Friday, October 31, 2003

- win some graphics cards from hypothermia.
- mac os x has 3 security issues with no patch available. report by @stake - the company that fired the guy who said microsoft were bad at security. are @stake funded my MS? (just wondering, as I don't want to end up sued for comments on this blog)
- but this guy likes it because he thinks it's cool - "it's style for people without the time to do it themselves." he says. so if you're not cool, then you need a mac apparently.
- Mac OS 10.3 vs Linux?
- one of the fastest supercomputers in the world made of macs "rolling around at 9.555 TFlops in LINPACK"
- Gator renames itself and sues you if you call them spyware.
- Apple to only offer security patches for Panther?
- gosh sorry, i've turned it into an apple day panther wipes your external firewire drive.

Thursday, October 30, 2003

why bother putting a hard drive in your pc? when you can boot knoppix and run it from a cd, it included WINE and Openoffice, and can see your current hard drive so you should be able to use your windows apps in it too. you may be pleased to know that they're developing a free frontpage and dreamweaver replacement for linux. wahey!
Fox nearly sued itself story here!

Wednesday, October 29, 2003

dan's data thinks selling free review items has dodgy moral implications involved. what are your thoughts? is it okay to sell brand new item that you've got free to review, if not, is it okay to upgrade your pc with the review item and then sell the old item that you've replaced with the free review item? how is getting a free review item different to getting a gift from your aunt that you don't want or need and then selling that, to make some money, to buy something that you do want or need?
Selling some dodgy graphics cards wonder whether the working one will sell for more than the falty ones or vice versa.
Microsoft employee appears to have been fired because he took photos of Apple G5's being delivery to Microsoft. odd.
right. woke up this mornin. some words popped into me 'ed and waddaya know, here's a website. Try not to be too offended if you're easily offended by tasteless humor.

Tuesday, October 28, 2003

dont you hate it when one of the worlds biggest computing companies decides to use your password as the name of one of their latest technologies. Well at least I've got 2 years to think up a new one.. and no it's not longhorn.

Monday, October 27, 2003

flying cat : catfan.wmv [372k] OH MY!!!
someone else thinks apple should release a small "shuttle" like cheap consumer mac without the screen. i'm sure i've said this before myself, but i don't know where. what they fail to mention in that article is the price difference of the iMac and iBook - when the iBook is cheaper than an iMac - why would people buy an iMac?
Got this in an email (requires shockwave, requires sound).
does this mean i'm finally famous? when people use my pictures in their ebay auctions? (the board with cuppa tea at bottom).

Sunday, October 26, 2003

fun with 5Kb.
do the bbc ever proof read the stuff they put on their website? "This is intended to provide four billion times four billion times four billion as many as currently exist." in this article, and the introduction text for that article was "A shortage of internet addresses has prompted researchers to come up way of generating billions more." depending on how you do "billions" but, if you currently have 4 billion ip addresses, and you're going to have 64 billion with IPv6, then that's 16 times as many as 4 billion. It's just simple maths, it's not exactly rocket science! And since when has IPv6 been something new! I learnt about it 2 or 3 years ago!

And while we're on the subject, I'm sick of seeing this image:
stupid bbc news website uses this image every time they talk about spam!
They use it EVERY single time they write an article about spam, such as this one, or this one, or this one, or this one, and on, and on, and ariston, etc, etc, ETC!!! (none of these articles are repeats! yet they all have the same chuffin image!!!) admittedly, for a bit of variety, they did use a twisted image of email here and some other previous one's have used other images, but man alive what is with them using the same image ALL THE TIME!!!?!!

Saturday, October 25, 2003

Apple say 8.5 million users of macos X: google would be able to give you a reasonable estimate (3% of surfers use winNT, 3% use macs, most surfers use ie6.)
i don't know how cheap this is, seems very cheap to me: a 15" centrino 1.3ghz laptop, with DVD-writer/CD-writer combo thing from Dixons for �998 ! Sounds pretty much like a bargain to me. considering that a dvd-writer on it's own (eg a slot loading one that you can get from hoojum.com) cost's �200 itself, it does seem like a good deal.
famous for a day: Seems that on august 15th we (probably josh :-)) chose some key stories and linked to the right sites and chose the right keyword for the story. See #15 "here" (last entry), #20 "Microsoft page, msblast removal" (first entry) #26 "W32.Blaster.Worm Removal Tool".

Friday, October 24, 2003

Well, since the motherboard I bought off ebay was most likely an LX board (meaning the fastest cpus would be 333mhz) - I bought an Asus P2B-D which is BX, and even does 133mhz FSB! The one I got was �35, including 2 socket 370 to slot 1 adapters! woohoo!!

Thursday, October 23, 2003

lamb korma in Stoke-on-Trent. Those giants are getting hungry again. First beer, then potatoes..
Gay Debate pro and anti-gay statements analysed by the bbc, good read. (although I did get bored and stop reading after a while).

Wednesday, October 22, 2003

apple getting way too much press. On google news they've got the top 3 headlines in sci/tech. one for destroying the market for custom built supercomputers (by letting anyone buy a bunch of standard machines), one for having some white g4 laptops. and one more for itunes having bugs that need fixing.
Apple seem to have produced a complete "web to playback-device" delivery mechanism that the record companies think is secure enough that it won't damage sales. relevant business model discussion here
don't mess with water pistols - you could end up in hot water. If they can prosecute him, there goes my fun.
Well, I won an auction for a dual slot 1 motherboard here - woohoo! - anyone heard of it? I want to know if it'll take 100mhz slot 1 CPUs, some old dual slot 1 boards are 66mhz only! (such as this good looking one with dual p2-300s here, and this one which also looks very good (p2-300 x 2 + 192mb ram), although this one is 100mhz inc p2-400)
a href=http:// "Officials from the Big Issue in Liverpool have lodged an official complaint about the police operation in which a number of the magazine sellers were arrested for alleged drugs dealing." news.bbc.co.uk "The magazine - which is sold by homeless people - is also thinking about taking legal action against Liverpool City Council which has temporarily banned sales in the city centre." /1/hi/england/merseyside/3211704.stm

Tuesday, October 21, 2003

Google adds a Frech court and trade marks, "Advertising is a form of free speech" - yep an expensive one.

Basic sysnopsis fo those who want to know, French court rules if you search for a trade marked term Google adds should only return adds from the trade mark holder.

Cest la monopley.
Sooner than we think, if the current leaders in the industry are to survive, we will need to move away from �OS vs. OS�, and we need to make �convergence� real. All software needs to run on ANY OS
macnet2 has some interesting stuff to say about apple, including his thoughts that Apple are developing OS X on x86 side by side with developing it on the G5...
Hard Drives more boring web pages by me: WD800AB, and a Samsung SP0802N which is Very fast and VERY quiet.

Fujitsu hard drive class action close to settlement.

Hornet is apparently a "SFF" (small form factor) pc - but it looks fairly big to me, well i suppose not that big compared to full towers, but it's not exactly small either.
Tunnock's Caramel apparently they're addictive and delicious. With many a supportive cult-like society dedicated to them, and there's more details here.
iTunes on the PC sells music quicker than on the MAC which makes sense as there's more PC people.

Monday, October 20, 2003





the vulcan mini pc looks much like the Atari portfolio but it runs Windows XP / Office and has a colour screen etc. the tiqit looks more like a "supervision" / palm thing. and here's a pic of a very dusty PC. oh, and apparently hell froze over, so I don't know what that means for everybody down there, or how it effects us when we're going round saying people have to choose between hell and heaven, especially now that hell's a giant ice rink. perhaps i should get a hot dog stand license and sell them down there to all the olympic skaters?
is anybody out there? reply if you are still alive. ps - there's a pic here of a dual VIA C3 board using those tiny new CPU's they've made!.

Sunday, October 19, 2003

more laptops etc available on ebay.
i thought this was funny cartoon song video thing made me laugh out loud at bits.
awesome strongbad's deleted, and duck pond which you can play at the end - there's also an atari 2600 version if you feed the ducks enough. in fact there's a cool site here with details about all the strongbads and the hidden stuff in them.
Tim: My line is so beating the heck out of your stupid line. Fear my pink line. You have no chance. I am the undisputed lord of virtual tennis. [Misses ball] Whoops.
John: Tim, how could you miss that? It was going like 1 m.p.h.
very funny 11 and 12 year old kids reaction to old games from the past over here. above they're talking about pong :) weird - they don't get tetris - tetris is awesome even now - did they never have a gameboy with tetris!?!
Tim: This is nothing compared to Grand Theft Auto III, because you can't steal a taxi cab, pick up somebody, then drive into the ocean with him.

Saturday, October 18, 2003

Cheap ebay stuff anyone? anyone? other ebay cheap stuff: pentium pro 200 / motherboard / 128mb ram currently �3, dual p2-300, 192mb, agp - currently �1 *, dual p2-266, 256mb currently �1 *, dual slot 1 board, �10 *, or dual slot 1 �5 *, another one slot 1 �5 with p2-400 * oddest of all a dual slot 1 dell board that takes RDRAM �1. all tempting, especially as you should still be able to put 1ghz slot 1 p3 100mhz chips in them if you can find them... and they should be much cheaper than the dual socket370 boards due to percieved demand / value. (and there's an article here about getting p3-1.4ghz cpus' to work in slot 1 boards.)

This CPU seems cheap: 800mhz P3 slot 1 100mhz fsb around �1 could be dead though. slot 1 933mhz VERY expensive �56!. so there's still people out there with slot1 systems that want to upgrade! �56 would nearly buy you a new ATX motherboard (�24) and a duron 1.6ghz (�33) - total: �57 from ebuyer.com!! another p3-933 slot 1 could be dead very cheap. (in fact this guy's got a huge number of potentially dead cpus wonder where he gets them from!.)

Thursday, October 16, 2003

itunes 4.1 is now available for windows 2000 and XP. Requires 128 MB RAM minimum. Requires quicktime 6.4. A 19.1meg download. Yes it is just winamp with aac encode decode, direct to cd burning.. and direct purchase and download of mp3s for people living in the states.. but I'm sure you've seen that sort of thing before.
Oh and panther will be out soon. With so many swooshy features, if it doesn't make you sea-sick, nothing will..
It might also be a 15% faster operating system. (at doing stuff like database queries), which is nice.
looking at dual cpu motherboards on ebay dual slot 1 inc 2x 350mhz P2 looks the cheapest, then there's 5 socket 370 (auction) motherboards (buy now �62), another dual socket 370 with celeron 400 (auction), intel (auction), auction (nearly finished) and the weirdest of all is this dual 386 motherboard! - my question though is - can you use socket 370 chips in slot 1 motherboards if you use adapter(s)? and why can't people spell "dual"? why do people spell it as "duel"? Dual AMD motherboards seem more expensive, especially as I may be able to get P3 socket 370 chips for free...
o Western Digital lower retail warranty to 1year - OEM Special Edition are still 3yr warranty. Samsung however, have 3year warranty on all of their drives, and they are Very quiet, and Very fast.
o 8-way Power 5 thing with 144mb cache shown here.
o PC Sales up 15% but mainly laptop sales.
seven new security holes patched by microsoft. I'm glad that MS are finding and fixing these 'undocumented features'.

Microsoft thanks the following for working with us to protect customers:
Greg Jones of KPMG UK and Cesar Cerrudo for reporting the issue described in MS03-042, The Last Stage of Delirium Research Group for reporting the issue in MS03-043, David Litchfield of Next Generation Security Software Ltd. for reporting the issue in MS03-044, Brett Moore of Security-Assessment.com for reporting the issue in MS03-045.


And for apple users we have macos 10.2.8 which fixes some bugs discovered in unix..

Wednesday, October 15, 2003

council worker runs down protestor real media footage captured by amatuer film person!!
imaginary things to put on the bottom of application forms, when applying for a job:
Your company is gr8 i want to work 4 u.
I have a normal sized bottom, so special chair requirements are not necessary.
I am also married to a scary wife so would like to get out of the house more.
dissapointed with the g5, macnet is here, so is this thread. ha ha ha, it will never end. (the mac vs pc thing, which makes life a bit more interesting, especially since apple aren't the fastest) Update there's further comments here about it in the usual mac / pc style ;) and there's some more rabid zealots over here.

transmeta introduce a 7watt 1mb cache 1ghz (or 1.1ghz?) cpu more details and links, and VIA make the worlds smallest, lowest power x86 CPU more details here. in other processor news add-on pci card turns your computer into a super computer (no not an apple "super computer", as per what apple thought of their G4, but a real super computer that could enter the top-500 list).
ha the gospel according to the simpsons in a real church story here, and Fijians apologise for eating english missionary over here

Tuesday, October 14, 2003


"Apple touts its new 64-bit Power Mac G5 as the world's fastest personal computer, but our initial tests indicate bragging rights may belong to PCs using AMD's Athlon 64 FX-51 chip." PC World reviews 64-bit computers

Monday, October 13, 2003

* monkey brains move robotic arms pictures here.
* dude takes an apple to work, and tries using it in a PC environment at OSnews.
* something about apple and x86 here a bit dull - about how apple could have switched to x86, but didn't, and what might have happened.
* 66% of people dissatisfied with MS Software - 41% thinking of leaving MS here "I read that Linux has issued 25 patches so far this year, so what is to be gained by switching?" (this colour is apparently amber!)
1.4GHz VIA "C3" mentioned at epiacenter.com - it's almost like watching (and waiting for) Apple a year or 2 ago when they were speeding up the G4 to 1.42ghz. The VIA "C3" runs at 1.4volts and would probably be able to be passively cooled. (and probably perform like a P3-800 to 900 or something like that)
"Like careful sexy product design even matters and as if you give a twit for packaging and aesthetics and user experience anymore in this overly plastic bloatedly excessive landfill wasteland Wal-Mart dystopia we call proud capitalist gimme gimme gimme America."

funny article about apple packaging and product experience SF Gate

Sunday, October 12, 2003

Saturday, October 11, 2003

Proof that the "MPG" series of Fujitsu IDE hard drives were inherantly faulty, and proof that ebay and it's buyers are a little bit mad.
article about "spackers" who are "A Polish company hiring out its 450,000 Trojaned systems to spammers that pay well." - get spybot search and destroy here.

Friday, October 10, 2003

If I had an AMD CPU THIS would be the cooler I would WANT! (very very much!)
a naked athlon 64
The computer world (generally, not "the Time group" computer world) is Freaky (with a capitol F): Dell and HP apparently make "white box" computers in this article here, which kinda makes sense because "white box" sales count for 30% of the market - which is more than Dell and HP etc sell.

So what I was thinking, since Dell are rejecting AMD (sort-of breaking news, in a "we already knew that would happen" kind of way, because of Intels nastiness, and also because HP are rejecting AMD too), all AMD need to do to get 30% of the market, is to get all these white box manufacturers / builders using AMD chips...

I suppose the only problem with AMD only being able to get into white box pcs it that the new Athlon 64s which are what will make AMD the most profit are unlikely to be used in white box pcs...

PS - This place is selling 21" monitors (probably Sony Trinitron tubes) for �59!

Thursday, October 09, 2003

Acacia Media Technologies owns patents on media streaming technologies / Digital Media Transmission. Either way it seems that you're going to have to be careful of how you send data (composed of compressed audio or video - possibly encoded using an algorithm unlike mp3 or mpeg) from one computer to another (or several) over the internet using a communications protocol that may support loss of some data blocks.. which is then decompressed and displayed / stored / hearable at another computer. So anyone got any idea of which parts in any of that could be patentable?
Hope nobody minds, but I've made a simple text navigation for tom's boringworld site. http://82.42.131.178/boringworld/ this is the link. let me know what you think.

Also, so much for the wonder of email: I emailed some small (5k ish) files from my work email to my hotmail account, at around 5pm, then I left work at around the same time, I got home around 5.45pm and the email wasn't there! The email got to my hotmail account at 6.22pm! So I managed to get home quicker than it took for my email to travel through the internet.
Epson (680) black ink cartridges - cost: �19.99 for Whsmith's own brand in Whsmith, �28.99 for Epson brand in Whsmith, and �6.50 from mx2.org for a compatible one... Chuffin nora! Are Epson ripping people off or what?!?!!! GRRR It makes me sooo angry!! Especially since the computer world sell whole printers for �38 here and were selling them for �19.99!!!!

* Sony show off hybrid Playstation gaming system and entertainment system - it includes 160gb hd, dvd recorder, and TV tuner, as well as game system.
* napster relaunches with pay service.
* 4 die in a car crash in Liverpool city centre bbc news.
* win a years subscription to Custom PC at hexus.net
* Eolas want MS to stop distributing IE untill MS have removed the Eolas stuff.
* "Magnatune" have a clever idea for how to share / sell music on-line based on the shareware model, where you get to "try-before-you-buy".
* Seroxat the anti-depressant, is being blamed for causing voilence, suicide and self-harm and is being used as a defence for voilent crime.

* "Cool'n'Quiet is the new developed technology of AMD PowerNow!, embedded in the AMD Athlon�64 processor." read all about it "Cool'n'Quiet appears to be a modified version of AMD's PowerNow! technology that throttles the Athlon 64 3200+'s clock speed all the way down to 800MHz at idle. As processor loads increase, Cool'n'Quiet ramps the Athlon 64's clock speed back up to 2GHz in 200MHz increments. Apparently, Cool'n'Quiet also lowers the processor's core voltage as its clock speed drops.
When paired with a temperature-controlled processor fan, Cool'n'Quiet could significantly reduce noise levels for idling Athlon 64 systems. Of course, the feature relies on BIOS-level support from motherboard manufacturers."

* another article here about the "pentium-m" which will have 2mb L2 cache and is planned for release Jan-04.

Wednesday, October 08, 2003

Tuesday, October 07, 2003

None of the pubs or addresses mentioned in this article are based on any real places you may have seen in real life.
Bargain cheap second hand IBM laptops on ebay here, and here, get them while you can, or view all my auctions here. Fantastic.

Monday, October 06, 2003

Michael Moore wrote another book called "Dude, Where's my country?", and here's some stuff like an interview and some questions.. from the Guardian.
And in other weird news that might just about be related: Food in prisons is better than food in schools link. Dyslexics are more likely to be millionaires, (link) suggesting either a link to diet and success or a link to schools being generally worse for you than prizons.
Of course maybe millionaire dyslexics should keep slum dwellers and release all the tigers back into the wild where they can get on with eating children.
I guess everyone wants their cake without the fat or the worry of whether this burger may contain traces of big-cat.
pentium m will reach 2ghz, and "Specifically for mainstream notebooks Intel will release the Pentium M 1.70A processor with 2MB L2 cache and reduced pricing." source x-bit labs. if you want 'em www.ebuyer.com sell the pentium-m CPUs, 1.5ghz: �210 1.6ghz: �299 1.7ghz: �446 exc vat Update Intel is slashing prices for its mobile Pentium M processors. The Pentium M 1.7GHz dropped in price by 34%, the 1.6GHz chip by 31%, the 1.5GHz model by 18%, and the 1.4GHz flavor by 13%. Intel also cut the price of its Centrino bundles by up to 30%. news link.

this guy's used an epia 800 + 5/6 laptop hard drives for a RAID server thingy details here - he uses linux and the software raid thingy built in. v. clever :)
1 billion people live in slums! BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Slum growth 'shames the world' and more tigers are kept by private citizens in America than remain in the wild BBC News.
head and shoulders, vosene, t-gel, nizoral, shampoos don't seem to be able to cure my dandruff - but this guy here thinks that apple cider vinegar, as a natural antiseptic, will be able to cleanse and cure dandruff. so if i can find some, that's what i'll be trying next. if you find it useful you're meant to send him 1 dollar note (or the lowest note equivelent - which in the UK would be �5, which seems a bit steep to me...) :)

Sunday, October 05, 2003

added "spaceship" and "boulderdash" to games list :) - also have a gander at the "IPEA Project" I'm working on, I've got a cool blue switch linky here.

Saturday, October 04, 2003

the M:855 is apparently a 64bit Athlon laptop link here although I couldn't find it on that page. AMD beats Apple to release the first 64-bit laptop :)
How do you make Roobik's cube even more annoying than it already it? By making a web version of it here. remember this? nice and soothing.

Friday, October 03, 2003

Anyone want to buy a lovely looking 10GB Western Digital Hard Drive? - if so please let me know before it goes on ebay. well - here it is on ebay - who wants to vote on how much they think it will sell for? laptop available on ebay again due to non-payer...!
most british people are scared of computers good i'm glad they won't be reading this then.

* Psion offers sexy looking laptop, that runs Windows CE.net

* the register reports of a trojan virus [QHost] that runs in IE, patched (by ms) but not enough says mcafee. UPDATE: Microsoft have re-patched it so make sure you get your computer patched!

* Boldy googling into the future zdnet news reports "the future of search technology will see science fiction become science fact"
* Microsoft faces class action over virus crashes - "Microsoft Corp. faces a proposed class-action lawsuit in California based on the claim that its market-dominant software is vulnerable to viruses capable of triggering "massive, cascading failures" in global computer networks."
hard ocp [inq] report that Valve (makers of the upcoming Half Life 2) have been hacked and their source code stolen! Nasty stuff.

Evesham micro's are selling complete Athlon 64 3200 (2ghz) systems (15" TFT, 512mb, 120gb, XP Pro) for �999 (�1099 with 17" TFT) - or alternatively Xeon "workstations" for �2199! Personally - compared to the other 64-bit Personal computers from Apple at �1549 for 1.6ghz/256mb/80gb no screen, in the apple store, the Evesham Athlon 64 system is brilliant value for money. But no, the Evesham does not include a �100 "superdrive" (aka DVD writer) like the Apple...

Thursday, October 02, 2003


"The Matrix Revolutions is to be released at exactly the same time in cities across the world next month, according to reports. Industry newspaper Variety says this will mean a 6am start for fans in Los Angeles, 9am in New York, 2pm in London, 5pm in Moscow and 11pm in Tokyo on November 5." linky-poos

Ooooh... "The Matrix Revolutions will open in 65 countries and will debut in Imax cinemas in the US on the same day as standard cinemas."
* keyboard on ebay will all X keys pic here.
* how to tell the boss they are wrong
* in the latest macuser they conclude that the 1.8ghz G5 is quicker than a 1.6ghz G5 (and also quicker than a dual g4). today i phone up and cancel my subscription, as there are more benchmarks, tests, and pictures on the net than there are pictures in macuser. ps - if you do cancel your subscription, like me, make sure they take you off their mailing list that they sell (sorry "provide") to other companies...
* added bike trials to games list.

Wednesday, October 01, 2003

slashdot reader asks "How much do you rely on the Internet for information?"
Question: Are there any other news sites out there that update regularly during the day with interesting IT news from around the web? (and other interesting news as they see fit) It seems that at the moment, apart from theinq, google news, and bbc news, there aren't hardly any other sites out there that update quick enough...
Swen is a rather nasty virus that has infected over 1.5million computers apparently, and comes in as email pretending to be a patch from microsoft.

more bad internet related stuff spying software, and a sad story called Hack Attack about a disabled person who's computer has been hacked and has had his internet access effectively stopped due to the continued attacks on his computer, all because he rejected some spam...
*Petrol prices have gone up again, with some people protesting.
*postal workers are on strike in london about wages, one guy after working there 13 years is on just �15k ! The strike may last several days and the cost to royal mail is estimated at �10m !
* big grid planned to make use of computers around the world.