News Archive

  • This is a little bit of a rant, BUT… I believe everyone is aware that copying a DVD or a Blu-Ray disc is incorrect; it’s against the law… I rented me a DVD the other night, Underworld – Awakening, and I noticed that it had this new warning on it. Thank goodness for the Internet so that you can go online and research this new ‘information’. It’s almost to the point I really miss the days of VHS; at least with VHS you could fast-forward tape, jump past the crap and watch the movie that you paid for, but with DVDs and Blu-ray it’s a little harder… Over the years, the movie companies have been taking away people’s DVD players abilities to skip past the movie trailers, special notices and various other things.  From the earliest VHS movie, I can recall seeing the legal warnings about copying the movie— I think everyone has, but now the US government has added another set of notices that can be skipped over; each one being 10 seconds.

    They continue to muck with entertainment – and pirates still don’t care…

    Posted on May 9, 2012 | 2 Comments
    This is a little bit of a rant, BUT… I believe everyone is aware that copying a DVD or a Blu-Ray disc is incorrect; it’s against the law… I rented me a DVD the other night, Underworld – Awakening, and I noticed that it had this new warning on it. Thank goodness for the Internet so that you can go online and research this new ‘information’. It’s almost to the point I really miss the days of VHS; at least with VHS you could fast-forward tape, jump past the crap and watch the movie that you paid for, but with DVDs and Blu-ray it’s a little harder… Over the years, the movie companies have been taking away people’s DVD players abilities to skip past the movie trailers, special notices and various other things.  From the earliest VHS movie, I can recall seeing the legal warnings about copying the movie— I think everyone has, but now the US government has added another set of notices that can be skipped over; each one being 10 seconds.

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  • It’s not bad enough that citizens of the Internet have to deal with new technology, new standards and new fires dodge everyday; but it seems lately the archenemy of the Internet is going to be censorship. Governments seem to think that the Internet has been unregulated for too long and it’s time that the dimwitted mines of the world, but have no idea how the Internet works, need to put restrictions on what the Internet can and can’t do. Everyone was aware that the US House of Representatives was scheduled to vote on CISPA (Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act) this week [Friday / 4/27/2012], but because of other bills that were strongly opposed, such as SOPA/PIPA and ACTA, the U.S. Congress decided to sneak in a few additional amendments and then pass the bill in haste. It’s pretty obvious that Congress was trying to avoid the cyber backlash of Internet citizens that believe snooping/censorship of the Internet, of any kind, should not be permitted.

    US Congress Votes Early on CISPA to avoid Cyber-Backlash

    Posted on April 27, 2012 | No Comments
    It’s not bad enough that citizens of the Internet have to deal with new technology, new standards and new fires dodge everyday; but it seems lately the archenemy of the Internet is going to be censorship. Governments seem to think that the Internet has been unregulated for too long and it’s time that the dimwitted mines of the world, but have no idea how the Internet works, need to put restrictions on what the Internet can and can’t do. Everyone was aware that the US House of Representatives was scheduled to vote on CISPA (Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act) this week [Friday / 4/27/2012], but because of other bills that were strongly opposed, such as SOPA/PIPA and ACTA, the U.S. Congress decided to sneak in a few additional amendments and then pass the bill in haste. It’s pretty obvious that Congress was trying to avoid the cyber backlash of Internet citizens that believe snooping/censorship of the Internet, of any kind, should not be permitted.

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  • Over the past couple days there’s been a lot of traffic and a lot of articles written about the Apple Mac being attacked by a backdoor Trojan. At last count, it was indicated that roughly 600 to 700,000 Mac users were infected with the virus. since early April, the reports of the viruses have been coming in and for Mac users I’m sure the idea is very troubling, because Apple has always had a loyal group of users who account the operating system as the most secure, and most Mac users don’t even use antivirus or malware software because of this… Those same users are now scrambling to find software that can protect their system. They’re now finding that their systems are not impenetrable; there’s flaws in the operating system that can be exploited. What’s funny is the response from Apple in regards to the Mac’s being infected by malware and viruses; there’s not one.

    Apple MAC users learn that they’re not untouchable…

    Posted on April 20, 2012 | 2 Comments
    Over the past couple days there’s been a lot of traffic and a lot of articles written about the Apple Mac being attacked by a backdoor Trojan. At last count, it was indicated that roughly 600 to 700,000 Mac users were infected with the virus. since early April, the reports of the viruses have been coming in and for Mac users I’m sure the idea is very troubling, because Apple has always had a loyal group of users who account the operating system as the most secure, and most Mac users don’t even use antivirus or malware software because of this… Those same users are now scrambling to find software that can protect their system. They’re now finding that their systems are not impenetrable; there’s flaws in the operating system that can be exploited. What’s funny is the response from Apple in regards to the Mac’s being infected by malware and viruses; there’s not one.

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  • The Windows 8 Consumer Preview has given all of us a much clearer picture of what Microsoft has in store for its next-generation operating system. This time around, it truly is “next-generation;” in fact, it’s the biggest change since DOS grew a GUI. Already, the spectrum of responses have ranged from gushing love to seething hatred — with plenty of room for gray-area confusion in the middle. Let’s take a quick look at five of the biggest reasons why Windows 8 is (or will be) a success, followed by another five indications that Redmond has made a terrible mistake. And keep in mind we’ve still got at least half a year before the finished product.

    The Best and Worst of Windows 8 Consumer Preview

    Posted on March 12, 2012 | No Comments
    The Windows 8 Consumer Preview has given all of us a much clearer picture of what Microsoft has in store for its next-generation operating system. This time around, it truly is “next-generation;” in fact, it’s the biggest change since DOS grew a GUI. Already, the spectrum of responses have ranged from gushing love to seething hatred — with plenty of room for gray-area confusion in the middle. Let’s take a quick look at five of the biggest reasons why Windows 8 is (or will be) a success, followed by another five indications that Redmond has made a terrible mistake. And keep in mind we’ve still got at least half a year before the finished product.

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  • I was reading an article from the Wall Street Journal and I just had to stop… It infuriates me to read these articles… The Internet is so powerful a tool for knowledge and business and innovation; and changing so much everyday because of the openness of it; sharing ideas and information— it’s awesome, but then you have this crap… People with ACTA, PIPA, SOPA and now countries want to start controlling the Internet even further… Why in the hell would I’d like to give a country like Iran or China the right to control the Internet internally. Iran trains their kids to not play ‘Life’, but to play death with real bombs. And China thinks that you can only think what they want you to think. What these same audience of people don’t like is that people are learning and living vicariously via the Internet. The governments of the world can’t keep their people in the dark ages anymore; people are learning there’s more out there than what their governments tell them to think.

    Rant: It’s all about who wants to control the Internet

    Posted on February 21, 2012 | No Comments
    I was reading an article from the Wall Street Journal and I just had to stop… It infuriates me to read these articles… The Internet is so powerful a tool for knowledge and business and innovation; and changing so much everyday because of the openness of it; sharing ideas and information— it’s awesome, but then you have this crap… People with ACTA, PIPA, SOPA and now countries want to start controlling the Internet even further… Why in the hell would I’d like to give a country like Iran or China the right to control the Internet internally. Iran trains their kids to not play ‘Life’, but to play death with real bombs. And China thinks that you can only think what they want you to think. What these same audience of people don’t like is that people are learning and living vicariously via the Internet. The governments of the world can’t keep their people in the dark ages anymore; people are learning there’s more out there than what their governments tell them to think.

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  • Back in June of last year, I was discussing the point that video chat protocols were a mess and that there needs to be a standard. Anyone with video chat should be able to go from [say] Skype to a Google+ hangout, or use WebEx. And to reiterate: ‘…The way I see it, there’s nothing wrong with Comcast, Skype, Google or Apple coming out their versions of video chat protocols; ones that work better for their phones, their customers or do things the way they want to do them— it’s ok, really. But as long as you can fall back on the standard protocol for a video call, that’s fine.’ So, now we have this new article from the BBC… …”Cisco does not oppose the merger, but believes the European Commission should have placed conditions that would ensure greater standards-based interoperability,” Cisco’s video conferencing head Martin De Beer wrote in a blog post.’ Were they reading my posts; reading my mind, or are they starting to see the light?

    No doubt: Video Chat standards are finally being discussed

    Posted on February 15, 2012 | No Comments
    Back in June of last year, I was discussing the point that video chat protocols were a mess and that there needs to be a standard. Anyone with video chat should be able to go from [say] Skype to a Google+ hangout, or use WebEx. And to reiterate: ‘…The way I see it, there’s nothing wrong with Comcast, Skype, Google or Apple coming out their versions of video chat protocols; ones that work better for their phones, their customers or do things the way they want to do them— it’s ok, really. But as long as you can fall back on the standard protocol for a video call, that’s fine.’ So, now we have this new article from the BBC… …”Cisco does not oppose the merger, but believes the European Commission should have placed conditions that would ensure greater standards-based interoperability,” Cisco’s video conferencing head Martin De Beer wrote in a blog post.’ Were they reading my posts; reading my mind, or are they starting to see the light?

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  • Writing for a blog and running a blog site like mine can be fun sometimes, on a sarcastic note, because of the things you deal with and the obstacles you try to navigate to keep your material fresh, perspective true and to provide as much accurate information you can. I don’t see who, or how, any journalist could be asked of any less. In these days of the Internet and being able to publish anything, anytime and with such rich media options; more than any traditional newspaper could dream of, there’s arguments that bloggers aren’t reports/journalists and they don’t deserve the right and honorary title of writer, or journalist; I call that utter baseless tripe. People are people; they have opinions and information to share. Having someone come from outside and to arbitrarily say they’re not worthy of being, is a joke. The real problem is that with rich media outlets like Twitter and Facebook and with information coming in via unfiltered venues like the ole’ traditional news did; now there’s a greater opportunity to bite the raw nerve of a story; to really piss someone off without filters.

    Blogger vs. Journalism: Is either less valid?

    Posted on February 10, 2012 | 1 Comment
    Writing for a blog and running a blog site like mine can be fun sometimes, on a sarcastic note, because of the things you deal with and the obstacles you try to navigate to keep your material fresh, perspective true and to provide as much accurate information you can. I don’t see who, or how, any journalist could be asked of any less. In these days of the Internet and being able to publish anything, anytime and with such rich media options; more than any traditional newspaper could dream of, there’s arguments that bloggers aren’t reports/journalists and they don’t deserve the right and honorary title of writer, or journalist; I call that utter baseless tripe. People are people; they have opinions and information to share. Having someone come from outside and to arbitrarily say they’re not worthy of being, is a joke. The real problem is that with rich media outlets like Twitter and Facebook and with information coming in via unfiltered venues like the ole’ traditional news did; now there’s a greater opportunity to bite the raw nerve of a story; to really piss someone off without filters.

    Continue Reading...

  • About a month ago, I was checking my stats for my website through Google Analytics and everything had been going just fine over the past couple of months, but one day my site visitors and pageviews took a dive, like a 60% dive in visitors. I realize that from day to day things can change on the Internet, so I didn’t think too much about it on the first couple of days; I wanted to wait to see if things were going bounce. Well, they didn’t matter of fact it seemed like it was just getting worse. And getting traffic to your site is the life blood of the site; it’s what keeps my site alive, it allows me to offer my services, keep my hosting and pay for products to review. Having traffic drop-off like that— you need to be watching it; and I was… So, I got to investigating, Google searching, checking things on my site, like performance and posts and ad placements; all kind of things. Well, after about two weeks of really nothing I went back to my analytics, did some comparisons and found that Google seems to be the one with not giving me my...

    Is Google being hypocritical with their services?

    Posted on February 8, 2012 | 3 Comments
    About a month ago, I was checking my stats for my website through Google Analytics and everything had been going just fine over the past couple of months, but one day my site visitors and pageviews took a dive, like a 60% dive in visitors. I realize that from day to day things can change on the Internet, so I didn’t think too much about it on the first couple of days; I wanted to wait to see if things were going bounce. Well, they didn’t matter of fact it seemed like it was just getting worse. And getting traffic to your site is the life blood of the site; it’s what keeps my site alive, it allows me to offer my services, keep my hosting and pay for products to review. Having traffic drop-off like that— you need to be watching it; and I was… So, I got to investigating, Google searching, checking things on my site, like performance and posts and ad placements; all kind of things. Well, after about two weeks of really nothing I went back to my analytics, did some comparisons and found that Google seems to be the one with not giving me my...

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  • The shutdown of MegaUpload has really stirred up a lot of controversy, and for all practical purposes it looks like the FBI and the United States government is using the shutdown of MegaUpload as a training course on how not to shut down websites that have copyrighted material on them while preserving the legal content of the other customers. Just taking a second to remind everyone that their are customers of MegaUpload that were legitimately using the service when the FBI came in and shut down the website. Now it seems the hosting [Capathia and Cogent] companies for MegaUpload is teaming up with the Electronic Frontier Foundation [EFF] to try to help those legitimate customers get their data back; something the FBI has no interest in doing. The takedown and prosecution of the owner operators of MegaUpload was their only concern. The hosting service and EFF are planning to get together to identify the files that are being hosted on MegaUpload legally— hopefully getting those files back the respective customers.

    MegaUpload: Crash course in how not to shutdown a website

    Posted on February 1, 2012 | No Comments
    The shutdown of MegaUpload has really stirred up a lot of controversy, and for all practical purposes it looks like the FBI and the United States government is using the shutdown of MegaUpload as a training course on how not to shut down websites that have copyrighted material on them while preserving the legal content of the other customers. Just taking a second to remind everyone that their are customers of MegaUpload that were legitimately using the service when the FBI came in and shut down the website. Now it seems the hosting [Capathia and Cogent] companies for MegaUpload is teaming up with the Electronic Frontier Foundation [EFF] to try to help those legitimate customers get their data back; something the FBI has no interest in doing. The takedown and prosecution of the owner operators of MegaUpload was their only concern. The hosting service and EFF are planning to get together to identify the files that are being hosted on MegaUpload legally— hopefully getting those files back the respective customers.

    Continue Reading...

  • One of the beautiful things about the Internet is the ability to exchange information freely with many other people on the planet without fear of having that information silenced. when legislation was proposed for censoring the Internet with SOPA and PIPA, the Internet rose up in protest to say that giving power to censor the Internet was not what the public wants. Immediately after SOPA and PIPA were shelved, the next round of attempted Internet censorship turned the corner, it’s called ACTA—  it’s not a law; it’s a treaty. It seems to me that the Internet itself is under fire. Individuals, corporations and entities who have failed business models, and can’t keep up with the trends in technology cry foul because technology is moving much faster than anything that they can implement to serve their customer base. It’s not been enough to China has established their own firewall for blocking outside sources of information. It’s not enough that Iran is going to create their own internal domestic Internet, blocking out the rest of the world, and only living in information they deem relevant to their way of life. SOPA and PIPA was going to give corporations and other entities the...

    ACTA, SOPA and PIPA: Threats to the Internet way

    Posted on January 31, 2012 | 4 Comments
    One of the beautiful things about the Internet is the ability to exchange information freely with many other people on the planet without fear of having that information silenced. when legislation was proposed for censoring the Internet with SOPA and PIPA, the Internet rose up in protest to say that giving power to censor the Internet was not what the public wants. Immediately after SOPA and PIPA were shelved, the next round of attempted Internet censorship turned the corner, it’s called ACTA—  it’s not a law; it’s a treaty. It seems to me that the Internet itself is under fire. Individuals, corporations and entities who have failed business models, and can’t keep up with the trends in technology cry foul because technology is moving much faster than anything that they can implement to serve their customer base. It’s not been enough to China has established their own firewall for blocking outside sources of information. It’s not enough that Iran is going to create their own internal domestic Internet, blocking out the rest of the world, and only living in information they deem relevant to their way of life. SOPA and PIPA was going to give corporations and other entities the...

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  • This week has been quite a ride for Google. The reputation for Google has been under fire all this week; both for good reasons and bad reasons. The motto of Google has been historically ‘Don’t be evil‘ and a lot of people on the Internet seem to think that Google is kind of stepping out of bounds of those rules, but at the same time the developers/engineers for Google want to continue to do good… it’s like a Yin and Yang of technology. The antitrust investigations are pending, the users are upset over the new privacy rules, the government is going to probe in to how Google’s changes with the privacy rules and in the meantime, Google is working on making the web faster with the SPDY protocol & nick names for Google+. I have received e-mail after e-mail from Google telling me about the new privacy policy and having them tell me in words and videos how the new policy changes are better for me and better for them to consolidate the user policies to one; not only that but it’ll help me find what I’m searching for I’m searching for exotic animals vs. cars.

    Google: The new two headed monster

    Posted on January 27, 2012 | No Comments
    This week has been quite a ride for Google. The reputation for Google has been under fire all this week; both for good reasons and bad reasons. The motto of Google has been historically ‘Don’t be evil‘ and a lot of people on the Internet seem to think that Google is kind of stepping out of bounds of those rules, but at the same time the developers/engineers for Google want to continue to do good… it’s like a Yin and Yang of technology. The antitrust investigations are pending, the users are upset over the new privacy rules, the government is going to probe in to how Google’s changes with the privacy rules and in the meantime, Google is working on making the web faster with the SPDY protocol & nick names for Google+. I have received e-mail after e-mail from Google telling me about the new privacy policy and having them tell me in words and videos how the new policy changes are better for me and better for them to consolidate the user policies to one; not only that but it’ll help me find what I’m searching for I’m searching for exotic animals vs. cars.

    Continue Reading...

  • Today, Nuance has some news that may get some people excited. Nuance has released a complementary application for the iPad. The new option combines the power of Dragon NaturallySpeaking and PaperPort. With the new application, PaperPort users will be able to create/dictate notes and store them in the PaperPort using cloud storage. PaperPort is already one of the most popular applications for trying to organize your digital library of documents. The application that they’ve released is for the Apple iPad, users are able to capture handwritten, typed and dictated notes. The application also supports saving documents to other cloud services, such as Google docs, box.net, Dropbox and PaperPort Anywhere. In addition to users being able to create notes with the new application, it also have some of the traditional functions of PaperPort such as annotation, highlighting documents and the ability to combine mobile documents all via the web. The application also takes advantage of a growing trend that seems to be coming around in imaging industry; using cameras as document imaging devices. This application allows the users to take pictures using the built-in digital camera in the iPad, and it saves the document as a PDF [an industry-standard].  

    PaperPort Notes: Nuance offers free application to iPad users

    Posted on January 25, 2012 | 1 Comment
    Today, Nuance has some news that may get some people excited. Nuance has released a complementary application for the iPad. The new option combines the power of Dragon NaturallySpeaking and PaperPort. With the new application, PaperPort users will be able to create/dictate notes and store them in the PaperPort using cloud storage. PaperPort is already one of the most popular applications for trying to organize your digital library of documents. The application that they’ve released is for the Apple iPad, users are able to capture handwritten, typed and dictated notes. The application also supports saving documents to other cloud services, such as Google docs, box.net, Dropbox and PaperPort Anywhere. In addition to users being able to create notes with the new application, it also have some of the traditional functions of PaperPort such as annotation, highlighting documents and the ability to combine mobile documents all via the web. The application also takes advantage of a growing trend that seems to be coming around in imaging industry; using cameras as document imaging devices. This application allows the users to take pictures using the built-in digital camera in the iPad, and it saves the document as a PDF [an industry-standard].  

    Continue Reading...

  • Cloud storage is something that a lot of companies are trying to get into and there’s plenty of benefit to support the fact that ‘cloud’ storage is beneficial; it’s one of the biggest things that Windows 8 is going to be bringing to the next iteration of the operating system. But if you’re watching the news last week you may have noticed a story about MegaUpload. MegaUpload is a file hosting service that used to host pretty much any type of file online for their users/customers. The quick summary of the story is that MegaUpload was known for storing and hosting a lot of copyrighted material, and the company says that they had policies against hosting copyrighted material or pirated software.

    MegaUpload brings the consequence of ‘cloud’ storage home… again.

    Posted on January 23, 2012 | 1 Comment
    Cloud storage is something that a lot of companies are trying to get into and there’s plenty of benefit to support the fact that ‘cloud’ storage is beneficial; it’s one of the biggest things that Windows 8 is going to be bringing to the next iteration of the operating system. But if you’re watching the news last week you may have noticed a story about MegaUpload. MegaUpload is a file hosting service that used to host pretty much any type of file online for their users/customers. The quick summary of the story is that MegaUpload was known for storing and hosting a lot of copyrighted material, and the company says that they had policies against hosting copyrighted material or pirated software.

    Continue Reading...

  • This is a kind of a new thing for me, it’s a first; and I will TRY to start doing more of these types of posts [I really wil]. I get to see a lot of tech news during the week. As a blogger, you can’t pick everything to write about, but some things will spark a post, but I thought I would start sharing some of the interesting stories of the week for an end of the week review. This past week was a lot about SOPA, politics, ingorance, the power of the Internet and new waves of technologies. It was interesting to see how things played out this week. It started out with a rage against the stupidity of the United States congress and the senators and representatives that were trying to push it and then the logic behind it and then why have it when you have other laws that can do the same thing. Another point, was the talking of MegaUpload; wow, what an interesting story there. I have So, here’s a few quick picks for the week…

    This week in tech – 1/21/2012

    Posted on January 21, 2012 | No Comments
    This is a kind of a new thing for me, it’s a first; and I will TRY to start doing more of these types of posts [I really wil]. I get to see a lot of tech news during the week. As a blogger, you can’t pick everything to write about, but some things will spark a post, but I thought I would start sharing some of the interesting stories of the week for an end of the week review. This past week was a lot about SOPA, politics, ingorance, the power of the Internet and new waves of technologies. It was interesting to see how things played out this week. It started out with a rage against the stupidity of the United States congress and the senators and representatives that were trying to push it and then the logic behind it and then why have it when you have other laws that can do the same thing. Another point, was the talking of MegaUpload; wow, what an interesting story there. I have So, here’s a few quick picks for the week…

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