Saturday, January 13, 2007

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

Friday, January 12, 2007

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

Thursday, January 11, 2007

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.

Monday, January 08, 2007

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.

Sunday, January 07, 2007

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