Office Max!

According to this Wired article, Adobe may be in the process of taking on Microsoft in the Office Suite arena. Microsoft, the maker of Word, Excel, Access, Outlook and Powerpoint, depends on the Office Suite as its main source of revenue given their product’s extensive rooting into the world’s business computers.

A good example of how a virus could completely cripple an economy was shown by the Code Red virus in 2001. This virus targeted different vulnerabilities in the Microsoft IIS system that that time, and quickly spread through large business computers like wildfire. The virus crippled main backbone’s all across the world, causing internet traffic to come to a halt. The code red virus was spreading at unheard of rates through these computers, as well as racking up almost $200 million in damages per day. This single virus was one of the most expensive computer viruses that have ever touched base on the internet.

So, I have my roommate see if he can read it from his computer, and alas - no. I wash it in hot water, and whilst rubbing it, I notice that it doesn’t appear to be…well…flat. Ah hah! I shouldn’t have put it in the box to be bent by whatever else got put in there. So I went to Staples and bought a shiny new Windows CD. (This one was also sparkly and holographic-looking, but aren’t they all.)

I was on the train back from Waterloo, and luckily I’d managed to find a seat WITH a table. This guy sits down next to me, and starts to read the paper. After he’s done, pulls out his laptop and boots it up. He also takes out a mouse with a CABLE that he has to plug in to make it work (even though the laptop had a finger pad).

Yesterday morning, I was sitting at the computer, when the computer all of a sudden started making a hellish racket. It happened every 30 seconds or so. After awhile I became convinced that their was a loose wire inside the case which was hitting one of the fans. After awhile of listening, it became apparent that the wire/fan collision was taking place within the power supply. So, I started poking around in the power supply with a paper clip while the computer was still running.

P.S. The patch Sony is offering may be worse than the original [Corante Copyfight]. It includes new versions of many of the files people already have on their computers. Maybe you should sweep up the glass yourself, instead of inviting the burglar back for a second shot at the stuff they missed.

I’ve been talking with friends and colleagues for he past couple of years about starting a business based on the idea of human filtering - the idea that there are certain tasks that humans, working in parallel, will do better than computers will, at least in the forseeable future. I wrote a bit about this when I first applied for a fellowship at Berkman - part of my application included a section on research interests, where I listed “human filtering”:

New.net finds itself little liked by experts on Internet infrastructure and security. But where are users in this mess? I’ve never spoken with a user who actually wanted New.net, but I’ve looked at plenty of massively-infected computers with New.net installed. So I’ve long suspected nonconsensual, improper, or overly aggressive installations of New.net software.

Tip #2. Go shopping at the office supplies and discount clubs. You may find some discount clubs like Costco & Sams have a 6 month return policy, check your location. California stores have a 6 month no questions asked policy, and yes, this means Computers and Software too, even if the package is open and you have used it. Just make sure you can put it back in the box and you have the receipt.

Greetings. A great number of people have difficulty with computers and with technology in general and in an effort to alleviate some of these problems, I proudly present the first entry in the When Reality Knocks Lifestyle and Technology Guide. Today’s topic: How to deal with everyday computer problems.

I'm definitely a child of the PC computing industry. I've grown up around computers. I've seen one innovation after another. I have to say the most amazing times in my programming life have been spent hunched over a computer all night hacking out a new way to solve a problem. Even later in my professional career, during the "high-tech late 90's" I had a blast playing with xml data islands before example one hit the list server (wow, does anyone remember learning new concepts on list servers? yikes I feel old). Whatever the case, what was interesting was that everyone was learning something new because everyone was solving technology problems on their own; sometimes for better and sometimes for worse. But every programmer had to learn to be creative to solve problems.

Oh, and why not one of the new PowerBooks? They just lack the feature set: low power consumption CPU’s with long battery lives, TV tuner/PVR capabilities, decent 3D cards, not to mention business software compatibility… I’ll pick up a new PowerBook in when they crank out decent Intel powered ones in 12-18 months.

Very little bothers me more than when ill-informed people conflate their own overinflated egos with Windows XP, implying that anything less than a Dell PC with Windows XP Pro is the domain of computing lightweights, grandmothers, children and homosexuals. For some, being well-practiced in weekly disk defragmentation, periodic registry cleaning, spyware removal and the installation of numerous resource-hogging antivirus interceptors is the hallmark of computing expertise, a skillset which defines what people who Really Know Computers do. I’m going to pour my drink on the next person who brags to me how OSX is for morons and women while running AdAware scans on his uber-l33t Win32 machine.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and 35 government partners from more than 20 countries are targeting illegal spammers who take remote control of unwitting users' computers to serve as spam transmission zombies. By hijacking home and business computers, spam can be routed through them, thereby hiding the true source of the spam and making the enforcement of antispam laws more difficult.

Hitachi, Japan’s largest electronics conglomerate, and smaller rival NEC offer hard drive-free laptops for approximately $1200, with desktops priced slightly less. Both will continue manufacturing consumer and business computers with hard drives.

Dell and Hewlett-Packard cut fees for their recycling programs this week in advance of Friday's Earth Day observance.

Tech companies have come under growing pressure in the past few years to address the growing mounds of dangerous waste created by outdated computer hardware. Gear such as monitors and circuit boards are full of hazardous chemicals that can leach into the soil and groundwater if dumped into landfills. Groups such as the National Electronics Product Stewardship Initiative have successfully pushed computer makers to responsibly recycle more and more of their obsolete goods.

HP announced Thursday that it was temporarily cutting in half the fees it charges customers to recycle old computer hardware. The promotion runs though May 31 and works in conjunction with a rebate program that gives customers as much as $50 off the price of new HP equipment if they recycle old gear through the company.