Malware turns PSP into expensive brick

Yes, it's a trojan for the incredibly popular Playstation Portable. This trojan is disquised as a hack to allow the PSP owner to use it for things that are not Sony authorized. Like a bad morality play, those trying to use a device they own as they please by implementing an unauthorized hack, find that their expensive handheld is about as useful for gaming, or anything else, as a brick.

Generate Light: LTT lit bathtub

"This illuminated, self standing, polyethylene bathtub is sure to add drama to your bathroom. Available with internal multicolored, programmable LED light unit, or with a regular light fitting." I think some people have way to much time on the hands!

Sharp Makes a Million-to-One Shot - Home Video News - Designtechnica

"Electronics maker Sharp has announced it has developed an LCD display with a mind-blowing one-million-to-one contrast ratio."
Can you smell the roses yet?

PCWorld.com - Best Defenders

"Spyware is getting smarter. The newest threats are better than their predecessors from just a few months ago at hijacking your browser, watching your Web surfing, and stealing your data. Your current anti-spyware program may not be up to the challenge. "

Technology News Article | Reuters.com

"The record industry may next aim its legal guns at satellite radio due to a dispute involving new portable players which let listeners record and store songs, an analyst and industry sources said on Wednesday. " I guess the record industry can't make money selling music so they want to make it off of us listening to the music instead.

BBC NEWS | Technology | PlayStation loses chipping case

BBC NEWS | Technology | PlayStation loses chipping case: "Sony has lost a legal battle in Australia over the modifying of its PlayStation games console. "

Guardian Unlimited Technology | Technology | Breaking America's grip on the net

It was announced yesterday that the "EU had decided to end the US government's unilateral control of the internet and put in place a new body that would now run this revolutionary communications medium."

More info at the article in the title.

--MissM

Robert Scoble says there's a google rss reader, the first time I went, I got a server error, so I hit refresh and there it is. Interesting, I'll have to check it out. :)

--MissM

Broadband Over Power Lines Debuts in D.C. Suburb

"MANASSAS, Va. -- Just one year after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved rules for the deployment of broadband over power lines (BPL), the technology made its commercial debut in this Washington suburb. " It will be nice if it works.

Alaska Before You Die - The vacation of a lifetime

Remember Geek Meet 2006 will be up here in Anchorage, I'm sure hope you can make the trip, it is the trip of a lifetime! The 3rd weekend in June is Geek Meet 2006, but you should plan on spending a week or two up here. Notice the date on the license plate!
You won't be sorry. :)
Joe

Slew of Windows patches coming | Tech News on ZDNet

"As part of its monthly patching cycle, Microsoft on Tuesday plans to release eight security alerts for flaws in the Windows operating system. "
I only have one thing to say, DO YOUR UPDATES!

Another busy Patch Tuesday

After a couple of months of relatively little activity, all of us Windows system administrators are going to be busy again this upcoming week. Nine security bulletins on the way; eight of them for Windows, one for Excchange.

TechCrunch: Verisign Acquires Weblogs.com

w0w, its getting wacky with all the news of purchases, Weblogs.com is Dave Winer's company, and he's in Greensboro, NC for ConvergeSouth, a blogging conference I'm dragging the kids to, tomorrow. They are really looking forward to sitting in meetings, all day... NOT! :)

--MissM

CNET News.com's Blog 100

Here is News.com list of top 100 weblogs, its fascinating, and worthy of discussion. My question for you, dear reader, is... How many of these were on your list before you read it, and after? I prolly have about half of them, already... too many to count for accuracy, especially this early in the morning. I know I'll be working my way through the list. I hope I don't go above 200 items in my aggregator :)

--MissM

Level3.Net is being Internet Terrorist in my opinion

According to Todd, at geeknewscentral.com Level3.Net is blocking Level 1 internet peer access to Cogent. That must be why the internet has been really, really slow for me, the last day, or so...

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Update: a link to News.com with more details.

Google formally declares war on Microsoftt i

The link is to a story in The Courier-Mail. You will have to decide for yourself whether or not it is overly dramatic. I think it is not.

Google is going to offer word processor and spreadsheet software online, for free. This is a direct threat to Microsoft's cash cow-Office, though exactly what percentage of the market for Office might be tempted to take advantage of the Open Office applications Sun and Google will offer in conjunction with each other. Even a 10% defection from Microsoft's suite would represent a few hundreds of millions of dollars directly subtracted from Redmond's bottom line.

It is almost inevitable a Google browser will follow in due time.

Now the rumor mill has it that there will be PCs with Sun's Java Desktop System (a Linux distribution with Sun's own desktop) or Sun's desktop running on Solaris 10 for x86. That may or may not be over the top. Who can tell at this stage? It's getting interesting, isn't it?

Jack

How Dell repels attempts to buy its 'open source' PC

Here's an interesting bit at The Register.

Dell evidently did not put out a press release about offering the "open source friendly" E510n. They just tipped off a few journalists who ran with it. Dell gets a free boost in the public eye. But go to Dell's site and try to find, much less buy, this computer and you'll find a very different story.

The PC is hidden well on Dell's site and, despite the fact that you're not having to pay for a copy of Windows, you won't be saving any money on this model. It's a tricky deal to figure out and evidently nearly impossible to consummate. There's also a page of almost hilarious chat transcript with a Dell salesperson. Apparently, they really don't want to sell you this machine.

Jack

Paidcontent.org: AOL buys Weblogs, Inc.

After Ebay paid US$2 Billion for SkyPe, now aol is buying out Weblogs, Inc. which publishes Engadget, which is a blog with the newest gadgets, among others. They may end up paying in the US$20-25 million for Weblogs, Inc.

Is this another dot.com surge?? What else is for sale??

--MissM

Dude! I'm getting a DELL

Just found out, all us mopguys are getting DELL desktops. It will be connected to a central server. This will finally allow us to submit things without paper. I for one am a happy mopguy! I'll keep you updated as things happen.

Shell Extension City: Fun for Geeks

Shellcity.net is a very interesting site for those computer hobbyists with a good set of backups and a recent system restore point or two. Caveat emptor. Lots of tweaks and code to supplant and improve Windows.

Now, If I Could Only Read Hindi, Telugu or Tamil

MICROSOFT Corporation India is set to launch the Windows XP Starter Edition priced at 1,000 rupees ($US22.72) that fits well into the 10,000 rupee ($US227) price personal computers that have begun to proliferate in the country.

The Starter Edition is attractively priced targeting countries such as India and Russia. The edition comes with high localisation and would be available in a local language interface such as Hindi, Telugu and Tamil.

Looks like I'll be paying a lot more than Indian consumers for my next copy of Windows XP...

You Can Forget About Having Your PC Play HD-DVD on Your HDTV

Forthcoming Blu-ray and HD-DVD discs promise higher resolution than a standard DVD's 480-line maximum. But to protect its high-quality content from pirating, the film industry, along with disc and hardware makers, has created an umbrella content protection scheme known as AACS. If Windows is to play the new discs, Microsoft has little choice but to support AACS, which is where PVP-OPM comes in. According to Microsoft, PVP-OPM will prevent pirates from attaching recording devices directly to the PC graphics card's DVI or HDMI video outputs in order to capture a pristine digital copy of the disc's otherwise encrypted content. A related component, PVP-UAB, will prevent savvy computer owners from installing data capture cards in order to grab high-def movies straight off the PCI Express bus.

Unfortunately, PVP-OPM will also shut out plenty of law-abiding video watchers whose current displays aren't future-proof. To comply with the film industry's protection scheme, PVP-OPM employs HDCP technology to determine whether graphics boards and displays are allowed to output and display high-def video. If HDCP sees a blocked display (such as a video capture device) or one that does not support HDCP (including any HDTV with only analog connectors), it prevents output or reduces the video resolution until the offending display or protected content is removed from the system.

Well, sports fans, this pretty well sums up what the content providers are going to do to your recent technology investments: make them more-or-less valueless.

Flaw found in Kaspersky antivirus | CNET News.com

"A 'critical' flaw in Kaspersky Lab's antivirus software could let an attacker commandeer systems that use the products, a security researcher warned Monday. " Another reason to use NOD32 The Anti-Virus that works! Over 7 years and no Virus has gotten past NOD32 in the wild.

Declaration of InDRMpendence | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com

"Is your anti-virus or anti-spyware technology warning you about the Digital Rights Management software on your computer? If not, it should be. It's a Trojan horse of the worst kind."
Here we go, now you can't buy a song legally and play it on your home stereo. What's next Will we have to pay to listen to our own music a third time? Once when we buy it, then if you want to listen to the same song again.

Euphoria!

Euphoria is a simplified interpreted programming language with a lot of fully modern features and the ability to be translated into C code and so compiled. It has Win32 as well as Linux/BSD binaries. You can use a wide variety of text editors and they have one specially for the language, should you desire that.

Unlike most "simplified" languages, this one seems to retain all the capabilities of a "real" language. It's worth checking out. Installation is easy and there is enough documentation to get almost anyone started.

Jack

Google and Sun Form Partnership

This is speculative, but if there is more than a grain of truth in it, the people who work at Microsoft's Office division aren't going to be sleeping well for a while.

Google and Sun have the power to deliver products together in a way Microsoft simply does not. This is not the end of Redmond's rule, but it is a severe crack in their rose-colored glasses

Jack

Ipod Nano 200gb Instructions/Page 1 - Uncyclopedia

A HOWTO: on making a 200GB Nano, this is just TOOO funny. Via Gizmodo, they say its got a whopping 6 minute battery life. ;)

--MissM

YubNub - YubNub.org

This is a really cool search engine that uses keywords, and you can make your own commands. I was made aware of this via ScreenCastsOnline which is a cool apple vidcast! This was the coolest command from the vidcast, in my opinion, gimyim porsche 911 gives you yahoo and google image search in one window! I can see there would be a learning curve with the commands, but they have really cool tips. Check it out!

--MissM

Check all your website rankings

Check your website ranking in all the search engines!
Here's another PubSub measurements, though I just subscribed to the rss, so I'm not sure how this works, its just interesting to look at, imo :)
We're trusted!

--MissM


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Admin: Small change in blog

EVERYbody can post here now, in the comments, as a further test. My initial one didn't work very well (See lack of comments), and I DO want want to have a 2 way discussion here. There is still word verification, which makes it unsuitable for the visually impaired, sorry Riley (Does he even check the blog?). Thank you for reading and commenting [perennial optimist, that I am ;)]

--MissM

Collaborative writing software online with Writeboard. Write, share, revise, compare.

Well, Scoble and GeekNewsCentral blogged about it, and once I looked I wondered if it was a good thing for the show hosts communication? Or just any collaboration that needs a common "writeboard" :)

Might as well compare blog search results, eh?
Google 100 results
Bloglines 21 results
Technorati 180 results
IceRocket 92 results
Digg.com 360+ diggs

I got these links by selecting preferences at tech.memeorandum.com
and showing link search. To maximize the number of results, I removed the site reference from all searches, except bloglines, which requires a url, to search. Which struck me as less useful than being able to search for one term (as a side note, I wish tech.memeorandum made it easier to post the url for the discussion, it shows up in rss, but the updates and what you can see are limited in sage and google, which is where I put the rss feed from memeorandum in my personalized google web page. HA! did you think you'd see my real home page? :)

I'm doing the work checking the blog searches, so you don't have to ;)

--MissM

Satellite internet access - improvement still needed

Being a former Direcway customer, I found this interesting. Fact is, wired broadband isn't everywhere, there aren't a lot of alternatives, and they all cost money. Satellite has been around a while but it's pricey and WiMax isn't yet ubiquitous. I found Direcway very good, certainly better than dialup (what isn't?) but at the time, no match for my DSL service that replaced it. Also played with Starband a couple of times at a local dealer, also good but no match for DSL or cable. I'd definitely recommend satellite to anyone who couldn't get DSL/cable and who could afford it. IMO, the satellite providers are probably sitting on a gold mine but they need to get more competitive in pricing and offer higher speeds. The only real downsides to satellite are high latency times (which may not be important to all customers) and occasional weather-related signal loss (and of course... cost). It's a really neat technology but at this point, unaffordable for many. I think it bears watching though, looks like it's (slowly) headed in the right direction.

OnComputers Radio show Podcast 10-02-05

This is the On Computers Radio show podcast for 10-02-2005. If you prefer, you can download the same file here via ftp.

Navas Cable Modem/DSL Tuning GuideTM

Been using the tweaks here for years. Very easy and they work well. Some interesting information on the page also.

Huge List of Windows XP Tips

Tips on everything from networking to performance to the taskbar. A huge list of XP tips. I found several useful things I just had to try :)

One of the most useful was finding out what things are running under svchost.exe, check it out.

--MissM


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