Hackers Rumor Steve Jobs Death
by Taylor Flatt on January 24th, 2009 at 11:05 am EDT - 537 views
Hackers made their way into the world renowned Wired.com and posted an article that Steven Jobs had died after going into cardiac arrest in his California home. The story was then leaked to multiple social networks which only makes the embarrassment worse. However, the article was posted under a writer, John Abell, who is known to write about Steve’s health. John had this to say about the article,
A widely-circulated URL… that purports to be a Wired.com story about Steve Jobs’ health is a hack job. I’ve written a number of stories about Jobs health hoaxes… but the true author of this crude fake, which hit far closer to home, remains a mystery.
With all the rumors running their courses around the internet, it is no surprise that something like this would come up. However, it was a cruel joke that was completely unethical. No matter who you are for, PC or Mac, everyone has to agree that both Gates and Jobs are great men with powerful ideas and smooth preserve.
Category: Industry News
Tags: Apple, Mac, Rumor, Steve Jobs, Wired.com
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1 CommentInternet Usages Reaches Over 1 Bil
by Nathaniel Ed on January 24th, 2009 at 10:49 am EDT - 987 views
In the month of December, over one billion individual users were served worldwide. 41.3% were from the Asia-Pacific region, according to comScore, and internet traffic measurement firm.
Second place went to Europe with 28.0 percent, then North America with 18.4 percent. Latin America made up 7.4 percent, and the Middle East/Africa region made up 4.8 percent.
The statistics of actual users are: Asia/Pacific with about 416 million users, Europe had 283 million users, North America had 185 million users, Latin America had 75 million, and the Middle East/Africa had about 49 million unique users.
Country wise, China came in first with 17.8 percent, or about 180 million users, then the U.S.A. with 16.2 percent, or about 163 million users, and Japan came in third with 6 percent, or about 63 million users.
Obama’s Plan to Broaden Broadband
by Chris Willhite on January 23rd, 2009 at 10:00 pm EDT - 460 views
We all know by now all about Obama’s stimulus package that he’s proposing, you know the one that asks for trillions of dollars to get the economy kick started. Well, as it turns out, parts of the plan contain net neutrality proposals. The whole point of net neutrality is the idea that imposing limits on how much content a user can download from the internet is a violation of free speech, wether it’s filtering content or just buckling down download caps.
Well on Thursday the House of Representatives started working on the $37 billion plan to stimulate technology related portions of the economy. About 25% of the funding will go to rural areas that do not have broadband service, the other 75% will go to helping underdeveloped areas that have broadband but services that lagg behind.
What the plan really calls for is that instead of internet service providers limiting access to their networks, they will instead get a good boost of funding if they increase their broadband services and capacity. You can think of it as an interstate that’s quite busy and instead of having a law where people can only drive so often on that road, you just put in more lanes.
Category: General, Industry News, Online
Tags: broadband, net, neutrality, Obama, stimulus
Mac Gets New Virus
by Chris Willhite on January 22nd, 2009 at 6:16 pm EDT - 1,201 views
On Thursday Intego, a security software company for Mac OS, sent out a warning to everyone about a new trojan horse virus that is spreading around the internet. Currently the trojan is only found in pirated versions of Apple’s iWork ‘09 software.
The new trojan has been named OS-X.Trojan.iServices and what it does is installs when you install iWork ‘09. On earlier versions of Mac OSX (10.5.1 and earlier) there is no password prompt but on newer versions it asks for the root pass to install. If the user puts in the password and allows the trojan to install then it has complete read write and excecute permissions in root which means it can do anything to your system that it wants. It also has the ability to reach out to other infected macs and even download other components after infection.
How to Extend Windows 7 Trial
by Nathaniel Ed on January 19th, 2009 at 6:41 pm EDT - 1,285 views
If you weren’t one of the fortunate 2.5 million who were able to get into the full beta test, everyone else has access to a thirty day free trial, provided that you have Vista to run it. A Windows internal mechansm, however, allows this trial to be quadrupled, allowing Windows 7 beta access for 120 days.
How do I do it?
You have to run the “cmd.exe” program, which, according to PC Games Hardware ”can be found by typing “cmd” into the Windows search, as an administrator.” Then you must type “slmgr.vbs -rearm” into the command prompt. Once you restart your computer, the trial for Windows 7 will restart at thirty days. This neat trick can be redone 3 times, for a total of 4 trial resets.
I think that it’s good that this was found. If you’re busy like I am, thirty days is barely enough to try out an entire operating system. I hope this extra time is put to good use by giving Microsoft good feedback about how to make Windows 7 a better OS.
Source: PCGH
Picture courtesy of PC Games Hardware.
Category: Operating Systems
Tags: beta, hack, Microsoft, Operating Systems, trial, Windows 7
Is Google Preferred Site Worth It?
by Chris Burns on January 19th, 2009 at 3:45 pm EDT - 617 views
So I wanted to write a bit about my personal experience with the new Google preferred site option. This is a feature that Google is beta testing with certain account members.
What the feature allows you to do is to tell Google which sites you find as authority sites. Google with then give these sites priority rankings with any related search terms to your preferred sites. This sounds like a great idea when you first hear of it, but upon further thought and use you start to wonder… what is it good for?
There are two ways to tell Google that a site is one of your preferred sites. You can enter the sites into a list as one option. Also, when you are logged into your account and browsing natural results in Google you will see an up arrow and a down arrow next to each search result listing. You can simply click the up arrow to add the website to your preferred list or down arrow to remove it. Not only can you bump your preferred site to the top of relevant searches, but you can even leave a comment about the site which will be displayed with future searches it comes up under.
This is very cool and interesting at first glance. I tested the system as you can see in the included screen shots. The keyword “florida mortgage company” when NOT logged into my Google account shows the regular natural search terms and my sample website is no where to be found in the top 10. Now when I log into my Google account and do a search for the same keyword I will ALWAYS find my preferred site ranked #1.
Microsoft Releases MED-V Beta
by Taylor Flatt on January 19th, 2009 at 3:06 pm EDT - 1,001 views
Microsoft has released another beta that runs a legacy program which essentially allows you to run Windows XP and 2000 apps on Vista without the need of migration or testing. The beta, called MED-V, creates a virtual PC of the legacy version of Windows that you would like inside Vista. The whole project is said to be completed by at least second quarter.
If you are looking to give this new technology a try, you can download it here, but don’t forget to register or you won’t be able to take part!
This seems like some technology that should have been developed along with the release of Vista or shortly thereafter. However, it seems quite pointless to release it now with Windows 7 coming next year. Maybe they should begin developing technology for Windows 7 instead of the soon-to-be-obsolete Vista.
Category: Operating Systems, Programs
Tags: Kidaro, MED-V, Microsoft, technology
Valve’s Take on Piracy
by Stephen Spring on January 19th, 2009 at 11:22 am EDT - 528 views
Valve, creators of such games as Half Life, Counter Strike, and more recently Left 4 Dead, have come forward today at a Game Business Law summit at Southern Methodist University. At the summit Valve stated that the piracy problems were largely the fault of the marketers and not the consumers.
We take all of our games day-and-date to Russia. The reason people pirated things in Russia is because Russians are reading magazines and watching television. They say ‘Man, I want to play that game so bad,’ but the publishers respond ‘you can play that game in six months…maybe.’
Holtman then stated that whenever their Valve products were readily available in Russia, piracy of said game dropped dramatically. Holtman took aim at the marketers again saying that the majority of pirates were simply “Underserved” customers. (That’s UNDER-SERVED)
This comes as a suprise to many as Valve, the creator of Steam, currently is one of two dominating powers in the video game sales industry and for a company whos livelyhood is creating and selling games to take a defensive stand point strikes us as a little odd.
Microsoft Stalked By EU
by Taylor Flatt on January 18th, 2009 at 1:26 pm EDT - 330 views
Microsoft has just been notified this Thursday that they will be required to appear in court due to the fact that they have been violating antitrust laws passed down by the EU.
However, this is not the first time the EU has pursued Microsoft and ask for money. Years ago, the EU fined Microsoft 1.35 billion because they were overcharging software manufactures. I’m not surprised one bit that the EU is seeking out more money from their best friend Microsoft. Microsoft also released a lengthy statement saying they are going to comply with EU’s regulations,
RSS Feed Update
by Taylor Flatt on January 17th, 2009 at 10:41 pm EDT - 193 views
Recently, Feedburner went through an update and we were forced to update our feeds. With that said, our new feed link is:
http://feeds2.feedburner.com/pceverything
We appreciate your patience and understanding. Thank you for updating your subscription!
PCE Staff
Category: General
Tags: Feedburner, Feeds, PCEverything, RSS