Well, I mentioned the release of Google Analytics yesterday which really looks promising. At this hour I can still say it looks promising. I had a funny thought after trying several times yesterday to get set up… it was a “good going, you just broke google” kind of thought. It was pretty clear that demand was VERY high for the service (what they’ll be providing for free used to be a fee service.) But it looks like Google has been really caught off-guard by the demand. As I don’t have any data yet, and it appears I’m not the only one.
Category: General Web/Tech
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$100 notebooks for schoolkids around the world likely will run linux
I was reading that Apple had offered free copies of OSX for the $100 laptop project aimed at bringing cheap laptops to schoolkids in the developing world and in some cases even here in the US. They don’t have the price down to $100 yet, but OSX was rejected because it isn’t open source, apparently the designers want an Open Source OS to work with so they can tweak and tinker with it.
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CJB sites spawning spyware downloads?
You might be cautious visiting the free sites at cjb.net according to the sunbelt blog many of them are unwittingly providing spyware downloads to users. The download is for a 180solutions pest. If you have a free cjb site, you would be well served to test your page to see for yourself what your visitors may be greeted with.
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Google announces analytics for web sites
Google has rolled out another free tool for site owners. Google Analytics was announced today. Using technology acquired from Urchin, this free service (limited to 5 million page views a month), sits on your webpage as a little javascript “bug” of sorts and tracks information on visitors to your site.
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OSWD.org is back up
I’ve just looked and noticed that oswd.org (Open source web design). They currently boast 715 free templates. In their absense several other sites have sprung up to fill the void they had left… openwebtemplates.com is one such recent entry. There’s also openwebdesign.org with over 1300 templates. There are several sites that seem to be mirroring the original list of zipped templates from oswd.org, but I don’t find any others with thumbnails, openwebdesign.org appears to have the complete list.
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Sony BMG suspends pressing DRM protected cds
It looks as though Sony has decided to suspend pressing cds with the XCP copy protection software. Numerous sources are reporting on the “capitulation” of Sony on the matter. It seems as though this is a temporary stop, from what I read they will likely pursue other means of DRM.
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Bad capacitors causing strange system behavior
This is, in fact something I’ve been getting ready to do an article on soon. I had a system that had very strange and random problems that I’ve visited and tried many of the typical fixes for, in fact I think I saw it a couple times a week and either couldn’t reproduce the errors on demand, or could only get an error once, do something and not see it again, then hear about something similar the next day…
Anyway, ultimately the system has been replaced (and it’s twin…) on inspecting the motherboard post-pull, there were some interesting issues with the capacitors, yellowish crusty leaked electrolyte… uh-huh, that explains everything…
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Sony BMG is still having a bad week….
Unfortunately a LOT of people that have bought Sony-BMG cds (or borrowed, whatever…) are going to have some headaches too. By stock in Tylenol or Aleve or something…. anyway… here’s todays roundup of Sony Rootkit news. Including a virus borrowing the gift of SONY…
First up is some “backstory” that reminds us of Sony’s attitudes in the past on the issue of piracy and what should be done about it, along with the precient “I think most people don’t know what a rootkit is” satatement.
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Risk – type strategy game using Google Maps
This one caught my eye as I’ve spent many long hours playing different variations on the old strategy board game Risk. It appears that using Google Maps, a group has managed to write an API that let’s you Play Risk with Google maps as the backdrop.
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More Sony DRM news
It looks like a list of Sony Music titles with the recent onerous DRM “rootkit” is being gathered. The Sunbelt blog has links to several lists. The EFF has a list here, there are two others though out there, here and here.
Among other things, another post mentions the stupid things Sony-BMG leadership has had to say on the matter…
“Most people, I think, don’t even know what a Rootkit is, so why should they care about it?”
and, it’s also noted the installer can be bypassed by pressing the shift key when loading the cd (to skip autorun.) (Does telling this actually violate the DMCA – spreading information on circumventing copy protection?)