computers

Chris Knight's avatar

Today is the final day of widespread sales of Windows XP. After today, it will no longer be possible to purchase a new computer from any major manufacturer with Windows XP installed on it.

The operating system first went on sale on October 25th, 2001. So it lasted with full support for nearly seven years: not bad for any software product but especially one from Microsoft, a company notorious for pushing updates on customers.

I was working at a Best Buy store when Windows XP was rolled out. Everyone associated with computers or media sales had to come in one Sunday morning prior to Windows XP’s release for three hours of what I have since come to call “Microsoft religious indoctrination”. We had to learn all about what Windows XP could do, what made it different from Windows Me and Windows 2000 Professional, all that jazz. I remember thinking ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

Yesterday was the 25th anniversary of the release of WarGames, starring Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy. AMC was running it last night and I wound up watching a good part of it.

In case you’ve never seen it before, WarGames is about David Lightman, a high school student who’s an unmotivated slacker in class but a first-rate computer hacker at home. David’s real talent is running automated searches for systems that can be dialed into via phone modem, and then cracking their security. While trying to locate a new video game company’s system so he can do his own brand of beta-testing, David unknowingly winds up accessing a computer at NORAD and nearly starts World War III from his bedroom.

A quarter-century later, WarGames still holds up extremely well. Practically all of the technology depicted is now horribly dated (look at the size of those floppies that David is ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

Journalist and programmer Andy Baio’s discovery of an old backup hard drive used by legendary computer game publisher Infocom has yielded, among other things, some games that were publicly announced but never saw the light of day. The most notable so far is Milliways, the sequel to the game based on The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

And if you go to the link you can even find playable games for download, too!

Baio writes that a lot of stuff is on that drive: from internal company memos to the source code and finished files for “every released and unreleased game Infocom made.” So are there any hitherto-unknown Zork projects on that thing? And I’ve heard mention a few times over the years that Infocom had planned a third Battletech role-playing game (it’s second, Battletech: The Crescent Hawks’ Revenge is arguably the first real-time strategy game ever created). Yeah ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

A few weeks ago while visiting a church this crazy idea struck: put the Bible on an iPod! I’m not talking about MP3s of spoken passages from the scriptures. You can find those all over the place. What I wanted to know is: was there any software that puts the text of the Bible itself on an iPod, that can be taken with you and read anywhere?

It took awhile but last night I found podBible, a neat (and free!) application created by a fellow named Brendan Ross. Using the Notes feature of the iPod, podBible puts the entire New Testament of the English Standard Version along with Psalms and Proverbs from the Old Testament on the iPod with an easy-to-navigate interface. Here you see podBible running on my own 80-gig iPod classic, displaying 1st Corinthians chapter 1 starting with verse 26 (however that is not Corinthian leather on ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

Abby Prince of WebProNews has filed a fascinating story, albeit one with significant ramifications, about the fast-evaporating pool of available Internet Protocol (IP) numbers. Ever since the Internet’s inception the computers connected to it have been given addresses under the original IP4 scheme. But with the increase of devices that use the Internet combined with the number of developing countries that are beginning to build up their information infrastructure, there is a dwindling number of IP addresses still free for use. A new scheme, the IP6 protocol, has already been developed but it’s far from being fully implemented… meaning we could possibly and likely will see an IP numbers “crunch” in the near future.

Hit here for some excellent reporting about the issue....

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

Last Tuesday, after I came back from Texas, I went to Greensboro to pick up my new computer at the store that I’d ordered it from. By the way if you’re in North Carolina and want quality computer products and outstanding service, I would definitely recommend Intrex. This is the second system that I’ve bought from them and I’ve never been anything less than overwhelmed at their confidence and dedication. They’ve got stores from Winston-Salem all the way to Greenville, with two in Greensboro and several in the Raleigh-Durham area.

Anyhoo, I got this new ‘puter as an investment in my new video production enterprise. That’s what I’ve spent a lot of this past week doing: installing software, tweaking hardware and otherwise fine-tuning it to be the instrument that I need to have.

So forgive me if I’m a babe in the woods when it comes to Windows Vista, ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

Scott McCausland pled guilty to uploading Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith onto the Internet a day before the movie’s release in May of 2005. He received 5 months in jail and then 5 months home confinement. As part of that part of his sentence, McCausland agreed to have some tracking software installed on his computer.

There’s just one problem: McCausland is a Linux user, and the government doesn’t have any tracking software that runs on Linux.

So now the government is making Scott McCausland use Microsoft Windows, or else don’t use a computer at all.

If they make him use Windows Vista, would that violate the Geneva Convention?...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

It is said that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. If so, then this judge’s comprehension of technology is downright lethal.

In federal court in Los Angeles last week, U.S. Magistrate Judge Jacqueline Chooljian, who is presiding over a lawsuit filed by the Motion Picture Association of America against TorrentSpy, ruled that TorrentSpy must turn over to prosecutors the RAM in its server.

This is not a joke. The judge has declared that the information in the RAM is evidence and that it has to be handed over. She has told TorrentSpy to unplug the RAM and give it to the prosecution.

Will she subsequently charge TorrentSpy with destroying evidence when it’s determined that there isn’t any data on the chips?

That has got to be the dumbest ruling that I have ever seen a judge make, or one of the dumbest anyway....

Read more