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7376

General Software Discussion / Re: Opera 11.5 Released

« Last post by 40hz on June 29, 2011, 09:04 AM »

@Ren- According to the Opera website: Opera Mini is the same as Opera Mobile minus Opera's own rendering engine and support for Adobe Flash and HTML5.

Those 'omissions' seem to be because Apple won't allow Flash; or any rendering engine other than their own in a browser if it's going on an iPad/Phone.

I'm guessing Opera decided to differentiate because they wanted it to be known their mobile browser's limitations were due to having arbitrary limits put on it by Apple. In short, if it's on Apple, you're not getting the full Opera experience.

That said, this new Mobile version (I'm using it right now) is still significantly faster, and feels more 'solid', than the latest Safari. And +1 w/capitalH. It does seem to have a smaller memory footprint than previously.

It's just a better browser than Safari. No surprise there.  

7377

General Software Discussion / Re: Google+

« Last post by 40hz on June 29, 2011, 08:47 AM »

^Absolutely. No doubt about it 

My point was just that social networking would merely be a byproduct for Google, not their real business.

7378

General Software Discussion / Re: Google+

« Last post by 40hz on June 29, 2011, 07:33 AM »

It pays to remember Google's primary goal is to deliver advertisements and ad related services. And collect data on usage patterns which they sell back to advertisers.  

For Google, it's not a question of doing anything other than attracting and retaining eyeballs. Everything after that is secondary. They could care less about winning hearts. If a popular product or service emerges as a side effect of their main goal, all well and good as far as Google is concerned.  But it's not their primary objective which is to get your attention and analyze how you use the web.

7379

Living Room / Re: Drive Dock: Turn bare drives into floppies

« Last post by 40hz on June 28, 2011, 09:44 PM »

But I don't think it'd work with my old drive, which is IDE.

-kyrathaba (June 28, 2011, 09:24 PM)

It won't. It's strictly SATA. Straight EIDE docks seem to have disappeared recently. Thermaltake used to make a companion EIDE version OF the BlacX. But I haven't seen one in years so I'm guessing it's been discontinued.

Startech still makes a dual IDE/SATA docking station, but it's fairly pricey.

I had an IDE dock. But it died about a year ago. What I now use is the guts from an old external USB drive enclosure that I leave the cover off of. Not as convenient to use as a real dock. But it does help recycle some of those old dead external IDE drives. Which is a lot greener than tossing them in the trash.
 

7380

General Software Discussion / Re: Google+

« Last post by 40hz on June 28, 2011, 09:27 PM »

Sparks and Circles looks very interesting.

My only problem is I'm very much divided on how much more I'm willing to let Google know about me (and my friends) than it already does.

However, that's how I feel about social media sites in general. So there's nothing specific to Google in my concern about this...

Gonna really need to think about this one.

7381

Living Room / Re: Drive Dock: Turn bare drives into floppies

« Last post by 40hz on June 28, 2011, 09:04 PM »

there are a ton of sata hard drive docks

-mouser (June 28, 2011, 07:21 PM)

I can recommend the Thermaltake BlacX Duet SATA dock.  

Excellent quality, inexpensive, must-have accessory if you do any kind of PC hardware support or repair work. (Or if you need to scrub a particularly resilient piece of malware off somebody's boot drive.) Prices vary widely so be sure to shop around for it. List is $49.99 USD. But last time I needed another one I ended up scoring two on sale for $22 each. I would have bought more at that price but they were the last two in stock where I got it.

 

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@kyrathaba -Very nice find. Haven't seen one of those before. Caveats aside, I like the fact it's an all-in-one. If they just added in a 6-port USB hub it would be the perfect addition to a technician's field kit. And a lot less to carry. 

7382

Living Room / Re: We need some good tech news sites - Where are they?

« Last post by 40hz on June 28, 2011, 06:34 PM »

@Renegade - please don't read beyond this point. You've been driven crazy enough by stupidity that I won't be responsible if you completely lose it because you start visiting this site.  

Here's a picture of a cute puppy to look at instead!  

Everyone other than Renegade

For the rest of you:

If you suffer from chronic low blood pressure - or function best when you're half out of your mind with moral outrage and indignation - check out TechDirt for your daily serving of tech news laced with a healthy dose of raw spleen.

Started in 1997 by Floor64 founder Mike Masnick and then growing into a group blogging effort, the Techdirt blog uses a proven economic framework to analyze and offer insight into news stories about changes in government policy, technology and legal issues that affect companies ability to innovate and grow.

The dynamic and interactive community of Techdirt readers often comment on the addictive quality of the content on the site, a feeling supported by the blog’s ~800,000 RSS subscribers, 45,000+ posts, 600,000+ comments and a consistent Technorati Technology Top 100 rating. Both Business Week and Forbes have awarded Techdirt with Best of the Web thought leader awards.

You can also find Techdirt on Twitter and Facebook.

Barely a week goes by that I'm not completely overwhelmed with anger (or laughing vindictively) over some bit of news I've read here.

Not for the faint of heart.  

You have been warned.

7383

General Software Discussion / Re: Google's WDYL (What Do You Love?) -- I think I like it

« Last post by 40hz on June 28, 2011, 04:37 PM »

JavaJones has got a new animated avatar!

7384

Living Room / Re: Lulzsec hackers outed by "anonymous" user

« Last post by 40hz on June 28, 2011, 02:27 PM »

In the end it plays into the hands of those who argue for even greater restrictions and surveillance.

First rule of street combat: Hit hard, hit fast, hit decisively - and end it.

Because if you don't completely take down your opponent with your first blow, there's a very good chance you won't get a second punch in.

7385

Living Room / Re: Anyone Using Bitcoins Yet?

« Last post by 40hz on June 28, 2011, 02:17 PM »

Recently seen bumper sticker: Forget more jobs. How about less people? 

7386

Living Room / Re: Lulzsec hackers outed by "anonymous" user

« Last post by 40hz on June 28, 2011, 02:09 PM »

Did anybody ever seriously think for one minute it would turn out otherwise? It was only a matter of time.

And "Time wounds all heels," as a college chum of mine used to say.

7387

General Software Discussion / New Windows trojan variant requires a System Restore to fix

« Last post by 40hz on June 28, 2011, 01:51 PM »

This in from TechSpot (emphasis added)

Trojan requires infected Windows users do a System Restore
By Jose Vilches, TechSpot.com
Published: June 28, 2011, 12:00 PM EST
windows, trojan, malware,

Microsoft has warned of a new malware threat affecting Windows users that can only be completely removed by restoring the system to a previous state or wiping it altogether. According to Redmond, the culprit is the latest variant of a Trojan known as "Popureb" (specifically, Trojan:Win32/Popureb.E), which stores part of its data in the hard drive’s master boot record (MBR) and introduces a driver component to prevent the malicious code from being changed.

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Not many details are available as to what symptoms infected machines are seeing, but its previous iteration, Trojan:Win32/Popureb.B, displays advertisements and modifies user's Internet Explorer start page.

Microsoft's antivirus engine will detect the threat. However, Feng says that those already infected will have to fix the MBR using the System Recovery Console and a command called "fixmbr", then proceed to use a recovery CD to restore the system to a pre-infected state. Recovery options for XP, Vista and Windows 7 users are detailed here:

Link to full article here.

Confirmed with Microsoft:

The bootkit malware Trojan:Win32/Popureb.E has made some changes in its code compared to previous samples (specifically, Trojan:Win32/Popureb.B), and now it introduces a driver component to prevent the malicious MBR and other malicious data stored as disk sectors from being changed. The driver component protects the data in an unusual way – by hooking the DriverStartIo routine in a hard disk port driver (for example, atapi.sys). The following steps describe the trick:

   1. It calls IoGetDeviceAttachmentBaseRef( ) to retrieve the bottom device object in the disk device stack, that is, the real physical disk device object.
   2. Then it hooks the DriverStartIo routine in the found device's DRIVER_OBJECT structure (see the picture below).

   3. The hooked DriverStartIo routine monitors the disk write operations: If it finds the write operation is trying to overwrite the MBR or the disk sectors containing malicious code, it simply replaces the write operation with a read operation. The operation will still succeed, however, the data will never actually be written onto the disk.

If your system does get infected with Trojan:Win32/Popureb.E, we advise you to fix the MBR and then use a recovery CD to restore your system to a pre-infected state (as sometimes restoring a system may not restore the MBR). To fix the MBR, we advise that you use the System Recovery Console, which supports a command called "fixmbr".

To find out how to use your system's recovery options, refer to the following articles:

    * For Windows XP: Installing and using the Recovery Console in Windows XP
    * For Windows Vista: System Recovery Options in Windows Vista
    * For Windows 7: System Recovery Options in Windows 7

- Chun Feng

Link to above Microsoft article here.

Y'know, every time I consider the type of person who would write something like this, I can't help but think:



 

7388

Living Room / Re: LulzSec: Folding up its tent - or merely going to ground?

« Last post by 40hz on June 28, 2011, 11:10 AM »

 I'm not going to get into that because it's far too political for DC.

-Renegade (June 28, 2011, 10:43 AM)

Agree. Dis ain't da venue for it. Let's talk about other things.  

7389

Living Room / Re: LulzSec: Folding up its tent - or merely going to ground?

« Last post by 40hz on June 28, 2011, 10:23 AM »

I don't share your confidence.

A well planned attack creates international privacy issues when you can hide behind laws or hide behind the need for a subpoena. Do that a few times, and you've got a complete bureaucratic nightmare.

-Renegade (June 28, 2011, 10:01 AM)

I don't share your optimism.  

The US federal government has granted itself (under US law) the authority to investigate, pursue and take into custody, and prosecute anybody who has committed a crime against the United States (or one of its citizens) anywhere in the world regardless of the country it was committed in or the citizenship of the person accused.

The US government invaded Panama and overthrew its government to arrest General Noriega on drug trafficking charges. We have an unknown number of prisoners rotting in a concentration camp on a military base in Cuba - a country that is officially hostile towards the US. We just walked into the country of a supposed ally, without so much as a "by your leave," for the express purpose of killing Osama Bin Laden.

Regardless of the "rightness" or "justice" or "necessity" of any of the above (and there are differing opinions) I think it's fairly obvious the United States does not feel constrained by treaties, international law, due process - or even it's own Constitution when it feels US interests are being threatened. (Like that famous movie line said: Badges? Badges? We don't need no stinking badges!)

Nor does any other major power these days.

9/11 changed everything. For everybody. Look around at all the governmental meddling, firewalling, and network censoring that's either planned, or already being done, worldwide. It's even happening in the so-called democratic nations.

C'mon Ren! You're supposed to be our resident cynic. Do you really believe the US is gonna let some inconvenient law or due process argument stop them from nailing someone who's thumbing their nose at them?

7390

Living Room / Re: LulzSec: Folding up its tent - or merely going to ground?

« Last post by 40hz on June 28, 2011, 09:54 AM »

Sounds like they know they are close to getting caught...

-Josh (June 28, 2011, 08:08 AM)

Oh I have no doubt they (or some of them at least) will be brought in very shortly.

It's all well and good for the hack culture to dis governmental computing and network security groups. But when all is said and done, The Man is no slouche when it comes to tech, access, or resources. And he has the cops on his side. So he's not limited to cyber weapons or legal niceties when he's provoked. Governments don't get mad. When they get really pissed they send in a Special Ops team. Or bomb something.

It's your basic rock-paper-scissors scenario: gun beats laptop in a F2F confrontation.



  

7391

General Software Discussion / Re: Opera 11.5 Released

« Last post by 40hz on June 28, 2011, 09:44 AM »

Thx Josh. Gonna have to give it a try. I find I've been using Opera a lot more than FFox lately. If Opera had a feedreader add-on I actually liked it would probably replace FF as my default browser.
 

7392

Living Room / Re: We need some good tech news sites - Where are they?

« Last post by 40hz on June 28, 2011, 09:25 AM »

Distrowatch for all things GNU/Linux.

HowtoForge for hands-on step-by-step guides and info on how to get the most out of FOSS applications and operating systems.

4sysops for those responsible for networks, or business and enterprise computing.

MIT's Technology Review for heavy-duty tech news for grownups. One of the few newsletters I accept in my mailbox. (the other is the OSNews Newsletter - IMO better than the actual website.)

The TED Talks More recreational or "food for thought" news. This is the place to go for tech that's either coming to us in the not too distant future - or tech that's destined to vanish and never be seen again. Lots of interesting "stuff" presented by some of the most interesting people on the planet. (Stay thirsty my friend! )

Arstechnica - if you have to ask what this site's about, you don't need to know.  

There are others, but this will do for a start. Put them in your feedreader and grab a free copy of Canaware NetNotes and/or a free ReadItLater account to archive whatever piques your interest. You're just a short step away from being better informed about tech.

Then buy yourself an iPad, invest in a grunge wardrobe, get a weird haircut, stop shaving regularly, don some retro shades, cultivate a taste for double expressos - and you'll soon discover you can hold your own in any hipster venue.

The only difference between vous and Them is you'll actually know something about what you're talking about.  

Do it!



 

7393

Living Room / LulzSec: Folding up its tent - or merely going to ground?

« Last post by 40hz on June 28, 2011, 07:47 AM »

This in from  Thom Holwerda over at OSNews.com:

LulzSec Calls it Quits

Well, after 50 days of causing amok on the web, the guys and/or girls behind LulzSec have called it quits last night. After hacking into the systems of various Arizona law enforcement agencies and releasing countless internal documents, they published a statement on Pastebin yesterday, dumping yet another boatload of data on The Pirate Bay, and announcing their disbanding.
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It sure has been an interesting ride - and, despite my reservations about their actions, surely a fun one. Despite their actions and tactics being quite questionable, there's no denying that they have had their impact - for instance, an Australian ISP has announced not to participate in the voluntary net censorship Down Under out of fear of LulzSec. Call it what you want, but I call that a major win.

In any case, I hardly doubt this is the last we'll hear from these folks. It's clear LulzSec and Anonymous have struck cords all around the world, and I'm sure either others will take it from here, or the same guys will emerge in some other corner of the web under a different name.
.

Read the rest of the article here.

7394

Living Room / Re: The law is for YOUR protection. Honest!

« Last post by 40hz on June 28, 2011, 02:51 AM »

^You don't even need an actual plant to run afoul of a patent when it comes to gardening.

There's a certain prolific inventor* who holds a patent on a method for plowing fields in order to reduce the need for water and irrigation.

Ready for this? It has nothing to do with how you plow the furrows or what tools you use to do it.

The patent is based on the compass direction relative to the geoposition of the field its furrows are plowed in.

So depending on where you're located, if you plow your fields in a certain direction, you're infringing on his patent. At least according to him and the morons at the USPTO who granted it.

He's claimed to have successfully enforced his patent against farmers and other 'agro' businesses. (Supposedly he's employed satellite imagery and hired planes to fly over and photograph fields in major farming areas looking for instances of infringement.)

Insane.


-----------------------
* Can't remember this guy's name off the top of my head. But it should come to me eventually. I'll post it when I do.

7395

Living Room / Re: Answers.com Getting Cuts

« Last post by 40hz on June 27, 2011, 09:27 AM »

Seems like a huge amount of money to pay just to get a good domain name. 

Also wonder if their dropping 1-Click Answers has something to do with Xerox's patent infringement claim pending against Google and Yahoo?

According to an article in the SEO by the Sea website:

The case number in US District Court for the District of Delaware is 1:10-cv-00136-UNA, and answers haven’t been filed yet by the defendants.

Within the complaint, Xerox claims that the processes described in their patent System for automatically generating queries , are being used to automatically generate queries based upon the content of web pages that show related advertisements through Google’s Adsense and Adwords programs, as well as through Yahoo’s Search Marketing and Publisher Network.

Yahoo’s Y!Q Contextual Search, which I believe is no longer available, is also described in the complaint as “a system that automatically generates queries based on the content of web pages to retrieve information related to the pages.” I did write about Y!Q a while back, and you can get an idea of how it worked from my post, if you somehow missed it – Y!Q didn’t seem to catch on with a wide audience.

The other Xerox patent, Method and Apparatus for the Integration of Information and Knowledge, is claimed as being infringed by Google Maps, Google Video, YouTube videos and Yahoo Shopping.

Read the full article here.

7396

Living Room / Re: Lifetime access to up-to-date info -- is this the future of the textbook?

« Last post by 40hz on June 27, 2011, 09:22 AM »

What I always worry about with constant updates is errors slipping past the final proof-edit cycle. It seems almost axiomatic that every correction made in a technical book introduces new errors.

Also to SteelAdept's earlier point, lifetime-free is not a workable business model. As we've seen demonstrated over and over. Either the company goes out of business, the product is allowed to stagnate, or the business is forced to reneg on its 'lifetime' promise. Like the old saying goes: speed, price, quality - pick any two.

This is something I get into with my clients and people I do business startup counseling with: Not every great idea is a good idea for a business. I often get told something is a "terrific idea" for something that addresses a "real need." Then they throw the dumbest justification in the world at me: Nobody else is doing this!

To which I reply: Maybe you'd better look into why nobody else is doing it before you go any further.

I know it's a real buzzkill. But about 90% of the time you identify something that's not being done, there's a very good reason (or reasons) why not. This isn't to say you should automatically rule it out. (Because that remaining 10% of previously unaddressed opportunity is what most million dollar commercial empires are founded on.) But you should at least do some 'diligence' and find out why.

I think Vikram might need to think the business side of his idea through a little more completely than it seems he has.

Of course I could be completely wrong about this. (I certainly was about Google and AOL - so it wouldn't be the first time. )

7397

General Software Discussion / Re: Betanews.com - What was once a great site, is no longer

« Last post by 40hz on June 27, 2011, 07:25 AM »

@Josh- the mobile thing is annoying. I hit a site on my iPhone over the weekend that kept looping a popup for you to "like" their product on Facebook. It completely took over Safari. You couldn't close either the popup or the underlying web page. Exiting to the desktop didn't fix it, nor did purging the cache, history, and cookies. I had to restart the device, then immediately launch the browser and close the page before I could get rid of it. Fun way to waste 5 minutes figuring it out.

At first I thought it was just me or this particular website. Then I saw some comments in a few other places talking about this new marketing technique of "forcing a like" some sites are now pulling.  

7398

Living Room / Re: The law is for YOUR protection. Honest!

« Last post by 40hz on June 26, 2011, 05:04 PM »

Where is Xerox in all this? They invented the windowed interface - why aren't they suing Apple and Microsoft and Linux?

-Carol Haynes (June 26, 2011, 04:31 PM)

They did sue Apple back in 1990.  See here for details. This occurred in the middle of Apple's lawsuit against Microsoft where Apple was ultimately denied the patentability of the desktop metaphor.

Xerox lost their suit too.

From Wikipedia (emphasis added);

In the midst of the Apple v. Microsoft lawsuit, Xerox also sued Apple alleging that Mac's GUI was heavily based on Xerox's.[2] The district court dismissed Xerox's claims without addressing whether Apple's GUI infringed Xerox's, since the latter licensed it to the former back in 1979 for pre-IPO stock.

Apparently somebody forgot (or was afraid) to tell Xerox's Board of Directors that somebody in the company had already licensed the rights to Apple. (And for what amounted to 'chump change' at the time they did.)

Whoops!  

7399

Living Room / Re: Have You Wanted Books You Discarded?

« Last post by 40hz on June 26, 2011, 03:57 PM »

These days, when I buy a book I read it and then leave it in a public place in hopes that someone else will get something from it.

-cranioscopical (June 26, 2011, 01:56 PM)

Lately I've been doing that, although not with every book I buy. (At lest not yet. )

There's actually some people who have taken the old summer vacation home practice of "leaving a book" to a higher level of organization and fun. You can register your book, attach a free serialized label, and then release it into the wild. The serialized label allows people to use the web to report its current location and track its wanderings for as long as subsequent finders play along.

And a surprising number do. Pretty cool viral concept. It's called BookCrossing.



I've been doing a bit of it lately. Except I prefer to hand draw a one-off original label with the same information on it. Mine are illustrated - and each one is completely unique. I think it makes it more personal doing it that way.

 

7400

Living Room / Re: Have You Wanted Books You Discarded?

« Last post by 40hz on June 26, 2011, 03:32 PM »

I've never thrown out any I later regretted disposing of. And that includes the one I tossed into a lit fireplace the minute I finished reading it.  

But I've loaned out dozens that never came back I now sorely miss.

My problem is that most of what I like to read tends to go out of print fairly quickly.