I have been accused of being a Google zealot, and I must admit, I do like Google and their boat load of products. But this week there is a new rumor spreading across the Internet that if true, could be the biggest software release that Google would have to date. I am talking about the Google Chrome operating system. The super secret OS could make its debut as early as next week. No one knows for sure exactly what the OS will be, since Google has done a very good job keeping the OS hidden from prying eyes.

But this afternoon I got my crystal ball back from the repair shop and I took a look at what the Google OS could be. It is going to be a light weight Linux version designed to first run on netbooks. Later Google will tackle laptops and desktops which will be supported. The OS will support many of Google’s fine products, such as the Google Chrome browser, Gmail, Google Apps. in the Cloud, Google Maps, and many of Google’s other online products. With the Google OS the world will be yours when you surf anywhere, from anywhere you like and one day it may be all for free.

So how are all of these Google puzzle pieces going to all come together? Be patient and the Google vision will soon be revealed.

What are your thoughts about Google and their OS ?

Comments welcome.

Source.

In an amazing turn of events, the MPAA has managed to shut down the municipal wi-fi network in a small city in Ohio. In what might be called  the most outrageous event in that state since Kent State in 1970, another egregious miscarriage of justice has occurred.

The slashdot article references another article in boingboing -

“The MPAA has successfully shut down an entire town’s municipal WiFi because a single user was found to be downloading a copyrighted movie. Rather than being embarrassed by this gross example of collective punishment (a practice outlawed in the Geneva conventions) against Coshocton, OH, the MPAA’s spokeslizard took the opportunity to cry poor (even though the studios are bringing in record box-office and aftermarket receipts).”

Notice that part about the Geneva conventions – this is the kind of stuff that should not be used on war criminals!

This is one of those times when, if you care about the way the RIAA, MPAA, and others are abusing the law and apparently not governed by it, it is time to send this little article to your representatives, along with a short message indicating your strong disapproval.

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Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside. Mark Twain

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First we had Mr. Ballmer stand up, at a public gathering, and take the blame for the blight called Vista. Now another mistake is being admitted, in the same year. This is really good news for the users, because next we might be able to look forward to admissions of flaws in software before the fix has been applied for two years.

Mary-Jo Foley from ZDNet tells us that the little faux pas of using open source code and modifying without credit to the original has now been admitted, and that Microsoft will do some recoding on their little Windows 7 utility.

Microsoft officials confirmed on November 13 — a few days after pulling a Windows 7 download tool that allegedly contained improperly-licensed open-souce code — that the company did, indeed violate the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL).

Microsoft pulled the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool from the Microsoft Store on November 10 after a report by “Within Windows” blogger Rafael Rivera that he had found what looked to be open-source code in the tool. Inclusion of open-source code isn’t a no-no, but Microsoft’s decision to put a restrictive, non-open-source license on the tool incorporating that code was. (The USB tool, which Microsoft made available on October 22, is designed to help netbook users upgrade from XP to Windows 7 in a more streamlined way.)

From a November 13 blog posting by Microsoft Open Source Community Manager Peter Galli:

“After looking at the code (within the USB tool) in question, we are now able to confirm this (inclusion of improperly licensed GPL v2 code) was indeed the case, although it was not intentional on our part. While we had contracted with a third party to create the tool, we share responsibility as we did not catch it as part of our code review process. We have furthermore conducted a review of other code provided through the  Microsoft Store and this was the only incident of this sort we could find.”

Galli said Microsoft plans to make the source code and binaries for the Microsoft tool available the week of November 16 under the terms of the General Public License v2 “and are also taking measures to apply what we have learned from this experience for future code reviews we perform.”

It really doesn’t matter to me what they ‘appropriated‘, the great thing is the admission. With the good news of Windows 7, and these two admissions, perhaps Microsoft is ready to ’straighten out’ and act appropriately. These subtle behavioral changes are really exciting; being able to deal with Microsoft on the up-and-up is going to make things easier for both sides.

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I’ve listened to the Apple fanboys crow on about how the Motorola Droid doesn’t have iTunes. They say it’s “Missing the experience” of iTunes and purchasing music in the iTunes Store. I have a question. Why would a wireless phone need to connect to anything to get content? It’s a wireless phone!

The iPhone requires me to attach it to a PC to sync content to it. The Droid has an Amazon store where I can download content directly to the phone. Even deleting a song on the iPhone is a pain since it has to be done from iTunes. My Droid allows me to just tap and hold the track and select Delete.

No smartphone should require its owner to also own a PC to use it. We’re moving beyond the PC and into an era where all that we need can be in our pocket, and iTunes is so 2005.

Two of the major electronic retailers, CompUSA and Circuit City are posed for a comeback if one company has their way. That company is little known Systemax, which is not exactly a household name. But you may know one of their companies which is Tiger Direct.

Thus far Systemax has brought back 3 CompUSA stores in the Tampa, FL. area. Currently Circuit City is only available online for purchases. But other plans are on the way. According to one recent article it states that:

Along the way, Systemax also bought the intellectual property and brand of CircuitCity, another victim of the downturn. That brand is coming back to life. Systemax is operating CircuitCity as an online-only merchant, in some respects competing with Amazon or other Internet retailers.

CompUSA was always a good place for real computer people to get oddball hardware or doodads to amp up their PCs – a graphics card, a new motherboard, etc. And much of that will stick around. There’s a large service desk for PC repair and upgrades.

Recently, the store hosted “Overclock” contests, where true propeller-head guys open up demo PCs, and retool their innards to run at a higher pace – kind of like ramping up a four-cyclinder Toyota to absurdly high RPMs.

“We had one contest where people were cheering and chanting ‘Overclock! Overclock!’ until the hardware snapped,” Paul said. “We’ll still have things like that.”

But now, TVs take a much more prominent role, with more than 65 different models from 19 inches to 73 inches, something never seen in an old CompUSA.

As for how CompUSA will compete against other electronics giants, Paul said he expects store managers to make more decisions locally about how to help customers work through their problems. Something akin to a neighborhood electronics shop, but with the deep resources of a national chain.

What is great about these stores coming back to life is that will offer additional competition in the electronic retail market. I am sure we all can agree that the more competition there is, the better the prices are for we consumers.

Comments welcome.

Source.

I often wonder why things like this are pursued. It appears to come from the thought process that things provided will find a reason for their existence.

YouTube is something that can provide hours of fun, but it occurs to me that only the desperate would use it as a way to view high quality content. I can’t see it used that way because I have experience with a very fast machine on a very fast connection, with jerks and glitches on the screen over a fair percentage of the time. This detracts from the experience a great deal. In fact, to my way of thinking, the higher quality the experience is on average, the worse it is for there to be any interruptions, glitches, or other problems with the presentation of picture and sound.

Yet we have news that YouTube will start providing 1080p for viewing.

Barring the fact that these interruptions are completely annoying, we should look at the bandwidth taken by these narrowcasts. There is also the problem of drive space. If they don’t have it happening already, it won’t be long before there will be a staff whose job is adding hard drives to the Google servers, for the YouTube storage.

It has to have limits somewhere.

But nothing I say will change that, as we can see on Maximum PC -

In recent years, 1080p camcorders have found their way into more consumers’ hands. Now YouTube will allow people to take advantage of all those pixels. Starting next week, the HD options on the popular video sharing site will include both 720p and 1080p, provided the original source allows it.

There is a test video already up here. Performance seems to be good, but it doesn’t look tremendously different from current YouTube HD offerings. If you have an HD camera, YouTube would like you upload some 1080p video. They will be highlighting some of the best footage on the front page soon.  If you shoot HD video, will you take the extra time to upload your videos in 1080p?

I haven’t looked, but the above paragraph makes me wonder if the video really is 1080p, or if it might be getting sampled down.

I can see a whole new level of site popping up, sort of like ‘At the Movies’, but instead ‘At the Tube’ where a couple of people help the newcomer, or impatient soul (such as me), to sort out the garbage that might be of lovely quality, but a complete waste of time and bandwidth otherwise (I’m sure you each have your own useless video to fill in the blank).

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Yes, Matrox, the name no one remembers when asked about graphics card manufacturers, because they don’t do 3D, used to be, before the days of Voodoo, a pretty decent card maker.

I have fond memories of a Matrox Mystique, and it was spectacular for the time. I never understood why they chose not to compete in the ATi – nVidia arena, because one thing they could do, which ATi never could, was deliver quality drivers for their products.

It does seem that the company wants to make a splash right now, with a card that touts lots of display power and memory. Surely this is not directed only at the stock broker crowd.

from Maximum PC

Matrox isn’t a name you hear a lot anymore. The graphics spotlight has been effectively taken over by Nvidia and AMD. Matrox isn’t letting that get them down and have announced a new GPU, the Matrox M9188 PCIe x16 multi-display Octal.

The M9188 comes equipped with eight DisplayPort outputs and 2GB of RAM. Each of the DisplayPorts is capable of driving a monitor with a resolution of 2560×1600. They also throw in eight DisplayPort to DVI adapters in case you have eight DVI monitors lying around.

Further, the driver supports multiple cards on a system. So with two of these monsters, you’d be capable of running 16 monitors with a total resolution of 20,480 X 3,200, in a 2 X 8 configuration.  Good luck finding wallpaper for that.

Now if they decided to do a little 3D magic, imagine what might happen. Though I’m sure that more Eyefiniti designs will be sold, it would be very cool to see some Matrox designs that would play some of my son’s favorite games acceptably. Perhaps Matrox could partner up with another small fry, like S3, and give the big 2 a little competition.

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Quote of the day:

The only thing that scares me more than space aliens is the idea that there aren’t any space aliens. We can’t be the best that creation has to offer. I pray we’re not all there is. If so, we’re in big trouble.

- Ellen DeGeneres

That’s the thought for the day,  Friday the 13th!

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For a limited time and while supplies last, order the Logitech Performance Mouse MX from Amazon.com for as low as $90.10 shipped! (Up to 10% Off!) Or for as low as $80.10 after $10.00 mail-in rebate!

With the Logitech Performance Mouse MX, you have the power to achieve. You can track precisely on more surfaces, even glass tables (4mm minimum thickness), with Logitech Darkfield Laser Tracking. And your mouse is ready when you are, thanks to the tiny receiver that stays in your notebook and flexible micro-USB charging.

Get the Logitech Performance Mouse MX at Amazon.com with FREE Super Saver Shipping on qualifying orders over $25.

This is not a good year for Chris Paul, the point guard for the New Orleans Hornets. His individual statistics are comparable to other years but his team is struggling. At the moment, they have won only three games while losing six. Some of those games were lost early and by a lopsided score.

The New Orleans Hornets have attempted to resolve the problem by firing Coach Byron Scott and replacing him with the General Manager, Jeff Bower. This was the last year of his contract for Bryon Scott and his recent “NBA Coach of the Year” honours did not save him.

In these early season games, the Hornet’s defense has been lacking and some veteran players have been missing shots. Offensive production has been disappointing. One has to wonder what a season like this does to a player as competitive as Chris Paul.

It is unlikely that Chris Paul will do what Kobe Bryant did when the Lakers were struggling. Kobe Bryant is remembered for some very public tirades and suggesting that some team mates be traded. Nevertheless, being on a team that soon may not have any post season hopes may impact Chris Paul as much as any of the Hornets. He will be an elite athlete, one of the best point guards in professional basketball, just trying to keep the game close. There will be some nights when it will embarrassing.

Chris Paul seems to be one of those athletes who really cares about winning. The thirteen and a half million dollars annual salary will not ease the distress of constant losing. How Chris Paul handles this season may determine the next years of the New Orleans franchise.

Catherine Forsythe

Since things are bad all over, and offers for free stuff are getting to be few and far between (that is, for anything worthwhile), I always am on the look out for good stuff that I have either really good feedback on, or have used myself.

Today’s software falls into the latter category.

I have been a Nero Burning ROM fan since I got my second optical disc burner (the first one came with some really poor software that I had to go online to check that it was actually retail software – it was that poorly done!). But after version 7, Nero started taking on bloat, and though it was possible to remove it, I became very annoyed with it, as there was typically no way to keep it installing at the outset. I still use it, but not exclusively.

A couple of years ago I set out to build a machine that, after having a licensed copy of Windows, would use nothing but free software. Now I am not a stickler for Open Source stuff, because frankly, that sometimes leaves a lot to be desired. I believe that when you design a program, you make it work first. But then, before you release it, you make it presentable, which means a clean, intuitive interface.

There are optical disc authoring programs that are open source, but they don’t meet the second requirement. There are free programs, however, that work well, and some, though usually paid, can be had free if you are patient, and know where to look.

The site once known as VNUNet is a good place for news, reviews, and frequently, commercial programs that are totally free.

Today’s free program is Ashampoo’s Burning Studio 2010 (stupid company name, but great products that are reasonably priced when not offered as free).

But today it is free… Get it here and enjoy. By the way, this version also supports LightScribe drives, with full label capabilities.

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careful, slippery when wet …

Just to prove it, the company went 1000 years into the future and brought back conclusive proof! (The DeLorean is in the parking lot.)

Actually, it is more about reasonable expectations than any offer of concrete proof; one wonders if the company will be around in 100 years to handle any warranty concerns. It is not often that niche products last for long.

From ComputerWorld

If you really, really need to make sure those precious photos of yours last virtually forever - or at least longer than the average two- to five-year lifespan of consumer-grade DVDs, then start-up Cranberry LLC has the answer for you: a DVD that literally lasts a millennium.

Cranberry’s DiamonDisc product holds a standard 4.7GB of data, which roughly amounts to 2,000 photos, or 1,200 songs, or three hours of video, but the media is unharmed by heat as high as 176 degrees Fahrenheit, ultraviolet rays or normal material deterioration, according to the company. DiamonDiscs contain no dye layers, adhesive layers or reflective materials that could deteriorate.

While only future generations may be able to prove DiamonDisc can last 1,000 years — never mind that DVD players will probably have been long forgotten by then — Cranberry claims its technology has been proved by researchers using the ECMA-379 temperature and humidity testing standards to outlast the durability of competitors that claim a 300-year shelf life.

The Ferndale, Wash.-based company this week announced their product, which it says uses the same format as standard DVDs to store data. However, instead of a silver or gold reflective surface, its disc is transparent, with no reflective layer.

According to the company, unlike standard recordable DVDs, which use a 650 nanometer wavelength laser diode to etch a small pit into a disc’s media surface, the DiamonDisc uses a higher-intensity laser to more deeply etch data into the “diamond-like” surface of its synthetic stone disc.

The DiamonDisc technology was invented by researchers at Brigham Young University and was first brought to market by Springville, Utah, startup Millenniata.

While Millenniata performs the R&D on the product, Cranberry does the sales and marketing. The company is in talks with the U.S. government and the military, which are looking for archival media.

“For the military, there’s no heat, light, magnetic waves or environmental abuse that will have an impact on these discs,” said Joe Beaulaurier, Cranberry’s chief marketing officer. The company is also working on developing a Blu-ray version of their DVD product, Beaulaurier said.

Photos, videos or other content that consumers want to store can be uploaded directly to Cranberry’s Web site or mailed to the company. Cranberry performs the data-write for customers on the DiamonDisc they purchase.

When compared to other consumer archive DVDs, such as Kodak Gold Preservation Write-Once DVD-R, which costs around $6, DiamonDisc carries a premium.

A single DiamonDisc costs $34.95, two or more individual discs go for $29.95, and a five-pack is $149.75. Beaulaurier said prospective customers should factor in not only the longevity of the product, but the services provided. Cranberry checks the burn of each disc to ensure the quality of the finished product.

“So [the consumer doesn't] need to monitor the burn process and make sure it took,” he said. “This is also very green technology. You burn a DVD once and it eliminates costs and energy down the road.” Of course, the company is also happy to sell you its burner, but that will set you back $4,995. But, for $5,000 you get 150 DiamonDiscs to burn away until to heart’s content. The burner plugs into any standard USB port and uses any standard DVD burning software, Beaulaurier said.

With that pricing structure, I wonder if this company makes it a year. Think about it, any company (or other entity) that is so concerned with preservation will have a full time staff to maintain the standard discs they use, plus certainly at least two copies would always be maintained.

For the individual, as long as you were diligent about it, you could still save lots of money with 10 backups of each disk, and the purchase of a wine-cooler (perfect temperature for storage) for much less.

The only hope of survival this company has is by selling these things to a number of oil sheiks, and then lowering the price by means of volume production.

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Technorati Tags: DVD - long term archival - 1000 year warranty - extremes of heat and cold survival - DiamonDiscs - Kodak Preservation DVDs - $5000 burner - long term storage

at the price of those discs, multiple swapped hard drives start to become a viable solution also.

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Can We Accurately Compare XP, Vista and Windows 7 When It Comes To Performance? One writer over at the ExtremeTech web site did what I believe is an accurate, as possible, comparison of the three operating systems. The writer took a Toshiba Satellite laptop which used a Pentium 1.73 GHz processor, 1 GB of Ram and a 100 GB hard drive as his test bed. The Professional version for all three operating systems was used in order to try and make the testing as fair as possible.

The writer also installed Office 2007, Windows Essentials and Picasa 3.5 so the systems would have other software installed besides the operating system. He put the three operating systems through a series of tests which included bench mark testing. The writer also included start-up and shut down times as well.

Before reading the test results I made the following assumptions, having used all three operating systems on various computer I have in my home. Windows XP would most likely be the fastest since it is less bloated than either Vista or Windows 7. Windows 7 most likely would come out as second and Vista third.

Check out the results on all of the testing here.

After you read the test results see what you think. Were you surprised at the results? I wasn’t.

But there was one statement that the writer made that I believe just about says it all:

Windows XP actually started up fastest, but keep in mind that my test machine was built in the XP days; new machines will be more tuned for quick start-up in Windows 7.

I’m running Windows 7 on dual-core machines, with at least 3 GB of RAM or more, with sata drives, better graphic cards and overall very fast machines. Therefore I personally believe that trying to compare Windows XP against Windows Vista or Windows 7 on a machine designed for Windows XP, may not be a fair comparison.

However the writer did go on to state that:

But for the purposes of this story, testing on one of those machines would be pointless—this story’s about the experience those who are upgrading can expect. For most people, that means an older machine.

This is where some people are going to have a less than stellar experience using Windows 7 on an older box. Your system will most likely run slower using a newer operating system. Just my two cents.

Comments as always are welcome.

They’ve been saying that Internet Exploder is more secure than Firefox. While no one would call them out as liars, we all thought they might be stretching the truth just a bit. Now there’s evidence they haven’t been fudging the figures.

A slashdot piece tells us that Internet Exploder isn’t as attack-worthy as Firefox; not good news for the Mozilla faithful.

“Cenzic released its report revealing the most prominent types of Web application vulnerabilities for the first half of 2009. The report identified over 3,100 total vulnerabilities, which is a 10 percent increase in Web application vulnerabilities compared to the second half of 2008. Among Web browsers, Mozilla Firefox had the largest percentage of Web vulnerabilities, followed by Apple Safari, whose browser showed a vast increase in exploits, due to vulnerabilities reported in the Safari iPhone browser.”

It seems a bit surprising to me that this study shows that only 15% of vulnerabilities are in IE.

Looks like I’ve been backing the right horse! Just because Microsoft stated their browser was better than Firefox doesn’t mean that was the whole truth. Though Chrome is not listed (perhaps because it seems to be in perpetual beta) we can indeed see that Opera is the browser to use if security is your concern.

It also happens to be easy to use, includes a very good mail program, and also a bit torrent client. It is available for all PC operating systems, and works and looks the same across all of them – how can you beat that!

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As some of you may know, I am an MVP over at Scot’s Newsletter forum, and have been a member of the forum since Scot started it. The main expertise of the forum is for Linux support, but there are also some great expert advice when it comes to Windows as well. So when I read this post this morning about one user experiencing problems with an upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7 on a 3 year old PC, I thought I would share this users experience with you who read the posts here at Lockergnome.

The user, Eric Legge, stated the following information in his post:

Hi all,

I just performed an upgrade to Windows 7 Home Premium from Windows XP Home for a relative with a Dell Dimension 3000 desktop PC.

The compatibility report did not indicate any serious problems with the upgrade.

Unfortunately after the final reboot, it can only boot to Safe Mode.

I tried Startup Repair from my Win7 repair disc, but it found nothing wrong with the startup.

There are no devices in the Device Manger with a yellow exclamation mark or red cross.

However, the computer failed to bring up the options to choose a Home, Work or Public network even though the wireless router was on and working and had been online with XP.

After I chose the Home network option with my own laptop, the setup required my wireless encryption key and then went online for updates.

Tomorrow I’ll try Safe Mode with networking to get online and get updates and drivers from Windows Update, if that fails, I’ll try connecting the PC by Ethernet cable to the router and then running the setup at startup from the install disc.

Any ideas would be appreciated because there are no reports of this problem on the web yet.

Other readers of the forum made some good suggestions, but when I was reading Eric’s post, my first thought was that I suspected a video display driver problem. At the end of his 2nd post, Eric confirmed this was the case and that the Windows 7 compatibility report should of warned him of this prior to the upgrade.

In his second post Eric stated the following from the compatibility report:

Windows Aero

Not capable

Your current graphics adapter won’t support the
Windows Aero user interface. Contact your PC manufacturer or retailer to see if
an upgrade is possible.

This should of alerted Eric to the fact that the video display may not work with Windows 7.

Finally he posted again with this conclusion:

Unfortunately the integrated graphics of the Dell Dimension 3000 is the Integrated Intel Extreme Graphics 2 chip.

This only supports DirectX 8 and Win7 requires a graphics card/chip that supports DirectX 9. Dell used a cheapo DirectX 8 chip in this 2006 computer. My own self-built 2005 desktop PC with an AMD Socket 939 motherboard has a Direct X 9.0 integrated chip and a PCI Express slot for a graphics card.

There is also no AGP or PCI Express slot for a graphics card, so the Dimension 3000 cannot be upgraded to Win7.

That shows the weakness in the compatibility report. It should have said that the graphics chip only supports DirectX 8 and that Win7 cannot be used unless the graphic card can be upgraded to a DirectX 9 card.

What this demonstrates is the importance of checking on the manufacturers web site to confirm that drivers are available for ALL of your hardware, prior to attempting an upgrade. Do not assume the upgrade will work without checking that Windows 7 will work prior to trying the upgrade process, especially when it comes to taking the leap from a machine designed for Windows XP.

There is one other thing I would like to share. Though Microsoft states that Windows 7 will function on a system with a processor of 1GHz and 1 GB of RAM, I seriously doubt that the user experience would be enjoyable on such a machine. Just my 2 cents.

Share your thoughts.

Comments welcome.

Scot’s Forum

Soon we will mark the 68th anniversary of December 7, 1941 — the day the nation of Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii and brought the United States into war with Japan and the wider conflict of World War II. As the nation reminisces on those events we must not forget the soldiers, sailors, and airmen who are sacrificing for this great country of ours. Soon it will be Christmas — not a holiday, but a holy day.

We also must not forget the events of September 11, 2001, another day of infamy for the United States that most of us should remember. We are a nation at war. Some children will not celebrate Christmas with their father; some children will not celebrate Christmas with their mother. Many fathers and mothers, sons, and daughters will be on the front line protecting another country struggling from the effects of an evil tyrant. More and more we are hearing encouraging words of progress. As for a free and democratic Iraq, time will tell if the sacrifices that were endured made a difference. At present, and all around us what we are seeing in Iraq and Afghanistan is humanity at its best — feeding and helping the needy children and distributing toys to young children. It is not easy to explain why God permits evil but in it all we see a lot of good being done to the neediest of the needy in the Middle East. The United Service Organization (USO) and Gary Sinise’s Operation Iraqi Children are two examples of humanity and hope at its best.

So, how can we help a soldier this Christmas? How can we employ our talents and say: “Thank You” for a job well done?

Don’t forget the soldiers. The best way to help a soldier, sailor, or airmen is to support your local United Service Organization (USO).

Help the children cope with parents being overseas. For children, the producers of Sesame Street have produced free videos to help children cope with a parent who has been called to go overseas. Sesame Workshop has videos, pamphlets, and learning materials on the topic of deployment. Their video on “deployment” is a good one to watch. You can either play or download the video. These videos and pamphlets can also be ordered and delivered through the mail.

Care packages are always welcomed by soldiers. Sometimes I have received a letter or e-mail from a soldier in Iraq for special items. If I could not meet the need immediately, my local American Legion Council in my neighborhood has a board for just that purpose.

As we move into the New Year, let us pray that all our young men and women come home safely. Sharing the Christmas joy is what this article is about. A simple note of thanks can mean so much to a soldier. So let’s not forget them, their sacrifice, their commitment, and patriotism this Christmas season. If we do our part we can be assured that our soldiers will do theirs. May God bless them and may God bless America!

-JFK

Sesame Street Deployment Videos

Managing Deployments With Sesame Street

Soldier Media Center With Elmo

Now that 7 is out and seemingly doing well, we can finally turn our attention to the next version of Windows and what it needs to improve upon over the older version of Windows.  Now, with the 7 just being sold, it would be hard to try and pick apart the software issues and compatibility problems that it may have, but the one thing we can look at is the confusing product matrix.  The complaints about Microsoft’s operating system product matrix have been around ever since they came out with Windows Vista and the huge number of options it came with, which largely just confused consumers looking to upgrade their XP machines.

Rather than learn from their mistakes with Vista, Microsoft took largely the same tact with 7, releasing an upgrade and a full install version in 32 bit and 64 bit with 3 versions to choose from - Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate.  The upgrade and the full install versions would mean that retail outlets would have to carry 6 different versions of Windows 7 provided they only wanted to carry the 32 bit versions.  The price for all these versions run from 120 dollars all the way up to 320 dollars.  Microsoft’s only two competitors in the operating system market, Apple and open source Linux distributions, ran 29 dollars and free respectively for their latest releases.

My first wish for Windows 8, the one thing I want them to do differently from Windows 7 and Vista, is to release a single disc to retailers.  A single disc that contains a full copy of Microsoft Windows 8 that gives the customer the option of either installing a clean system or upgrading their existing OS in place.  I’m sure that Microsoft pays some pretty good programmers, they should be able to figure out how to get the 32 and 64 bit version of their operating system on a single disc and have it automatically choose the best option during the install or upgrade.

I’m not exactly sure how they did it, but I know that I can choose which kernel my computer boots into - either 32 bit or 64 bit simply by holding down two keys on my keyboard during boot-up.  I’m positive that Microsoft has the ability to do the same thing, which might help with running 32 bit applications on a 64 bit system.

My second wish for Windows 8 is to get rid of the annoying “Windows Genuine Advantage” program.  I get that Microsoft is concerned about piracy, but it does not make me feel good about a company that treats me like I am a potential software pirate.  If I’m using your software it means that I paid for it and I should be able to install it without having to jump through hoops just to get it to run.  I’m not saying I wish I could just buy a single copy of Windows 8 and then be able to upgrade all of my computers, all of my friends computers, and the computers of people I may or may not have met at a Windows 7 launch party.  I have no problem with buying a single copy of Windows for a single computer, if there are people that want to install the latest version of Windows on a couple of computers in their home, give them an option for a family pack - one that isn’t a “limited time only” offer.  Getting rid of the type of copy protection and activation headaches that have plagued Windows since XP will help the average consumer to have a better computing experience, the people that might abuse the system and pirate Windows would do it regardless of any copy protection system that has been put in place.

With the release of OpenSuSE today, I just had to download it, as I have thought that the distribution has been, since about revision 9, one of the two best Linux variations available (the other is Fedora).

The great thing about Open SuSE is that when you download the DVD, you can choose what interface you wish to run, Gnome, KDE, XFCE, or a couple of others. I chose KDE because I really don’t like Gnome that much, and I had read that KDE 4 was less goofy looking and more business-like. Though I like the implementation of XFCE on Zenwalk, it really left me cold on Xubuntu.

If I may digress for a moment, this is one of the problems I see with the major Linux interfaces – they are not all delivered the same way on every distribution. It leads to some confusion, and in order for Linux to grow, it needs to present a more unified front to the world.

Back to the install…

The install of this is the most informative, well-thought-out that I have ever seen. It screams ‘fit for commercial usage’ and though I know it is designed that way, what I am trying to get across is that this is an interface that Microsoft would do well to emulate. This is an installer that every OS should use – the information and reassurance it gives while working is without peer.

For the people who want to watch pretty pictures while the install moves along, that choice is there; for those who wish to see every nuance of the install, so that they may find what the problems might be later, that choice is there; finally, if you want to read all the errata about the installation and distribution, that can be done. However, you need to read pretty fast, because the install goes really quickly. On my Celeron 1.5GHz, the full install took only about 30 minutes (actually somewhere between 30 and 35, because I was not paying that much attention to the start).

When the install was finalized, the system came up without a hitch. I did have a problem with the system asking for the latest updates, but found later that the problem was because the site is being pounded (this being the first day of release and all). I also tried to get Opera, but because I could not get the right additional files (dependencies) that will have to wait.

I also have found that for whatever reason, most Linux distributions configure my wireless connection as the one to connect, so i needed to get the wired connection to work (when I am at home, I don’t use the wireless connectivity, I have pain-in-the-butt neighbors who are always trying to filch the wireless, and rather than play their little games, shutting it off makes for an easy fix).

After getting rid of the bilious green hues on the screen, putting up a better wallpaper, and choosing a very cool screensaver, I was set, until I can get the rest of the updated files (until the check is made, and any files are downloaded, there is a little yellow upside-down  yield sign on the taskbar, which I can’t seem to rid the desktop of).

Everything is so….CRISP. The metrics of the screen are just right. Icons perfectly sized, not looking like they were designed by or for the hard of seeing. The menus are very cool, both popping up and sliding left-to-right or right-to-left. The effects are swoopy, yet they don’t get in the way.

I am currently trying the various programs right now – they all seem to work well, though many have stupid names, which tends to annoy. The price being free, complaints are few and far between. Again, the revision 4 of KDE is much, much improved.

Oh, it boots very fast, too. Unless the next revision does something to screw it up, I think I’ve found my winner in the Linux wars.

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Technorati Tags: Open SuSE - Linux distributions - peerless installer - KDE 4 - screen metrics perfect - setup without glitches - commercial grade - professional - DVD download vs Live CD

running Open SuSE, there’s an Opera version for that!

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DeskScapes is a unique program that allows users to customize their Windows desktop wallpaper with effects, animation and a variety of other options.  DeskScapes 3 adds support for Windows 7 and includes a host of effects that users can apply to their existing traditional desktop backgrounds.

DeskScapes 3 also includes a new configuration interface that lets users easily mix and match between different types of wallpaper. Natively, DeskScapes supports its own popular .dream format which lets users use video or dynamically generated animated wallpaper. Version 3 extends this format to support what are called “Hybrid dreams” that let users mix and match static images and animation designed to provide easy to create animated wallpaper that are also practical and visually exciting.

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Many articles about the last Patch Tuesday were almost puffing about the lack of fixes for Windows 7. It did appear that Windows 7 was doing better than almost any other operating system after release.

It was not to be however, as a story in ComputerWorld reveals the flaw reported in Windows 7 the very next day -

It was a notable accomplishment when Windows 7 was not impacted in any way by the vulnerabilities addressed in the six Security Bulletins released by Microsoft for the November Patch Tuesday. It would be even more impressive if Windows 7 proved invulnerable to the zero-day exploit that hit the next day.

This newly found bug was discovered by Laurent Gaffie and details were posted on the Full Disclosure mailing list. Microsoft is investigating the reported flaw which basically crashes a Windows 7 system when exploited. The issue is in the SMB (Server Message Block) protocol that forms the backbone of Windows file sharing. When triggered, the flaw results in an infinite loop which renders the computer useless.

Tyler Reguly, Lead Security Research Engineer with nCircle, explains “Exploitation of this vulnerability occurs when a user attempts to browse to Windows Share hosted on the malicious server. On Windows 7, the DoS (denial of service) will occur as soon as you type ‘\\<ip>\’ in the search box. ”

The vulnerability actually impacts both Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. There are currently a couple different proof-of-concept exploits circulating, but there are no reported attacks in the wild at this point. Because the flaw only enables an attacker to crash the system, and doesn’t provide any unauthorized remote access that could lead to compromising information or performing other malicious activities, the odds of the exploit being actively used by attackers is fairly slim.

So it seems that it is only an annoyance, with little possibility of permanent damage to any system. Still, it is very strange that after almost 20 years of SMB protocol Microsoft has not made this thing absolutely bulletproof.

It has always been my understanding that user tests occur on large scale OS projects, as well as computerized usage. After getting that many years of shaking out the bugs, there simply should not be any.

I remember being told in a beginning programming class, that if a programmer wanted to make sure that error trapping was working properly on a project, turn a couple of 3 year-old children loose, and see what havoc they can wreak. Perhaps Microsoft never heard that. Certainly the ability of ‘computerized ruggedness checking’ to be employed, makes the appearance of these type of bug very disappointing.

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over 20 years of repeated mistakes, and counting…

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