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Microsoft has extended the life of its older operating system days before PC makers are forced to stop selling it.

June 30th (2008) would have been the day that PC manufacturers would have to stop selling Windows XP, Microsoft’s older operating system, and be forced to sell its new operating system on all new units.  That date has now been extended to June of 2010.  There is one catch.

The computer that XP is installed on must be an “entry level” laptop.  Major PC makes such as Dell, HP, and Lenovo have said that Vista cannot run on their lower-end machines.  Also, in a market dominated by price, makers have started to install Linux distributions on these computers.  The Linux operating system is free and that can be passed on to consumers.
In the statement at a trade show in Taiwan, Microsoft has stated that this extension is only good on laptops with less than 1GB of RAM, 80GB hard drive, a 10 in screen, and 1GHz processor.

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At The Last HOPE conference, hackers will broadcast their minds  and their iPods.

In the center of the summer’s top hacker event will be a small isolation booth. “Radio Statler!” as the station is called, will send out a three day broadcast of all-original material. From the center of Manhattan, around the clock, discussions of the past, present, and future of technology, creativity, and humanity itself will be transmitted.

The first night of the conference, July 18th, the station will carry a program called Digital Music Night, hosted by Peter Kirn, editor of createdigitalmusic.com. The three hour live concert will feature a convergence of artists and musicians using custom, original tools for performing live in new and bizarre ways, including:

* Houseplants hooked up to live computer visuals and music
* A mutant trumpet, halfway between the digital and acoustic worlds
* Packets of data visualized as three-dimensional eye candy
* An animated digital art sketchpad controlled by Wii remote
* A set of digital gloves for gestural DJing
* A robotic drummer
* Computer-generated vocals that sing your spam folder to you
* Live digital art made from vintage game consoles and computers

The station will give additional talk and interview time to the conference’s speakers, broadcast the keynotes and other popular seminars, and offer attendees who don’t speak at the podium a chance to share their ideas. Many hackers who already do their own podcasts are being asked to contribute and do special programs for the conference.

Program and content submissions are still being taken, volunteers are being sought, and the organizers are looking for promotional sponsors to help cover the cost of broadcasting. More information can be found at http://radio.hope.net/ or by emailing projects@hope.net.

For more information on The Last HOPE, visit http://www.hope.net.

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Purchasing a ticket to the opening and closing ceremonies to the Olympics in Beijing comes with more than just admission.  In a first-time move for the Olympics tickets will have a chip embedded in the ticket.  That chip will contain the ticket bearer’s photograph, passport details, e-mail address, regular address, and telephone numbers.

The organizers of the games say this measure is in place to keep out troublemakers to the National Stadium, which hold 91,000 people.  Terrorists, pro-Tibet protesters, and people with the wrong t-shirt on are not welcomed to the Olympics.

Identity theft is also an issue with the $720 top ticket price.  Dignitaries and friends of the Olympians make up a majority of the attendees to the ceremonies.

Opinion: Planting RFID tags in a ticket will surely fend off any evildoer with intents of destroying the peace (and freedom) the games bring to us.  Terrorists also can’t afford a $720 ticket either.  Taking away the privacy of all the attendees will be worth it.

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New York, NY - May 15, 2008 - This summer, hackers from around the world will track the movements of thousands of visitors to New York City.

As part of a social experiment, attendees at a hacker conference in July will be issued badges with electronic tracking devices.  Large displays will show in real-time where people go, with whom they associate, for how long and how often.

The tracking technology, known as RFID, is fast becoming an unseen part of everyday life.  This July, for the very first time, the general public will be able to participate in the transparent operation of a major RFID tracking program.

Conference attendees will participate in games built around the tracking system.  Players will seek ways to protect their privacy, find vulnerabilities in the tracking system, employ data mining techniques to learn more about other participants, and choose how much personal information they will disclose in order to play.

This demonstration will be open to the public at The Last HOPE conference from July 18-20 at the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York City. The first 1500 preregistrants will be guaranteed an RFID badge enabling them to participate in the game.  More information and preregistration is available at http://www.hope.net/.

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If you’ve bought a Zune and a plan to do a software update you may not be able to play all of the content you’d like.

Through a round-about way it was revealed that Microsoft plans on making non-copyrighted material (specifically video) not be able to play on the Zune.

NBC has announced that they plan on not offering their programming through iTunes for two reasons: Apple’s demand to keep the price of the video at $1.99 and Apple does not plan on building filtering software to not allow pirated videos to be played.

There is one company that does have the rights of these companies in mind.  NBC has decided to work with a “broader” base of customers by going with Microsoft’s Zune Marketplace.

NBC plans on offering older shows at a lower price than the new retail price for play on the Zune.  As of now the Microsoft filtering software is not in place or fully developed.  With the dollars it has behind it with this new NBC deal Microsoft will soon have this available in a software update.

In the Zune Insider Blog, Cesar Menendez, a member Microsoft’s Zune team mentioned…

We have no plans or commitments to implement any new type of content filtering in the Zune devices as part of our content distribution deal with NBC.

Perhaps it’s purely coincidence, the tradition of Microsoft’s copyright “protection”, and this NBC deal that could cause Mr. Menendez to respond like this.  It would be safe to assume that Microsoft already had plans in place to “protect” companies from pirated material.

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It has been quite a number of months since I explained the issues with my laptop (see this entry).  For a quick summary the Toshiba A135-S4656 is a nice computer for the price. .  The major reason why I’m not totally happy with it is Vista.  Microsoft’s new operating system is still filled with bugs.  Even after I upgraded to 1.5GB of RAM the computer is still slow.  When I tried to install Ubuntu I was disappointed with that the sound card would not work.  That was a few months ago.

I had heard that Ubuntu has a new version of their Linux distrobution.  I thought, “What do I have to loose?”.  Vista (in my mind) was terrible and the current version of Ubuntu was unused becuase of the the lack of sound.  So I downloaded the lastest version of Ubuntu from their website.  The latest version, as of today is 8.0.4 LTS for desktop computers.  While on the site I noticed their are 6 versions of Ubuntu, which might seem daunting to someone not familiar to Linux.  All you need to be concered with is the desktop version.

After the download I burned the .iso to a CD and proceeded to run the installer.  The CD is a live CD, which enables people to try the operating system out without doing anything permanant to the computer (nothing gets wrtitten to the hard drive).  The menu in the latest CD asks if you want to run in live mode or go directly to the installer.  Since I was already familiar with Ubuntu I went right to the installer.

I also want add that I did this while on my way home from work the other day.  I had to make two stops and entered through the prompts then.  I DID NOT use the keyboard while driving.  I wanted to state this to show how easy it is to install Ubuntu.

By the time I got home the OS was installed onto my computer.  I sat down on my sofa and started the boot for the first time.  Ubuntu will install a GRUB boot menu.  This menu is a non-graphic interface which appears after the computer is powered on and asks what OS you want to load.  So I login and hear the Ubuntu welcome sound.  IT WORKS!

So version 8.04 LTS has the proper drivers to run sound on my Toshiba Satellite A135-S4656.  I will use Ubuntu now over Vista, but still have the Microsoft OS in place when I need to.

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It’s been reported from a few sources that a number of areas have been targeted for the “Phone Book Scam”.
As the summer vacation season is coming upon us please be aware of this scam. Men driving around in unmarked vehicles (usually vans) are throwing out free phone books. Usually they are getting tossed outside of a moving vehicle to everyone in a neighborhood.
The van will come around two days after the drop off to see who has not picked up the phone books. People who have not picked up the phone books are then targeted for a robbery that night.
Warning: Be suspicious of any free phone books coming your way, no matter what companies name is on it. If you use VoIP ask yourself, “Should I be getting the ‘Ma Bell’ phone book for free?”.
Be careful this upcoming summer season when you’re on vacation. Ask your neighbors to get anything that gets dropped off on your property

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The Oklahoma Department of Corrections has let the private information of nearly 11,000 people be leaked out to the public. The information comes from a federally mandated registry of sex offenders in the state.
A smart hacker was able to use a database exploit in Sexual and Violent Offender Registry to get the name, address, race, social security number, and more personal from the registry. By typing in certain information into a browser URL would pull this data from the database and be available for download.
This hacker did what any good hacker would do.  Before going public he wrote a message to the people who programmed the site.  The person he contacted was appreciative for pointing out the flaw and would then pass this information to the developers.

The day after the phone call was made the site was taken down for “routine maintenance”.  It looked as if the flaw was fixed…except the “printer friendly page” still was not fixed.  After another e-mail to the person in charge of the developers the site again went under “routine maintenance” and the flaws were fixed.
Say what you will about the people on this registery, no one should have there personal information up on a web page that can easily be viewed.  In this case by changing the URL anyone could have viewed this data.  I would also like to add that the “hacker” featured in this article would not be the type of person getting into the IRS database or stealing you identity.  That type of person is called a thief.

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Once the only game in town, domain registrar Network Solutions has stooped to a new low.  Many years ago the company started offering hosting packages as well as domain registration.  It seems that if you hosted with them and had a subdomain (like blog.tombrennan.org) that you haven’t updated in a while something interesting will happen.

According to NetSol’s terms of service (TOS) they have every right to use those abandoned subdomain and fill it with pages chuck-full of ads:

You also agree that any domain name directory, sub-directory, file name or path (e.g.) that does not resolve to an active web page on your Web site being hosted by Network Solutions, may be used by Network Solutions to place a “parking” page, “under construction” page, or other temporary page that may include promotions and advertisements for, and links to, Network Solutions’ Web site, Network Solutions product and service offerings, third-party Web sites, third-party product and service offerings, and/or Internet search engines. You agree that Network Solutions may change the content and/or appearance of, or disable any of these temporary pages at any time, in its sole discretion, and without prior notice.

You have every option to not use this service, but you’ll first have to dig through the TOC to know about it.

Many years ago NetSol was the only game in town, charging $300 for all three domains (com, org, net).  Times have changed in the domain registration landscape with $3 domains, many registrars, and many more domain suffixes.

In the new world of the web, NetSol needs to figure out how to be the best game in town and still make money.  A fine balance that relies on the customers of the company, who may not be too happy with hijacked subdomains.

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