Huge Diggnation Announcement — Diggnation — Revision3

Huge Diggnation Announcement — Diggnation — Revision3

The guys at Digg need to be flogged after their early April Fools’ day joke.

Microsoft top brass ‘burned’ by Vista problems

Microsoft top brass ‘burned’ by Vista problems – Technology – smh.com.au

<grin>

winetricks – The Official Wine Wiki

winetricks – The Official Wine Wiki

WineTricks is like Automatix for WINE.

If you get runtime errors in Windows apps running under WINE in Linux- this may help. (A lot!)

Ubuntu/iTunes

I posted a rant last week about how I hate iTunes because I can’t play my iTunes music in Linux, and I’m pissed off that I have $200+ in music there that I no longer have access to (except on my ancient G4 with no CD burner).

Well- iTunes WORKS in the latest version of WINE.

Said latest version of Wine isn’t in the official Ubuntu repositories, so you need to grab it directly from WineHQ:

http://winehq.org/site/download-deb

Of course, if it works on Ubuntu, it probably works on all the other distros as-well.

Also- if you missed it- Hardy Heron Beta 1 is now out! I’ve been happily running the Alpha versions on one of my work laptops (with all of 256MB of RAM!) and my home desktop for a couple of weeks now. It seems to me to be very stable and fast, and I haven’t really had any major problems with it other than a bit of video card flakiness (which is a given anyway).

You can download development (as well as actual released) versions of Ubuntu here:

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/

Damn You Vista!

I’ve seriously f*cking had it with Vista.

Microshit screwed up VPN access with Vista once already. Just when my users got used to dealing with it, they decided to break it again with SP1:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948067/en-us

Apparently they haven’t figured out that unless they can click on an icon- most users won’t be able to deal with it. Now they are supposed to actually TYPE IN a fully-qualified domain\server address with a path?! Are they f*cking insane?!

Besides breaking their own VPN client, they break Cisco’s with ever damn update.

To be honest- I feel this is a ploy to get companies to buy more Terminal Services licenses.

Blu-ray player prices hit 2008 highs as competition dwindles

TG Daily – Blu-ray player prices hit 2008 highs as competition dwindles

This shouldn’t surprise anyone. Sony probably had a corporate financial orgasm when HD DVD was declared “dead”.

Belkin : Mini Surge Protector with USB Charger

Belkin : Mini Surge Protector with USB Charger

I LOVE this! I hope it comes out before my next business trip.

HowardForums: MobiTV is trying to shut us down!

HowardForums: Your Mobile Phone Community & Resource – Announcements in Forum: Windows Mobile Professional (Pocket PC)

This is all over the tech. news today. Apparently HowardForums posted a URL for MobiTV. A URL that allows anyone to access MobiTV’s paid content for free. MobiTV provides paid TV content to mobile phone users, and the URL presented was specific to Sprint, although I understand people have found several others now.

So- MobiTV sent them a take-down notice claiming that they “hacked” their site, in violation of the DMCA. A public URL with no login or other protection is not protected by any law, copyright or DMCA, and cannot be “hacked”- it is just there. There are also no laws against posting a public URL in a public forum. Several companies have tried to fight this- and have been shot down.

Unfortunately, instead of taking it as a clue- MobiTV has sent a take-down notice to HowardForums ISP. Generally ISPs have to comply with this, pending an investigation or unless their legal department deems the notice to be without merit. In any case- it can result in a legal battle, and it could take HowardForum’s down indefinitely.

Security by obscurity has likely never been a viable security method on the Internet. From some of the earliest days- crawlers and spiders have been available to root out URLs (and prior to the Web- Archie addresses, for example), and brute-force dictionary attacks on domains are commonplace. Whoever is in charge of IT at MobiTV should be ashamed to work there right now.

iTWire – Ubuntu: next release will be the critical one

iTWire – Ubuntu: next release will be the critical one

I think the criticality of this is a bit overblown. The next release will definitely be a milestone, but I don’t believe most Ubuntu and Linux supporters in general consider it to be “critical”. I feel it definitely brings Ubuntu that much closer to being a viable Windows and OS-X competitor.

I’ve been running the Alpha 5-Alpha 6 version of Hardy Heron on my desktop machine for a few days now, and am really impressed with it. Even in an Alpha stage- I’ve found it to be reliable and quite usable. Some of the configuration tools have problems, but they are still working on them, and it should make things a lot easier when the final release comes out. I’ve still had some video issues, and Firefox3 gags on several Web sites, but it’s all Alpha or Beta software.

Drop.io: Simple Private Exchange

Drop.io: Simple Private Exchange

I really like their setup. There have been a few others who have tried this, and I don’t believe any of them are around anymore. I think Drop.io is doing it right. My company has a few clients that for whatever reason can’t deal with FTP or our own internal file upload system to submit artwork- and I think this will be a perfect solution for dealing with them.