google zeitgeist still most popular os: 1st: win98 2nd: WinXP 3rd: win2000. IE6 most popular browser... etc.

Cpu / server / 64-bit type news AMD should have released the 2ghz Opteron CPUs but they haven't yet. Apple have bargain 64-bit workstations with good performance, AMD could be there too. And there's a look at the Top 500 Supercomputers with more and more systems built from standard desktop/workstation chips in PCs. [all links from theinquirer.net] I wonder why they don't just use Via Epia systems for servers like I do.

Lesbian couple from Merseyside buy sperm over the internet in order to have a baby.

scale up for trade justice today. I completely forgot about it. oops. and the speak website wasn't working, but it seems to work now see here for more info.

People want Microsoft to allow Linux to run on the Xbox without a modchip... and slashdot wonder whether it's possible to have a whole house wired up for mp3 playback using one computer...

Spoof cigarette warnings slammed
I wouldn't normally consider buying cigarettes, but where else can I stick these amusing stickers?? get them here

yay for b3ta and salt slug maze. very clever slug.

Microsoft blame a guy from Birkenhead, Merseyside for being one of the top 15 spammers they are trying to take legal action against.

NT4 support stopped, Win98 will be next.... Not that you guys probably didn't already know these things were gonna happen... lifecycle.

Cool games: domokin angry smash fest, spy hunter, rockface.

Geek alert ! Via stop producing P4 mother boards, to concentrate on thier mini form factor boards.

new google toolbar with built in pop-up blocker and image search. and something about blogging. but i haven't tried it yet. ars technica is quite spiffy too, with a good balance of news stuff that's actually interesting. and microsoft.com have sort-of* release service pack 4 for windows 2000 which you can get here [129mb]. *when going through microsoft.com and looking at service packs it doesn't seem to be listed yet... apparently there's 669 fixes in it! That's pretty good value for money eh?

While I'm on the subject, why does Apple UK charge more for Apple's than Apple US? Here's a table showing the current prices: Note the difference, ranging from �171 extra, up to �504 extra! Just for Apple to get the Macs to the UK so that we can buy them!!

apple	US store price ($)	UK � (conversion)	UK store price (�)	difference
g5 1.6	1999	1197	1549	352
g5 1.8	2399	1436	1849	413
g5 2x2	2999	1795	2299	504
ibook 12.1 800 g3 cd	999	598	799	201
ibook 12.1 900 g3 combo	1299	777	1049	272
ibook 14.1 900g3 combo	1499	897	1199	302
eMac 800 G4 cd	799	478	649	171
eMac 1000 G4 combo	999	598	799	201
eMac 1000 G4 super	1299	777	999	222
iMac 15" 800 G4 combo	1299	777	999	222
iMac 17" 1000 G4 super	1799	1076	1449	373
G4 1250 combo	1299	777	999	222
g4 2x1250 combo	1599	957	1239	282

Vaguely interesting artile, it's called "No wonder people don't buy Apple Macs" the inq.

Personally I think it all comes down to price. Simple as that. In every situation of life, when someone makes the descision "I need to buy a new computer", whether in business, home, education etc, they think, well "what do I want it to do? - just the basics, internet, office stuff, maybe some games..." and then before they actually go to buy a computer they think "how much money do I have?" and already the Mac is out of the question... this guy sells some interesting products (all of which are cheaper than the cheapest Mac)... this guy also thinks Apple should lower prices of their low-end macs details here. especially considering they still sell G3 based machines (the ibook).

www.joshwaller.tk new domain. feel free to visit it. it might even work with that name and then your folder / file(s) etc. [edit - no it turns out you can't, and you have to use the "real" address of the server] also have you noticed this blog things been converted to the new blogger?

IK+ one of the best games ever. C64 version. The VICE emulator seems to work.

"Greg Joswiak, vice president of hardware product marketing at Apple, in a phone interview today, defended Apple's performance claims for its upcoming Power Mac G5"

"Linare plans to sell a $199 no-monitor model with 1GHz VIA CPU, 128MB RAM, 20GB HDD, KDE, OpenOffice. An extra $50 would get the user upgraded to a 2GHz Athlon"

Apple Spec Int and FP numbers. here. AMD Opteron Spec Int and FP numbers. 2CPUs Int, 2CPUs FP (I won't bother comparing 4 CPUs against 2 Apple CPUs, even though Apple seem quite happy to compare 2 G5s to 1 P4). Also if you look at the figures for the 2x Xeon 2.8ghz: Int 19.6 FP 14.7 on AMDs site vs Apples Site 2x Xeon 3.06ghz: Int 16.7 FP 11.1 you wonder why Apple are "flavouring" the benchmark results.

AMD Dual Opteron 244 Int : 26.8 FP : 26.7 vs (note Opteron is running at 1.8Ghz)
Apple Dual 2Ghz G5 Int : 17.2 FP : 15.7 vs
Intel Dual Xeon 2.8ghz Int : 19.6 FP : 14.7 (from AMDs site)
Intel Dual Xeon 3.06ghz Int : 16.7 FP : 11.1 (from Apples site)

If you can be bothered, you can confirm the AMD, and presumably Intel, results at spec.org/cpu2000. and while i'm at it: some people wonder when Linux will have more market share than Apple....?

Other sites that question the Spec scores : apple guy [slashdot waffle], AMD Zone [the inq.]. and some more comment about the performance of the G5 from a mac person. if you're not completely bored by it all yet, then there's a fairly good post here about it. and some semi-amusing pics here.

New Apple G5: some thoughts. graphics dual 2ghz G5 faster than a single P4 3ghz. (not a very fair test) in Quake 3 !!! (tee hee. it's a bit of an outdated test - i mean great if you like playing a 4 year old game all the time, but a mac that probably costs twice as much as a PC). expansion am i reading this right? you can only have 2 hard drives in there? 500gb, so that's 2 x 250gb hard drives, you could easily buy 4 or more 250gb hard drives for a PC and easily have 1Terabyte of HD space, (probably for less than the mac). performance this is quite impressive though, even the single 1.6ghz G5 is faster than the P4 in specific things. (what you do have to note is they're showing you things where the Mac wins, and they aren't going to show you were it doesn't win...)

unfortunately they still want too much money [G5 1.6 $1999 �1549 / G5 1.8 $2399 �1849 / Dual G5 2.0ghz $2999 �2299] and at the moment the store is still selling a Dual G4 1.25ghz machine for $3274!! (more than a dual G5 2.0ghz machine!) - If you watch the keynote, Steve says about how they're the only one's in the industry who do handles on the computers, well quite a lot of pcs are significantly smaller [dell from �409*] than the mac, so you don't need handles, because you can just carry it with one hand... *you can probably fit 4 of these in the space the new G5 would take up... note how they don't compare their G5 to the dual or quad AMD Opteron 64bit systems that are already out? (perhaps servers aren't personal computers though... but then there is the Sun Ultrasparc I - 64 bit. Introduced: 1995 - they don't mention that when they proclaim on www.apple.com that their G5 is the first ever 64bit Desktop Personal Computer...)

Atari make Ikaruga for the gamecube "a pixel-perfect adaptation of an original arcade game, which appeared on the Dreamcast more than a year ago" screenshots here... <sarcasm>proving that they're hip to the latest trends in game styles.</sarcasm>
"Daddy? - What's a Dreamcast??"

Live coverage of the Apple WWDC Keynote speech where Steve Jobs says things like "FreeBSD 5.0 and IPv6 will be in Panther!" and "8 weeks ago, iTunes Music Store. 5 million songs sold" you should be able to watch the video here sometime after 8pm uk time.

only 2% of people care about looks over price/performance so apple will never gain market share in the long run..

some people on the internet think the web guy got fired for leaking those apple pics. and that's why there's a web job going at apple. seems a bit mean. is this the new mac case? (people think it's a fake and that instead it will be a honeycomb grill). Also the 3.2Ghz P4 is out, with Inquirer thinking it will be the last one before the Intel P5. [which is just a 32-bit son of P4 chip, that has more legroom / scalability "Q3/Q4, based on its architecture but capable of higher frequencies"]

Apple accidentally release details of the new 64 bit machines avaliable on monday - dual 2.0ghz..
"the Power Mac G4's listed specs as including "1.6 GHz, 1.8 GHz, or Dual 2 GHz PowerPC G5 Processors; up to 1 GHz processor bus; up to 8 GB of DDR SDRAM; Fast Serial ATA hard drives; AGP 8x Pro; three PCI or PCI-X expansion slots; three USB 2.0 ports; one FW800, two FW400 ports; Bluetooth & AirPort Extreme ready; optical and analog audio in and out."
"apple's new low-end professional desktop Mac will pack a 1.6 GHz PowerPC 970-- which, according to just about everything we've managed to read about the chip without falling into a deep, deep slumber, may well blow the doors off the dual 1.42 GHz G4s currently perched in Apple's top spot."
"the top of the line looks to house dual 2.0 GHz 970s, which, in addition to absolutely crushing any prior Mac performance-wise, might very well give the zippiest Wintel desktops a run for their money. What's Intel up to now, in terms of clock speed? 3 GHz? So even if we completely ignore the Megahertz Myth (like, you know, pretty much everyone else does), Apple's actually going to ship a processor that's two-thirds the clock speed of Intel's fastest. When was the last time that happened? And the fact that there are two of them in there, well, let's do some Joe Shmoe Math, shall we? Lessee, 2 + 2 = 4, and 4 = 3 + 1, so... Apple's top system must be "one faster" than the Wintel! The company's success in the marketplace is assured!"

apple's go faster soon. 2.5ghz by 2004, 4-5ghz by 2005... I wonder what speeds Intel and AMD are expecting to be at by those times? they accidentally posted the specs on the web. and here's where it says wahey, back to the days when apple claim to have the world's fastest computers...

it's friday again, which means my inbox is treated to the wonder that is the b3ta newsletter here's some funnys: man vs shed, bendy legman. er that's about it.

Lib Dems beat BNP in Burnley by 11 votes.

linux not ready for business more details in this opinion article. here's a quote:

"However, Linux is in many ways a throwback to more primitive systems. Not only is it repeating the mistakes of its predecessors, it apparently is introducing a brand new set of problems, having to do with intellectual property."

hire electric cars in leeds for �1 per hour. sweet.

also memory management in mac os 9 and below is pants too. more here.

usb 1.1 renamed to usb 2.0 on some computers, just for the sake of it. more details here goes to show what a messed up marketing mess some of the computer marketing world is. why don't they just start calling 256mb ram sticks, 512mb ram sticks and get windows to tell you, you have twice as much memory... etc.

multitasking on mac os 9 and lower is a bit poor. anyone know how this compares to windows 9x ?

psycho politician wants to destroy computers..
A US senator wants to develop new technology which would remotely destroy the computers of people who illegally download music tracks. Hackers have wanted to do the same thing to US senators (computers) for years, but haven't yet succeeded.

and Microsoft sue spammers Microsoft said on Tuesday it had filed lawsuits against 15 alleged spammers, accusing them of clogging its computers and those of its customers with more than two billion unsolicited e-mail messages. [what i reallly reallly don't understand is why they can't pay some real programmers to just block stuff coming from these 15 spammers]

and finally Slammed! An inside view of the worm that crashed the Internet in 15 minutes.
- basically a piece of ms software was reprogrammed by a virus to send out lots of packets of UDP (ie; another kind of data to tcpip) **** to other MS sql servers and (because of the amount of data,) swamped the internet. If you know assembly you can learn from the 376 bytes that took over the world. And all because c strings end with a 0. doh!

win a celeron (4) 2.4Ghz cpu here 10 to be won, you can enter once every day. and apple decide to stop that "ibox" apple cloner way to go apple. (the big meanies)

google dance. find your search positions on all 9 google servers.

mushy peas close A1 give peas a chance. another funny

lovely mp3s from all those classic games on the atari st and amiga. over here once again shows that atari ST games players were let down with poor quality sound when compared to the amiga.... whilst we're on the subject of all in one pcs (such as the amiga and st) there's people trying to sell em again zerofootprintpc - funny that, I always remember people complaining about the all in one case of the atari falcon...

Pants window smasher detained
That bloke who went around in black underpants smashing windows with a shovel (I'd call it a spade) will be kept in a psychiatric hospital.

does anyone know of any free HTML web page / site making programs? or worded differently "Know any good free software to create web pages?" obviously, Frontpage, Dreamweaver etc aren't free...

woo. psychodelic desktop wallpaper, and screensaver. lovely jubbly. (set to 16bit colour screen and turn off activ desktop)

"I paid a premium for Apple equipment, because of the quality of equipment, lifespan, and service I used to get. Now I have lower quality and lower service, at a higher price." full details and has no support because he didn't buy "AppleCare" - sounds like worse treatment from Apple, than you would get with Time, at least with Time you pay a low initial cost for the PC, and then pay some money for extended "care" (eg �200 for 3yrs support) - with Apple you pay a rediculous amount for the Mac (probably twice as much for the Mac, than a Time PC would cost - eg - cheapest mac - �649.00 for an eMac - 800MHz PowerPC G4, 128MB SDRAM,40GB Ultra ATA drive,CD-ROM drive,ATI Radeon 7500,32MB DDR video memory,56K internal modem is a joke!) and then �139 for 3 years support. Sounds even worse than Dell, who the majority of the time include 3yr support as standard, and if they don't, they only want an extra �129 for 3 years support. The chap, who is also responsible for the mikado website ends the article with "Everything I do can be done on a PC, faster and cheaper."

PCs. You may have a 3000Mhz CPU, and an 800Mhz FSB, and 1GB of ram, and the fastest graphics card money can buy, but your hard drive is still slowing everything down, which is why I think it's important to spend as much money as possible on a fast IDE hard drive with 8mb cache, and 7,200rpm. (or maybe think about SATA, or SCSI) more about performance here. some of the other stuff on that site's quite good too.

"Three years ago, it had to pay US$90,000 because 8 percent of its Microsoft software was "noncompliant," or pirated. Microsoft subsequently ran a press release and an ad campaign around Ernie Ball's infringement. Infuriated by how the company was treated, Ernie Ball executives decided to clean house." they are moving to Linux, but is linux going to stay free forever? especially considering all [sco vs. everyone] the lawsuits [open group vs. apple] and issues [gpl vs. sco] going on.

some apple news slashdot, and the reg, "Microsoft will not create a new version of Internet Explorer for Macs in a move that leaves Apple users in an uncomfortable spot." apparently..

fun game. much fun to be had.

why are apple still around?
Someone else that expects apple to die and is surprised that they haven't.

colin mcrae rally 3 is out for the PC today! and play.com have it for �17.99 (rrp �35!, you save �22) details here. you can download the pc demo of colin mcrae rally 3 from codemasters site. the ability to smash up your car lots has improved...

you can get colin mcrae rally 1 and 2 for �4.99 each from play.com as well.

wow! some people build some mini-itx stuff into robots to play football : check it out here!

how safe is linux. someone asks in this article here. who knows? not me, as i haven't read the article yet. and i've put my epia 800 webserver into an apple 4400/200 case. you can see the bad pictures of that here, on my site jillajang. hopefully i'll get some better pictures up this weekend.

biscuit buff famous for his website

more stupidity here at slashdot money for people who port mozilla to the amiga.

Suicide chicken terrorrises Christchurch - stop pressing enter so much!

horse and donkey in salami here poor donkeys!

smoking endangers your life in burnley - stop pressing enter so much.

Did you see how damaged this plane was.. cyprus to manchester flight .. just an ordinary little flight. - stop pressing enter after every post matt!

Tea Review. ilovetea.blogspot.com. go there now. if you've had an invite, make sure you join. can you let me know aenon's email address then i can invite him too :)

useful tools : http://network-tools.com/ and http://www.infosyssec.com/infosyssec/ipsectools.htm lots of stuff. the b3ta newsletter is out, and it's got a spectrum thing. here.

lovely jubbly, keyboard and mice. and apparently the apple ergo keyboard were right good. the Apple dude, won a design award. more details he designed the original iMac, iPod, iBook etc. ps. i hate smooth scrolling in internet explorer (you can turn it off by going to tools, internet options, un-select "use smooth scrolling")

watched james bond. die another day. last night, was rather good. he kepts saying, my names james bond, or bond, but he never said "the name's bond, james bond", like he used to do. lots of action, exciting fast high speed car chases, on ice! that was cool. ignore the scientific, yeah right as if that would happen factor, and you'll enjoy it. interesting twist at one point to. lovely jubbly.

chicken farming there's innovation there. lovely story.

PCs... where's the innovation? okay, you get new processors, they go faster, you get new OS, it looks better, is more "secure", and more "stable", but does it mean HP Printer drivers work 100% of the time? no. can you buy a load of pcs, plug them in to a network, switch on and watch them configure themselves for the network, for email for the user in front of them, and automatically setup the nearest network printer for the user? no. can you buy a new 30ppm colour printer plug it into the network, and all local pcs automatically configure themselves to use it? no. does a PC automatically contact it's manufacturer, eg Dell, when the hard drive is faulty to get Dell to come out and replace the hard drive? no. load of crap, there is no innovation in the PC sector at all.

the internet. it's a bit boring. same old stuff everywhere. nothing new to be honest. you get fresh "funny" animations / videos. you get stories about technology, and reviews of hardware. you get chat on message boards and forums. repeat week after week. maybe television is better? what do you think?

electrolux. the world's first robot-vacuum cleaner! http://www.electrolux.com/

and modern day (uk) gamer documentary : more here - 75mb divx download. 9 and a half minutes long. i personally found it quite interesting.

ya know what. this internet malarky's not free anymore. they're shut down my www.josh.org.uk website! and they want MONEY to re-activate it! my ass!

well, i've setup smoothwall, which means my internal network (and the webserver) in the green zone, is infintely more secure, as it's a firewall as well as a router... but the only problem is that i can't figure out how to grant access to the webserver. anyway, here's a diagram of the network.