Next Firefox will tell Google all about you

Yup. It's true. However; the feature is disabled by default. I can see where it might be useful at times, but I doubt I'll be enabling it. It's the Luddite in me. :)

Jack

OpenOffice.org documents within Firefox

I guess this is handy. I passed it by this morning, thinking it was not all that hot, but since then have gotten two emails telling me I need to blog it. So, I guess I will.

Enabling the plug-in that is already part of OOo is a one or two click affair. This gives you editing and save capabilities in OOo and ease of saving as well.

Jack

The Old Calculator Web Museum

The handheld electronic calculator turns 40 this week! Who'd a thunk it?

I can remember lusting after a HP scientific in tech school. Anything to replace those laborious calculations on paper. (I was taking toolmaking and machine design, so no slide rules allowed. We had to be exact for several places past the decimal point.) And when I finally got one, I was the envy of the shop. Everyone came by to use it, until they got their own. And then programmables really made us hot stuff!

Anyway; they're all here, from the desktop model the CPA for your grandparents used to the zoomiest scientific model.

Jack

DRM troubles drive ex-Microsoft employee to Linux | CNET News.com

A security expert who once worked for Microsoft has said he may dump the company's Windows Media Center in favor of Ubuntu-affiliated LinuxMCE after struggling with the software giant's digital-rights management software.

An Ex-Microsoft person thinks DRM is bad: Johansson said that DRM software is not only ineffective, but a waste of money that is damaging businesses attempting to use it to control the way consumers use copyright material.

This was from Curtis, Thanks

AlaskaJoe

Video Professor upset by criticism, sues 100 anonymous critics

I guess friendly looking ol' John Scherer isn't as sweet as he looks.

It's a legal blunderbuss attempt to thwart criticisms which, from what I have been able to tell, are at least somewhat justified.

Jack

Institute urges the EU to unbundle Windows

I don't know if this is going to happen. It seems awfully far out to me. However; if it does, it will be the biggest single blow to the Microsoft hedgemony yet. Imagine buying a computer and then having to choose the operating system at another source. What would you choose? How much would you be willing to pay, knowing some alternatives at least are free?

Jack

KWord 2.0 alpha running on KDE 4 under MS Windows

Don't think MS Office is under attack, as I said on the show? People even have native Linux word processors running in Linux environments on Windows!

While that probably was not all that hard, it was not done as an idle excercise in coding. People perceive MS, and their Office franchise in particular, as vulnerable. Competitors are no longer seen as tilting at windmills, so to speak, but as harbingers of some new period in computing. They could be right.

Jack

Feeling tinfoilish? $5 billion suit against Google over privacy, terrorism

Well, I wonder if the Founding Fathers of the USA intended that a tinfoil hat be no bar to accessing the legal system? Apparently not, because that's how things have turned out.

At any rate, this is one for the books, though at the same time one has to wonder what issues might be raised in a similar suit by a lawyer with a more coherent client?

Jack

OnComputers Radio show Podcast 09-23-07

This is the On Computers Radio show podcast for 09-23-07. You can listen live every Sunday from 10AM to 1PM Pacific thats 1PM to 4PM Eastern. Join us for the live show and chat. If you prefer, you can download the same MP3 file here via ftp.

Links from the Gregg Zone!

1) Just in case you forgot or did not know, the do not call list against telemarketers expires five years after you signed up. This means if you signed up early when it came out, you will soon be up for grabs again. What this means to you is if you wish to be left alone to eat dinner in peace, or do not want to pay for text messages, or calls to your cell phone, you need to renew your preferences. Odd that it should expire, but it does so time to update, this is the place to do it. https://www.donotcall.gov

2) I saw a kind of scary (at least to me) story, saying that the Arabs are trying to buy 20% of NASDAQ here is a link to that story here, http://www.americanintelligence.us. This brought to mind a subject I brought up a week or two back about the tapeworm economy, if you missed that, or found it confusing I found a better explanation. So, if you want to peek at those monsters hiding in the closet check this out or you could always just stick your head in the sand and hope for the best. http://www.karavans.com

3) Here is one of those illusionary sites, just has a little different twist, it mixes your visual, and auditory. Its pretty strange if you watch the guy talk you hear one thing, close your eyes and just listen you hear something different. Your eyes are giving you information that your brain is interpreting incorrectly, causing you to hear what you see, as opposed to the reality of what the sound really is. http://www.media.uio.no

4) To close for the week one more of the ways we can save the planet, bring back hemp, not pot, industrial hemp. This is an example of how screwed up our society can get trying to control how we live our lives. Just a couple of things one should know, hemp seeds are the most complete food ever tested, will not get you high just good food, you cannot eat enough to even test positive, like a poppy seed bagel. Hemp per acre is hundreds of times more efficient for paper, could save the rain forests, much better for clothes than cotton, as it requires much less chemicals to grow. It is many times more efficient than corn to fuel cars. The list goes on. This is a good site to start learning about the realties of the subject. Not to mention a suggestion how to make some money in the stock market, or start a new business. http://www.reason.com

5) I just wanted to add one more quickie as there are only two days left. The guy who bought the Barry Bonds baseball, the record breaker is taking votes as what to do with it, I voted to blast it into orbit, heck why not if the guy can pay seven hundred thousand dollars for a ball, he can afford to put it on the space shuttle. Just thought you might want to do something totally pointless. http://www.vote756.com

Roll back DirectX with handy shareware

DirectX Happy Uninstall is the name of the program and from what I know, it is long overdue. There are a lot of reasons to roll back DirectX; probably as many reasons as folks use to justify upgrades. Most of us just don't need it and we may not want to dedicate the resources it takes to it. It's a personal decision.

First reports, like this one in The Inquirer, are good. I have chatted with a couple happy users and don't know of any unhappy ones. It does not yet work on Vista or DX10, but for XP users, this is a good one. The price is right, too.

Jack

Firefox Won't Save You from IE Flaws

We all though we were safe using FireFox or Opera.

The problem is the OTHER programs that are on your computer that are not patched.

The broader implication is that even users who think they're safe because they don't run IE are exposed to any IE vulnerabilities out there, Petkov said. This is true not only for Windows Media Player users but also for those who run Skype, GTalk and AIM, given that those applications all use IE for rendering incoming and outgoing messages, he told eWEEK in an e-mail.

Petkov told eWEEK that the best way to protect a system from the Windows Media Player vulnerability is to upgrade to Windows Media Player 10 or 11.

We always tell you to run your Microsoft Updates, for those that don't maybe because they don't have IE as their default browser YOU need to read this report.
You should always run the latest version of any program you use. Be it Skype, mIRC, AIM any program.

AlaskaJoe

Protect yourself from silent Windows updates - WindowsSecrets.com

From Windows Secrets [I subscribe because Fred Langa merged himself with them, so he could gallivant around the continent.] this seems like a very complete reference about the "hidden updates." Just to update Gari's post.
Enjoy.

--MissM
Protect yourself from silent Windows updates - WindowsSecrets.com

eCommerce… as Imagined in 1967?

We may not have flying cars or be wearing disposible clothing, but our implementation of e-commerce is even better than predicted.

iPhone unlocking for pleasure and profit

Here's a quick article on the current state of iPhone unlocking. It's apparently still a somewhat ungainly process, though doable by anyone willing to take the time to fully digest directions for the deal.

I suspect that over the next month or so (perhaps 6 weeks) we ill see truly user-friendly software appear for doing this. The fear factor is already fairly low. A "bricked" iPhone can be recovered without a trip to Apple for which one would undoubtedly be charged and the process is no worse than the one for unlocking.

While I doubt I will get an opportunity, I'd love to give this one a whirl myself.

Jack

OnComputers Radio show Podcast 09-16-07

This is the On Computers Radio show podcast for 09-16-07. You can listen live every Sunday from 10AM to 1PM Pacific thats 1PM to 4PM Eastern. Join us for the live show and chat. If you prefer, you can download the same MP3 file here via ftp.

Links from the Gregg Zone!

!) Well to start the week, I caught a story on the news about the earthquake in Indonesia, started looking around for some information on it, and found this site. This is one is cool, and I am a little surprised I had not run across it before. The site is primarily, focused on the United States all you need to do is click on your state, and you will find lots of info about where you live, some I am sure will be new to you. I clicked on Nevada, of course, and Alaska out of curiosity just to give you an idea of what is there. I found in Alaska there are 33 volcanoes some with web cams, saw an article about a bird that migrates 18,000 miles ( they put a electronic satellite tracker on the bird studying bird flu), it went eight days non-stop on one leg of it’s journey, over eight thousand miles. What is up with that? Any way, check it out for yourself. http://www.usgs.gov/

2) Are you into new age stuff here is a site with supposedly over fifteen thousand videos on almost anything you can think of from Acupuncture to Zen, about as extensive as I have found in this arena, well worth checking in to http://www.newagevids.com/

3) The dead line for the free internet is coming up very fast, like two months. The government moratorium against taxes and state fees on internet use is ending on November 1, if this is news to you, or you have forgotten about it, this web site will fill you in on the details. You can also learn about what you can do to help insure free access in the future. http://www.donttaxourweb.org

4) A site that discusses the authenticity of the latest Bin Laden tape, interestingly it appears is a fake. If you are interested in the analysis used to determine why, and how it might have been done check it out here. http://www.boomantribune.com

GIMP UI brainstorm

I can state with a fair degree of certainty that the vast majority of us who actually use higher-level image processing applications such as Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro (or whatever Corel is calling it now) and the like use only a very small sub-set of the features available. I know I do and the same goes for nearly every user I know. Not all, but the largest part. And finding those features in the application and using them well enough to do what we need done is confusing and time consuming. It just goes with the territory.

The GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is like that for me. I use it daily. Now, there is a program on to allow both users and developers to "brainstorm" new interfaces. You can find it at the link above.

I welcome this. Perhaps The GIMP does not really need a new interface so much as one that allows more casual users like me to access the few features we use more easily and/or directly; perhaps with customizeable menus or something like that. People who actually make that software work for it's keep probably need something like the current interface. I don't know about their needs. I only know about mine.

In the OCLUG newsgroup on our servers (news.oncomputers.info, see the show site for more information) I recently asked if there were a simpler image manipulation program available for Linux for just this reason. None was suggested and I have not found one yet. However; this does not just affect Linux or Unix users, as there is an excellent port of The GIMP to Windows, as well and Windows users can now have all that GNU goodness too! :) Windows does have simpler applications for the purpose: Witness IrfanView and others. But Linux still lacks one. A new interface for The GIMP might just turn that trick for those of us who need it.

You might want to watch this one develop at the link given above and perhaps even put your efforts into the project. I'm watching it closely now and am thinking about whether or not I have any ideas worth submitting.

Jack

Micro$oft is in control of your computer?

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols writes in an opinions article, that MicroSoft is sneaking updates into our XP SP2 and later Windows computers, even with Auto-Updates switched off. See the article linked above for the rest of the story.

Attacking multicore CPUs

Somebody gave a talk about this a few months ago at my Linux User's Group. I missed it and I'm sorry I did, now that I have the beginnings of awareness on the topic.

We're always talking about the evolution of the threats against our computers, but rarely in terms of the basic engineering of our systems. While this could be just one more thing to lay awake worrying about, it seems to me it is an opportunity to learn more about the relationship between the evolution (for which read growth, as well) of our computing resources and how that leaves opportunity for security vulnerabilities to surface and be exploited.

Mainly, though, I think this article is a good illustration of how and why we, the user communities, must keep abreast so we can adequately use the security information and tools we are given wisely. Things change in all sorts of ways and the fundamental changes wrought by multi-core and multi-processor systems must be accounted for in our practices.

Jack