Apple to ditch IBM, switch to Intel chips

New news at news.com (yes, I was trying for alliteration :P) about apple and intel, Peter was right but, exactly what they are gonna do with it, has yet to be decided.

-MissM/Jane

Uneasy Rider - Newsweek Technology - MSNBC.com

This article asks if Ask Jeeves, the owners of "My Search", are in the clear. Apparently, Ask Jeeves is working to make sure their toolbar doesn't go places its not wanted, including cancelling contracts with its distributors.

As a side note, Ben Edelman, who was a guest a couple of weeks ago, is quoted.

Microsoft Office Versus Open Office in Terms of Market Share

Softpedia.com has a short article about market share of MS Office and Open Office. I found the numbers a little surprising, with Open Office having a 10% to 15% market penetration, depending on which analyst you believe.

Jack

ratDVD v0.5.1017

ratDVD v0.5.1017: "ratDVD takes a full featured DVD movie and puts it into a highly compressed .ratDVD container format file - while preserving all the features of the original DVD such as: "
This looks like a nice little program to back up your DVD's to your media center PC.
Joe

Congressional aides predict telecom reform soon | InfoWorld | News | 2005-06-01 | By Grant Gross, IDG News Service

Congressional aides predict telecom reform soon | InfoWorld | News | 2005-06-01 | By Grant Gross, IDG News Service: "WASHINGTON - The U.S. Congress should pass some kind of telecommunications reform by late 2006, four congressional staffers focused on telecom issues predicted Wednesday, but the group couldn't agree on what kind of reform is needed. "
Ya think they can get it right this time?
Joe

Forging an anti-terrorism search tool | CNET News.com

Forging an anti-terrorism search tool | CNET News.com: "The government is counting on new search technology to sniff out terrorists.
Google is the No. 1 free tool to snoop on friends or strangers. But government agencies including the Federal Aviation Administration are investing in a new search engine being developed at the University of Buffalo to do some of their more sensitive detective work."
Do you know who your friends are?
Joe

Apple to offer $50 credit in iPod suit | CNET News.com

Apple to offer $50 credit in iPod suit | CNET News.com: "Apple Computer has agreed to settle several class action suits over the battery life of its popular iPod portable music players, offering extended service warranties and $50 store credits to consumers who lobbed complaints. "
Read this to see how you can get your $50 credit.
Joe

Digital divide has not disappeared | Perspectives | CNET News.com

Digital divide has not disappeared | Perspectives | CNET News.com: "It appears that we no longer need to worry about building a bridge between technology haves and have-nots. "
Or do we? do your kids use a computer to do their homework?
Joe

Group revives effort to define spyware | CNET News.com

Group revives effort to define spyware | CNET News.com: "Makers of anti-spyware software are taking another shot at creating a definition of spyware, this time with help from consumer organizations. "
Do you think that pop under is spyware? Or did you ask for it?
Joe

DIYParts.org

I've now heard about this site from 2 podcasts, and a couple blogs, and I think there is something of genuine interest to you, the geeky reader of this blog. ;)

Basically its a hardware exchange between geeks, check it out, you might find a use for those parts stacking up, never to be used by you again.... (The ultimate reusing, in the reduce, reuse, recycle chain) Yes, you know who you are, too.

Then again, one might find a part that has been long needed!

-MissM

SBC ups the ante in broadband war | CNET News.com

SBC ups the ante in broadband war | CNET News.com: "SBC Communications' move to slash prices on its DSL service could spur a pricing war between phone companies and their rivals in the cable industry, say analysts. But cable companies say they're competing on value rather than price. "
Is it time for you to call SBC? I have heard DSL as low as $14.95 a month.
Joe

Slashdot | Online Shoppers Naive About Online Prices

I'm proud to be a "bottom feeder" shopper (searching multiple sites for the lowest prices), but I do tend to have sites that I trust. And a list of sites, I stay away from, because of various negative experiences.
and like Joe says "[fr]oogle is your friend!"

-MissM/Jane

Microsoft Will Drop 'My' Prefix for Longhorn

From the "I always did think it was silly" dept...

OnComputers on PodcastAlley.com!!

Shameless self promotion alert!

We are actually listed at podcastalley.com but... we have NO votes :(
I hope you feel us worthy of a vote, you can only vote once per month, per email. Another benefit for you, the voter (hint, hint), is you can see a great selection of podcasts. I subscribed to the techpodcast.com feeds, and am slowly weeding out, the ones that have poor production values, or are too "basic" for me.
Enjoy!

-MissM

The 'Dirty Little Secret' About Longhorn

Several sites are reporting that Longhorn won't be as closely tied to .NET 2.0 as previously reported. There are good reasons for this given in the eWeek.com article linked to above and it looks as if things are going to be handled in such a way that developers who are depending on the next version of .NET aren't going to be left out in the cold, even for a short time.

So why is this treated in the press as such a defeat for Microsoft? I don't know. Maybe folks are just acustomed to throwing brickbats at Longhorn because of the major features that are going to be delayed.

Jack

Dr. Watson's Longhorn Makeover Raises Eyebrows

This is one of those aspects of Longhorn that will be very hard to judge until the product actually debuts. I can understand the privacy worries, yet cannot help but wonder if this is one of those tempests born of speculation and without complete facts.

See for yourself.

Jack

Boffins build self-wiring supercomputer

A large computer that can reconfigure itself on the fly in order to best solve whatever problem it is working on has been the goal of several research efforts, over the years. Great progress seems to have been made. Franky, though, the biggest attraction of this story in The Inquirer was the subtitle "Handy for those who can’t change a fuse".

Jack

Computex show opens in Taiwan

Click here to see what's up at Computex, the consumer digital technology show in Taiwan. You'll likely pick up on many of the items that will be hot this Christmas buying season.

BIG NEWS ON USA MICROSOFT: Slavery to It Is Ending : Argentina Indymedia (( i ))

BIG NEWS ON USA MICROSOFT: Slavery to It Is Ending : Argentina Indymedia (( i )): "Mass-produced computers can KILL Microsoft and free the world's computer users. They'll be too cheap to accommodate MS Windows"
Will you get a cheap Linux based computer?
Joe

Enterprises Tout Linux's Cost, Performance Benefits

Enterprises Tout Linux's Cost, Performance BenefitsA million dollars is not trivial, and that's the amount that retail chain Boscov claims it will save by switching to open-source software.
Will your company make the move away from Microsoft?
Joe

15 things you can do with RSS - Tim Yang's Geek Blog

Since more and more of you are using RSS now (you know who you are :P )

I found the tips here fascinating. One allows you to track fedex packages
I think that RSS and podcasting are two VERY cool, and expanding technologies, that truly do make life easier.
-MissM

IBM Seeks More Users for Cell Chip

IBM demonstrated a blade server board based on the Cell architecture at the E3 show this week, and reportedly plans to sell the boards in rack-based server systems, according to The Register in the UK.

Already designed into next year's Sony Playstation 3, IBM and partner Toshiba are looking for more uses -- to keep IBM's East Fishkill, NY $3 billion fabrication facility busy.

The engineering prototype Cell blade generates 400 Mflops with two onboard cell chips running Linux. With this level of floating point, expect IBM to target scientific, military, academic, and life sciences applications. (And yes, Jack, http://setiathome2.ssl.berkeley.edu/stats/team/team_48460.html would do great with a couple of these blades).

-- Peter S. Kastner
[UPDATE:link to the OnComputers Seti Page, MissM]

LinuxISOtorrent.com :: Linux ISO Torrent

This site seems to have the latest Linux versions, at least, the few that I do know...
SuSE 9.3, Fedora Core 4, kubuntu 5.04, knoppix 3.8.1, Mandrakelinux 10.2 RC2, ubuntu 5.04 and 5.10 Colony 1, etc, etc,

I was amazed! at the number of distros. I knew there were a lot, but golly I never realized there were so many.
Several AMD 64 versions too, in addition to the std i386.

-MissM

"Linux Lasts Longer" Says Honeynet Project

Interesting white paper by Honeynet.org for a quick read. Note the date is last December, but, heck, I cannot keep up with everything on the Internet anymore :-) The date is important because Windows XP SP2 was brand new as of the report's data collection period.

Interesting findings:

• Unpatched Linux machines last a mean of 3.0 months before compromise
• Windows machines last hours if left unpatched
• Machine-based hacking is goving way to human-based social crimes (DOS) and financial crimes (e.g., phishing).

I am going to bookmark this org and check back periodically to see what comes to the honey.

-- Peter S. Kastner

OnComputers Podcast

This is the On Computers podcast for 05-29-2005. If you prefer, you can download the same file here via ftp.

Rumours of the death of VMS...

Few of us ever think about VMS/OpenVMS anymore. It's still alive and very well, thank you, despite rumors of it's demise. Our friend Buddwig often works on a VAX running VMS and the operating system has now been ported to Intel's Itanium2 platform.

There aren't many operating systems as robust and reliable as OpenVMS, as this Infoconomy article shows. It's an interesting read.

Jack

PCWorld.com - Microsoft: New Netscape Breaks IE

PCWorld.com - Microsoft: New Netscape Breaks IE: "Microsoft is advising users of Netscape 8 to either uninstall the software or edit their computer's Registry files because of a bug in America Online's new browser." It sure is a good thing Microsoft has never had a bug!
Joe

PCWorld.com - Indy 500 Team Turns to Wi-Fi for Racing Edge

PCWorld.com - Indy 500 Team Turns to Wi-Fi for Racing Edge: "Wireless IP technology will play a role at Sunday's Indianapolis 500, keeping the Red Bull Cheever Racing team updated with reams of precise data from two cars zipping around the 2.5-mile track at speeds of 219 mph."
Who said 802.11G wasn't fast? It works for them.
Joe

PCWorld.com - Fret About PC Zombie Threat?

PCWorld.com - Fret About PC Zombie Threat?: "Worried about zombies? Internet users concerned about the number of virus-infected PCs ready to launch an attack over the Web can at least keep track of how afraid they should be--and satisfy their curiosity--by visiting CipherTrust Inc.'s new ZombieMeter resource."
Am I worried? Should I be? Are you?

Joe

Cellular | Why Jerry Springer should get into the ring tone business | News.blog | CNET News.com

Cellular | Why Jerry Springer should get into the ring tone business | News.blog | CNET News.com: "What's next, Jerry Springer ring tones? I'll bet there are people willing to buy snippets of a particularly bleeped out bit of his day time schlockathon, like when the cross-dresser reveals himself to his unsuspecting husband of three months? 'Why you BLEEP, I'm gonna BLEEP your BLEEPing BLEEP'
'Oh, Hi mom, great to hear from you!'"
Is that your phone ringing?
Joe

When a lawyer gets hit by spammers, expect a lawsuit | CNET News.com

When a lawyer gets hit by spammers, expect a lawsuit | CNET News.com: "In one of the few instances of an individual taking a spam fight to the courts, a New York lawyer has filed a lawsuit alleging that his e-mail address was hijacked and used to send messages promoting a company's stock. "
Didn't anyone ever tell this guys not to ness with a lawyer?
Joe

Federal report warns of RFID misuses | CNET News.com

Federal report warns of RFID misuses | CNET News.com: "Radio frequency identification is becoming increasingly popular inside the U.S. government, but agencies have not seriously considered the privacy risks, federal auditors said.
In a report published Friday, the Government Accountability Office said that 13 of the largest federal agencies are already using RFID or plan to use it. But only one of 23 agencies polled by the GAO had identified any legal or privacy issues--even though three admitted RFID would let them track employee movements. "

Is this a surprise? I don't think so!
Joe