We Didn't Start The Flame War

One of the better videos I've seen in a recent while.

GDrive

Google is to launch a service that would enable users to access their personal computer from any internet connection, according to industry reports. But campaigners warn that it would give the online behemoth unprecedented control over individuals' personal data.

The Google Drive, or "GDrive", could kill off the desktop computer, which relies on a powerful hard drive. Instead a user's personal files and operating system could be stored on Google's own servers and accessed via the internet.

The long-rumoured GDrive is expected to be launched this year, according to the technology news website TG Daily, which described it as "the most anticipated Google product so far". It is seen as a paradigm shift away from Microsoft's Windows operating system, which runs inside most of the world's computers, in favour of "cloud computing", where the processing and storage is done thousands of miles away in remote data centres. - Guardian

Sounds nice if you put a lot of trust in corporations and the government.

Nasty Worm Wriggling Into Comps

SAN FRANCISCO – A nasty worm has wriggled into millions of computers and continues to spread, leaving security experts wondering whether the attack is a harbinger of evil deeds to come.

US software protection firm F-Secure says a computer worm known as "Conficker" or "Downadup" had infected more than nine million computers by Tuesday and was spreading at a rate of one million machines daily.

The malicious software had yet to do any noticeable damage, prompting debate as to whether it is impotent, waiting to detonate, or a test run by cybercriminals intent on profiting from the weakness in the future.

"This is enormous; possibly the biggest virus we have ever seen," said software security specialist David Perry of Trend Micro. - Newsmax.com

Non-Windows Operating Systems are reportedly free from the infection.

Environmental Cost of Google Search

Performing two Google searches from a desktop computer can generate about the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle for a cup of tea, according to new research.

While millions of people tap into Google without considering the environment, a typical search generates about 7g of CO2 Boiling a kettle generates about 15g. “Google operates huge data centres around the world that consume a great deal of power,” said Alex Wissner-Gross, a Harvard University physicist whose research on the environmental impact of computing is due out soon. “A Google search has a definite environmental impact.” - Times UK

Oops, that sucks.

Ben Tan on Juicy Campus

First, he was on the Étudiant. Then he was on NECN. Now he's on Juicy Campus. Ben Tan is everywhere. I have my suspicions that he created a topic about himself, but hey that's just me.

Click here: http://www.juicycampus.com/posts/permalink/Emerson%20College/241709

Case Closed On Spyware

The case against Julie Amero is finally closed.

On Friday, prosecutors reached a plea agreement with the former Connecticut schoolteacher who at one time faced up to 40 years in prison after being convicted of endangering minors. The charges stemmed from a 2004 incident in which a computer loaded with spyware displayed pornography to her students.

State prosecutors dropped four felony charges of "risk of injury to a minor" against her, with Amero pleading guilty to a disorderly conduct misdemeanor, according to the Hartford Courant.

A jury convicted Amero of the felony charges in January 2007, but the presiding judge in the case, Hillary Strackbein, set aside that verdict five months later, essentially granting Amero a new trial. - New York Times

"Risk of injury to a minor" -- seriously?

Teen Commits Suicide On Cam

MIAMI, Florida (CNN) -- With his webcam trained on him, a Florida teenager died in his bed of a drug overdose while others watched over the Internet, officials said Friday.

Some of those watching urged him to take more drugs while others debated whether he had taken enough to kill himself. Hours passed before someone finally notified authorities that he appeared lifeless, officials said.

The teenager was pronounced dead Wednesday afternoon in Pembroke Pines, Florida, said Wendy Crane, investigator for the Broward County Medical Examiner's Office.

The cause of death was found to be an overdose of benzodiazepine, an antidepressant, as well as other opiate drugs used to treat depression, Crane said. CNN is not reporting the teenager's name.

That's just crazy.

Yang To Step Down As Yahoo! CEO

Yahoo co-founder and CEO Jerry Yang will step down as CEO as soon as a successor is found, the embattled Internet company just announced. The release (quoted in full after the jump) came shortly after the blog Boomtown broke the news.

The move may well prompt Microsoft, whose repeated attempts to buy all or a portion of Yahoo failed to produce a deal earlier this year, to come back with another offer. That’s what investors, who have bid up the stock about 4% in extended trading after the market close Nov. 17, may be hoping. “This clears the path for a likely Microsoft deal,” probably a bid for Yahoo’s Internet search operation, says Sandeep Aggarwal, an analyst with financial services firm Collins Stewart. “By not having Yang as CEO, Yahoo can free up its strategic alternatives.” - Business Week

This is easier to type.

Internet Explorer 8

Microsoft’s latest internet browser includes a piece of software that allows internet users to hide the audit trail of websites they have visited.

The InPrivate feature on Internet Explorer 8, nicknamed “porn mode”, allows users to conceal the sites they have viewed at the click of a button.

Once the setting is chosen, others using the same computer will not be able to see which sites have been accessed. Other browsers have similar functions, but this one is far more prominent. Although casual users cannot see the previous user’s search history, authorities such as the police will be able to access it if necessary. - Times Online

It is sad that this is what the Internet has come to.

Israel To Put Dead Sea Scrolls Online

JERUSALEM — In a crowded laboratory painted in gray and cooled like a cave, half a dozen specialists embarked this week on a historic undertaking: digitally photographing every one of the thousands of fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls with the aim of making the entire file — among the most sought-after and examined documents on earth — available to all on the Internet.

Equipped with high-powered cameras with resolution and clarity many times greater than those of conventional models, and with lights that emit neither heat nor ultraviolet rays, the scientists and technicians are uncovering previously illegible sections and letters of the scrolls, discoveries that could have significant scholarly impact.

The 2,000-year-old scrolls, found in the late 1940s in caves near the Dead Sea east of Jerusalem, contain the earliest known copies of every book of the Hebrew Bible (missing only the Book of Esther), as well as apocryphal texts and descriptions of rituals of a Jewish sect at the time of Jesus. The texts, most of them on parchment but some on papyrus, date from the third century B.C. to the first century A.D. - New York Times

This is exciting considering most people know what the Dead Sea Scrolls are, but don't know what is contained within them.

The Digital Age Distractions

Chronic distraction, from which we all now suffer, kills you more slowly. Meyer says there is evidence that people in chronically distracted jobs are, in early middle age, appearing with the same symptoms of burn-out as air traffic controllers. They might have stress-related diseases, even irreversible brain damage. But the damage is not caused by overwork, it’s caused by multiple distracted work. One American study found that interruptions take up 2.1 hours of the average knowledge worker’s day. This, it was estimated, cost the US economy $588 billion a year. Yet the rabidly multitasking distractee is seen as some kind of social and economic ideal...

“I feel that much of my life is ebbing away in the tide of minute-by-minute distraction . . . I’m not certain what the effect on the world will be. But psychologists do say that intense close engagement with things does provide the most human satisfaction.” The psychologists are right. McKibben describes himself as “loving novelty” and yet “craving depth”, the contemporary predicament in a nutshell. - Times Online

Professor Chomsky probably agrees.

LOL FUNNIEST THING EVER

A man who fell asleep in a drunken stupor on the grass outside his home was horrified to find his embarrassment posted on the internet.
He had been drowning his sorrows over the death of a friend and collapsed after climbing out of a taxi.
As he slept off his excesses, a car-mounted video camera passed by to record pictures of the street for Google's StreetView website. - This Is London

Maybe not the funniest thing ever, but I've seen some funny Street Maps before and this clearly tops them all.

Comcast Ordered To Stop Blocking Torrents

WASHINGTON, Aug. 3 (UPI) -- Broadband Internet customers of cable television giant Comcast should be free to use file-sharing software, the Federal Communications Commission says.
The commission voted Friday to order Comcast to stop blocking its Internet customers from using BitTorrent, an online software application that enables users to share large movie, TV show and music files, The Hollywood Reporter said.
Commission Chairman Kevin Martin split with his Republican colleagues to join the two Democratic members to produce a 3-2 vote against Comcast. The (NASDAQ:CMCSA) precedent-setting decision was hailed by supporters of so-called net neutrality, which maintains Internet service providers should be barred from discriminating among various types of traffic.
"It was unreasonable for Comcast to discriminate against particular Internet applications, including BitTorrent," Martin wrote in his majority opinion. "They delayed and blocked customers using a disfavored application even when there was no network congestion."

Should have been a 5-0 vote.

The Internet Is Dead

Literally. Where is everyone? Nobody has posted on my favorite forum since 10:39 AM. You might say that I go on there a bit much and yeah, you'd be right. Matter of fact, the whole reason I go on there is to check out the variety of content which, as of right now, is minimal at best. In terms of weather, today is not special. It is raining pretty heavily, although it does look like it might clear up soon. As one of my friends told me "the internet is not the future." The kid, I think, is right.

A side note: I hate ranting like this because my grammatical structures come off as being a bit whiny. I could use all CAPs or talk in a language known as "dumbass", but that just isn't very cool.

Facebook Redesign

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook Inc. is making sweeping changes to the world's largest social networking site, aiming to give users more control and to curb new forms of spam, company officials said late on Sunday.
Facebook's redesign aims to make user profiles more dynamic by giving more prominence to the newest information, and it is cracking down on applications that violate privacy or user-control guidelines.
"Users should have control of their information when and where they want," said Ben Ling, the head of Facebook's platform product management. "Users should share things because they want to share them."

Facebook will offer members a cleaner and simpler set of the Web pages which make up personal profiles. These profiles, which can be organized into tabbed pages, let users share tidbits of their lives with select groups of friends or colleagues. - Reuters

The new look went into effect tonight for me

U.S Lagging In Broadband Infrastructure

The United States is one the few industrialized nations that has not yet implemented a comprehensive policy to promote broadband internet access. Nations that have prioritized broadband infrastructure have already seen improvements. For example, Denmark improved broadband penetration between 2005 and 2007 from 25 to 34.3 connections per 100 inhabitants, while the United States has only improved from 16.8 to 22.1 (See chart). The United States currently ranks 15th of the 30 developed countries in overall penetration as measured by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) - Epi.org

Bureaucratic gov't = high prices/slow speeds = not good

Encyclopedia Brittanica Competes W/ Wiki

And now, you can get access to the online version for free through a new program called Britannica Webshare - provided that you are a “web publisher.” The definition of a web publisher is rather squishy: “This program is intended for people who publish with some regularity on the Internet, be they bloggers, webmasters, or writers. We reserve the right to deny participation to anyone who in our judgment doesn’t qualify.” Basically, you sign up, tell them about your site URL and a description, and they review it and decide if you’ll get in. I wonder if Facebook, MySpace and Twitter users are eligible? They all certainly “publish with some regularity on the Internet.” - Tech Crunch

Stupid. I'm sticking with Wikipedia as are millions.