I saw an interesting question over at slashdot on the topic of how many companies actually had their employees power down their PC’s overnight. The site in question had about 8000 PCs about half of which stayed powered on overnight. There’s a lot of talk these days about “going green”. I’ve always been interested in the idea of conservation because it just makes sense to not be wasteful where it’s possible. So, as many of you know already I have somewhere around as many hobbies as there have been Presidential debates this last year…. At one point in time I’ve spent a lot of time working with off-grid power ideas (built a small somewhat portable emergency power system with solar/car recharge capabilities.) And if you’ve ever seriously looked at alternative energy you know that you need to learn about power consumption…. so based on what I learned here are some things to think about…
Tag: PC
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Ipod warning for Vista owners
If you’re upgrading to Vista and use an ipod (true Apple branded iPod)… you might want to refrain from hooking the ipod up to the Vista pc. theregister has reported that Apple is sounding the alarm over a serious data corruption issue due to an incompatibility with Vista. It sounds as though users should wait for the next release of iTunes before using their iPod with Vista… there is a workaround….
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Fab@home 3d printing
I wanted to make a note here about a recent news story related to a topic that’s fascinated me for the ~10 years or so since I first heard of such things…. For some time there have been 3d printers. Devices that would use a liquid of some sort to “print” a real physical object. Usually these were plastic-ish prototype parts/proof of concept samples. These “printers” cost 10s of thousands of dollars and typically just have one material to choose from. Certainly out of reach for a home tinkerer… But recently I read this article about a desktop fabricator… The project name is fab@home and for ~$2500 in parts YOU can build your own personal fabricator….
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How Microsoft could patch VML vulnerability before October’s patch day
SO, there’s the second big vulnerability exploit for Internet Explorer making the rounds in about a week and Microsoft’s advisory says that the most recent flaw will likely be patched on October’s patch day (“unless the need arises…”) So, what would trigger that need? Lot’s of browsers being subjected to unwanted drive-by downloads? I suppose that doesn’t trigger need for an out of cycle patch. True, “lot’s” is hard to quantify – how many people are really affected by this, home users? office users? etc. After all there IS a way to mitigate this (unregistering the vml dll….) not for the faint of heart but, it’s your computer and you’re responsible for it, right? Last month, a program offered people the capability of removing DRM from Microsoft DRM protected windows media files… it took about 3 days for Microsoft to release a fix…..
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Skype and USB phones….
I’ve seen skype I just haven’t used it personally until very recently. In fact there was a place (dialpad?) that I had used once upon a time for a few free long distance calls online. It was neat, but had some limitations (delay). It quickly became non-free and frankly the microphone I have hooked up to the PC fell back in the corner beside the desk and I haven’t dug it out in quite a while. A few weeks ago though my Dad discovered Skype and ordered a cheap ($17) “phone” that plugs into the usb port of the pc and can be used with skype and a variety of other services. (in fact, it works as a generic usb sound card so… there might be other possibilities for using it to record wav files directly, etc.)
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List of Vendors for Linux preinstalled PC’s
The forums over at LXer.com have a good list underway of vendors that sell linux preinstalled on PC’s (desktops and laptops.) They also list those vendors that sell pcs without an operating system.
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The end for Windows 98 may be a boost to linux?
There are articles out about the demise of official Windows 98 and ME support would be a boost to linux uptake. Realistically, I suppose it may, but I personally am not holding my breath. Here’s why. 1) The people still running Windows 98/ME are likely doing so because that’s what came with their PC. There is a common perception that ~6 is a point where they might replace it anyway with a new pc. 2) IF you’re running Windows98 on original equipment (as opposed to someone that opted for 98 instead of xp on a slightly newer system, or has upgraded from the original equipment.) You might be frustrated with the performance of MOST linux distributions on your equipment. Let’s face it, linux can run on most anything, but most of the distributions that people HEAR about focus on newer hardware….
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The great firewall of China
The great firewall of China may be just an illusion in technical terms. This article describes the details of how things work…. Basically when “banned content” is detected, both ends of the connection are sent a flood of tcp reset packets. Which (if both sides are designed to pay attention to) means that the two computers “hang up” assuming the other side reset the connection. But, while most current PC operating systems obey the reset packets…. it’s not something that is imperative. (You might think of this as a targeted/surgical denial of service attack using TCP reset packets…) The article goes a bit deeper though….
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More Vista talk coming in
While, I’m still waiting to get the Vista Beta download anyway… I’ve seen the first of what I expect will be many posts out and about complaining about the upcoming OS from Microsoft. Admittedly it’s a beta and after seeing a lot of beta-release candidate – final cycles from open source software, I’m sure much will change. However…. some good points are raised.