Friday, September 15, 2006

The biggest problem with new technology is that DRM (digital rights management) digs farther and farther into everything we do. BlueRay is such an example. Due to its DRM loving developers it will be harder and harder to back up your purchased data. The software, music and video companies do not want you to have that right. If you get it stolen or damaged, they want you to pay full price to buy it yet again. Even now, those who shove DRM into everything we own don[base ']t get it. The only people they are really hurting are the end users; the pirates will always find a way around their protective rules and will steal them blind. While the little guys get charged too much and have to put up with the copy protection that produces everything from bad images to not even being able to play the original disk on some machines. The easy way to end this would be to not buy any of the new DRM machines, but that won[base ']t happen due to the got-to-have-it yuppies with too much money. So you better get used to not being able to backup your movies, music or computer applications. 9:30:12 PM    comment []

Thanks to Steve Riggins for the following tip. If you have something that refuses to be thrown away while in the Trash, try doing a "secure empty trash". I had a really old file from a client machine that would not go away until I used this option. For those of you who are programmers or geeks, yes I know you can do it from Terminal but I'm always looking for the non-geeky answer. www.geeksrus.com 9:25:04 PM    comment []

AMD, the PC chipmaker and chief competitor to Intel, has agreed to purchase ATI for over five billion bucks. The only problem here is that ATI produces the video cards for Apple's G5 tower, the MacBook Pro, and the iMac. So chances are that changes will be coming to those video cards soon. Intel will not want to add to AMD's profit line by putting ATI video cards into Apple machines. I hope Nvidia (the company whose video cards are likely to be used) is up to the change because Intel video cards right now are not up to snuff. 9:20:23 PM    comment []

At the Apple Worldwide Developer Conference, Apple announced the replacement for the G5 tower[^]the silver desktop model is now called Mac Pro. New features include two Dual-Core Intel Xeon (Woodcrest) processors, 1 GB of RAM (you can add more up to 16 GB,) one 250GB Serial ATA hard drive (with space for three more,) an Nvidia GeForce 7300 GT 256 video card, and one 16X SuperDrive with a second drive bay in case you want two. The things I really liked is that on the front there are two USB ports plus one Firewire 400, one FireWire 800, headphones, and the Power button. Yes, there are lots of new options; the basic machine is $2500 and looks like a winner. Here is a quick overview of the next version of the Mac OS (10.5 nicknamed Leopard) with several more features not yet announced due to fear of the Redmond copy machine. 1. 64-bit support even when running 32-bit programs. 2. Time Machine automatically backs up to another hard drive, and can be restored fully or partially. 3. Boot Camp will be built in. 4. Spaces gives you virtual desktops that can be switched between using the Dock. 5. Spotlight gets more features and ways to search including local network searches. 6. Core Animation allows you to create animation using content on your computer. 7. Universal access improvements such as Braille, voice over, closed captioning etc. 8. Mail.app is due for major overhauling, adding to-do lists, notes, alarms, due dates, and more. 9. Dashcode to help create design widgets using templates. 10. Web Clip for making any web page into an auto-updating widget. 11. iChat enhanced features may include backdrops, slideshows, and parental controls. I[base ']m kinda worried about the iChat stuff, as most of us can't get iChat to do everything it[base ']s supposed to do NOW. You really need everyone you want to chat with to have really good high-speed access and even then you[base ']re lucky to get a good connection. So Mr. Jobs, how about having some of your talent fix the current problems before promising even more things to come. 9:18:45 PM    comment []