Interesting Software and System News

[bob3160]

Wikipedia - the biggest multilingual open access encyclopedia on the
internet ( www.wikipedia.org/ ) has features that allow editing of
articles. Due to the popularity of this website and the ability to make
changes, public figures, like congressmen - and women - have their staff
delete and reword articles to improve their image.  This practice of
partisan editing by those with a vested interest has lead Wikipedia to
block the congressional computer network on a number of occasions in the
last six months due to the inappropriate contributions.
Full story available at the following site:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4695376.stm

[bob3160]

Yahoo is considering launching a program to reward people who make Yahoo
their primary search engine.
http://news.com.com/2061-10811_3-6037090.html


Microsoft is considering the same idea - bribery - or as they call it
"sharing advertising revenue."
http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/12/08/HNmssearchengine_1.html

[bob3160]

Google Grabs Half Of Booming Web Search Market
===============================
 
U.S. Web surfers conducted 5.1 billion searches in the last month of
2005, compared with 3.3 billion during the same period a year ago.
Yahoo and MSN lost their shares of internet searches.
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=FG3UWDDJNL5LUQSNDBOCKHSCJUMEKJVN?articleID=179103246

[bob3160]

Songbird, the "open source iTunes killer," is available
 
A team led by ex-Winamp-er Rob Lord today released a preview edition of
Songbird, a desktop media player that offers an open source alternative
to services like Apple's iTunes and the Windows Media Player. Instead of
connecting to one locked store full of DRMmed goods, it can connect to
any and all available music (and video) on the internet.
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/02/08/songbird_the_open_so.html

[bob3160]

Protests Jump to Virtual World: 750 Websites Hacked
 
The effects of the boycott launched in response to the offensive Prophet
Mohammed cartoons published by Danish Newspaper Jylland-Posten are being
seen in other areas.  Hackers have accessed hundreds of Websites ending
with (*.dk).
 
The hackers of Danish websites show their reactions by leaving messages
on Website pages. Some wrote the name of Prophet Mohammed with hymns,
while others simply displayed a rose on the page. According to the
records of http://www.zone-h.org/en/news/read/id=205987/, a site listing the Websites accessed by
hackers, 750 Websites were blocked in the last 10 days

[CharleyO]

***

Yeah ... well, who expected  congressmen (and women) to be honest???   


***

[bob3160]

A new CPU is on the horizon.
It is twice the speed of Intel and AMD chips without the heat problems.
http://us.ft.com/ftsuperpage/superpage.php?news_id=fto020620062017026269&referrer_id=yahoofinance

[bob3160]

You must agree...
 
Those long boring "End-User License Agreements" (EULA) that say you must
agree to bla, bla, bla before installing software are sometimes strange.

For example:
Sony says you must delete all your music should you ever go bankrupt.
Qwest says they can charge you $5 per email should your computer get
infected and spams anyone. However, others are more interesting, such as
Microsoft offering $5 if their software screws up your computer. PC
Pitstop's promise to pay $1,000 to the first person who actually read
their EULA (in part, to prove that no one reads EULAs) was eventually
paid it out, but it took four months and 3,000 downloads until anyone
claimed the prize 

[Abraxas]

bob3160:

... PC  Pitstop's promise to pay $1,000 to the first person who actually read
their EULA (in part, to prove that no one reads EULAs) was eventually
paid it out, but it took four months and 3,000 downloads until anyone
claimed the prize 

That is funny !

There's a program EULAlyzer from Javacool Software (SpywareBlaster) which is pretty lame, just  in it's infancy collecting data it seems .
" EULAlyzer can analyze license agreements in seconds, and provide a detailed listing of potentially interesting words and phrases. License agreements can be a pain and a bore, but not reading them can be dangerous. EULAlyzer makes it all easy - "
Be interesting to see if it picked up on  PC  Pitstop's $1000 offer

[bob3160]

Hackers are hijacking thousands of PCs to spy on users, shake down
online businesses, steal identities and send millions of pieces of spam.
You can read the whole story here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/14/AR2006021401342.html

An outline of one of the ways they build A Botnet can be found here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/custom/2006/02/17/CU2006021701353.html

[bob3160]

Here is somthing that you'll look at and think..
"I should have thought of that."

360 Electrical outlets rotate into 18 positions so you can more easily
deal with wall-wart AC adapters. Excellent idea! "Coming soon," says the site.
http://www.360electrical.com/

I've requested  a surge protector that has those features...

[CharleyO]

***

Nice idea ... and yes, I wish I had thought of that!   


***

[bob3160]

Want to see where an IP address is located?
just go to:
http://www.tleone.com/tools/ip-atlas/plot.php
and type in the address.
It always starts off by showing you your own location.
It's fairly close anyway.

[neal62]

Interesting. I tried it from where I work which is about 50 miles south of Houston. This program came back and said I was located in or near Plano, Texas which is up near Dallas or about 400 miles north of me. Wonder what happened? 

[CharleyO]

***

Hmmm ... maybe something to do with your ISP service. When I tried, it said I was in or near Marina Del Rey, CA ... only about 2000+ miles off.           


***