Ok, it appears that Microsoft is giving away Vista Ultimate, Office and other software. No, really, for free. You just have to let them monitor what you do with it! Um … I don’t think so, thanks for the offer but I’ll just go download Ubuntu.
Category Archives: Tech News
Sun Microsystems Opens the T2
Sun Microsystems is a great company anyway, they make outstanding hardware and deliver a rock solid operating system. Add to that all of the stuff they open source to the public and it just gets better. Now they have announced that their latest chip, the T2 or Niagra 2 has also been open sourced. This means that anyone can get the code, plans, schematics, etc. and make their own … for free. Think about that for a second. Let’s say you are a device maker, some mobile gadget, and you need a CPU to work with. Would you rather use something like the T2, which is unmatched in capabilities for free? Or pay a few million for an Itanium chip? Yeah, me too. I’ll take the Sun chip and run before they change their mind. They have opened other chips too, like the T1, and software like Java and Solaris. Good stuff as far as I am concerned.
The U.S. Army is expanding it’s use of Video Games
I am sure that any game playing geek out there has heard of, if not played America’s Army. This was the FPS put out by the Army about five years ago. It has been so popular that it seems the Army is looking to use video games even more for training and other purposes. It’s about time someone decided to tap this gold mine!
This can’t be good
Anyone that reads much on this site will see a theme in many of my posts and articles, where I stress security quite a bit. Here is a prime example of security being the job of everyone, users and system administrators alike. Here is a snippet of an article from ars technica:
“Hackers successfully infiltrated Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL),
one of the nation’s leading military research facilities. The attackers
gained access by sending e-mails infected with trojan horses to ORNL
employees. The lab claims that no classified information was retrieved,
but admits that the perpetrators managed to acquire a database
containing personal information about ORNL visitors and employees,
including Social Security numbers.”
Yikes! Read more about it …
You want to trademark what?
OK, I like Fark and probably go there almost every day to catch up on interesting news. However, it seems Drew wants to trademark the phrase “Not Safe For Work”! How can you trademark something so vague and intermixed amongst the ‘net as that? I think they are reaching a bit far on this one and personally I hope it gets thrown out.
Comcast Using Malicious Hacker Technique Against Own Customers
Here is an article I found that shows Comcast (my own ISP) doing things like blocking P2P traffic of their customers, etc. Pretty interesting read …
One of the nation’s largest telecommunications companies is using a
controversial technique to cripple certain kinds of Internet traffic
traveling across its networks, says a new report from the digital
rigthts group the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San
Francisco.
“Comcast is essentially deploying against their own customers
techniques more typically used by malicious hackers (this is doubtless
how Comcast would characterize other parties that forged traffic to
make it appear that it came from Comcast or its subscribers,)” write
the authors of the new report. “In other words, Comcast is essentially
behaving like a telephone operator that interrupts a phone
conversation, impersonating the voice of one party to tell the other
that this call is over, I’m hanging up.”
Read the whole article: http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/11/comcast-using-m.html