2004 August

When a number appears on your Caller ID, you take it at face value, right? Well you might wish to rethink this policy after reading this article. Apparently it works much like an anonymizer for your telephone. I think this is pretty scary. Imagine, Caller ID being rendered useless almost overnight.

As broadband Internet continues on its course to becoming the “norm”, there is little doubt that companies are looking for methods to drive home a profit. I think that within the next two years, we will see services like Vonage and Skype triple in use as the costs prove to be more efficient that POTS […]

According to Ars Technica, about a third of the US will be using computer based voting machines come voting season. One third, people! I guess our best bet is to hope that the people that figure out a way to hack into these machines do not belong to the opposite political party you are voting […]

So what is the best pop-up blocker of them all? Well the guy in this post from ExtremeTech seems to be asking that same question. Personally, I believe the answer is bordering on obvious with all the press both of these options have received. Both Firefox/Mozilla and the Google toolbar offer the best protection based […]

Forget supersonic jets of the past, NASA’s X-43A hypersonic aircraft has already made short work of the old Guinness Book of Records’ fastest jet in the world. The new record will make its appearance in the 2006 Guinness World Records book.

Freeware. Another follow up to my earlier posts on msconfig on Windows 2000 - if you don’t have access to a Windows XP computer, you can always use Autoruns from Systernals. Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell have been writing utilities to make an administrator’s life easier since Windows NT 4 Server was new […]

“A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, someone had the idea that science would be at its most interesting when it was being subverted. Just as science itself was developing, storytellers began expanding the worlds of physics, biology, chemistry and engineering.
They came up with a universe full of lightsabers, spaceships and robots, […]

“The promise of Internet-based video has long been hamstrung by copyright and piracy worries, slow dial-up connections, technical challenges and consumer disdain for watching blotchy videos on their home computers.
But a Silicon Valley startup is tackling those obstacles, hoping to become the first major provider of cinema straight from the Internet to the living room […]

“A significant milestone in developing next-generation chip manufacturing technology has been achieved by Intel Corporation. The company has built fully functional 70-megabit static random access memory (SRAM) chips with more than half a billion transistors using the world’s most advanced 65 nanometer (nm) process technology. The achievement extends Intel’s effort to drive the development of […]

“Quantum computers, which use attributes of quantum particles like atoms and photons to represent data, promise to solve certain very large problems many orders of magnitude faster than is possible using today’s computers. The challenge is being able to manipulate particles well enough to carry out computing.
A key step is being able to entangle five […]

AMD to demonstrate dual-core chips
Aiming to deflate archrival Intel, Advanced Micro Devices this week will show off its dual-core chips, which will start to trickle out toward the middle of next year.
AMD on Tuesday will show off a Hewlett-Packard ProLiant server with four dual-core Opteron chips at a facility in Austin, Texas, bringing the […]

Microsoft Corp. long ago proved itself a dominant force in the software industry. But does a company known for PC operating systems and productivity software have the chops to make it in the music biz?
That’s the central question this week amid widespread reports that Microsoft is poised to unveil its long-awaited MSN Music download store. […]

According to Internet Week, China has decided to legalize electronic signatures. The report claims that the reasons behind this move are to help stimulate China’s Internet based economy.

There is some new software on the market that has both XM Radio and the RIAA concerned about the rights of music played over the XM network. His intentions seem innocent enough. He claims that he was simply wanting to be able to record the content so that he would not miss any of his […]

Who needs the Simpsons when they can play console based video games, right? A recent survey by Ziff Davis shows that a growing number of Americans are opting out of their favorite TV programing and instead are heading over to their gaming consoles.

Internet2, is it all hype or is it going to be the information super highway of tomorrow? That is hard to say. However in the mean time, Microsoft will be using Internet2 for Service Pack 2 delivery according to Government Computer News.

Apple is still a little hesitant about this new FairPlay DRM technology. They appear to feel that if they budge a little in any direction, there might be a loosening of the strangle hold they currently maintain on the online music industry.

I saw a Linus Point-Of-Sale system in the store where I bought my beer today and got terribly excited - I guess I’m just too geeky for my own good…. :-) “About a third of businesses plan to migrate at least some Windows machines to Linux, according to a recent survey, […]

“A new company thinks it has the answer to the complaints of scientists and engineers looking for high-performance computing (HPC) on the desktop. The Orion Cluster Workstation packs the power of a PC cluster into a desktop-size package using low-power chips and an innovative motherboard design.
Orion Multisystems Inc. will emerge from stealth mode on Monday […]

A Reuters article indicates that according to Entertainment Software Association, 39 percent of game players are women, and women purchase about half of all games. With numbers like that, we need more women game developers. WomenGamers.com has partnered with The Guildhall at SMU to offer a women-only scholarship for the 18-month certificate, a six-term program.