Thursday, October 18, 2007

Byte Into It - 17 Oct 07

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Screenshot Tour: A Look at Ubuntu 7.10 "Gutsy Gibbon" RC1
there's a lot that's new (or at least now included by default) and very cool here—native support for dual-monitor setups, integrated Firefox tweaks and extensions, instant printer configuration and, of course, more of the Compiz eye candy that's helping Ubuntu look less like the dowdy younger brother of Windows and Mac.

Leopard and Leopard Server to go on sale October 26
Rumors swirled once again that October 26 would officially be Leopard Day, and Apple came out this morning with the official announcement. The big cat will go on sale at 6pm (presumably local time) at Apple's retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers that Friday, and the online store is now accepting preorders.

Leopard system requirements and new features
The system requirements are now official: any Intel or PowerPC G5 Mac, or a G4 running at a minimum of 867MHz. Nice knowing you, G3s and sub-867MHz G4s. The minimum RAM is 512MB—but you'll want some more if you intend on actually running applications. And you need a DVD drive plus 9GB disk space. Some of the included applications have additional requirements, such as an external HD (sold separately) for Time Machine.

Jobs confirms iTunes Plus price drop across the board
A number of independent labels have now indeed been added to the iTunes Plus section of the iTunes Store, and many (but not all, yet) of the DRM-free tracks have been reduced to 99¢ apiece. Steve Jobs has now confirmed to the Wall Street Journal that the company is reducing its iTunes Plus prices, to 99¢ across the board down from $1.29 per track. He said that all of the company's iTunes Plus tracks will reflect the new prices later today or tomorrow.

Featured Windows Download: Export Hardware Drivers with DriverMax
Windows only: Want to format your hard drive and reinstall Windows but you're not sure you have all the hardware driver disks to get everything working again? Free utility DriverMax analyzes XP or Vista systems for installed hardware drivers and exports them to a folder or external drive. Install DriverMax on a newly built system and import those drivers to get everything from your video card to TV tuner working again.

Featured Windows Download: Burn CDs and DVDs with CDBurnerXP
Windows only: Freeware application CDBurnerXP is an easy to use, all-in-one CD and DVD burning suite with an impressive range of features. This app can burn gapless audio CDs, create and burn ISOs, and even handle burning to Blu-Ray and HD-DVDs. Its simple Drop-Box feature offers a really smooth way to add new files to a project via drag-and-drop. If you've got the urge to burn a lot of optical media but you don't want to shell out $100 for Nero or some other professional suite, CDBurnerXP is an excellent alternative. CDBurnerXP is freeware, Windows only.

How To: Cheat DVD Regional Encoding
If you've ever bought a DVD that wouldn't play on your DVD player due to region incompatibilities (the film industry's attempt at protecting their distribution system), Wired's guide to cheat DVD regional encoding is for you. The cheapest solution: If you live in the U.S. or if you simply want a solution that will work on any DVD player—even those which haven't been hacked—your best solution is to burn a copy of the movie. ...what you'll want to do is rip a copy of your DVD using one of the many popular ripping programs on the market (we suggest ImgBurn on Windows and Mac The Ripper for Mac). Make sure that you set the ripping software to produce a "region all" file and then, when you've got a copy on your hard drive, burn a new DVD. Wired suggests a couple of shareware apps to burn the new regionless DVDs, but you should also be able to use free/freeware apps like ImgBurn or CDBurnerXP for Windows and Burn for Macs.

Getting Things Done: David Allen on Managing Your Stuff with GTD
author of Getting Things Done David Allen explains the meat of his GTD system in this five minute video, which covers dealing with the "stuff" in your life, reducing your to-do's to simple "widget-cranking," and clearing your mind. Allen comes across pretty frenetic in this quickly-cut together clip, but it's a good primer for folks new to GTD.

Featured Windows Download: Find Software Updates with UpdateStar
Windows only: Freeware application UpdateStar detects what applications are running on your computer and informs you of available updates. In tests, UpdateStar performed much better than previously mentioned AppSnap as it provides shareware and commercial application information, whereas AppSnap does not. UpdateStar's interface is also a lot snazzier, though that's really just frosting. To be fair, UpdateStar isn't entirely accurate: it informed me that Mozilla Thunderbird 5.2 was the latest version available (it's currently at 2.0.0.6). However, for a product that's still in beta, it does a fine job. UpdateStar is a free application for Windows only.

Online Storage: Gmail Storage to 6GB by January
The Official Gmail Blog has announced that Gmail's storage counter has received a much-needed bump in its storage growth rate, which will put Gmail storage at 6GB by January 2008. Additionally, the premium Premier Edition is seeing a jump to 25GB from 10GB.

Releaselog | RLSLOG.net » Real punishment: Russian Viagra spammer murdered
Alexey Tolstokozhev (btw, in Russian his name means ‘Thick Skin’), a Russian spammer, was found murdered in his luxury house near Moscow. He has been shot several times with one bullet stuck in his head. According to authorities, this last head shot is a clear mark of russian hit men (known as “killers” in Russia). Tolstokozhev was a famous spammer who sent millions of e-mail promoting viagra, cialis, penis enlargement pills and other medications. Links in these e-mails usually led to some pharmacy shop, which paid Tolstokozhev a share of its revenue. This is a well known affiliate scheme employed by spammers worldwide. Tolstokozhev is estimated to be responsible for up to 30% percent of all viagra and penis enlargement related spam. In order to send millions and millions of unsolicited letters, Tolstokozhev employed a network of infected computers (so-called “botnet”), which he rented from hackers. How profitable is spam? Well, the authorities say that Tolstokozhev has likely made more than $2 million in 2007 alone. (in comparison: average russian monthly salary is $400). This is a second murder of a spammer in Russia. Another russian spammer, Vardan Kushnir, was assassinated in 2005.

Dell: Microsoft warnings haven't hurt Linux uptake - ZDNet UK
Claims made by Microsoft that Linux violates its software patent have not affected sales of Linux-based hardware, according to Michael Dell. Speaking to ZDNet.co.uk at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo in Orlando on Thursday, Dell's chief executive officer said his company has seen Linux uptake for servers increase faster than Windows server products, despite Microsoft's claims. "On the server side Linux continues to grow nicely, a bit faster than Windows," said Dell. "We're seeing a move to Linux in critical applications, and Linux migration has not slowed down."

Patent holding company targets Linux, files lawsuits against Red Hat and Novell
Patent holding company IP Innovation has filed a patent infringement suit against Linux distributors Novell and Red Hat. The patent, which describes a "user interface with multiple workspaces for sharing display system objects," dates back to 1987 and originated in Xerox's PARC labs.

schrep's blog: Mozilla and Mobile
* Mozilla will add mobile devices to the first class/tier-1 platform set for Mozilla2. This means we will make core platform decisions with mobile devices as first-class citizens. * We will ship a version of "Mobile Firefox" which can, among other things, run Firefox extensions on mobile devices and allow others to build rich applications via XUL. * Mozilla will expand its small team of full-time mobile contributors to focus on the technology and application needs of mobile devices. In particular two new folks just joined: ** Christian Sejersen, recently the head of browsers at Openwave which has shipped over 1 billion mobile browsers, joined Mozilla Monday. He'll be heading up the platform engineering effort and setting up a R&D center in Copenhagen, Denmark. ** Brad Lassey just joined Mozilla from France Telecom R&D. He's already been an active contributor to our mobile efforts and can now focus on Mozilla mobile full time.

Review of Ubuntu 7.10 (gutsy) new features and changes
Some little sweets

Desktop deliverance: an overview of GNOME 2.20: Page 1
This article explores some of the new features in GNOME 2.20 and GTK 2.12. In particular, we will look at how some of the most significant changes impact the GNOME user experience, examine some of the architectural improvements that are of interest to open-source software developers, and shed some light on the GNOME development process to see how some of these features came into existence.

Only Ubuntu Linux: Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) Release Dates
In addition to Ubuntu 6-months stable releases and the next version of ubuntu is 8.04 with Code Name “Hardy Heron” but this release will proudly wear the badge of Long Term Support (LTS) and be supported with security updates for five years on the server and three years on the desktop

Crazy EULA makes you agree to a bunch of other EULAs - Boing Boing
Sam installed a IE plugin called Web Viewer today, and when he clicked on the license "agreement," he noticed that it contained this clause: The Software may contain third party software which requires notices and/or additional terms and conditions. Such required third party software notices and/or additional terms and conditions are made a part of and incorporated by reference into this EULA. By accepting this EULA, you are also accepting the additional terms and conditions, if any, set forth therein. Get that? When you agree to the EULA for Web Viewer, you also agree to a bunch of other, nonspecified "agreements" somewhere else. Better hope that there's nothin' unreasonable in them!

EFF to Dems: don't let AT&T off the hook for illegal spying! - Boing Boing
EFF's legal director Cindy Cohn has written a great op-ed in today's San Francisco Chronicle about the Democratic Congress's move to immunize AT&T from liability for its complicity in illegally wiretapping every single American Internet user for the NSA.

Hard times for hard drives: US may ban popular imports
The International Trade Commission (ITC) has announced that it plans to begin an investigation into several companies that either make or use certain hard drives. In a statement issued yesterday, the ITC said that the hard drives in question are alleged to infringe on patents owned by California residents Steven and Mary Reiber. The two filed a complaint with the ITC in September, saying that the importation of the hard drives violates section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930.

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1 comment:

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