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.

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Mac Gets New Virus

by Chris Willhite on January 22nd, 2009 at 6:16 pm EDT - 1,197 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.

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IBM Remains US Patent Leader

by Taylor Flatt on January 14th, 2009 at 8:32 pm EDT - 521 views

IBM, for 16 straight years, has dominated in most patents per year. This year, they have topped off at over 4,000. IBM managed to beat out their challenger Samsung by 671 patents. IBM said this in their official release, “IBM’s 2008 patent issuances are nearly triple Hewlett-Packard’s and exceed the issuances of Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Oracle, Apple, EMC, Accenture and Google – combined.” However, HP fired back saying they are seeking quality of the patents, not quantity.

While IBM grabbed 11.5 technical patents per day last year, they are looking to increase their technical production by upwards of 50%. This seems pretty odd to me that IBM is the leader in patents. I would think that companies like Microsoft or even Sony would be towards the top of this list. It just seems that many people have forgotten about the hero of old that rivaled Microsoft in the beginning.

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Jobs To Leave Apple Temporarily

by Nathaniel Ed on January 14th, 2009 at 6:32 pm EDT - 265 views

Steve Jobs of Apple has announced he will take a 6 month leave from his “jobs” (pun intended) until June due to medical reasons. Taken straight from the horse’s mouth, Jobs said “[My health issues are] more complex than I originally thought,” and that the publicity from his “hormonal imbalances” were too distracting to his family and to Apple employees. The entire content of his message to his employees can be seen here. Apple’s chief operating advisor, Tim Cook, will be the CEO pro tempore for the next six months.

I personally haven’t been too big of a fan of Apple in the past (their “Quicktime for Windows” is crappy, and it seems to sabotage any computers that I’ve owned) and their iTunes are too popular for their own good in my opinion, but I hate to see people become ill like this. If anything does eventually happen to Jobs, though, this is Tim Cook’s opportunity to prove his worth as CEO. I wonder what’s in store for Apple in the years to come. Let’s hope for the best!

Source: BusinessWeek
Image courtesy of ScrapeTV

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Jobs’ Health Disclosure

by Taylor Flatt on January 5th, 2009 at 8:43 pm EDT - 2,041 views

Steve Jobs and Apple have finally disclosed the condition of their most famous possession. Apparently, Jobs is suffering from a hormone imbalance that is stealing proteins from his body ergo the rapid weight loss. Now since Apple has disclosed Jobs’ condition it seems only obvious that they will now have to inform the public and investors on the state of Jobs.

This is a terrible development. I am not saying that Jobs condition is nearly as bad as everyone else thought but I am saying that the public has pressured and forced someone to divulge private medical information through the process of “peer” pressure. Although it was hurting Apple to have such rumors flying around, it is still not anyone’s business to know this man’s private business. Obviously if the condition was chronic or deathly they would have said something sooner, but it wasn’t.

However, my feelings on this matter are little compared to how the rest of the public feels. Although investors have a right to know of such developments I don’t feel it is the public’s concern. Jobs has had a successful career as a computer genius and will continue to be such for many years to come.

Source: CNet
Image courtesy of CNet.

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5 Reasons Why IE Fails

by Taylor Flatt on December 31st, 2008 at 12:57 am EDT - 2,192 views

 Internet Explorer, the gateway to the internet, or so it was back in the day is anything but now. Currently, there are several decent browsers that can get you to the same place faster, safer and easier. With an unbiased approach, I will look into the reasons why IE has and is beginning to fail. From CSS interpretations to memory usage IE has gone downhill.

Over the years Microsoft has prided itself in bringing technology and service to use who aren’t as fortunate to have the resources to do it ourselves. However, over the years, it seems that Microsoft has strayed from this path and has gone down a more adventitious avenue seeking more fame than actual usability and safety.

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Google, Microsoft, Apple sued

by Taylor Flatt on December 29th, 2008 at 10:25 am EDT - 409 views

The tech giants are being sued for infringement upon icons used in various programs. These include,

• Google – Chrome
• Microsoft – Vista, IE 8
• Apple – iPhone, Safari, Mac OS X

Cygnus Systems, the suers, are looking to score with this lawsuit. They claim to have had this patent since March 2008.  However, they have been applying for it since 2001 but first applied for it 1998. This raises the question, will they (Google, Microsoft, Apple), attempt to settle and get this out of the way, or will they fight it to the end?

That much has yet to be seen. The case was filed in the US District’s Court in Arizona where the CEO of the company, Gregory Swartz, lives. Gregory is seeking to prevent any further infringment upon these preview icons, thumbnails, used by these and other companies. This is leading it to consider accusing other companies and adding them to the stand as defendants to help prevent this and get them all in one swoop.

We will see how this turns out and hopefully it turns out to favor the little guy who seems to have the rights to these icons.

Source: CNet 
Image Courtesy of us-japan.org.

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