Low End PC Archive
Low End PC Archive for December 2002
Articles on Low End PC
- Tying up loose ends on bitty boxen, Buttercup, and the state of tech, Michelle Klein-Häss, Low End PC, 12.02. Mandrake Linux rocks, Buttercup gets a new motherboard, and the sorry state of the tech sector today.
- more in the November 2002 archive
Around the Web
- Spam: The spam problem: Moving beyond RBLs, Philip Jacob, 12.30. "One of my servers is listed on an RBL in spite of the fact that no spam has ever passed through it."
- Rights: DVLA fails in reverse domain name hijack, John Leyden, The Register, 12.31. UK's Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) rebuked for attempting to hijack dvla.com from DVL Automation.
- History: Happy birthday, dear Internet, Justin Jaffe, Wired, 12.31. The Internet had been around for years, but on January 1, 1983, it adopted TCP/IP and paved the way for today's Internet.
- Humor: Windows in a sewing machine, Jeff Adkins and David Deckert, The Lite Side, Low End Mac, 12.31. From the umbelievable but true department: A sewing machine that runs Microsoft Windows.
- Dark Side: What makes IE so fast?, Brian Tiemann, Grotto11, 12.13. One reason IE for Windows is so fast when connecting to Microsoft IIS servers - MS cheats.
Dark Side:
Glass panes and software: Windows name is challenged, Steve Lohr,
New York Times, 12.30. "No company, no matter how powerful, no matter
how much money it has spent, should be able to gain a commercial
monopoly on words in the English language."- Web: Who owns the Internet? You and i do, John Schwartz, New York Times, 12.29. Joseph Turow's campaign to change 'Internet' to 'internet' with a lower-case 'i'.
- Spam: Hotmail, Yahoo! erect roadblocks for spam sign-ons, John Leyden, The Register, 12.27. Turing tests used to distinguish robots creating new email accounts from humans. Clever.
- Tech: DVD writers could hit 16x in 2004, Martyn Williams, PCWorld, 12.26. Expect 8x burners in 2003, 16x in 2004. Time Corps could be all over this.
- Rights:
Fair use and abuse, Gary Stix, Scientific American, 12.27. "The
DMCA has not only undercut fair use but also stifled scientific
investigations."
- Review: A smart keyboard for typing on the go, David Pogue, New York Times, 12.26. Two pound portable costs $400, runs 25 hours on a set of AA batteries, runs PalmOS, and includes a touch screen.
- Opinion: When simple is better, Paul Gilster, News Observer, 12.25. "Maybe we should let computers do what they do best - sorting, filing, finding data. And maybe we should emphasize what we do best, which is the human side of communication...."
- Rumor: Microsoft plots Macromedia coup against Java, The Register, 12.23. Acquisition of Macromedia would put Microsoft head-to-head with Adobe Monopoly? What monopoly?
- Rights:
Broadband supplier
puts limits on peer-to-peer services, the Inquirer, 12.21. Users of
Cablevision's "Optimum" broadband service warned to stop using Aimster,
KaZaA, Gnutella, LimeWire, and several other peer-to-peer file sharing
systems.
- Forum:
OptimumOnline bans uploads to P2P networks, Slashdot, 12.21.
"...Cablevision's high speed broadband unit OptimumOnline has sent
letters to subscribers warning that uploading to P2P networks will no
longer be tolerated."
- Web: Next-gen pop-up ads, Slashdot, 12.21. New generation of popup ads use "kick through" to steal you away without a mouse click. Can it get any worse?
- Opinion: Whither the BeOS?, Mike Berman, osOpinion, 12.20. "...is BeOS truly dead, or is it just lying dormant, waiting to rise again like a phoenix?"
- Review: Logitech Cordless Navigator Duo and Elite Duo keyboard/mouse combinations, Lars Dueck, Mac Upgrade Zone, 12.20. Everyone seems to love the $99 mouse/keyboard combination.
- Web: Pop-ups add new twist, Stefanie Olsen, Cnet, 12.20. Pop-ups, pop-unders, and pop-afters not bad enough? New ad format can take you to another site without you ever clicking a thing.
- Rights: EU tells HP et al to scrap inkjet 'clever chips', electricnews.net, The Register, 12.20. New EU law requires manufacturers - not end users - to bear the cost of recycling electrical goods.
- Opinion: Europe says no to chips in ink cartridges, John H. Farr, Applelinks, 12.20. Legislation could force printer companies to raise prices on hardware to maintain profitability.
- Rights:
Bush
administration to propose system for monitoring Internet, J
Markoff, J Schwartz, New York Times, 12.20. White House "planning to
propose requiring Internet service providers to help build a
centralized system to enable broad monitoring of the Internet and,
potentially, surveillance of its users."
- Rights:
Verdict
seen as blow to DMCA, Joanna Glasner, Wired, 12.18. "Critics of a
controversial U.S. copyright law applauded a jury's decision Tuesday to
acquit a Russian software firm...."
- Rights: Patent creates IM wrinkle, Jim Hu, Cnet, 12.17. AOL subsidiary ICQ awarded patent for inventing instant messaging over a network in 1997. Prior art: Broadcast for the Mac, 1992.
- Forum: AOL patents IM, Slashdot, 12.17. "AOL has recieved a patent on . . . any technology that provides 'a network that allows multiple users to see when other users are present and then to communicate with them' is covered."
- Forum: Fast CD-R drives make for twice the piracy, Slashdot, 12.15. "...the operation had the equivalent of 421 CD-burners, which . . . means '156 CD-burners but some of them were fast.' How they expect anyone to take their statistics seriously is beyond me."
- Huh?: RIAA in a spin over CD copying bust, Andrew Orlowski, The Register, 12.15. New math: RIAA considers 156 high speed CD burners "the equivalent of 421 burners." Is this how they calculate piracy losses as well?
- Humor: Pay off the US national debt - Nigerians help out!, Dave Gammage, The Register, 12.13. Huge caches of American currency stored in Nigerian trunks, mattresses, and secret bank accounts could reduce national debt.
- Rights: ElcomSoft programmer takes stand, Elise Ackerman, BayArea.com, 12.11. "Dmitry Sklyarov, the Russian programmer whose arrest for violating a controversial copyright law sparked international protests, finally got to tell his story to a jury Monday."
- Perspective: Toward a public ethic, Part 2: Life, liberty, and property, Dan Knight, Reformed Reflections, 12.10. A look at our most fundamental rights as human beings.
Rights:
Publish
here, get sued everywhere, Andrew Stroehlein, E-Media Tidbits,
12.10. High Court of Australia rules that defamatory remarks published
on the Internet can be prosecuted in any jurisdiction.- Humor: What to do with the unemployed Gateway cow, Jeff Adkins, The Lite Side, 12.10. Ten suggestions for putting the retired Gateway cow to some good use.
- Web: Trade stuff online at Trodo.com, Trodo.com, 12.09. Neat new free system for swapping books, records, CDs, videos, games.
- Humor: Internet soapbox, smilepop.com, 12.10. "Bill Gates is not going to send me money. I am not going to get gift certificates...."
- Rights: Cable companies despise PVRs, Slashdot, 12.09. Cable companies despise Tivo, Replay TV because they reduce market for video on demand.
- Advice: Passwords and security: Creating chaos from order, David K. Every, iGeek, 12.08. Why you need a good password - and how to pick a good one.
- Rights: Some call it fair play, Ed Foster, The Gripe Line, InfoWorld, 12.09. "...if we are to remain a society in which freedom of speech and freedom of the press have any meaning, vendors must not exercise any form of prior restraint."
- Spam: Spam king inundated by junk mail, fails to see the irony, Bryan Chaffin, Mac Observer, 12.06. The title really says it all. If you hate spam, you will love this story.
- Tech: The case of the 500-mile email, Trey Harris, 11.26. The strange but true story of an email server that couldn't send mail more than 500 miles.
- Huh?: Feds label
Wi-Fi a terrorist tool, Paul Boutin, Wired, 12.06. "The Department
of Homeland Security sees wireless networking technology as a terrorist
threat." Yes, they mean AirPort.
- News: HP plans to take Alpha to its omega, Ian Fried, Cnet, 12.05. Final revision of Alpha CPU scheduled, once among the most powerful CPUs on the market.
- News:
AT&T, IBM, Intel found nationwide Wi-Fi network venture,
Ephraim Schwartz, InfoWorld, 12.05. Cometa to have 20,000 access points
covering 50 major U.S. markets sometime in 2004.
- Virus: Klez tops 2002 virus charts, The Register, 12.05. "During the year, Sophos detected 7,189 new viruses, worms and Trojan horses, bringing the total number of bugs on its books to more than 78,000." Mac users feeling left out?
- Analysis: IDE RAID round-up: A four-way, four-drive benchmarking bonanza, Geoff Gasior, Tech Report, 12.04. Excellent introduction to RAID and lots of benchmarks. There is no single best card; that depends on how it's deployed. Advice: Beyond MHz: It's the whole system that counts, Evan Kleiman, Mac Daniel, Low End Mac, 12.04. Don't be fooled by fast CPU clock speeds. The performance of the whole system can be crippled by a single slow component.
- Advice: Building a Linux-based time-shifting box, Russell Pavlicek. TiVo runs on Linux - and you can have most of TiVo's functionality on an old PC with no monthly access fees.
- Rights: Internet hate-speech ban called 'chilling', Michelle Madigan, PC World, 12.04. "As European leaders move to ban Internet hate speech and seek support from the United States, civil liberties groups charge that the proposal would violate free-speech rights."
- Rights: Who will rid us of fake error message ads?, Drew Cullen, The Register, 12.04. "A class action suit has been filed in Spokane County Washington against Bonzi Software, the maker of the fake error message banner ads you have all seen thousands of times."
- Rights: Class action filed against Bonzi Software, Slashdot, 12.04. "A nationwide class action lawsuit was filed . . . against Bonzi Software, Inc. Bonzi is among the world's most prolific issuers of internet advertising banners."
- Huh?: Finnish taxi drivers must pay music royalties, Slashdot, 12.03. "Finland's Supreme Court has ruled that taxi drivers must pay royalty fees of about $20 annually if they play music in their car while a customer is in the backseat."
-
Rights:
Fatwallet challenges abusive DMCA claims and protects users' privacy
rights, FatWallet, 12.02. FatWallet countersues WalMart et al for
abusive use of DMCA. Go get 'em!
- News: Ritalin passes safety test, Carla McClain, Arizona Daily Star, 12.01. First long-term study shows that it works and is safe in the long run.
-
Rights: Taking
liberties with our freedom, Lauren Weinstein, Wired, 12.02. "Since
. . . 9/11, a range of legislation detrimental to fundamental freedoms
and privacy rights has been rammed into law, without any assurance that
our safety will improve as a result."
- more in the November 2002 archive
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