BSteng.com

Well, Yesterday google apparently maid an agreement with Viacom to protect everyones privacy. Google will now turn over info that blanks out the user names as well as the IP addresses which Viacom was actually seeking. However, Google employees that violated copyrights may be opened up to them. So it won’t be as bad as originally thought for now. Plus I feel it looks good for Google since they are respecting peoples rights of privacy.

Links:

http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/08/07/15/149202.shtml

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/212226/google-wins-agreement-to-anonymise-youtube-logs.html

Well it is a good photo shop program for if you are on a very limited budget. I still prefer photoshop over it though. It has most of the features that the other programs have but I do sometimes have issues since it opens several windows which I find to lessen the ease of use quite a bit and it makes it harder when trying to work on several pictures at a time none the less it is about the largest free photo shop program out there.

Link:

www.gimp.org

Well it was announced yesterday that Windows 3.11 will stop being licensed after November 1st this year. It was sold for OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) use in embedded applications for example cash registers. This OS has been around since prior to Linux 1.0 and is well know and Windows 3.1 was the operating system that my first computer had on it and you did everything of importance through command prompt for the most part. ex: launching software.

Sources

http://blogs.msdn.com/jcoyne/archive/2008/07/09/it-s-the-end-for-3-11.aspx

I don’t know why exactly but I saw an article today talking about how some telcos plan on actually installing 25+ under ocean fiber-optic lines by 2010 and several are new connections to the U.S. Now for me it leads me to think are they really needed that badly? From what I know most of the usage is from with in countries currently. Yes, I know that it does get slow when trying to go overseas but apparently there are lines that are currently not being used so that would leave room for expansion. Then I know that most web developers do try to keep the websites on servers closest to there customers for the optimal speed and bandwidth. But, then telco’s are worried about there lines being over used by “Heavy Users” which normally can easily consist of people who watch like youtube or other video on the internet. With that, most of that stuff is not international and they are worried about not being able to provide enough bandwidth to everyone and trying to implement billing people per the amount downloaded and with a speed cap. Now that makes me think we should be looking to improve our side prior to going international because what good would it be if the U.S. networks can’t support the demands going in and out of the new lines? It just frustrates me how Telcos think that consumers that actually use a little of what they pay for are cheating their companies when they should put reasonable limits on how much they actually over sell as well as build their network out. Look at like japan and it is easy to get a 20+Mbps line to almost everywhere when in the U.S. only 1 or 2 companies can provide that at residential rates in only very limited areas.

I just feel they should be focusing on what needs work now and not where the most money could be had but sadly that is the way it normally goes. Plus I am aware that this is not just the case in the U.S. but in many places around the world.  So I still think more effort needs to be spent on working on the more localized networks so that they can support the future.

Sources:

PC Pro

Submarine Cable Map

Wikipedia

Link to cables that projected you will need to scroll down some

I saw it this weekend and thought about how it is kind of a violation of privacy. The thing is that Viacom won a case regarding copyright stuff and the information they are getting ties IP addresses to who viewed certain videos(user names). It makes me wonder if they are getting too much information on it. With that I feel that it could tell them who exactly is watching what. Plus it frustrates me to hear that they are going after youtube saying that they are neglegent in the fact that they don’t offer more protection from copy righted material being posted. So even though Viacom states they are only using the information to go after youtube it makes me wonder about what the future of online videos will be and if eventually someone like the RIAA would actually go through and try to nail users who might not even know if something was illegally posted since sometimes it is hard to tell whether something posted is legit or not.

I highly recomend this if your on a budget but still want all the features as Microsoft Office. It is also easy to go between it and Microsoft Office due to every thing being laid out the same. Some of there terminoligy is a little different but it is easy enough for most people to be able to make the connect between the 2. Plus with Open Office you can also actually save document in Microst formats across the office suite so for example word, power point, and excel. Anyways I highly recomend it to anyone really.

You can check it out at

www.openoffice.org

While I anounced a couple of days ago Microsoft stopped shipping windows XP there is a new report that shows that use of windows XP has actually fallen in the market share. It has fallen just a little over 11% but with that Windows vista for the most part made up the difference. But the fall in Windows 2000 usage has continued to fall in addition to XP and that percentage seems to be going elsewhere like to Mac and Linux. Mac went from around 6% to over 7.5% in the last year as well as the use of Linux nearly doubling going from .43% to .8% while small that is a huge increase compared to all the other operating systems. I can only hope though that it will lead to the expansion of the open source community.

Source

Market Share table

I saw it yesterday on slashdot and looked into it further and it frustrates me. I feel that people who repair computers should not need an irrelevant Criminal Justice degree to work on computers. While the other way to obtain a license is to have an apprenticeship for atleast 3 years. Punishments for the crime include a fine of up to $4,000 and a year in jail as well as a $10,000 civil fine. Now many computer repair businesses are fearing that they may have to shut down due to it while large companies like Best Buy and Circuit City will be able to maintain service due to the loop hole that they only have to have one person with a private investigator and they can have the apprentices below them for $500 each as well as the computer forensics groups that already hire them. But for many of the smaller shops it will be much tougher. It effects the end consumers though as they will most likely be paying more as it will become harder to find repair people until this gets repealed. As it stands there is already a Lawsuit filed against the state for it though.

My Comments,

I think it really for the most part doesn’t make much sense as it will raise prices for consumers as well as most likely degrade service as people with criminal justice degrees don’t need to really know anything about computers when they graduate. Plus I used to work for geek squad and I have pondered going out as an individual but with a law like this it is no longer possible so I really don’t like it and I feel it is unfair.

Links:

The Actual Law

Gearlog’s Article

Citronix is filing the lawsuit

Well many may already know that at age 52, Bill Gates retired on friday. But there is a lot of talk going around about the future of Microsoft. Well one new thing I saw recenly was Microsoft’s PBX sitter video. I think it might be showing Microsofts new vision which I think is right on target. Not only adding features but coding the software better. Making it more optimized to run faster and having fewer errors. One thing still stands today though after Microsoft quit shipping out copies of windows XP today. While the only other microsoft option is Vista which is notorious for having more than its fair share of problems is the only other OS available. But there is already a trend that is currently taking place that I and probably most other people weren’t aware about. Google was able to entice some software developers away from Microsoft a while back but they are now returning back to Microsoft citing that they value software reliability and readiness for consumers more than google. So it basically means people who used to work on the well liked XP are now returning to microsoft. So to me in the last few days I think I am really seeing a positive change happening over at microsoft. Plus I have seen a little bit of chatter about microsoft recognizing the open source community and linux.

I have used it for quite a while and really like it. It is a free archiving program that allows you to compress files into a ton of formats as well as uncompress them. While windows will extract zip files for you, you may come across some different extensions ocasionally that windows will not extract.

You can check it out at:

http://www.izarc.org/index.html