OnComputers Radio show Podcast 01-14-07

This is the On Computers Radio show podcast for 01-14-07. You can listen live every Sunday from 10AM to 1PM Pacific thats 1PM to 4PM Eastern. If you prefer, you can download the same MP3 file here via ftp.

Save the Internet!

Joe has expressed an interest in Saving the Internet and when I saw this, I thought I'd post another video explaining Save the Internet, I thought that this explains it in terms that my brother might understand. ;)



Other videos I've posted here, about SaveTheInternet:
GeekBrief.TV
Rocketboom
Save the Internet FAQ

--MissM

P.S. Technorati says this blog has been posting on this subject for 263 days. Keep listening and reading to keep up to date with the "bleeding edge" of technology.
P.P.S. oops forgot attribution. [h/t Network Neutrality: What It Is, Why It Is Important, What You Can Do About It - Robin Good's Latest News

Mozilla and Microsoft reload browsers

I had already read about plans for FireFox v.3 and it is not surprising everyone is looking ahead, not just the population of the Mozilla Foundation. Specific information is hard to find, now, but will almost certainly surface in the next couple months.

I am in the process of writing an article in partnership with my friend, Waleed, about spreading literacy, computing and information technologies to developing nations using the so-called "Web 2.0" technologies. Along the way, we have decided that in order to increase efficiency, the current web browsers need to morph into web browser/application browsers. While related to the web browser, the application browser additions make the application browser a different species, however close their common ancestors are.

I suspect that web and application browsers will not separate into differing programs. They will remain united. It doesn't make much sense to code up separate application in this case, generally speaking. There may be exceptions, though, such as security needs, that will dictate a separate application. We will just have to wait and see.

Jack

MPAA's file fakery exposed

Of course the BIG QUESTION is whether or not these 'trash' files are also depositing tracking or other malware on your machines or if they are simply collecting the addresses of the machines connecting to the torrents. One is questionable from a legal standpoint. The other is not.

Beyond that, this is merely confirmation of something we have suspected for a long time. I have compiled a list of some articles to send to parents I know which highlight the dangers of music downloading and sharing online, in the hope they can use the information to keep themselves and their children out of legal and financial troubles. So far; this is just grist for the mill.

Jack

'Craplets' could damage Vista launch: Microsoft exec

Okay. I am officially on my soapbox and agreeing with Microsoft, to top it off!

I hate all that, er, stuff, they install on the computer besides the operating system. The first several hours with a new computer are absolute hell, bouncing in and out of Add/Remove Programs, deleting the stuff the maker has put on that has no entry in Add/Remove Programs (an accelerating trend, much to my chagrin) and trying to reclaim enough resources that startup is not an excercise in watching your only shot at performance go down the drain. Thank Goodness I have a good automated Registry cleaner!

I would indeed pay to avoid having all that stuff installed. I know it is blackmail, but I would still pay.

Jack

Cisco sues Apple for trademark infringement: ruh roh! - Engadget

Yeah, I meant to post about Jobs' keynote, but I didn't watch the whole thing, just the highlights. Having said that, you had to be incommunicado to miss Apple's announcement of the iPhone. Of course, Cisco owns the iPhone trademark, and they recently announced a product, by that name.
Engadget posts the following:

We're not quite sure what broke down in talks between Cisco and Apple, but they ain't playing friendly no more. Cisco just announced that it has filed a lawsuit in Northern California to prevent Apple from infringing upon its registered iPhone trademark. The word yesterday was that Apple and Cisco had been involved in "extensive discussions," and that they were expecting Apple to sign up for whatever final agreement they proposed. "Cisco entered into negotiations with Apple in good faith after Apple repeatedly asked permission to use Cisco's iPhone name," says Mark Chandler of Cisco. "There is no doubt that Apple's new phone is very exciting, but they should not be using our trademark without our permission."

Hmmmm, interesting
--MissM

Cisco sues Apple for trademark infringement: ruh roh! - Engadget
When I started the post, I hadn't seen Aaron's. But I believe that they both add to the story.

Cisco sues Apple over use of iPhone name - Yahoo! News

Next time Apple, make sure you own the trademark first.

Microsoft at CES - The Keynote

I'm watching/watched Bill Gates' keynote at CES. Some comments as I watch it:
You can make videos be your desktop, the document preview is neat, it did seem a teeny bit slow (I'm curious what the hardware was driving the demos.). There is a cool feature that will allow you to combine pieces of pictures in a new picture, they called it "Create the picture you wish you had taken." I can see uses for this with GeekMeet pictures, for sure. ;) In the music space, some one (I forget who) spoke of the Urge store, and the Zune ("the 2nd best selling media player" ;) ). The part that I found ironic, was they trumpet the connectivity of Vista and the 360 and the car (see below) but the Zune doesn't work with Urge, as I understand it, anyway.
Office 2007 was briefly demoed and the background restore (with a snarky comment about whatever Apple calls it) was shown. The preview format in Office was more speedy than the preview in Explorer, or so I thought. Then they controlled Vista with the XBOX 360 controller (flying through Las Vegas on live.com with it) and a woman demonstrated playing Uno on Xbox Live with a PC and a 360. So, Vista will connect to Live, sometime this year. Then the IPTV capabilities were demonstrated with the XBOX 360.
Microsoft has entered in to a partnership with Ford Motor Co. to allow your car to sync with all the "devices you carry in your car" according to a Ford executive. The part that concerned me, besides an BSOD while driving, was the promise of constant updates as new devices are released, so your car connectivity will never be obsolete.... The car gets updates??? Ok, there is a bit of excitement when I consider Wide Area wireless, but there's the BSOD fear. :) The car will read your IM messages to you, and respond to voice commands, there's even a link to a youtube video demonstrating this.
Those are my highlights of Gates' keynote at CES. [When I went to find the url for CES, the #3 result was a 404 error on the CES page. lol]

--MissM
Microsoft at CES
P.S. I wonder what Jobs is going to say at MacWorld...
P.P.S. Oh yeah! I'm letting the keynote play a second time (what dedication, eh??!?!?!?!) and in the middle of the keynote, there's a section showing something with HP, but instead they put up a screen that says "In respect to the intellectual property demonstrated... " yadda yadda. Sigh... This seems silly to me because how many hundreds or thousand saw it? Oh well, I'm sure there's some perfectly legitmate reason for this, but it eludes me.

OnComputers Radio show Podcast 01-07-07

This is the On Computers Radio show podcast for 01-07-07. You can listen live every Sunday from 10AM to 1PM Pacific thats 1PM to 4PM Eastern. If you prefer, you can download the same file here via ftp.

First Open Graphics board appears

Why should you care about this? Because as Microsoft and Apple lock down graphics with more and more DRM, and refuse the specifications to Free and Open Source Software developers, it will be impossible to run an alternative operating system with modern graphics. And trust me; there is not enough demand for the Big 3, Intel, ATI and NVidia to cater to this market, so don't hold out that hope.

Enter an open specification graphics card. The link will take you to a short article at The Inquirer and from there you can follow the link provided to complete specifications of the new card. It's not half bad, though still available only in a PCI interface. Hopefully, AGP and especially PCIe will be coming along soon. There may indeed be enough demand to convince some smaller company to produce these. I, for one, hope someone does.

Jack

Asus shows the future of graphics

The sub-title is "the coolest thing at CES". I might not go that far, but this looks like the graphics system of the future.

In short; it involves putting the PCIe graphics system outside the case. This solves a lot of heating and power supply problems and would also let you put world-class graphics on your laptop, forever ending the running joke of "gaming laptops".

Check it out

Jack

Hitachi Shatters Capacity Record with World's First Terabyte Hard Drive

Press release from Hitachi about a Terabyte (TB?) Hard Drive announced at CES.
Hitachi Shatters Capacity Record with World's First Terabyte Hard Drive



[h/t TechMeme ]
--MissM

update: Wellll, apparently Seagate released the information first according to Daily Tech. Seagate Confirms 1TB Hard Disk Drive
I hadn't seen that the first time, but Techmeme referenced Daily Tech on Hitachi's TB HD.

Bribing Bloggers - So, that's why people are saying nice things about Vista.

Amazing how much "press" Free Laptops can buy... Must be nice to have them pre-loaded, so that no hardware nightmares can raise an ugly head to discourage the would be free kudos...

Windows Vista in Your Ford?

Just what I need for my morning commute, a Vista-powered navigation and information system built into the dashboard of a new Ford. But that's what the story says will be available on two models this year and the entire 2008 Ford lineup.

So start practicing -- with one hand...assuming you use the other one on the steering wheel. And while the thought of malware taking control of my computer is disheartening, the thought of malware takig control of my car in motion is, well, a heart attack.

Net neutrality push expected to resume in Congress

The nation's soon-to-be largest telephone company may have caved to certain Net neutrality commitments for the sake of a merger blessing, but a renewed push for more sweeping rules could return to Capitol Hill as soon as this month.
If you haven't sent a letter or email to your person on Capitol Hill, DO IT NOW!
This is very important !
AlaskaJoe

This worm wishes you a Happy New Year

An e-mail worm disguised as a New Year's greeting is making the rounds on the Internet.

Worm-laden messages are titled "Happy New Year" and contain an attachment called either postcard.exe or postcard.zip, according to experts at VeriSign's iDefense Labs, which provides information on security flaws and exploits. If the attachment is opened, malicious software is downloaded from the Internet and can infect computers running Windows operating systems.
AlaskaJoe

Acrobat Reader plugin vulnerable to attacks

Security researchers are poring over what one vendor has called a "breathtaking" weakness in the Web browser plugin for Adobe Systems Inc.'s Acrobat Reader program, used to open the popular ".pdf" file format.
The problem was first highlighted by Stefano Di Paola and Giorgio Fedon, researchers who presented a paper in Berlin last week on security issues related to Web 2.0 technologies such as AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and extensible markup language).
AlaskaJoe

OSalt.com; Open Source as Alternative

I'm a cheapskate. You all know it and are usually too kind to rub it in (except for Joe and Riley :P ) I am also a fan of Free and Open Source software. FOSS appeals to my sense of economy and rightness. I'm not too adamant about FOSS ethics, but I do lean that way and practice them at every opportunity. And an awful lot of FOSS offerings are simply good software, meeting my needs or the needs of those I recommend it to.

I track freeware and Free and Open Source software, trying to keep up on what it does, how well it does it and what it runs on. This is real work. Once you get out of the "mainstream" of operating systems, office suites and browsers, there are no central repositories where the average Jane or John can explore FOSS alternatives productibely. Yes, I know all about Freshmeat.net and Source Forge, but those sites, good as they are, are still very much oriented toward the geeks among us.

OSalt.com is trying to address that and to some real degree they succeed. I recommend the site. Now that you know about it, the next time you are thinking about prying open your wallet and buying software to which you really have no rights, check at OSalt.com and see if you can find what you need or want in the FOSS ranks. Odds are that you can. You will save money, aggravation and time. What's not to like?

Jack

Wake up: quad-core is overkill!

This confirms my thinking that the average user can now easily afford far more computing power and capabilities than they will ever need. Trust me when I say this is something very hard to communicate to many users. Evidently they think they are still in 1998 and have to buy every single FLOP they can afford in order to get anything done.

That mindset is 'way out of date and will lead to an almost uncountable amount of money being spent unnecessarily. More than ever before; users and those of us who help them make purchases need to think carefully about what they need and simply buy to fulfill their needs, plus some indeterminate amount of power to accomodate the future needs. Almost none of the users I serve needs the power available in many affordable machines now and I don't want them to pay the freight or the added energy bills over-buying will impose on them.

Jack

OnComputers Radio show Podcast 12-31-06

This is the On Computers Radio show podcast for 12-31-06. You can listen live every Sunday from 10AM to 1PM Pacific thats 1PM to 4PM Eastern. If you prefer, you can download the same file here via ftp.
We from the OnComputers show wish you all and happy and Safe New Years!