Recently in Computers and Software Category

*Click on the image to play*

CHICAGO -- Members of a Chicago family are trying to get a warning out after they said a computer they bought as a child's gift turned out to be laden with pornography.

Rick and Joy Donaldson had something special planned this Christmas for their 13-year-old son, Simeon: a new computer.

"On Christmas Day we set it up, hit Internet Explorer and the first thing to pop up was a porn site," Rick Donaldson said. "That was a shocker."

Joy Donaldson said what appeared was child pornography. The Donaldsons said they had to yell for their son to stay out of the room.

Rick Donaldson said he purchased the computer from a Comp USA store in Skokie, Ill. It was a floor model Donaldson bought at a discount, but the father never imagined that such content would be on the computer. He said the URL that appeared wasn't just pornographic, but racist, too.

"It was very frustrating," Joy Donaldson said.

Comp USA said it is common practice for the store to erase hard drives. A store representative said this was "very rare and we're very apologetic."

Donaldson said he wanted to warn other families to be on the lookout.

"Our message to parents is that something like this can happen and make sure you're the fist one to look at it," he said.

http://www.wftv.com/family/10621074/detail.html

For all you Nostalgic freaks out there, a blast from the past :
http://r-101.blogspot.com/2006/08/evolution-of-desktops.html

This is one hell of a mod. Using 30 USB ports spread out over five USB PCI cards, this barbeque was created. The PC is still functional, too. Enjoy cooking a 1 ounce steak on that tiny grill—and no, I don't have a damn clue what they are trying to cook in the picture and video. It looks like a piece of bacon, but who the hell BBQs bacon like that?

Seriously, is there a point to this?

Less than 24 hours after Microsoft shipped security fixes for 23 serious software vulnerabilities, the U.S. government's Department of Homeland Security issued a firm notice to Windows users: immediately apply the patches in the MS06-040 bulletin.

via: Homeland Security: Apply MS06-040 Patch

Google is preparing its own distribution of Linux for the desktop, in a possible bid to take on Microsoft in its core business - desktop software.

A version of the increasingly popular Ubuntu desktop Linux distribution, based on Debian and the Gnome desktop, it is known internally as 'Goobuntu'. Google has confirmed it is working on a desktop linux project called Goobuntu, but declined to supply further details, including what the project is for.

Over the last week, "Blackworm" infected more then 700,000 systems as measured using a counter web site used by the worm to track itself. This worm is different and more serious then other worms for a number of reasons. In particular, it will overwrite a user's files on February 3rd.
The following file types will be overwritten by the virus: DOC, XLS, MDE, MDB, PPT, PPS, RAR, PDF, PSD, DMP, ZIP. The files are overwritten with an error message( 'DATA Error [47 0F 94 93 F4 K5]').
Update your Anti-Virus software today!
Our favorite security guy and infrequent poster here at IHMC, Brad, says this anti-virus software is free and good. However it doesn't constantly run looking for viruses, you have to manually run it once a day.

Can't wait for your Apple Store order? No need to check Apple's Order Status page constantly, just load up this widget and enter your order number and zip code. The status will update automatically for you, and even count down the days!
Who buys Apple Computers?

An online auction of a "brand new vulnerability" in Microsoft Excel had reached about $60 when eBay pulled the item late Thursday.
A seller using the name "fearwall" started the auction Wednesday evening at 1 cent. It was up to $56 on Thursday afternoon with 21 bids placed, and eBay quashed the auction soon after that.

I could tell ya how to put Ms. PacMan into an infinite loop.......... wonder if that's worth anything???

The bug-bearing message claims to come from either the FBI, CIA or German BKA police agency, and warns users they have been detected visiting illegal sites.

Those opening a questionnaire attached to the message will be infected by a variant of the well-known Sober virus.

Anti-virus firms have caught millions of copies of the malicious program, suggesting a lot of people have fallen for the fake warning.

Yes, it can be done! I've almost finished building a digital pvr (personal video recorder). The only thing left is getting the HD tuner connected to an antenna to record OTA HD. The price-point is higher than Tivo, but you gain a LOT of flexibility like adding as much disk as you can afford, multiple tuners (SD and HD), a web interface to schedule and view programming, burn DVD's of recorded shows, automatically skip commercials, etc. etc. I have mine sitting in the basement running 'headless' and watch stuff on the (modded) XBox. Very slick! You can have multiple clients all feeding from one backend server, so if you needed a PVR for you and your roommates, you could put a big box with 3-4 tuners and network it to multiple xboxes or linux clients or windows clients!
(See the links in the extended entry for details)

From http://red.planetarena.org/:
"COR Entertainment has announced the release of it's standalone free online deathmatch game, Alien Arena 2006, to be early November, 2005. The game features 25 dazzling levels, DM, TDM, CTF, All Out Assault and Deathball game modes, as well as five new mutators, 9 player characters, 8 weapons, 3 alt-fires, and exciting powerups. The source code is released under the GPL license, and features a number of new updates and enhancements. "

I've only tried it on Linux, but it's pretty decent so far, and for the price it's hard to beat! Read the reviews and give it a shot.

I found this on Hackaday, I can't believe VMWare is giving this away, grab it while you can!

Download the free VMWare player here
Download a free virtual machine here, I would recommend the Browser Appliance since it is actually pretty useful, and the smallest one there (200MB, Ubuntu Linux with Firefox)

Install the player, unzip the virtual machine somewhere you can use (c:\vm)

Try out the appliance, it's good for surfing to sites that are spyware-central and of dubious origin, since the virtual machine can be crushed and re-copied if things go pear shaped. It's also Linux so it shouldn't get whacked like your typical XP box, but the default install is lacking some plugins. Oh well, it's free...

Now, to make your own machines, you can copy the browser appliance files to a new directory, and edit away with notepad and some blank disk images.

Read the rest here, as this is a hack by [Faileas] and the hackaday.com folks and their writeup is as good as any. (Note: you don't have to use SCSI images as they point out in this howto. See my vmx file in the extended entry to see how to use regular IDE images made with QEMU. Why didn't VMWare encrypt the config files? Who knows, more viral marketing maybe.

Get your free Xbox360 Today!

Microsoft has announced at the DigitalLife conference in New York City the availability of a new software update for Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 that will provide new entertainment experiences for Media Center Edition customers around the world. Update Rollup 2 for Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 will enable customers to stream digital music, videos, photos, and standard and high-definition television and movies from Media Center PCs to any television in their home via the Xbox 360 gaming system. Windows XP Media Center 2005 customers can obtain Update Rollup 2 free of charge via the Windows Update download site as of today. The software update is also available on new Media Center PCs. Read more...

BOFFINS AT THE Massachusetts Institute of Technology have invented a crank powered laptop that can be made for $100. The machines' AC adaptor doubles as a carrying strap, there is a hand crank to power them when there's no electricity.

It can fold into more positions than an Indian yoga expert and is covered in a rubber coating so it is pretty tough.
The big idea is that it will enable third world children to have access to IT and the boffins want to make 5 million to 15 million of the machines. It is not just third world countries either. MIT hopes to start buying them for all 500,000 middle and high-school students in the state.

The machines are not exactly quick. They have a 500 mHz AMD chip and flash memory instead of a hard drive. It runs on Linux too. However the laptops can connect to Wi-Fi wireless networks and be part of "mesh" networks.The hand crank sounds a great idea, but apparently you only get 10 minutes of juice from a minute’s winding so it might not be so useful.

Google has updated its desktop search tool with an automated sidebar that learns your interests as you surf.

Google Desktop 2 is available for download here and gives users the ability to search their own PC and the web simultaneously as well as including an intelligent sidebar that presents topics likely to be of interest and monitors RSS feeds.

Looking at the user's habits allows the software to filter the information in the sidebar, limiting the need for manual configuration.

Apple Computer on Tuesday introduced Mighty Mouse, the company's next generation USB 1.1 and 2.0 mouse. Mighty Mouse offers users up to four independently programmable buttons and a Scroll Ball that lets users scroll in any direction -- vertically, horizontally and even diagonally, according to Apple.

The release of Mighty Mouse ends years of holdout by Apple in not producing a multi-button mouse, despite many requests from users. Many users switched to third-party multi-button mice, leaving Apple's mouse in the box.

"We just weren't willing to compromise on design and ease of use," David Moody, Apple's vice president of Worldwide Mac Product Marketing, told MacCentral.

Read more: Apple introduces the Mighty Mouse - Yahoo! News

The world's largest software company has launched a high-level campaign against the one factor it fears could threaten its market dominance above all others: pirated copies of its own products.

From now, users of Microsoft products will face spot-checks of the authenticity of their software before they are allowed to download updates. Read more...

How can some guy make the decision that the company he is in control of could operate just as well with 15,000 less people?
What the hell were these 15,000 people doing that all of sudden Hewlett-Packard has decided they don't need them anymore?


****UPDATE****
Here's a nice companion story to the one above...
Hewlett-Packard has awarded its new chief information officer, Randall Mott, whom HP lured from rival Dell, a pay package worth at least $15.3 million, according to a regulatory filing made Friday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Nice timing by HP huh?

Yep, the dreaded BSOD Blue Screen Of Death is to be enhanced with a new RSOD (RED Screen Of Death)! Like crashing your computer and making you reboot (daily) wasn't enough.
Thanks Microsoft.

Old:

New:

Screenshot from Joi Ito's blog

Coke vending machines are everywhere. They're getting more and more like regular computers with LEDs that show little "ICE COLD" messages and whatnot. Well, there's a lot more to those little built-in computers than you may think. Included in the low-level operating system that these babies run on is an actual debug menu that gives you access to all sorts of machine information and possibly gives you free cokes in older machines.
Read all about it here.
I can't wait to try this.

Why? Because you can! And if you put a mod chip in your XBox, you can build your own "media center computer" that's WAY better than anything Micro$oft has released. (And run Arcade games, NES, SNES, N64, Atari 2600, Sega Genesis, Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, etc. etc. etc.)

The XBox is totally under appreciated! Check out more info here here and here( and here, and here)

Read the full Linux article here (From xbox-scene.com)

Actually, this works with any MP3 player, I don't even have an iPod...

Get StreamRipper for your O/S. I've used the Windows GUI version and am currently using the Linux console version. It runs 24x7 pulling K-HaHa into a directory for me to sync to and listen to/from/at work.

I would not recommend this for dial-up users.

Yeah, yeah, I know, not really new, but for TV junkies, more is always better! (and I haven't posted much recently)
Building your own PVR is cool enough, but the web and WAP interfaces make this capable of just being a video slave machine, without needing to fart around with video out under Linux or anything, just grab your regular PC or "Enhanced" XBox and away you go.

Yes, that's scheduling a recording from a Blackberry!

It can also be split into recorder/viewer pieces with one server feeding serveral viewers. I'm going to use mine as a headless pvr in the basement to just record the TiVo's conflicting stuff and shuttle it over to my server to watch from the Xbox.

Geek factor = MacGyver's Sensei
(more)