Computing
j7uy5 | November 29, 2006I 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 rubbish
By Thomas C
Greene
2nd June…
j7uy5 | November 19, 2006I'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…
j7uy5 | November 17, 2006Another 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…
j7uy5 | November 17, 2006Casual 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 Fighter
By Jay Lyman
LinuxInsider
11/16/06 4:00 AM PT
Mozilla and Microsoft are duking it out over…
j7uy5 | November 5, 2006Finally, 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,…
j7uy5 | October 30, 2006The 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/…
j7uy5 | October 27, 2006Just 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…
j7uy5 | October 12, 2006KDE
3.5.5 released.
On 11 October 2006, the KDE Project released
KDE
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…
j7uy5 | October 8, 2006Linux 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…
j7uy5 | September 18, 2006Facetime
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…
j7uy5 | September 15, 2006What 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/…
j7uy5 | August 21, 2006The 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…
j7uy5 | July 22, 2006Long-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,…
j7uy5 | July 8, 2006I am having a bit of trouble publishing posts. So it may be a couple of days before substantive posting resumes.
j7uy5 | July 1, 2006For 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…