Well, the second week of unemployment and being back on the job hunt trail has shown itself to be even worse than last week. I have had no one even want to talk to me, no one even indicate they are hiring. It seemed everywhere I hit this week had little more than 'Thanks, we'll review it' to say. I hope the next couple of weeks is better, because I need something to look up at, a goal that does not appear to be higher than Mount Olympus. I will be soon putting my resume online in Doc and HTML formats. Look for a link.
January 2004 Archives
I am off momentarily to my nieces Birthday party. I am bringing the camera along, though 8 MB of memory is highly limiting in the range and number of pictures I can take. The party is at a pool, but on a Saturday afternoon it is likely to be filled with kids, and no one worth introducing myself to. It is supposed to snow out today, so I can only hope that it waits until we get back, and that we do not have a repeat of the last time we made a trip to that part of the province, in other words hopefully the car does not break down.
I would love to tell you I have found new dedication to updating the site, and now that I am not working I have a lot more time to keeping this site up to date. Unfortunately, I would be lying. 15 days of unemployment has left me tired every night, forcing myself to move to a sleep schedule that, unlike my 12 PM to 3 AM schedule of being awake before, it more conducive to looking for work at a time when people who do hiring are actually there. Therefore, I have been trying to get myself on a 7-10 productivity cycle, no matter how hard it is. when you add in that I have been spending several hours online before and after going job hunting, as well as trying to contact friends who might have leads, this leaves little time for blogging. I will, though, try to be productive here on weekends.
In a move the completely surprised absolutely no one, Microsoft today announced a $250,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of the person who wrote the Mydoom.B virus that is set to use all infected machines to do a DoS attack on the Microsoft web site on the 3rd of next month. This is the third time the company has offered a bounty, the first two times were for the creator of the MSBlast worm, and then also the SoBig.F writer. Neither of those rewards have been claimed. This reward comes 2 days after SCO, the other target of MyDoom.B and also the sole target of the original MyDoom, offered it's own $250,000 bounty for the originator of this line of viruses. No word on what measures each company will take to protect from DoS attacks on their chosen date.
A new variant of the MyDoom virus has already been released, antivirus companies warn, and this one is different in a few ways. While the original virus was yesterday handed the crown by Finnish security company F-Secure of the worst mail worm ever, surpassing SoBig, MyDoom.B has caused additional grief to IT managers and internet users worldwide. The new virus differs in that it attacks both sco.com(on February 1st) and microsoft.com(on February 3rd), it prevents access to a long list of sites including advertising sites and anti virus sites, and is rumoured to be the cause of many spams with greetings like 'hello' and 'hi' that advertise Viagra. Thankfully there are reports that due the previous knowledge of mydoom, the variant is not spreading nearly as fast as the first.
So, I have been unemployed now for 12 straight days, and I must say I can understand why I never liked this. I find the lure of laziness hard to beat back, and the cold often unbearable. I find myself having to redistribute my resume because of the fact the first 100 I had printed were, well, flawed. Yup, I sent out more than 50 resumes with wrong phone number, address, and email address. I did, though, send them out with proper information about me, and the phone number is my parents, but I felt the need to get the proper information in front of these people ASAP. I am rationing myself on food to try to make what I have last, but I cannot foresee the food I have lasting for another 31 days, which is when I hit hard up against the do or die date. Feb. 29. It all goes to shit then.
In response to the new fast spreading virus Mydoom that on the 1st of February is programmed to attack their web site, SCO has issued a quarter million dollar bounty for it's writer. While Bruce Perens has made good points on what Linux advocates can do in response to the mydoom worm, and more importantly what we should not do, other writers online are pointing to negative mydoom posts on Slashdot as proof that Linux users are behind the worm. Not sure how they came to such a biased conclusion less than a day after the worm debuted, but ok. In the end, I suspect that this will be just another worthless attempt to bring in a worm writer, and just like Microsoft's attempts with Blaster and SoBig.F, it will fail. That community, like many online, is too self preserving.
A new virus, known as "Mydoom" or "Novarg", has begun spreading across the net, discussing itself as an email error message. "A small file is attached that, when launched on computers running Microsoft's Windows operating systems, can send out 100 infected e-mail messages in 30 seconds to e-mail addresses stored in the computer's address book and other documents. The attack was first noticed Monday afternoon. Within hours, thousands of e-mails were clogging networks, said Vincent Gullotto, vice president of Network Associates' antivirus emergency response team." The word on what exactly this worm does is varied, some say as above that it is a backdoor, while others say it has a keylogger. Others yet say it is timed to attack SCO's web site on February 1.
I finished a new article, my first in far too long, and I have published it on this site, which honestly was a big question. I was not sure if I wanted to finally move articles to Pixels and Bits, but I decided I am not yet ready to do that, but have added it to my To Do list. As for the article, it is titled "How to eat crow, RIAA style", and it details how timing is everything, and how the RIAA's reasons for it's poor financial showing are complete crap. I have blogged these points before, but I have expanded on them and added a little of my own thoughts to the article. I will take emails and comments, which can be placed in this blog piece, or the forums.
About 45 minutes ago now, the Mars rover Opportunity, twin to the Spirit rover which just reestablished contact, landed on the surface of Mars. It took a little time to get it set down and make sure things were OK, but the word came from NASA a short time ago that the lander, the second one to arrive this month, was just fine and would begin the normal steps to get onto the martian soil, just as Spirit had to before it left it's platform a week or so ago. While this is a very good sign for the 60% failure rate overall for NASA's trips to Mars, I want to wait and see if there is any problems, and if Spirit stops acting like Windows ME.
The law that post September 11th took away a large number of American citizen's freedoms and liberties, the Patriot Act, is going to be brought up for renewal and succeed, if George Bush has anything to do with it, the President said in his State of the Union address to Congress. "Key provisions of the Patriot Act are set to expire next year," Bush said. "The terrorist threat will not expire on that schedule. Our law enforcement needs this vital legislation to protect our citizens--you need to renew the Patriot Act." Reports CNet.
CNet also reports "One section that will expire permits police to conduct warrantless Internet surveillance with the permission of a network operator. A second section permits police to share the contents of wiretaps or Internet surveillance with the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and other security agencies. Another section makes it easier for prosecutors to seek search warrants for electronic evidence. A fourth, Section 215, became well known after some librarians alerted visitors that it permits the FBI to learn what books a patron has read and what Web sites a patron visited--and prohibits the recipient of such an order from disclosing that it exists." Needless to say, I am heavily against this move, and only wish I had the ability to have Bush removed from office.
It has now been more than 24 hours since NASA last heard from the Spirit rover that landed on Mars in early January. This is not the first time NASA has had trouble on Mars, with several other crafts being lost to Mars, though most were in orbit or on entry. The European Space Agency also recently lost the Beagle 2 rover, that was supposed to have landed around Christmas, but has not been heard from since it entered the atmosphere. A second NASA rover is supposed to land soon, the Opportunity, and all three 2004 landers were to look for signs of water having once been on Mars. Of course, the lack of contact from either Spirit or Beagle 2 are leading to dumb bad jokes about the two rovers off in a corner, but at the least Spirit did provide a lot of great pictures.
Not allowing the recent rulings against it's practise of self issuing subpoena's, the RIAA has filed 532 so called John Doe lawsuits, named for the fact they are suing a file trading user of a certain P2P user name and IP address, and will later ask for the persons name and other details. The majority of the 500+ lawsuits have some in the Washington and New York states. The level of upload piracy that this group has been accused of is lower than that of previous suits, as these people only had about 800 songs available. The Register is predicting that the RIAA will continue until they have sued a significant number of people on the file trading networks, while one lawyer is quoted as saying he thinks they will begin raising the price of a settlement the harder suing people gets.
Coke's attempt to jump on the online music download bandwagon was supposed to go live yesterday, but as of right now, there is nothing there. mycokemusic.com merely says the site is in the midst of updating, and it will be up and running by 16:00, while Coke says they ran into a minor technical problem. My many years online inform me that anything that causes a commercial site to be down for more than a day is no longer a minor technical issue. "Coke's site is branded as the "first consumer branded, legitimate downloadable music site" for UK music fans. It promises to offers a selection of more than 250,000 songs from 8,500 artists, with individual tracks costing from 80p and albums from £6.40. Coca-Cola promises that the site will feature exclusive and pre-release content, with tracks available on the site up to six weeks before they arrive in music stores." The site will only serve the UK.
Well, I have been mopping, and ruminating on being fired, and now it is time to pick myself up, move on, and find myself a few good strong possibilities. I have good friends backing me up, and a lot of people keeping their eyes open for chances. Periods of unemployment can be some of the most stressful times on a person, but they can also be the times when we find out who our friends are. I know things will not be easy, but if I just give up now then I let myself and those who want to help me down, and I am unwilling to do such a thing. So, if you know of a place that a geek like me would want to word at in the City of Winnipeg, drop me a comment.
Have you ever watched someone on TV, and found them to be quite knowledgeable and even fun to watch, interesting and thoughtful, and then you see them in another medium or scenario, and then you have a whole new level of respect for them? I find myself in just such a scenario. I have seen Leo Laporte on TV with The ScreenSavers and Call for Help on TechTV, as well as on Regis and Kelly. I have seen him on stage for a question and answer at Gnomedex 2. I have also sat in a large group and heard from him and Chris Pirillo and their thoughts on technology and TechTV. Now I have had the chance to listen to him in a new medium, one I am sure many of his fans started listening to him on, the radio. This brings a whole new dynamic to him, and I do think I like it.
Ever call someone, expecting to be the mad one, expecting that you will tell them what is what, give them a piece of your mind and all that, only to hang up with you being the one who got told what's what? Well, I just did that, but sadly my original issue was not solved. The thing is I was calling re: my net connection needing to be disabled and re-enabled after each reboot. The call was to my ISP, and it ended with a talk with the bandwidth division, and they had a few kind words to me. You see, I was told I have done in the first 18 days of this month more than 70 GB of download, and almost 55 GB of upload. Yup, your very own geek will likely clear 125 GB of transfer this month. 'Most companies don't transfer that much in a year' is not something you want to hear. Ever.
I feel like such a moron. I couldn't figure out why index.html would keep getting recreated, which makes the whole site look really messed up, like I had not completed the move to the new location of MT. Well, I just figured out why. When I first started doing all of this, the whole MT install, I had to hack out an archaic fix to get the links to individual entries to work as they do now. Well, I had the code below under MORE, and the problem is obvious. It was trying to still find the .html files, and since the old interface was still there, the readers could still leave comments. I was wondering why there have been a lot less comments as of late, but trying to leave a comment of my own told me the issues. I have, thankfully, now fixed it all up.
Someone in IRC just an hour ago said they though tonight's ScreenSavers was boring, with 'a bunch of old farts'. Having watched this episode, I know now that my response to the person, questioning if they have any idea of the importance of the Home Brew Computer Club, the topic of the night, had on the computers we use today. There was one person who created the first video adapter for the Altair. There was three of the early people at Apple including co-founder Steve Wozniak and a person involved in perfecting the GUI. They told stories of the first few meetings, and of the people, alive and passed on, who affected silicon valley and the path that computers took from that home bound beginning. They then showed the present of computing, guys my age doing awesome things. What we were is were we need to look for the future of computing as we know it, not Redmond, WA.
Did I say it, or did I say it? Monday, January 05, 2004 I said "While piracy on the major networks like Kazaa has fallen, my experiences tell me that piracy levels are not actually decreasing, they are just becoming less centred and more private." in this post. Today I read studies that say that piracy is not dropping, and The Register covering crypto P2P. The reason I know of these kinds of shifts is because I am doing them myself. I am trying eMule and I will say I dislike it's diskspace gobbling nature, and I have been invited to try some crypto based P2P clients. Of course, all I am doing as a Canadian is downloading music from unidentified sources, therefore not breaking the law at all, but I find some of these networks far more useful for such purposes. ISP's are even ignoring the RIAA.
Ok, well, I have not yet found the solution to some problems I am having, namely my net connection issue, but I did find out some more about the mail problem I was having. you see, I found my mail messages from before I messed up and had to wipe C:, but the problem then became one of an uncooperative mail client in Outlook Express, which kept telling me "No messages can be found in this folder..." when I pointed it at the folder with the files. I tried the recommended permissions fix, but they weren't read only. I was close to using DBXtract to get all my mails out of their folders and importing them by hand, which would have taken a long time. Add to this that I discovered that some of the folders had 0 file sizes, likely from the virus I had.
Then I hit on something. The above fix mentioned that Folders.dbx might be corrupt, so I might need to delete it and have OE recreate it. The knowledge base article is about OE 5, but I thought that it might just fix the problem with these files if I told it the location I wanted it to look in, the location import was telling me was bad. I proceeded to close Outlook Express and carefully backup the mail files I have made since reinstall of XP, and then preceded to clear the folder and copying the files over from the old mail folder. I then started OE back up, and low and behold all of my old mails, excluding the folder files that were damaged, were there and waiting. It took a quick import of my newer emails from the newer files and a lot of reorganizing, but it worked.
At about 3:30 PM today, due to many factors, many of which were in my control, I was let go from my job. I will not be posting this until I have a chance to inform my family, but I do want to write my immediate thoughts and worries down. I am both saddened and hesitant now, as the last time I was unemployed it took 5 months to find work, though this time I hope to get some support from the government in the form of Employment Insurance. I will get my severance pay in about a weeks time, plus the nearly 2 weeks I actually worked. I will begin the long process of preparing myself for jon hunting tomorrow, and begin to set things as I need them, but I do not have much time, so the long processes will need to be refined and purified to base essentials. Wish me luck.
I have found out from Mike McBride that there is yet another new version of Movable Type, this one another attempt to solve the problem of automated comment spam. I will, though, not be as eager to install this one as I use MT Blacklist, and just got 2.65 installed. Still, those who have not installed MT Blacklist, and want to end the deluge of comment spam, please do check out the MT download page, and keep your eyes peeled, as this was a previously unannounced revision of the software, and no mail list publicity had been provided.
Ok, well, I just finally got the right board, and the proper updates downloaded for my video card and motherboard, and just did all the updates to the current drivers. After they have been installed I am angered to find the problem of no net connection on reboot has not gone away. I am not sure the cause, but I do not recall it happening on this computer before I lost C:, but it may have been solved quickly. I am still hoping someone will stumble on this blog who has had this problem, and let me know the solution. Since I have done all but try a new NIC, I will do that next and if that also fails, I will try to contact Shaw, my ISP, and see if there is any suggestion they have. I suspect they will tell me I should wipe and install again. This would not be good.
While not one taken with a lens, really, and I am also sure I am not the first or last to do this since Spirit landed, but I have now after nearly a month with a black desktop, decided to go with one of the more stunning pictures of the Mars landscape that the rover has taken in the time on the landing pad. Click here for info on Spirit, or here for your own choice if you want to be the next owner of a Martian Desktop. Thank god NASA has such good data pipes, both to and from Mars, and across the earth. [Update: Several of the other options also posted now]
After telling the world it would stop supporting anything old than Windows XP would no longer be supported at the end of this year, some techs thought this was good, while users of the older OSes thought this sucked, and some even made or completed plans to move to Linux. After this last option began to happen far too quickly, it is suspected by many, the Redmond giant decided to make a move to encourage people to stay with Windows a little longer. This, I surmise, is what has led up to today's announcement that Microsoft will extend support on at least windows 98, and windows ME until at least June 30, 2006. 98 support was to expire in a few days, and ME around December of this year. Thankfully, or sadly(depending on viewpoint) this will not occur for several more years.
Fax.com, a site that offers to send faxes to consumers on behalf of it's clients, has been fined $5.4 million for violating do not fax rules 489 time, and earning $11,000 in fines per instance. The FCC has ordered the company to respond within 30 days as to whether it has begun to follow the rules, and if the company does not the FCC can levy additional fines. Unfortunately, receiving payment for the violations could be a little more difficulty. One attorney's office, Covington & Burling, received 1,634 faxes through the law firm's phone system within one business week in June 2001, including a deluge of faxes after the law firm's tech department told Fax.com to stop. The firm won a $2.3 million judgement in April of last year, and Fax.com has had it in appeals since.
Thomas E. Ray III, of Jackson, Mississippi is claiming he is innocent of accusations that he tried to extort $2.5 million from Best Buy, and threatening to reveal a major security issue with the companies web site, which the company says do not exist. Ray is accused of allegedly sending emails to Best Buy between Oct. 16th and 30th under the name "Jamie Weathersby" and threatening to go public with the security issues unless the company paid up. The company says they forwarded the emails to the FBI. "Ray, 25, was arraigned on two felony extortion charges in Minneapolis yesterday. He was freed on $10,000 bail following his first court appearance, during which he pleaded not guilty." The trial should begin sometime in March.
Well, it is looking good. I have not yet heard of any issues with the site, about 24 hours after it was all done. The site it good, and the only thing is those who are linking by html file, instead of root or such. I have, though, set up a new set of error pages, so if you see one please do follow the instructions and inform me of where. If you get here by a link and get an error, please do let the site know. Overall I hope this will make the site work better, and allow for better load times. Now, if you don't mind, I have some posts to catch up on.
If you have no sense of honor, no sense of loyalty, no sense of justice, than this movie is not right for you. This movie is a great movie, it shows a time when honor and loyalty were the rule, not the exception. It was a time when loyalty was held higher than money, by some at least. The story is said that the beginning to be fictional, but I have little doubt that similar such tales occurred dozens of times as civilization was brought to Japan and the old ways were forced aside for new, far more profitable ways. Of course this could also be applied to other nations whose most humble of people had progress forced on them, but this tale is of the Samurai and their last fight against technology(yes, a chain gun was technology) and you see the beginnings of the cities that we know now.
Ok, so the big rage is the supposed need for gigabit ethernet. I have an issue with this. There are a few technologies I can see the need for, as the limits are being reached across the spectrum of usage. PCI to PCI Express I can see. Old tech, being pushed beyond it's usefulness, nearly every card you buy these days is PCI, and is pushing the protocol to it's limits, but could be doing more. Video is a good place to look for this, as it outgrew PCI to the point of needing it's own special route to the CPU and memory. BTX is another new and upcoming technology that I see a need for, as CPU's are too hot to be the third or fourth thing that incoming air hits. When I can only get 50 Kbps on one of this city's best networks, and 128 kbps is rejoiced over, why do I need gigabit?
Why do most people need gigabit when megabit is nearly impossible to get unless you are plugged right into the ISP? I just do not get it. I can see if we were tapping out the connections we have, but we are not. I could see if the whole world was straining to get online, and the net could not hold the strain, then we would need gigabit, but there is no strain. Yes, some sites do get a lot of traffic, but they use servers, and thus could use gigabit, but this is not what I refer to. I refer to gigabit on my home PC. When my computer shows more than 75% of the 100 Mbps use and my cable modem is not being taxed, then there will be a need for gigabit. The question we as consumers need to figure out is whether innovation without need or use is a worthwhile achievement.
Ok, well, this is looking good so far. I have just completed the import, and everything looks to have worked on my blog. I am not sure if every little bit has worked perfectly, but I will do the second to last rebuild then move it over to the prime directory(aka http://www.geekblog.net/) and then do the final rebuild there, and deleting the html files that are there. This seems, I hate to tempt the fates and all, that it has been too easy, things have gone too well. Anyone else think the same? Yeah, thought so. Well, I best get the main blog moved over, then move on to Lens.
So, 20 years of the Mac. The best thing Apple is doing to celebrate is to put a newly edited(to include an iPod) version of the original ad for the Mac, with the runner carrying the hammer as she runs up to the screen with the droning person on it, and she breaks the screen, supposedly signifying the breaking of the hold the boring PC's had on the market. I still recall the first time I saw that ad, and it still strikes me as powerful, but adding an iPod to the ad makes it a joke. Sadly, Apple did not release any great new hardware for the masses to celebrate, as they did that for the companies 20th year. The best thing we had this week is the iPod mini, and the droning on at MacWorld by Steve Jobs as he tried to make up for lack of good tech. Wired, though, has more than a few good pieces in reflection.
The FCC has named broadband as it's cause of the year, with chairman Michael Powell saying at CES that it should be expanded on, and new technologies that take advantage of it, like Voice over IP phone services, should not be killed off before they have a chance to be great. "We should be starting on the cleanest slate possible," he said. Powell also spoke of changing the way media and information is delivered, like with his TiVo: "Why I like my TiVo is I'm the programmer, instead of NBC or ABC or CBS." This makes me more than a little confused, as Powell was the spearhead of the movement to loosen regulations on media ownership, which has been shown in the past as only bad for consumers, and their right to choose. Hopefully clarity will come soon.
Due to worries over the airbags that cushioned the landing of the rover Spirit being in it's path when it leaves the landing pad, the rover's departure to set off across the Martian soil has been delayed until at least the 14th, ABC News reports. "Two sections of the now-deflated air bags partially block the ramp that the rover is supposed to use. Engineers will work to further retract parts of the bags before Spirit begins its expedition to dig up rocks and soil." The three day delay of the rover will give NASA time to get the airbags out of the way, though time is something that NASA will have to give a lot of, as they also discovered that the landing site they thought they had, on a former lake bed, has turned out to be incorrect, and the search for signs of water will take awhile. Mars is not quite ours, not yet anyway.
Apple, the maker of the iPod, the original device in the portable music player industry, has agreed with HP to allow the latter to make an HP branded iPod music player. HP says that the new device will be shipping sometime in the spring, and that they will begin immediately preinstalling Apple's iTunes music software on all of it's customers laptops and desktop systems. While Apple recently unveiled the higher cost per GB iPod minim there is no word on which of the many iPod varieties HP will be rebranding. This is going to prove, I suspect, to be a huge win for Apple, due to the likely increase in songs sold on the iTunes music store to Windows listeners, and for HP, which will get a proven piece of technology which it can call it's own. No price is announced, as of yet.
I am a little confused to report the news that Adrian Lamo's pleas today may result in a possible 6 months to one year federal jail sentence. While many have pointed out that some news sources are making it appear that Lamo has already been sentenced, when in fact he has only plead guilty, sentencing will not be for several months. While he said he was hoping he would only receive a few months home detention, it is still possible he could receive a jail term, and from speaking to those who know him and have met him, that would not be good for him. I still have strong doubts that Adrian did what he is accused of other than the admitted hack then inform that he has done many times before, I only hope the judge sees the good he has done, the help he has given.
I am a little confused to report the news that Adrian Lamo's pleas today may result in a possible 6 months to one year federal jail sentence. While many have pointed out that some news sources are making it appear that Lamo has already been sentenced, when in fact he has only plead guilty, sentencing will not be for several months. While he said he was hoping he would only receive a few months home detention, it is still possible he could receive a jail term, and from speaking to those who know him and have met him, that would not be good for him. I still have strong doubts that Adrian did what he is accused of other than the admitted hack then inform that he has done many times before, I only hope the judge sees the good he has done, the help he has given.
A lot of signs point to message that the hot show of the year for technology may be shifting away from the nearly defunct Comdex, which has been the must see show every year for 2 decades, to CES. Bill Gates gave the opening Keynote at CES, the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, and there are a lot more presenters, a lot more booths, and a lot more cool technology than Comdex. Of course, this shift from Comdex does likely have a lot to do with the move in electronics purchasing from super fast PC's to job specific consumer electronics. In Gates' opening speech he decided not to give the attendees much new on the electronics front from Microsoft, instead he said they are going to put a price tag on a lot of software that used to be free. There were a few pieces of gadgetry, a watch and others, but the big news was software.
It took all of a day for the mass of tech news sites online, a lot of them to be more explanatory, to slam the new ad campaign being put on by Microsoft in an attempt to put a wrench in the gears of the Linux market share growth. While those who want to actually look at the campaign and associated site unbiased will see that it is full of research paid for by Microsoft, and that Microsoft has, without a doubt, a lot of worries about how to stop the free OS. Some press, though, is not as unbiased. Many sites that are leaning more to the Open Source side are calling this pure FUD by the company that founded the style of marketing. "The point they're trying to make is really quite specious," said open-source activist Bruce Perens. "If anything, this lowers Microsoft's credibility and shows that they're losing ground to Linux." (Wired)
AMD has begun to show the tech industry that it is completely moving to the 64 bit line of processors by today introducing several new processors. The 4 new processors are the new Athlon 64 3400+ processor, aimed at high-end desktops, while the Athlon 64 2800+, 3000+ and 3200+ chips will go into notebooks. This does appear to be a new move for AMD< putting some of their highest level processors into portable units, but AMD has to do a lot of things that are foreign to them in order to keep one important step ahead of Intel, as well as keeping their prices low. "The Mobile 3200+, 3000+ and 2800+ cost $293, $233 and $193 for a thousand units. Which are not bad prices at all. The AMD Athlon 64 processor 3400+ is priced at $417 for the same order volume."
After buying SuSe, a maker of one of the best selling Linux distributions, and Ximian, the maker of some of the most well used and popular software for Linux, Novell has made the long expected move of combining the two acquisitions ot make the whole product better. "Novell has updated Ximian Desktop 2, its home user software for Unix-based systems, adding more applications and tweaking the product for use with Novell's recently acquired SuSE Linux operating system."(CNet) "Novell's Ximian Desktop 2 is available for free download. The professional edition of Ximian Desktop 2, which includes technical support, automated software updates, Java support, and more is available for purchase from Ximian's store here. The professional edition costs from $99 and up, depending on support options."(The Register).
While NASA is rejoicing that they finally got another lander on the surface of Mars, the European Space Agency revealed that the first clear sky flyover of the expected Beagle 2 landing site found no signal from the lander which has been missing since it should have landed on Christmas day. While NASA is proudly displaying the pictures beamed back from Spirit, which landed in the first few days of the month, the ESA says it has likely lost the lander it named after the ship on which Charles Darwin developed his theory of evolution. NASA expects that Spirit will soon be moving over the surface of Mars, after tests to make sure it will all go good, and it is expected the rover will beam back even more spectacular images at that time. ESA says it will not give up on Mars.
In a sign that it is a forward thinking company that is looking out only for it's great customers, Microsoft just released the Windows Blaster Removal Tool, which will "disinfect machines infected with either the Blaster or Nachi worms." there is a little, tiny problem, though. Blaster came out in August. Nachi shortly thereafter. Therefore the AV companies has clean tools out since a day or two after the first cases, and Microsoft took 5 months. This leads to many questions that users need to begin asking themselves soon, such as 'Why did it take so long for a simple cleaning tool?', 'What else might they have done for it to have taken the other 4 months and 29 days to release?' and what I have to think is the most important, 'Do I really want to use software put out by this company?'