Topics by John A

Hitachi has now announced a 1-terabyte internal hard drive, claiming they're the first to unveil a 1 terabyte hard drive in the industry. It doesn't sound terribly impressive, given the fact that storage mediums are increasing faster than you can blink an eye. However, they have done quite a feat …

How often is it that we hear stories from people who work as tech support about the stupid people they have to deal with? Indeed, it seems as though working as tech support could potentially be an extremely entertaining profession, provided that you have a good sense of humor. Of …

Add SuSE to the list of operating systems going to be offered by Dell as they ally with Novell and Microsoft to sell their server software. Planning on selling both SuSE SLES (SuSE Linux Enterprise Server) and Microsoft's Windows Server, Dell broadens their offering of solutions, hoping to increase their …

Since recent years, we've come to appreciate the speed and usability of Flash drives. The fact that sudden motion makes no difference to its accessibility makes Flash drives an intriguing prospect for laptop manufacturers. Especially Dell, which is going to offer a configuration option with its Latitude D420 that will …

Yesterday, [URL="http://www.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=dev&msgNo=19660"]an email was sent[/URL] to the OpenOffice developers that proclaimed the development of a new version of OpenOffice -- one that's going to be available via the web. Using a technology that's been in development for 3 years already, Gravity Zoo Framework, a special programming library aimed at online …

The social networking site MySpace has added a new feature that brings MySpace into the journalism world: [URL="http://news.myspace.com/"]MySpace News Beta[/URL]. It has a system very similar to Digg, that is, it allows users to rate and promote content to the front page. With over 160 million users, a feature like …

Following Google's announcement just yesterday that they are going to develop a full office suite for the web, they've just recently added a new feature to Google Spreadsheets: charts. This isn't quite your regular spreadsheet program, as it's still quite basic and was not much more than a portable way …

The software giant Adobe has made another move to expand its reaches by unveiling a new media player program called "Adobe Media Player". And no, Adobe hasn't just created *another* video format for streaming, they're using an existing technology that they already own to handle the video: Macromedia Flash. The …

If you're visiting a known site such as Google.com, you're perfectly safe, right? Wrong. New DNS vulnerabilities in Microsoft's Windows 2000 and 2003 severs could potentially allow a DNS server to get hijacked, and redirect a user to a completely different site than they expected to see. The vulnerability exists …

Last Tuesday, Palm announced that they're developing a new operating system. Not surprising, especially since the current one that they've got needs a revamp. The huge news here is that this new operating system is going to use the Linux kernel as the base of the operating system, freeing them …

Somewhat surprisingly, Apple has admitted that they can no longer stick to the Leopard schedule that had previously planned this spring of 2007 as the release for the new operating system being brewed by the developers of Apple, and so you should expect it 4 months later, says Apple. Reasons …

Today, [URL="http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2007/04/09ipod.html"]Apple announced that they have now sold over 100 million iPods[/URL], which comes after they had released the first iPod 5-and-a-half years ago. Grammy award winner John Mayer said about the iPod: "Without the iPod, the digital music age would have been defined by files and folders instead of …

Microsoft has just announced the release of a Windows Live instant messaging client for its Xbox 360 game console, giving gamers the capability of chatting to their PC friends. There was already a video and voice chat feature via Xbox Live, but this feature enables players to connect with up …

What better use of an iPod than to save a soldier's life by stopping a bullet? [URL="http://www.flickr.com/photos/tiki/445618364/in/pool-appleusers/"]This photo[/URL] appears to prove it, although the actual story was that the iPod [I]alerted[/I] the soldier to the fact that he had been shot, but it was his armor that actually stopped the …

Open source means that it's not possible to pirate the software, right? Well, somehow OpenBSD developers have found out exactly how you can do that, by copying sections of some Linux wireless drivers (released under the GPL of course) and then releasing them under OpenBSD's less-restrictive license, allowing proprietary use. …

In an effort to bring Firefox users closer together, Mozilla has released a conceptual design dubbed "Coop" that would give Firefox the ability to share "photos, news stories, links" with other users, reports [URL="http://www.computerworld.com"]Computerworld[/URL]. Mozilla of course, says that this is purely conceptual, and that this is as far as …

[URL="http://www.apple.com/macpro/"]Without further ado[/URL], Apple has added a new build-to-order option to their Mac Pro that allows 2 Quad Xeon processors instead of the previous 1, promised to run at 3 Ghz, and making the Mac Pro the first 8-core Mac. The upgrade doesn't seem like a huge one, as all …

The latest lawsuit against Vista, so it seems, is now attacking the marketing methods that Microsoft used to sell PCs. The prosecutors claim that Microsoft mislead customers by allowing PC manufacturers to place stickers on the machine that said "Vista capable", when in fact many of the PCs sold were …

It seems like Apple is nearing a day we'd never think would come. [URL="http://uk.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUKN0137689420070402"]This time it seems official.[/URL] According to the reports, Apple and EMI have formed a deal that would not only allow Apple to sell EMI's music on their store (quite possibly The Beatles), but "large portions of …

Microsoft is aiming to broaden your web surfing horizons with their new "Deepfish" software available for the next version of Windows Mobile. Among other large improvements over the previous browsers used on the PDAs, this one includes a thumbnail view, which will allow you to view content in a scaled-down …

Microsoft has already created a new "version" or "model" of their Xbox 360 console, dubbed "Elite". Aside from its black color and matching headset and wireless controller, it's not that much different, but it has a few important upgrades: [LIST] [*]They've upgraded the hard drive to make it a whole …

Since Microsoft announced that they had reached the 20 million mark of Windows Vista licenses, people have been criticizing the numbers, and rumors have been swirling that the numbers are straight-out made up. Recently, [URL="http://www.pcmag.com"]PCMag[/URL] published an article stating how the numbers did not add up with Vista sales. Microsoft …

If you had any doubts that the code that powers the applications you use is secure, then it's time that you see this in perspective. Because very unsurprisingly, the SANS exam of developers [URL="http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=software_development&articleId=9014307&taxonomyId=63&intsrc=kc_top"]scored terrible overall in terms of security[/URL]. With the increase of hackers and such on the internet …

Apple's digital hub, known as the Apple TV, has finally started shipping. It's aiming to bridge the link between your media and your TV, providing a wireless digital hub through which you can transfer your content to watch, namely the content purchased through the iTunes store. How much does it …

[URL="http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=security&articleId=9013481&taxonomyId=17&intsrc=kc_top"]According to ComputerWorld[/URL], MySpace seems like the next target for the now-famous "month of bugs" project. The hackers are of course, anonymous, which is perhaps part of the fun of doing such a project. They say that they're going to expose a new bug every day for a whole month, …

Red Hat's been the king of Linux for a while -- but as of lately, it's been quite some time since they released an update to their enterprise edition of their distribution, RHEL. 2 years in fact. Now, Red Hat has finally released a new version of RHEL: REHL 5. …

Once again, Microsoft is pushing forward their domination by applying the successful techniques in the gaming industry to the PC world. What is it this time? Xbox Live. Microsoft has announced that they plan to make this service available for PCs, too. This is exciting news, for several reasons. Microsoft's …

It's just been around a week since the previous threat of cracking Vista almost worked -- until we found out it was fake. Well, this time around, [URL="http://filenetworks.blogspot.com/2007/03/vista-32-bit-one-click-activator-bios.html"]a Vista crack[/URL] appears to be working this time, as numerous reports have said that it works, and the crack has already been …

Intel's finally received the kick-in-the-pants from its rival AMD, and, trying to kick that reputation of having hot chips has decided to revamp its server quad-core Xeon chips. The new chips, which have started shipping, use a mere 50 watts of power. It also has a 60 percent reduction from …

Google is being charged with content copying by none other than... Microsoft. They are complaining that Google is copying far too much information, information that many people make a living on. Google's been trying to make the whole web searchable, everything from books to news to magazines. Although Google has …