computers

Chris Knight's avatar

It’s a bit of a long read, but Corey Doctorow has published an exceptionally well-written piece at Boing Boing about the direction that general-purpose computers are going in regard to SOPA (the “Stop Online Piracy Act”) and other dubious legislation. Doctorow recounts the history of digital rights management measures, how they have all ultimately failed and will continue to fail, and how it is driving information as we know and enjoy it to become way too specialized.

Here’s a snippet…

…Ultimately, the question is whether every PC should be locked, so that their programs could be strictly regulated by central authorities.

Even this is a shadow of what is to come. After all, this was the year in which we saw the debut of open source shape files for converting AR-15 rifles to full-automatic. This was the year of crowd-funded open-sourced hardware for genetic sequencing. And while 3D printing will

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If you’ve an Apple iOS device that’s been plagued by battery problems from iOS 5, be of good cheer: iOS 5.0.1 is now available, and it’s said to put those high-drain issues to bed!

This is also the first time that iOS can be updated “over the air” via a Wi-Fi connection, which is what I just did with my iPad 2. It’s by far the most straightforward process I’ve ever experienced in upgrading any operating system. Just go into Settings and tell your iOS gadget to check for an updated version. From there it was just a simple matter of about 40 MB of download and the iPad running from there. Total update time: less than 10 minutes. I bet my Dad could even do it… and he hates computers! šŸ˜›

Anyhoo, iOS 5.0.1 is out there now. You know you want it…...

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So for the past several weeks my iTunes hasn’t been up to snuff. iTunes starts up okay… but when it comes to the iTunes Store it did nothing but show a blank white page with “iTunes Store” printed in the center. And whatever has been the problem with that, it also has kept iTunes from properly updating my iPad. I’m still using Windows Vista (no jokes, please :-P)

I tried everything but nothing worked to make iTunes Store functioning on my computer. I even uninstalled and re-installed iTunes… three times! And still the iTunes Store wouldn’t come up. When I ran the Diagnostics tool it gave me some crap about how iTunes Store couldn’t make a secure connection.

Well, as of about an hour ago it’s finally working again! It took me the better part of three days of actively addressing the issue and a whole wazooload of Google ...

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Good friend and fellow blogger Scott Bradford pointed out that today is the 30th anniversary of Microsoft giving MS-DOS its name. That was the main operating system for the vast majority of personal computers for many years, until it came to be supplanted in the mid-Nineties by Microsoft’s own DOS-less Windows software (even though every version of Windows since Win95 has had the original style DOS window available to open, just like the old days).

Well, 1981 was another landmark year for Microsoft, though it’s the kind of history that Bill Gates would no doubt just as well wish nobody would remember! It was in 1981 that Gates and fellow programmer Neil Konzen wrote DONKEY.BAS. This was the very first video game that Microsoft would ever produce for commercial retail. It was packed in the early versions of MS-DOS, as a way to sorta “show off” the IBM PC ...

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Aimi Eguchi is a 16-year old music star in Japan, with a loyal following of several thousands of fans. She lives north of Tokyo, has an official website, and enjoys track and field sports.

And she doesn’t exist outside of a hard drive.

Good friend and fellow blogger Lee Shelton was the first to draw my attention to the intriguing but also unsettling story of Aimi Eguchi: a computer-generated composite of six different girls, who until now had fooled many people into believing she was a real flesh and blood person…

Click here for more about Aimi Eguchi’s “biography”.

I’m telling you people here and now: one of these days, this is going to be an American politician who “runs” for office. Whether or not it wins is a commentary that I shall leave as an exercise for the reader…...

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Barring any crazy circumstance, I should be getting my iPad 2 next week! Looking forward to having it for… well, all kinds of good stuff šŸ™‚

So I’ve already been planning which apps I should buy for it: the list thus far includes iMovie, Garageband (I’ve waited five years for the chance to use that program ‘cuz Apple doesn’t make it for Windows), and the iPad/iPhone port of Doom (‘cuz in my book it’s not a real computer unless it plays Doom).

There’s one more bit o’ software that I aim to install on my iPad right out the gate, but I thought I’d pose this to my readers…

What’s a good Bible app for the iPad?

It’d be great to find one that has multiple versions available. Other than that, well… I don’t know what I should be looking for.

Suggestions? Any would be most welcome šŸ™‚...

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Whilst I await the arrival of my iPad 2 (estimated shipping 4-5 weeks, ahhh the price I paid for trying and failing to score one locally) here is something that will make one appreciate Apple’s biggest rival in a brand new light. For all the dissin’ that Microsoft gets, I have to respect them anew after watching this clip: Andrew Tait’s video “Chain of Fools”. In it, Andrew upgrades to Windows 7… but he starts with MS-DOS 5.0 running the original Microsoft Windows, and proceeds to upgrade from there to every subsequent version of Windows until he gets to the latest release!

So how successful was his endeavor? Watch and be amazed!

Anyone else nearly shed a tear when they saw Windows 3.1 again for the first time in years? šŸ˜›...

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My plans have been thrown afoul… because now I’ll have to be here next Friday afternoon to place my order for the iPad 2 on Apple’s website.

(Mash here for one of Engadget’s myriad of articles about the product’s unveiling today.)

I didn’t get an iPad last year, but I fell in love enough with the simplicity of the design that… I knew this was on my short-list of “things I never knew I needed” and ought to have. For more than a decade people have given me funny looks when I have to tell them that I’ve never had a laptop computer. I just don’t like how they’re made: too much that can get broken easily. The iPad is different. And iPad 2 has enough bells and whistles on it to have me break down to get one now.

‘Course, word on the street is that iPad 3...

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So one of the bigger stories this past week has been IBM’s supercomputer Watson beating all-time champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter during a three-game series on Jeopardy!. Watson’s final haul was $77,147, with Jennings coming in second with $24,000 and Rutter third with $21,600. During Final Jeopardy! on the last night of the contest Jennings wrote “Who is Stoker?” and in parenthesis added “I for one welcome our new computer overlords”.

I thought Watson’s performance was… impressive. But, I’m not too terrified about a droid uprising just yet.

For one thing, Watson is not much more than a glorified search engine. IBM’s engineers assured the Jeopardy! audience that Watson could not access the Internet: that “he” relied entirely on his oodles of terabytes of storage, containing (it is thought) every iota of trivia that has possibly been digitized. Clearly, an advantage was held by Watson.

And yet, even ...

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Things could be about to get really interesting pretty soon…

Sometimes around 4 a.m. on February 2nd – next Wednesday morning – the very last of the still-available IP addresses under the traditional IPv4 scheme will be allocated.

And then the Internet as it has existed since IPv4 was established in 1977 will, for all intents and purposes, be running on empty.

“Who the hell knew how much address space we needed?” said Vint Cerf, Internet pioneer and father of the World Web Web. At the time Cerf and his colleagues thought that it would be a ridiculously long amount of time (they may have assumed it would not be within their own lifetime) before the Internet would run out of IP numbers. They couldn’t have possibly foreseen not only Internet usage in private home but also mobile devices, streaming video and the like. In 1977, 4.3 billion possible ...

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