Tag: technews

Vistado

So it looks like Microsoft is going to support XP for 6 more years, until 2014. So if you’ve bought a Vista equipped PC recently, you gotta ask : “So pano na ngayon ang binayad ko sa Vista?!”

Mind you, this isn’t a pro – Linux or pro – anything rant. I don’t own a Vista PC to begin with, and like I said in a previous post, I don’t find anything wrong with it either. I’m using Vista Home right now on Jill’s PC, and I’m doing just fine. Some isues here and there, but mostly, it is, albeit superficially (primarily because most of it’s ‘improvements’ are cosmetic) can be considered a step up above XP.

Continue reading Vistado

VMWare Shows The Way

I love it that VMWare stock is doing well in the U.S. stock market right now. I’ve often wished I could play in that market if I had the chance, particularly during Apple new product situations and occasionally, a few web services in the past that I thought would do well (although I’m not gonna say I pick em all great because most did ok but some didn’t).

I’ve never wished I could buy stock at no better time than now, with VMWare going public. Not necessarily because its done as well as it had – I was sure it’d do well but certainly not this well – but also because of the clear message this sends to bad ol’ Microsoft.

VMWare simply put is software that gives the ability to run services on a computer regardless of operating system by allowing several operating systems to run alongside one another in one machine. In effect it brings sanity in a world where choices aren’t necessarily made in favor of the best.

I don’t really wanna get in the intricacies of what virtualization is about right here. I was about to start a paragraph explaining it a bit, but I realized I was quickly getting much too techie and was losing focus on what I was trying to say.

Continue reading VMWare Shows The Way

How much is slow costing us?

Yes I’m still talking about the Taiwan earthquake and resultant Internet mess. And the fact I am still on it means I am starting to get angry. And if you deduce that when I say I am starting to get angry it means I will huff and puff but do nothing but write on my blog pounding my keyboard a little harder, then you are correct-a-mondo.

At any rate, I had been invited by Hingemedia super head chief editor gadget head in, err, chief Adel to contri to P.W.I.T., (Philippine Week in Technology), the resulting acronym possibly recognizant of how he feels about it, but more likely because he thinks it sounds fun. A fun and intelligent man, Adel is. And surprisingly athletic! When we were in Tagaytay we caught MS Windows PM Chay Saputil smiling and enjoying an m|ph issue and I swear I’d never seen a man run, flip open his Canon 400d, get down on his knees and take a magazine worthy snap in, oh, that must have been .5 seconds! Amazing.

So anyway, let me take you to his post in PWIT, where he describes in light detail how affected they are at the office. Here he says:

Continue reading How much is slow costing us?

Thoughts on: “People seen as the Achilles’ heel of computer security”

From here:

LAS VEGAS–The most vexing weakness in computer security is not in the hardware or the software, it is in the people who use the machines, according to top hackers and cyber safety specialists.

“It really is more of a human problem than a technical problem,” Dan Kaminisky of Dox Para Research said at the world’s premier hacker conference, DefCon, which ended in Las Vegas on Sunday.

Some things come to mind here:

  1. Knowing that people are the main risks, shouldn’t technology then adapt itself to avoid such pitfalls?
  2. What is technology’s purpose anyway? A lot of people have forgotten the forest that the trees make up. The main purpose of technology is to help people, and if their security is jeopardized while using it, then technology is failing.

    3. Continue reading Thoughts on: “People seen as the Achilles’ heel of computer security”

Girl fired via text

A yawner of a news article From Yahoo:

LONDON (AFP) – A company has defended its decision to sack one of its staff by text message, claiming it was keeping in touch with youth culture. Katy Tanner, a 21-year-old sales assistant, received the message while she was off work with a migraine, the South Wales Echo newspaper said Friday.

The text message said: “We will not require your services anymore…Thank you for your time with us.”

“I don’t think it’s right to just text someone. At least they should have talked to me face to face,” Tanner said.

From the looks of it, it’s more likely she’s peeved because she was fired, and not necessarily that she was fired via text. I mean, what if she was promoted instead? Would she have felt it was inappropriate then?

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Belkin Appoints Microwarehouse

Attended the fashion show / launch event today at Shangrila Makati. Belkin is the world-famous iPod accessory manufacturer, but they’d be the first to point out they also manufacture other stuff like input devices, wifi routers (which will incidentally compete with Microwarehouse’s Linksys products), and the one that caught my eye, pretty KVM switches. That’s right. No longer will sysads have to contend with dreary, gray monotone KVM boxes. Merely buy these and they can release their inner interior decorator.

At any rate, here’re a few pics of their more famous products, plus you can download the press kit and prices after the jump.

Continue reading Belkin Appoints Microwarehouse

Suing Microsoft – A good investment?

In this article Californians to soon get $1.1 bln from Microsoft, it says:

Beginning in August, Californians who have filed claims will receive vouchers that can be redeemed for cash during the next four years, said Richard Grossman, whose law firm represented plaintiffs in the class-action case..

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Stale no more. AMD Buys ATI to wake up PC Market.

Check this out. AMD bought ATI today, which is a bit of a throwback, I think, to the 90’s when big mergers like that were the norm.

Anyway, important things to consider here off the top of my head:

  1. Possible integration of the graphics chip, chipsets and processor will offer a whole new type of machine never seen before.
  2. It will theoretically be faster. If it becomes much, much faster than a standard mobo/vidcard/chipset/processor/memory setup, then that means we’ve been suffering all along, and that the way it had been done for years, which is different components by different manufacturers put together, was actually a hindrance in performance. If on the other hand, it doesn’t offer much of a performance boost, then the opposite would be true.

    3. Continue reading Stale no more. AMD Buys ATI to wake up PC Market.