Computing

I have not posted as much recently, compared to my usual.  That's because I've been messing with my computers, setting them up to use Sabayon instead of Suse.  Those of you who can about such things can guess why that is. One thing I've noticed.  If I don't post very much, not as many people visit.   One thing I wanted to mention.  This is href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/06/02/ballmer_linux_is_a_cancer/">old news, but apropos anyway: style="font-weight: bold;">Ballmer: “Linux is a cancer”Contaminates all other software with Hippie GPL rubbishBy Thomas C Greene2nd June 2001…
I've been holding back on this one, but it is time to speak out.  On November 2, 2006, href="http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/articlenews.aspx?type=technologyNews&storyid=2006-11-02T230517Z_01_WEN9025_RTRIDST_0_TECH-MICROSOFT-NOVELL-BALLMER-DC.XML">Microsoft and Novell announced a deal.  The deal involves Microsoft paying Novell, and the two companies working together to ensure a certain level of interoperability between Novell's Suse (a Linux distro), and Microsoft's Windows.  In return, Novell would get protection against intellectual-property litigation. By way of background,…
Another product that makes me go "hmmm."  Once or twice in my life I've paid extra for high-performance random-access memory, but I've never paid extra for the href="http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/10/17/log_ocz_camouflage_ddr2_memory/">paint job. This is the PC2-6400 Special Ops Urban Edition from OCZ. I suppose if you have a problem with tiny snipers running around in your case, it might make sense to get these.  Or, if you are fond of using old parts to make jewelry or something like that, it could be pretty cool.  But, what the hell, sometimes it makes sense just to have fun with…
Casual users might not notice much difference between Firefox 2.0 and IE 7.0.  But with continued use, the advantages of Firefox become increasingly evident.  This is especially true for people who take the initiative to install a lot of extensions. What is less obvious, is that Firefox still has the advantage in security, as confirmed by a recent report: href="http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/7asiAzrqaYcW7j/Firefox-The-Better-Phisher-Fighter.xhtml">Firefox: The Better Phisher FighterBy Jay LymanLinuxInsider11/16/06 4:00 AM PT Mozilla and Microsoft are duking it out over which of their…
Finally, a product to bring much-deserved recognition to an out-of-the-way place: Intel has announced their "enthusiast" motherboard for high-performance computing: the href="http://www.intel.com/products/motherboard/d975xbx/index.htm">D975XBX, nicknamed the "Bad Axe." Just get a load a'the href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_sink">heat sinks on that baby!  Granted, it's not the most pragmatic piece of hardware on the planet, but it'll make your lan-party buddies green with envy.   The product's namesake is a little town in Michigan's thumb.  Hardly anybodies been there, but…
The latest issue of href="http://www.fastcompany.com/subscr/110/index.html">Fast Company has an article about href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Bell" rel="tag">Gordon Bell, who is running a project to digitize and record all of the information he generates and encounters in the course of his life.  He calls the project href="http://research.microsoft.com/barc/MediaPresence/MyLifeBits.aspx">MyLifeBits.  (The article is not openly accessible, but there are others out there on the same topic, and at least one href="http://participationage.wordpress.com/2006/03/22/…
Just for kicks, in case anyone cares, and is not already familiar with these sites, here are a few that I use: class="inset" alt="" src="http://a248.e.akamai.net/7/248/430/20060421021059/www.merckmedicus.com/ppdocs/us/hcp/images/redesign/img_mm_logo.jpg" align="left" border="0" height="39" width="140"> href="http://www.merckmedicus.com/pp/us/hcp/hcp_home.jsp">Merck Medicus is a great site.  I had to provide some medical license information, so I don't think it is available to everyone.  That is annoying, but I understand why they do that.  The site provides free access to resources…
KDE 3.5.5 released. On 11 October 2006, the KDE Project releasedKDE 3.5.5. For packages, please visit the href="http://kde.org/info/3.5.5.php">KDE 3.5.5 Info Page and browse the KDE 3.5 Requirements list. src="http://kde.org/media/images/hotspots/10years.png" alt="Hotspot" align="right" border="0" height="111" vspace="3" vspace="3" width="166"> KDE is going to celebrate its 10th anniversary. On 14th October 1996, Matthias Ettrich announced the beginning of a project which is now one of the biggest and most exciting open source projects. To celebrate this event we'd like to…
Linux has long been the champion of cute names.  For example, right now I am downloading (via bittorrent) href="http://distrowatch.com/sabayon" rel="tag">Sabayon Linux, which is named after an Italian dessert ( href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabayon" rel="tag">Zabaglione). I must say, though, that the best name for a Linux distribution is this: href="http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=slackintosh" rel="tag">Slackintosh A Slackware for your Macintosh, or Slackintosh, is a Linux distribution designed to run on your PowerPC-based hardware. Version 11.0 was released…
Facetime Communications has href="http://www.facetime.com/pr/pr060918.aspx">announced that they have seen evidence of a new Internet worm that spreads via AOL Instant Messenger.  It comes in the guise of a picture, that is astually an executable file.   The user first sees an ordinarily link, but when the link is clicked, it downloads a file called image18.com.  Details follow... Like many IM worms, W32.pipeline first appears as an instant message from a familiar contact, luring users into clicking on a link with a contextual phrase. The IM message "hey would it okay if i upload this…
What Congress set out to do, was to come up with ethics reform legislation that would show that they are addressing the concerns of the public, in the wake of numerous scandals.  Reportedly, though, both parties were reluctant to put limits or their interactions with lobbyists.  Instead, they are going to settle for a rather anemic rule change that requires lawmakers to acknowledge the pork-barrel earmarks they sponsor. href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/14/AR2006091401674.html"> href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/14/…
The August issue of Linux Format has an article showing how all the the most-anticipated features of Windows Vista are available today, on Linux.  Although Microsoft touts these as "innovations," they are not new, or at least won't be new by the time Vista is actually on retail shelves.   One of these features is href="http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/features/foreveryone/searchorg.mspx">Instant Search.  It indexes everything on your hard drive, so you can find anything quickly.   The comparable Linux tool is Beagle.  It not only reads and indexes the contents of text files, but it…
Long-time readers have noticed that I tend to hype free software and resources from time to time.   After SB redesigned the skin for our blogs, I decided that I should redo the banner.  The old one was done in brown, specifically to match the old page style.  It looked dorky after the redesign. So, I used GIMP, the GNU Image Manipulation Program, to design a new one.  It's a free program that runs on Linux/Unix, Windows, or Mac.   align="right" height="81" width="210">The images were taken from an href="http://www.cnsforum.com/resources/imagebank/">image bank at CNS Forums, sponsored…
I am having a bit of trouble publishing posts. So it may be a couple of days before substantive posting resumes.
For various reasons, I am now mostly using a computer in the living room, rather than the study.  That is fine, but it is far from the cable modem.  That would be no problem, having a wireless card installed.  But the card is a Linksys card that uses a Broadcom chip.  There is no Linux driver.  I am not clever enough to get the Windows driver to work is Linux using ndiswrapper.  I did get to the point where the OS could see the card, but I could not actually get the card to work.  I'm pretty sure that I was getting hung up on configuring the encryption.  I thought briefly about using it…