2003 March

“This rig doesn’t have Plexiglas portals or sport a fancy-pants paint job, but behind its plain-Jane exterior are no fewer than 37 operating systems! Make that 53 if you count the DOS window managers.” - Do you suppose Guinness lists a world’s record for this?

From Yahoo: Federal investigators have arrested an enigmatic Wall Street wiz on insider-trading charges — and incredibly, he claims to be a time-traveler from the year 2256! Sources at the Security and Exchange Commission confirm that 44-year-old Andrew Carlssin offered the bizarre explanation for his uncanny success in the stock market after being led off [...]

It appears that Intel, followed closely by AMD, have actually raised prices. I can’t say I ever remember this happening. Both say they expect the price rise to be short lived, but then again… you never know.

Having lived in MA for several years this held particular interest for me and also for what it may allow city planner to do in the future. Part of the Big Dig’s construction has included miles and miles of fiber optic cable linked to a computer which can check all 40,000 data points every 3 [...]

IBM have unveiled a storage device with a maximum capacity of 2 Petabytes (PB) - or 1 million gigabytes, with a transfer rate of 1gbps (1 gigabit per second, or 125 MB/sec). Now that’s something. CNet has the news.

“Much-loved computer columnist Henry Norr has been suspended by the Hearst Corporation - owners of The San Francisco Chronicle - for expressing political views on his day off. Along with two thousand other citizens, including the former head of the Pacific Stock Exchange, Norr was arrested in San Francisco last week as he was protesting [...]

Slashdot offers commentary on an early review of the next release of SuSE Linux 8.2, apparently the distro of choice for Linus Torvalds himself. The full review is on MadPenguin.org but the site is very slow so you may prefer to read a mirrored copy.

“In the wake of the Columbia disaster, future shuttle missions will have pictures taken in-flight by any U.S. satellites — including spy satellites — that have a good view, NASA’s chief said on Friday.”

“RipBurnRespect is a public service program supported by Gateway to help music fans understand the ways that digital media formats can make music more enjoyable – as well as some of the responsibilities that come with using this powerful technology. We also want to make sure that artists and the recording industry hear the consumer’s [...]

“Microsoft said criticisms of its Palladium security initiative are rumors and speculation about technology that won’t even be ready to hit the market for years.”
While I can see obvious advantages of Palladium, I’m personally worried that it’ll lead to our computers being controlled by corporations, and not by ourselves. But then it does require specific [...]

“With the availability of Macromedia Flash Player 6 for Pocket PC 2002, developers can incorporate video and application components within Macromedia Flash MX to deliver rich Internet applications, as well as bring e-learning, rich media, and gaming content to devices.”

“With the release of version 0.6, a hush came over the Chimera announcements page until, much later, the truth emerged: a legal wrangle was holding things up. And not just any legal wrangle either. It was the name that was causing all the trouble, so no further versions would be released until a new name [...]

There is a new book being published by Random House and authored by David Kushner, about the creators of one of the most influential games in the gamming industry… No! Not Dead or Alive Volleyball, I am talking about the ever popular DooM, this book is based on the lives of 2 of its main [...]

The title here has more to do with what I am doing than what the site is doing, but it seemed appropriate. Quite a while back they published an article on windows forensics, the followed it up so it seemed appropriate for me to do so as well. So here is Part II. But wait [...]

“If you have logo or artwork on paper and you need to get it into Illustrator, you must see this video! This will also work with logos you have created in Photoshop and need to convert them to vector! (You can find the video on the home page / 20min 11mb / QT).”
This video will [...]

Well the price tag on this one definitely puts it in the drool-ware range (at least for me), but when this popped on the screen at work at least half the guys in my office were suddenly peering over my shoulder. Of course that may also have something to do with too many people and [...]

Originally read this story on Neowin, but I forgot to copy the URL (Doh!). However, I did remember to get the URLs for downloading a copy, so for those of you interested here you go.
Mandrake Linux 9.1 RC3 CD 1
Mandrake Linux 9.1 RC3 CD 2
Mandrake Linux 9.1 RC3 CD 3

With Windows 2003 having just shipped to manufacturers this week, this may be just a little bit premature or perhaps just PR. Nevertheless, microsoft has a skills assessment drill for those of you interested in learning a bit about its new offering.

Enter your phone number in this format: 000-000-0000 into Google.com and they will give you back any websites with your phone number on them and also your address and two (2) maps to your house! For example, try President Bush at 202-456-1414.

A vulnerability in the default image viewer for one of the two major Linux desktop systems could allow an attacker to execute code on a computer running the Gnome software, security group Core Security Technologies said in an advisory on Friday.