After 49.7 days of use, I'd have to get restarted, too

alternateorg on September 22, 2004

Southern California’s Air Trafic Control system had a glitch in it that stranded 800 planes in the air without contact to Air Traffic Control. Did I mention the system is based on Windows?
The servers are timed to shut down after 49.7 days of use in order to prevent a data overload, a union official told the LA Times. To avoid this automatic shutdown, technicians are required to restart the system manually every 30 days. An improperly trained employee failed to reset the system, leading it to shut down without warning, the official said. Backup systems failed because of a software failure, according to a report in The New York Times.
Awesome. Why do people use Windows again?

Sure to make Microsoft Execs Everywhere Happy!

alternateorg on September 15, 2004

Details have been released about several vulnerabilities in Mozilla, Mozilla Firefox, and Thunderbird. These can potentially be exploited by malicious people to conduct cross-site scripting attacks, access and modify sensitive information, and compromise a user’s system.

The link in question. . .

*Moves back over to IE on his WinBlows machine.*
I kid, I kid.

Seriously though, this doesn’t even affect the latest version of the programs, and the exploit is miniscule compared to those in IE. So, yeah, not a big deal. I’ve been using Firefox since it was still .5, I forget what it was called back then, Firebird maybe?

The only thing that concerns me here is that any time there’s even a minor security exploit in Firefox, Microsoft will mention it in a Press Release and it will make IE look like it’s on equal ground with Firefox where security is concerned. Psh.

By the way, I have posting privlidges now <3 Kev.

I'll believe it when I see it

alternateorg on September 13, 2004

A near-universal emulator that allows software developed for one platform to run on any other, with almost no performance hit? Hmm.. I have serious doubts about this. And just because it’ll run Mac programs on Windows doesn’t mean it could run OSX or system-level frameworks required by the iLife apps. But shit, if it runs IE6 on my Mac for testing websites for you fucktards and your awful browser, then that’s cool. But again, I have serious doubts.
In demonstrations to press and analysts, the company has shown a graphically demanding game — a Linux version of Quake III — running on an Apple PowerBook.

Um, couldn’t they just run the Linux version anyway? I mean, with a basic port? Why not show us something like Half-Life 2 running on a Mac? Now THAT I’d be impressed by.

MS to rely on 3D rendering

alternateorg on May 6, 2004

3D graphics on a PC have long been stuck with a “for games only” reputation. Of course, you could rightfully argue that 3D performance has been the driving force behind most recent PC performance increases; usually, the “application” that needed all the horsepower your PC could muster wasn’t an application at all, but a high-powered 3D game. But now the shroud of illegitimacy is about to be lifted, as Microsoft prepares to rely on 3D performance to power its Longhorn operating system.

Wow. Pretty ground-breaking, out-of-the-box thinking going on at Microsoft.

Haha.. oops. I guess that link should have pointed here. Sigh. It’s getting boring talking about this kind of thing. Or it’s actually been boring for well, I guess about 9 years now.

Playfair

alternateorg on April 5, 2004

Sick of the hassle of only being able to play your Protected-AAC files you purchased from the iTMS on YOUR 3 computers? Want to share those files with your friends?

Looks like you need Playfair, the FairPlay DRM stripper.The playfair program is quite simple. It takes one of the iTMS Protected AAC Audio Files, decodes it using a key obtained from your iPod or Microsoft Windows system and then writes the new, decoded version to disk as a regular AAC Audio File. It then optionally copies the metadata tags that describe the song, including the cover art, to the new file.

What's all this about crow, then?

alternateorg on December 15, 2003

Richard Forno’s response to last week’s latest Mac-bashing tripe. Who’s Richard Forno, you ask? Just a security technologist, author, and the former Chief Security Officer at Network Solutions.

Lance also fails to recognize that Windows and Mac OS are different not just by vendor and market share, but by the fundamental way that they’re designed, developed, tested, and supported. By integrating Internet Explorer, Media Player, and any number of other ‘extras’ (such as VB Script and ActiveX) into the operating system to lock out competitors, Microsoft knowingly inflicts many of its security vulnerabilities onto itself.  As a result, its desire to achieve marketplace dominance over all facets of a user’s system has created a situation that’s anything but trustworthy or conducive to stable, secure computing.  Mac users are free to use whatever browser, e-mail client, or media player they want, and the system accepts (and more importantly, remembers!) their choice.

…

If Lance is sleeping well believing that he’s on an equal level with the Mac regarding system security, he can crow about not being overly embarrassed while working on the only mainstream operating system that, among other high-profile incidents over the years, facilitated remote system exploitation through a word processor’s clip art function

One thing I noticed while reading the original “article” was this pervasive idea:

I was tired of the “We use Macs because they don’t get attacked by viruses and hackers” refrain from Mac nuts. I generally counter with what is apparently a secret carefully hidden from Mac zealots: “That’s because only a fraction of the world uses Macs. What’s the point of attacking a niche market? No one will notice!”

What’s the problem with this? He seems to think that because the entire mediocre business world relies on Windows and is ritualistically attacked by teenage hackers and worm-writers, that Windows is better to run. Like I care about the reason why no one writes virii for my OS. They don’t exist, it hardly matters that (he thinks) it’s because there are relatively few of us.

Long-shoe-horn.

alternateorg on November 17, 2003

I find it odd that Microsoft is basically bashing Mac OS X and yet at the same time copying it and taking until 2006 to do it.

Weaksauce.

In addition to the underlying WinFS technology, Microsoft is also adding a new file system concept called Libraries, which will organize like collections of data in Longhorn, regardless of where they are physically stored in the system. For example, a Photos & Movies Library would collect links to every digital photo and digital video on your system.

“I should not care about location when I save,” says Microsoft VP Chris Jones. “Why can’t I just click on my computer and it shows me my documents? It is a computer. It should know what a document is, what I have edited and annotated, what I have searched for before, and what other places I have looked for documents. It is not just documents on my computer I am looking for. It is documents I care about.”

Now, is it just me or do “Libraries” sound like iTunes, iPhoto, iCal, New Finder, Playlists, etc…

Also, the usability/searchability comment is almost word for word what Steve already said a couple years ago.