Dell Brings Back XP Preload Option
Dell may have been ready to move on to Vista, but some customers were not.
Maybe they're reading this post right now
Neddie finds something rather disturbing : a border guard leaving a comment in a blog , flaunting his knowledge of the comings and goings of the blogger at a border crossing . It's vaguely threatening, in a "I know where you live" kind of way. The assertion that "you do not have a right to privacy" is even more creepy—I think someone on ... (Read on Source)
Climate changes said harm sunflowers
AP - Imagine the Sunflower State without its sunflowers. That's one of the dire predictions contained in a new report on global warming released by the National Wildlife Federation, which says the Kansas state flower could move north to other states in a few decades. (Read on Source)
Are these things annoying to you?
There are lots of really annoying things about Web pages. But even if they're annoying, why do Web developers keep doing them? Image courtesy Candice Courtney from www.candicecourtney.com. I suppose that...
Single Mobile Females
Studies like this one from Samsung make me feel old. I got my first cell phone in my mid to late twenties and only recently began texting...my husband...to tell him to pick up half and half or feed the dog. I missed being a single mobile female (which, according to Samsung, are women 18-35). Here's what else I missed: (Read on Source)
Balko on Drug Informants
Radley Balko's weekly column at Fox News focuses on the use of drug informants by law enforcement around the country and the routine abuse of the justice system that results. He begins with the familiar story of Kathryn Johnston in Atlanta: A subsequent investigation revealed that the entire chain of events up to and shortly after Johnston's ... (Read on Source)
Sony Debuts Music-Playing Dancing Egg
Sony's new dancing, egg-shaped music player rolled into a dimly lit Tokyo hotel Monday, blinking its flaps and flashing its lights in time to each tune it played. The $354, 11-ounce Rolly, set to go on sale in Japan Sept. 29, is small enough to fit in your palm and comes with stereo speakers, 1 gigabyte of internal flash memory and a battery good for about five hours of music.
Today’s third giveaway in the ProBlogger Birthday Bash!
Alright - this is today’s final giveaway, but don’t despair! We’ve got something super special in store for tomorrow morning that’s going to carry us through until Friday morning (”morning” = 8am EST), and we’re expecting even MORE response on that one than our first and second giveaways today! (Read on Source)
Wikipedia's Inner Circle Keeps Producing Competitors
Danny Wool, who left the Wikimedia Foundation last spring after six years as a contributor and staff member, is founding a competing encyclopedia called Veropedia. It joins Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger's Citizendium as the latest attempt to correct inaccuracies in the popular public-access encyclopedia.
Arrow, LynuxWorks, Motorola and RTI Offer free Seminar on US Navy Open Architecture Technology
It takes a mix of standards-based technologies with complementary strengths to meet the stringent requirements the military faces.
Linkin Park to play at "secret" Apple concert
Linkin Park and Apple are putting together a "secret" concert in New York City, according to band member Mike Shinoda. He writes on his blog that the band had recently won its second German Echo award, and is preparing to play a sold-out show in Madison Square Gardens, before briefly mentioning the "secret" project. According to AppleInsider, this ...
Power Management on Linux, Part 2
LinuxPlanet: "Today we're going to dive into the world of power management on laptops: ACPI, APM, hard disk spindowns, and spinups..."
Spooler Subsystem Application - is there an easy solution?
Spooler app is an essential part of Windows. You simply can't print without spooler in your computer. There are several known malicious programs that mask themselves to be legal spooling.
Spool...
Deegan to referee football final
Laois man Maurice Deegan has been chosen to referee the upcoming All-Ireland Senior Football final between Kerry and Tyrone on Sunday, September 21.
F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin Revealed
Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment announces the new name - F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin - for the sequel to F.E.A.R. The game ...
AdMob: iPhone Internet Use Sees Major Growth Spurt in August
According to the latest data from mobile advertising company AdMob , traffic from Apple's iPhone on AdMob's advertising network almost doubled in August. Apple's iPhone saw the fastest growth of all smartphones worldwide, closely followed by the Samsung Instinct. It is also noteworthy that the top 5 smartphones in the U.S. generated 54% of all ... (Read on Source)
Metabolife Founder Pleads Guilty To Lying To FDA; Faces 5 Years In Prison
SAN DIEGO - Michael J. Ellis, founder and former president of Metabolife International Inc., on Nov. 5 pleaded guilty in federal court to charges of making false statements to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 1999 about the safety of Metabolife's ephedra supplements (USA v. Metabolife, Inc., et al., No. 03 CR 1088-J, S.D. Calif.). Full story on lexis.com
Migrations Made Simple: The Beauty of Unix
InfoWorld: "Many, many things have changed at the OS level between Fedora Core 3 and CentOS 5.2 (which is basically RHEL 5), the number of services provided by the server had quintupled, and I had only a five-minute window to make the swap. However, these are Linux boxes. That makes all the difference."
Germany looking for 2 terrorist suspects
Federal authorities have released the names of two terrorist suspects they believe might be returning to Germany.
This fine individual...
... has more rights than I do . Especially in the state of Florida, where she resides, and where I reside part time. Nice. (Read on Source)
Reccomended Web Strategy Reading
I started my social media career at Hitachi Data Systems (I’ll actually be speaking to Hitachi in Tokyo this coming week) and eventually become the online community manager. One of the keys to being a successful community person is to be a resource (or lethal generosity) to the entire industry you want to serve [...] (Read on Source)
The Alt-Fuel Race Cars of 2025
The Los Angeles Design Challenge invites the auto industry's wildest minds to create the race car of the future. What they come up with is pretty freakin' sweet.
Exxon, Shell profits soar on oil, refinery strength
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Exxon Mobil Corp posted the highest ever U.S. quarterly operating profit and Royal Dutch Shell Plc beat market forecasts on Thursday, helped by high oil prices and fatter refinery margins.
Ballmer: Microsoft 'interested' in open-source browser
Microsoft has given its most ringing endorsement of open source Web browsers to date with chief executive officer Steve Ballmer not ruling out adopting such technology as an alternative to its own popular Internet Explorer, saying it is "interesting".
In Sydney to speak at a Power to Developers event, Ballmer ignited the audience with his powerful "Developers! Developers! Developers!" chant, but was surprised to hear a question about open source browser adoption from one of his student constituents.
[ Track the latest trends in open source with InfoWorld's Open Sources blog. ]
"Why is IE still relevant and why is it worth spending money on rendering engines when there are open source ones available that can respond to changes in Web standards faster?"
"That's cheeky. A good question, but cheeky," Ballmer said.
Indeed it is. If I was a Microsoft share holder I would want to know why Microsoft is sinking so much money into its own Web browser rendering engine when there are others available for free. Good thing the chairs in Sydney's Exhibition Centre are all bolted down.
Ballmer began his answer philosophically, saying Microsoft will need to look at what the browser is like in the future and, if there is no innovation around them, which he thinks is "likely", Microsoft may still need its own browser because of proprietary extensions that broaden its functionality.
"There will still be a lot of proprietary innovation in the browser itself so we may need to have a rendering service," he said.
Then came the startling revelation that Microsoft may also adopt an open source browser engine.
"Open source is interesting," he said. "Apple has embraced Webkit and we may look at that, but we will continue to build extensions for IE 8."
Ballmer also admitted Microsoft got delayed with the transition from IE 6 to IE7 during the development of Longhorn, which became Vista. "But I don't what to go there."
Developers want money
Another question arose from the recent success of Apple's App Store and Facebook for helping independent developers make money via the host vendors application delivery mechanism. Ballmer wants to do more here for Microsoft developers.
"Making money is a good thing and with some of the competitive opportunities I don't think anyone is making any money," he said. "Some good work is being done with Facebook and the iPhone where it's easy for developers to distribute applications. It's easier to get exposure. Not much money is being made, but giving developers a way to get more visibility of their code is a good idea.
"Microsoft can do more here. We are not ready to talk about opportunities, but fear not! We are hard at work, particularly with Facebook."
Looks like Microsoft is working on a more streamlined way to bring more ISVs (emphasis on independent) into its technology stack before the are irreversibly lost to competing platforms. A well marketed application repository is the perfect way to achieve this.
New products
What gets Steve Ballmer excited when it comes to new products? Well, there's Steve Ballmer the user and Steve Ballmer the developer evangelist.
"From a user perspective I'm excited by Windows Mobile 7 and the next release of Windows Live at end of the year," he said.
As a developer, Ballmer sees a bright future for integration of SharePoint with the cloud-based SharePoint online. Also on the cards is porting the Microsoft Access database front end to SharePoint. "The productivity benefits for business applications and the tools we are building, with Microsoft Access as a front end, will make it a higher-level development environment," he said. "Writing applications with SharePoint will be pretty attractive for some people."
Human computing is the future
To finish his keynote, Ballmer began prognosticating about what computers will be like 10 years from now.
If someone asked me what's the best profession to recommend people get into - that's software development," he said. "So much more innovation will be created in the next 10 years. Ten years from now we will look back and say how primitive life was back then."
"We will talk to computers and they will respond. Everything we touch will be an electronic surface connected to the Internet. Everything will be automatically streamed. There is sure a lot of software left writing in this world."
Techworld Australia is an InfoWorld affiliate.
OK, I'm glad we got hosed at the pump
There, I said it. In fact, I was quite ecstatic if that would lead Hummer Nation to rethink its ways.
GigaTribe Launches Web 2.0 File Sharing Service in the U.S.
Sharing large files or sensitive documents with friends, clients, and coworkers shouldn’t be as hard or as expensive as it is with other services, that can charge up to thousands of dollars a year.
2 Proprietary Firmware and the Pursuit of a Free Kernel
... considering those things in the same way." A similar position was expressed on the debian-devel list earlier this month by developer Loic Minier, who suggests that, since the firmware ...
United States: Drug Warning Claims 'Impliedly Preempted' But Asks High Court To Hold Off
WASHINGTON, D.C. - The U.S. solicitor general on Dec. 21 told the U.S. Supreme Court that failure-to-warn claims involving a drug are barred by implied preemption, but he urged the court not to take up the case until it issues preemption rulings in separate drug and device cases that are pending (Wyeth v. Diana Levine, No. 06-1249, U.S. Sup.). Full story on lexis.com
City of Chicago to Use ACH Direct for Check Verification and E-Check Processing
ACH Direct, Inc. will be providing check verification and e-check services for the City of Chicago. This new venture will help improve payment processing for in-person payments as well as the City's many alternative payment options including Chicago EZ Pay Stations and web payments. (PRWeb Dec 4, 2008)
Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/cityofchicago/echeck/prweb1703044.htm
name: MAGPIE