If you haven’t heard of this yet, I’m not quite sure how you’ve missed it since last night… There have been article, after article telling of Google’s intention to release a limited trial of their new online spreadsheet at a screenshot tour. Also, this will be a limited trial (so they don’t do an analytics type launch I suspect.) So, there is a form to submit your email address to be considered for the limited trial.
Just an update to let you know I’ve recompiled the src rpm’s from Cooker for Mozilla 1.5.0.4 (For Mandriva 2006) and am uploading them to a subdirectory in http://www.averyjparker.com/wp-content/downloads/firefox/. (Look for the Mozilla-Firefox-1.5.0.4 subdirectory… thought it would be fairly obvious.) Anyway, I’ve put the src rpm in a subdirectory mysteriously named src… and the devel rpms in their own directory. As always the rpms are without guarantee/warranty expressed or implied. They’ve worked for me (I’m typing this now from 1.5.0.4 under Mandriva…) If you find them useful – great. Updating this and this post to reflect updates.
I don’t know, it seems excessively wine-y to gripe about an operating system that isn’t released yet, but I’ve seen people do that about linux quite a bit…. (why doesn’t xyz work in beta 1 of _____ distribution….) It’s a beta, there will be many things that aren’t likable, report it where they’re looking for feedback… That much said, there was an article out at Computer world detailing the 20 things you’ll dislike with Vista. Of course, given that it’s a beta things will likely change (yeah – there’ll be 30 things you don’t like by the full release…. sorry had to be said.) Seriously, hopefully Microsoft is listening to this feedback. I’ve heard that they are aware they need to make the UAP less “in your face all the time…”
This looks neat…. Noaa has started releasing kml files which are compatible of course, with Google Earth, to mesh the satellite imagery of Google earth with real-time weather information. It’s covered a few places…. The Map Room… and Google Earth Blog… Now you have the graphics necessary to do your own local weather report…
In what feels like a continuation of recent bad news related to major hacks and data losses…..George Ou reports on a BIG hack of GoDaddy hosting customers. There was also a big hack-athon by Turkish hackers over the last week that will be recorded as the biggest mass-web-site-defacement on record… There seems to be a lot of GoDaddy customers hacked by the very same method….
I haven’t seen news to this yet, just found it on Mozilla.com, but the 1.5.0.4 release of firefox seems to have been released sometime today. (1.5.0.4 of Thunderbird was announced earlier today.) I don’t know how quick Google is at directing to the new version of firefox, but I’ll include a link in this message for those of you that don’t have it…. Firefox is a very nice customizable, free (open source) web browser that I’ve found many people prefer to Internet Explorer for a number of reasons….
Embarrasing…. and a big pain in the neck for any of their visitors… It seems as though if you’ve visited Circuit City’s Support Forum with an unpatched Internet Explorer, you likely have a trojan/backdoor of some sort on your pc. (Assuming Explorer hasn’t been patched since January. In reality – if you haven’t updated explorer since then, there are likely SEVERAL backdoors. Call someone to work on it….)
The Register is reporting on Ernst & Young’s loss of a laptop which had information on around 243,000 hotels.com customers. Apparently Hotels.com was notified on May 3rd. Apparently the laptop made use of a password as the only security measure. From the article….
How often do I get to talk about this? Yahoo News has an article on a couple who, a year ago, took their PC to Best Buy to have the hard drive swapped. Best Buy assured them that the drive would be destroyed…. Recently they got a call from a guy in Chicago that had bought a hard drive at a flea market. It had their data on it and he wondered if they wanted it or if he should wipe the data. OK – there’s this really good utility Dariks Boot and Nuke (DBAN) that can thoroughly wipe a hard drive. I know the couple in this article had taken their drive to someone else, but….
According to ibnlive.com started today (June 1st) Microsoft will be utilizing their Genuine Advantage check through the Automatic Update feature. Up until now, you have only been prompted for the Genuine Advantage check when visiting the Windows update site directly. (I can only assume the Genuine Advantage check is the method the article speaks of to verify if you have a licensed copy of windows.) Essentially, they say they will not be taking details like name/address, but they will nag you that you have a pirated copy of Windows and updates will not be available.
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