Perhaps Mark Shuttleworth is right when he so gleefully welcomes the release of Windows 7. Ever since Vista was released on January 31st, 2007, Linux has been gaining a lot of steam, thanks to Vista’s many pitfalls.
Ubuntu is without a doubt leading the charge when it comes to proliferation of the Linux kernel, and thanks to the popularity of netbooks, Linux is fastly becoming the operating system of choice for many netbook users.
Microsoft isn’t comfortable with this trend.
If the current economic crisis hasn’t already become evident maybe this will change your mind. As more and more of us have to tighten our financial belts, we look to every corner of our lives to save money. We cut back on phone services, eating out, entertainment, and new purchases. For most of us shelling out 400-800 dollars for a new computer or 200 dollars for the highly anticipated Windows 7 is not at the top of our to-do list.
This is a prime time for Ubuntu and other free alternatives to take root, why not keep your current hardware, and get more functionality out of it. There has always been an argument that Linux is not friendly enough, and “that’s for geeks I couldn’t understand that”. Well fair enough it’s something different, but if anything it’s easier to learn. Recently a new guide has come out that gives users foreign to anything beyond windows the opportunity to shorten the learning curve. The full version is available for free for those cost conscious to download in a PDF, and in book form from Amazon.
With the latest versions of windows making changes to the ways users navigate through the OS now is the best time to give alternatives a shot. Just keep one thing in mind before you click away, and forget that you read this. What do you have to loose from downloading the guide and the OS below. If you don’t like it then you can go spend money, but once you buy that coveted shiny box labeled windows you have paid your money, and cannot get it back.
Lynne Brindley, director of the British Library points out that digital content is not being preserved the same way analog content is, and because of that, we risk losing our “memory”.
From the letter:
“At the exact moment Barack Obama was inaugurated, all traces of President Bush vanished from the White House website, replaced by images of and speeches by his successor. Attached to the website had been a booklet entitled 100 Things Americans May Not Know About the Bush Administration - they may never know them now. When the website changed, the link was broken and the booklet became unavailable.”
Also, if you remember the most recent Olympic Games, there were over 150 websites (that’s only counting mainstream) that covered the game. All of which disappeared overnight after the games.
Brindley eludes to future generations finding a blackhole in the knowledge base of the 21st century because of this lack of record keeping.
This is an extremely important project that is worth your attention, so donate to them if you can, and make an effort to track the progress of the project.
A few weeks ago, the European Comission complained about Microsoft bundling it’s web browser with it’s operating system, calling it anti-competitive and monopolistic.
Now the EU is considering forcing Microsoft or computer manufacturers to bundle Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Safari with the operating system.
Microsoft faces the threat of monetary fines, proportional to the sales of windows-based PC’s, and they plan to request a hearing on the matter, before the Commission makes it’s ruling in 2 months.
Perhaps Quantum computing will one day be the backbone of cloud computing
A team of scientists from the Joint Quantum Institute at the University of Maryland, and the University of Michigan have successfully teleported a quantum state from one atom to another.
“Conventional electronic bits (short for binary digits), such as those in a personal computer, are always in one of two states: off or on, 0 or 1, high or low voltage, etc. Quantum bits, however, can be in some combination, called a “superposition,” of both states at the same time, like a coin that is simultaneously heads and tails – until a measurement is made. It is this phenomenon that gives quantum computation its extraordinary power.
At the start of the experimental process, each ion (designated A and B) is initialized in a given ground state. Then ion A is irradiated with a specially tailored microwave burst from one of its cage electrodes, placing the ion in some desired superposition of the two qubit states – in effect writing into memory the information to be teleported.”
After that, the ions are “excited” by a brief laser pulse, which causes each ion to shed just a single photon as it “calms” back into a ground state (on or off or both at the same time).
and then:
“The emitted photons are captured by lenses, routed to separate strands of fiber-optic cable, and carried into opposite sides of a 50-50 beamsplitter where it is equally probable for either photon to pass straight through the splitter or to be reflected. On either side of the beamsplitter output are detectors that can record the arrival of a single photon.”
To understand the impact this will have on computing:
“Photons are ideal for transferring information fast over long distances, whereas atoms offer a valuable medium for long-lived quantum memory. The combination represents an attractive architecture for a ‘quantum repeater,’ that would allow quantum information to be communicated over much larger distances than can be done with just photons. Also, the teleportation of quantum information in this way could form the basis of a new type of quantum internet that could outperform any conventional type of classical network for certain tasks.”
Check out the read link for more detailed information.
So this is week two running windows 7 on the old emachine. So far I have been pleasantly surprise by how well it has performed, and how few glitches I have run across for it being a beta and all.
The Good
Good performance on sub-par hardware.
Network sharing - File sharing, and printer sharing is now working after the latest updates.
beta 7
The Bad
IE8 - I started testing the computer with the intention of not using FireFox, but after being unable to do my school work online, access some web mail, and poor performance I have installed FireFox.
Standby - doesn’t work the computer locks up and has to be powered completely off.
Wireless - older wireless hardware will work, but the install file must be switched to compatibility mode for Win 2000 or XP.
The Ugly
HDCP - I cannot watch any movies because the computer cannot determine that my analog output is not copying them.
Take away
Its clear that Microsoft has learned a lot from VISTA and the outcry of the users. Many of us have lost hours if not days of our lives because of the poor performance of VISTA. I hold out hope that the HDCP legacy hardware issues will be worked out, but even if not I see an permanent upgrade from windows XP to Windows 7 in my near future.
“It’s very simple, the authorities have no way of controlling criminals, so they control the law-abiding, because we’re an easy target.”
I found this documentary originally on the Campaign for Liberty website, and I wanted find some statistics on British crime rates.
From 2001, 4 years into the ban:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1440764.stm
From 2003:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/2656875.stm
From 2008:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/jan/25/politics.ukguns
From 2008, the report referenced in the above link:
http://www.crimereduction.homeoffice.gov.uk/statistics/statistics074.htm
From 2007, Home Office crime report:
http://www.crimereduction.homeoffice.gov.uk/statistics/statistics066.htm
From 2005, Home Office crime report(PDF):
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs05/hosb1105.pdf
so, with that, some highlights:
So, it’s pretty much undeniable that banning guns does not reduces crime, not even gun crime, at least in the UK.
Microsoft has revealed it’s new MSN Mobile Music Service, designed specifically for users who listen to music primarily on their mobile device. The weird thing about this is that the music you buy from the MSN store is locked to the phone you purchase it for. A return to Digital Rights Managment.
This comes as a surprise considering the MSN Music Store debacle in April 2008, in which Microsoft announced that the service would be shut down, without giving users a way to keep their purchases music outside of burning it to a cd.
The interview linked above is downright embarrasing.
Although a smooth change over from the old website to the new there were still a few glitches. The website in its previous form had remained under the same management and form from when President Bill Clinton’s administration first launched it during his term. I myself have only been to the site a handful of times in my life, seeing no real benefit to devoting time to read any droll content listed on it. The new site appears to have much to offer in terms of policy being implemented. If utilized the blog feature, and weekly video addresses may prove to be very popular, something akin to the fire side chats from President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
For more information please visit the link below.
Authors: Beware of Copyright by Jeffrey Tucker of the Ludwig Von Mises Institute.
The Mises institute was created to educate the public about the Austrian school of economics, which I’ve written about in the past with regard to the collapse of AIG in October 2008. The Mises Institute is a libretarian movement that focuses primarily on issues such as ending the Federal Reserve, reverting to sound money, deregulating the markets, and ending the practice of frational reserve banking.
Why does it matter that the Mises Institute recognizes Creative Commons? Because it’s a sign that our message is getting through to audiences beyond our readership. Another plus is that the Mises Institute is affiliated (unofficially) with Ron Paul’s Campaign for Liberty, so no doubt that that band of revolutionaries will get the message as well.
