can almost triple your memory space on the ipod end vs the Zune.
At this prices the Zune is certainly competitive to the pod. I actually have over $300 in amazon coupons for use during Christmas, it is now a real question between the zune and the nano. Better quality software vs good video and 4 times the memory.
I would welcome any advice, which way should I go for teenage sons who don't own a mp3 player yet?
Posted by Peter at 10:11 PM | Comments (2)
September 09, 2007
I guess I won't use that hotspot
It may not be "censorship" but it sure is stifling.
Indian journalist Amit Varma reports that Mumbai's police are requiring the city's 500 Internet cafes to install keystroke loggers, which will capture every keystroke by users and turn that information over to the government
Lets hope the outsourced chat support doesn't allow telecommuting.
Posted by Peter at 11:06 PM | Comments (0)
September 08, 2007
A spammer and his money are not easily parted
Whats the surest sign that efforts against Spam are working? When the spammers fight back:
Spamnation reports that CastleCops and other anti-spam forums are being DDoSed as well. Sounds like a massive, concerted effort against the folks who are fighting the good fight.
Spammers make good money and they won't give it up without a fight.
Posted by Peter at 10:43 PM | Comments (0)
September 05, 2007
With apologies to Forest
Life may or may not be like a box of chocolates, but Glenn Reynolds explains why the internet is like Tar and Feathers (which seems to have made a comeback).
Posted by Peter at 09:11 AM | Comments (0)
September 04, 2007
And George Ou; Serial Debunker, for the defense
We bust Windows Vista quite a bit here, but as George Ou demonstrates if you are going to bust Vista, make sure your facts are right:
Computer scientist Peter Gutmann made a name for himself when he published his paper “A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection” and got worldwide attention for outlining some serious concerns about Windows Vista DRM mechanisms. But Peter Gutmann admittedly doesn’t use Windows Vista and he’s publicly asked for others to confirm his theories and based many of his key assertions on web forum postings as his source.
George goes on to do is own testing and the results are a pretty big mismatch. His bottom line is typical Ou:
So based on dubious web forum “research”, Gutmann concluded that Vista Content Protection is like a virus that consumes unnecessarily high CPU and memory resources. Believing that Vista supposedly consumes an extra 10 to 50 percent CPU utilization, Gutmann flew halfway around the world to Usenix Boston 2007 and told the audience that Vista content protection draws so much power that it causes global warming.
I suggest the whole thing and the previous article as well.
This doesn't change my own negative opinion of Vista but my opinion is based on daily usage and my experience with the same PC before I upgraded.
Posted by Peter at 11:29 AM | Comments (0)
August 25, 2007
Excuses Excuses
We all have excuses on occasion. My excuse right not is that call volume is so high that I really don't have time to post except on my free time. That's why posting has been so erratic lately.
Speaking of excuses or the lack thereof:
US Internet giants Yahoo and MSN confirmed Friday they had signed a code of conduct for their blogging operations in China that committed them to protecting the interests of the Chinese state.
Read the whole thing you will in fact find it is as bad as it sounds. Do these companies have an excuse?
MSN China spokesman Feng Jinhu said: "We've signed the pact but there is no press release on that. On your other questions, we will get back to you as soon as possible."
Apparently not.
Posted by Peter at 12:15 AM | Comments (0)
August 22, 2007
XP is worth how much more than Vista?
Friend of mine's Grandfather picked up a new Dell recently. He didn't want the one model that came with XP but didn't want Vista. Dell graciously offered to downgrade the system....for $300.
He accepted.
Think about it Vista is so disliked that a person paid $300 extra not to have it.
Posted by Peter at 06:14 PM | Comments (0)
August 16, 2007
Speaking of Virus' and Yahoo
Well McAfee has found a new issue with Yahoo messenger and webcams.
For now, you should stop accepting Webcam invites from untrusted sources until a patch for this flaw has been released and installed. Additionally, McAfee also recommend that you block outgoing traffic on TCP port 5100.
So you might want to give that webcam a rest for now.
Posted by Peter at 11:07 AM | Comments (0)
August 12, 2007
Online Video purchase fine print
Via Glenn we get this link to Boing Boing that shows "buying" downloadable videos online isn't all its cracked up to be:
Samuel sez, "Hey guys. Several months ago, I bought an episode of Star Trek on Google Video, just out of curiosity to see how it worked. Today I got an email letting me know my videos would stop working in five days."
Apparently the videos he purchased is being taken back and a $5 credit given at a different location his reaction is not a big surprise:
The terms that Google sold its video on were similar to those laid down by other downloadable video "stores," like Amazon Unbox. These stores claim to "sell" you things, but you can never truly 0wn the things they sell -- they are your theoretical property only, liable to confiscation at any time. That's the lesson for DRM: only the big motion picture companies, search giants and other corporate overlords get to own property. We vassals are mere tenant-farmers, with a precarious claim on our little patch of dirt.Hey, class-action lawyers! This seems like a golden opportunity.
There is a reason why the net stuff is called "software" and "virtual".
Posted by Peter at 08:16 PM | Comments (0)
August 01, 2007
Isn't it great when there are people you can count on?
Today is Wednesday which means I will be departing on the New England Rally in less than 48 hours. It was getting close to crunch time and funds were getting tight. Now I have already taken care of most of the work the car needed for this expedition, and fortunately I had a few people who like me enough step up to make sure everything was up to par.
As you all may know I will be streaming live in car video, and taking my tech toys with me. Thanks to Brian from our tier 2 escalations team I was able to get the web cam synced with the laptop, as well as integrated with the web based video feed. All I had to do was zip tie it to the rear view mirror!
My brother Xavier donated lightweight wheels and tires, as well as his suspension tuning knowledge to get the car running in top form. It may not be the fastest car entered... but it will definitely stick to the track when it needs too!
Hector from our technical team decided a PC Restoration wouldn't be a bad idea for the laptop. I guess it makes sense too. Why embark on a 1500 mile road trip in a car thats tuned, and bring a PC that hasn't had updated spyware definitions in 2 months? Sad isn't it? I slacked on my own PC... The cool thing is he started it around 1:30 AM (gotta love 24/7 tech support), I went to bed around 2:30 AM, and when I woke up I had a PC that was noticeably faster. I guess a PCR is kind of like weight reduction!
So whether you are going to an extreme, or just want a little more oomph out of your computer. A PC restoration can definitely help things run smoothly.
Posted by Jose at 02:54 PM | Comments (0)
July 25, 2007
We will withhold judgement for now
There has been probable new moon maiden sighting on the net. Other than the use of the word "probable" I'm going to withhold comment for now. If you don't want to wait till I'm positive then read here to see what other blogs are saying.
UPDATE: This goes to show that you never get in trouble for what you haven't said. We don't have a moon maiden we have a blogger, now it remains to be seen if he is writing comic books.
Posted by Peter at 08:29 AM | Comments (0)
Now that's what I call a PC security issue
We talk about computer security a bit around here and offer several products to enhance it, but the first and most important part of computer security involves actually knowing where they are:
More than a quarter of the computer equipment at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Washington could not be found by investigators, government auditors reported Tuesday.Three other VA facilities showed slightly better results but still could not locate between 6 percent and 11 percent of their equipment, including computers, hard drives, monitors and other devices. In all, the four facilities audited by the Government Accountability Office reported more than 2,400 missing items originally worth $6.4 million.
This would make my hair stand up on end, if I had the hair to make stand.
Posted by Peter at 08:14 AM | Comments (0)
July 19, 2007
Harry Potter and the early Shipment
National Review tells the story of a mis-shipped Harry Potter volume that ended up in Will Collier of Vodka Pundit's hands.:
The first thing I thought upon seeing the book was, “Boy, somebody screwed up.” Hallows is famously scheduled for release at midnight on July 21, more than four days after my copy arrived.As you’ve probably guessed by now, my second thought was, “Hey, this thing’s probably worth more than 18 bucks between now and then.” It was a matter of minutes from that thought to taking a blurry digital photo of the book propped up against my computer and composing a brief ad on eBay.
More on the story here here and here.
Posted by Peter at 04:06 PM | Comments (0)
July 18, 2007
Harry Potter and the purloined volume
If by some miracle you haven't already heard the final Harry Potter book has been leaked to the net:
Photos of what appeared to be every page of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” the breathlessly awaited seventh and final installment in the wildly popular series by J.K. Rowling, were circulating around the Web today, potentially upsetting the most elaborate marketing machine ever mobilized for a book.Various file-sharing Web sites were carrying what looked like amateur photographs of each pair of facing pages of the book, which officially goes on sale at 12:01 a.m. Saturday morning. The pictures show the book laid out on a green and red-flecked looped carpet with somebody’s fingers holding it open. Some of the photos make the text difficult to read, but the ending is definitely legible.
Since the book is out in a few days its not really a big deal and I personally don't think it is going to hurt sales but this shows that in an internet age all the security and all the contracts in the world can't stop a person with a camera and a net connection.
(I won't include the link to the spoilers, if you are dying to see them you should be able to find it on the net).
Posted by Peter at 10:30 AM | Comments (0)
July 11, 2007
iSee whats in the iPhone
For anyone that is interested the great folks at Thinksecret they have a gallery full of pictures of an iPhone taken apart. You can view them and a short article here.
Posted by Chrisk at 12:10 PM | Comments (0)
July 10, 2007
Some people can't do without their music for a second
The iPod is a great music player to listen to music almost everywhere. Stress the almost:
The Muslim woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, is accused of concealing the device beneath her headscarf so that she could listen to music during the testimony of a man who bludgeoned his disabled wife to death.Judge Roger Chapple, presiding, said that he thought he could hear “tinny music” in the courtroom at Blackfriars Crown Court in Central London, but dismissed it as a figment of his imagination until another juror sent him a note.
Music may be food for the soul but this is ridiculous.
Posted by Peter at 10:34 PM | Comments (0)
July 09, 2007
Sony trying to play catchup?
Slashdot reports today that the Sony playstation will be dropping its price:
Starting on July 10th, the current 60GB model will sell for $499. Coming to US shores in August is the 80GB version only available in South Korea at the moment, which will retail for $599. They're bundling that unit with Motorstorm, so it's not just another 20 gigs for $100.
Thats tomorrow, yet somehow I don't see myself running out to buy one and with the Nintendo Wii in the house the kids haven't indicated that they have any interest at all in the Sony.
Posted by Peter at 07:46 AM | Comments (0)
July 08, 2007
Pink is for girls for boys there is blue....
Shiny Shiny comments on the use of Pink Tech to sell items to women.
Funnily enough that's the same as the black version, but this one gets a relaunch all of its own. I'll admit that it looks quite nice, but wouldn't it be equally so if they dared make it a new colour? Or (shock) came up with something totally new to market their gear towards women?
I guess the reason is that it works. BTW this is the product she is talking about.
Posted by Peter at 11:44 AM | Comments (0)
July 06, 2007
Ve haff ways of making you upgrade
Many times users (particularly elderly ones) will ask if they need to upgrade their computers. My normal answer is to ask what their system is used for and then advise accordingly. If the user is just doing a little surfing and maybe some e-mail you usually don't need to go for an expensive upgrade.
Web sites however are doing their best to change this reality. As sites use more and more embedded video in ads and in presentations your PC tends to increase the use of RAM memory and increase the size of temp files that build up.
From blogs to business sites to news sites this has increased dramatically, in addition sites like YouTube and their common use increase the need for extra memory. It the same way that game makers add features in update that require better and faster systems.
Here is some bottom line advice:
1. Check the cost of any upgrades you are thinking of: (ram, hard drive etc) If you are running a system with a pre P4 processor and or 256 mb of ram or less you might just be better off picking up a new system. If you will pay $250 or more, think new system. Even a bottom of the line system will have 512 mb of ram and likely a better processor than you have.
2. Consider a used system: If you have an incredibly old system consider picking up a used system running XP. Quite a few people have moved on to Vista and have P4 and better system used and for sale, you might be able to grab a pretty good system for under $200.
3. Check the outlet stores for the manufacturers: You can get pretty good deals at the various outlet stores that might compete favorably with the price of the upgrades you are thinking of.
4. Eyes on the Prize: Remember what you want the system for and what you plan on using it for in the future when you buy.
5. Prices always drop: If money is tight remember time always drops prices. That six months will not only mean more dough to spend but a better system to get with it at the end.
Only you can decide what you can or can't afford but some forethought now will save time and money later.
Posted by Peter at 12:06 PM | Comments (0)
July 03, 2007
Cyberterror made easy
Are you a jihadist who wasn't able to get a medical degree in England but still wants to do his bit? Not to worry Information Week (via LGF) reports that you too can be a Cyber Terrorist!
a relatively new Web-based application offers Islamic jihadis a way for even the relatively nontechnical to target and attack Web sites perceived to be anti-Islamic.The "Electronic Jihad Program" is part of the long-term vision jihadi Web site Al-jinan.org has to use the Internet as a weapon, something that affects any organization that relies on the Web.
Considering how dependant the west is on electronics (that doesn't even count those dying for iPhones) this could be a real pain in the neck. In addition to economic targets media and blog targets might be selected. For example Michael Yon's report of Al Qaeda Massacre of the villegers of Baqubah (warning graphic photos)would be a prime target, that is if the media would bother to report it:
But for those publications who actually had people embedded in Baqubah when the story first broke and still failed to cover it, their malaise is inexplicable. I do not know why all failed to report the murders and booby-trapped village: apparently no reporters bothered to go out there, even though it’s only about 3.5 miles from this base. Any one of the reporters currently in Baqubah could still go to these coordinates and follow his or her nose and find the gravesites.
This has produced some disgust in the blogosphere
the blogosphere has become incensed that big media mostly ignored the murders, especially given that there are reporters currently in Baqubah. Newsbusters and countless others are on it. More disturbing to many bloggers is that major mainstream players were busted (again) by Pajamas Media just days ago for reporting outright fabrications of a “massacre” that never occurred.
Of course if you read us you know about this story without the media's help. For everyone else, Mr. Yon offers a solution...
I humbly offer permission to media outlets to republish excerpts of the dispatch or the dispatch in its entirety, including my photographs from the story (if used as they are in the dispatch) at no cost during the month of July 2007.
It will be interesting to see how many if any take him up on it. The electronic media will continue to grow if and the mainstream shrink if they can't be counted on as a source of info.
UPDATE: At least some jihadist stuff will be stopped online:
Internet service providers (ISPs) would face charges if they failed to block websites containing bomb-making instructions generated anywhere in the world, EU officials said.“It should simply not be possible to leave people free to instruct other people on the internet on how to make a bomb – that has nothing to do with freedom of expression,” Mr Frattini said yesterday.
This might be interesting to see if some informational sites are closed.
Posted by Peter at 08:44 PM | Comments (0)
July 02, 2007
Trouble in happy Apple land
Well these little things tend to pile up:
The Universal Music Group of Vivendi, the world’s biggest music corporation, last week notified Apple that it will not renew its annual contract to sell music through iTunes, according to executives briefed on the issue who asked for anonymity because negotiations between the companies are confidential.Instead, Universal said that it would market music to Apple at will, a move that could allow Universal to remove its songs from the iTunes service on short notice if the two sides do not agree on pricing or other terms in the future, these executives said.
This could make things very interesting very fast.
Posted by Peter at 07:29 AM | Comments (0)
June 26, 2007
Update: VMware and Parallels testing
As you know last week I posted an entry on a small challenge I put for myself. Test two virtualization applications for Mac OS X. I was hoping to have results by today but projects and business has caused me not have as much time as I would like to test them. I can say one thing Parallels is already uninstalled and VMware is taking the most of my time trying to see it's Pro's and Con's. Hopefully I will have something later in the week.
Posted by Chrisk at 09:50 AM | Comments (0)
When the internet does the job China won't
We're written about internet censorship in China. But all speech that promotes change isn't political:
A letter posted on the Internet by 400 parents of children working as slaves in brickyards was the trigger for the national press to finally report on the scandal that some rights groups say had been going on for years.The parents' Internet posting was part of a growing phenomenon for marginalised people in China who can not otherwise have their complaints addressed by the traditional, government-controlled press.
An unfree press isn't used simply to ignore political stories it is used to keep bad and unflattering news out of the public and world eye. Another example:
Also in Chongqing, parts of the city were this month set on fire following the beating of flower sellers by the "chengguan", city police charged with "cleaning up" the city's roads.Witnesses to the beatings had appealed to local television journalists, but nothing was broadcast.
The incident only became known outside the city thanks to photos and stories published on the Internet, sparking anger among China's netizens.
"It's fascism," said one, while another mocked: "The inhabitants of Chongqing are truly naive, the Chinese media is all controlled by the Communist Party, they decide what people know."
Well DUH. Some people haven't read their C.S. Lewis.
Posted by Peter at 07:45 AM | Comments (0)
June 25, 2007
Rosie the robots of the world unite!
We talked briefly about the Immigration bill that is now again trying to gain traction in congress. Wired reports all this debate has had an interesting side effect; farmers paying for development of Robot fruit pickers:
This time around, growers' associations are funding the research. By the end of this year, the orange growers will have invested almost $1 million in the project, says Ted Baskin, president of the California Citrus Research Board. He estimates that it will take about $5 million more to get to the finished product.The farmers are willing to pay up because they've been rattled by a labor shortage over the past few y