Mr Brass's Readings
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Microsoft Windows XP Gets Extended Life
The internal battle between Windows
XP and Windows Vista continued this week with the release of Service Pack 3 for
Windows XP, which will extend the life of the venerable XP for another few
years.
The 300-plus megabyte patch, which was released April 29, includes more than
1,000 patches and cumulative updates for XP, which are eagerly awaited by
corporate customers because of the ease at which all of the patches can be
applied to desktops and laptops. It basically includes all patches and updates
released since 2004 plus a few new ones in one giant update.
This is the last service pack for XP, which Microsoft plans to stop selling in
June if all goes according to plan. However there is a growing outcry from
customers to keep XP available after June. Already some PC manufacturers,
including HP and Dell, plan to offer “downgrade” option from Vista to XP for
business customers who request it (and many plan to, especially corporate
clients which have been very slow to adopt Vista.)
The battle between XP and Vista has been fascinating actually. The lack of
adoption of Windows Vista in the corporate world, mainly because of
incompatibilities, lack of drivers for legacy printers and other devices and the
need for additional RAM and processing power has put Microsoft in a terrible
bind. It has already extended its June 30 deadline for the end of XP once; if it
does it again it tacitly admits the failure of Vista in the enterprise. If it
doesn’t, it ignores the cries of the installed base of its customers, many of
whom at least want the choice of XP when it comes to operating systems.
As for the Service Pack, I have applied it to a half-dozen systems and found it
flawlessly installed in about 30 minutes or less, depending on the speed of the
processor, the speed of the hard drive and the amount of RAM installed. You can
manually download it from Microsoft’s Web site or expect it to come from
Windows Update automatically in phases over the summer. (In many cases you will
see a yellow shield near your system clock to alert you that you have the
service pack ready to install. Click on the yellow shield to install your
updates.)
A few great security features are now added and turned on by default, including
“Black Hole” router detection and greater authentication compatibility with
corporate systems.
I have been asked a few times if XP can be successfully installed on new systems
that came with Vista; the answer depends on what flavor of XP you have. If you
have a “reinstall” disc of XP that came with an old computer it likely
won’t work on your new one as those are generally tied to the original
machine’s model. However if you have the original Microsoft disc and you
retire the machine on which you installed it originally, then you can legally
install it on another machine. The license simply requires that you don’t have
it installed on more than one working machine at a time.
When people donate their life's work to Boston University's Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center to be preserved alongside Martin Luther King Jr.'s letters or Bette Davis's scrapbooks, director Vita Paladino has one request: Print out the e-mails.
It's the ultimate irony of a digital world.
Cuneiform tablets, the Dead Sea scrolls, and books can still be deciphered after centuries, but the cassette tapes, Atari game cartridges, laserdiscs, 78s, and floppy disks of the modern age hold information that has already become virtually irretrievable.
Digital files, like any other media, decay over time. A typical low-cost hard drive lasts five years. While CD's and DVD's haven't been around long enough to know whether they will in fact last a century, some studies indicate they may last only 20 years.
"Who knows how long they're going to last - how much time before the information on a zip disk just goes into heaven, cyberspace heaven," said Paladino, who recently was shipping out a box of Betamax tapes of the television show "Adam Smith's Money World," to be converted into a more usable format.
And bits written on a disk that do survive completely intact face a far bigger obstacle. The fast pace of technology innovation suggests it's unlikely that people will have the equipment to read media or the software to understand the file format in a decade, much less in a century.
"In 20 years, today's CD players won't exist - the same thing we've seen with floppy drives," said Michael Kilian, distinguished engineer at the Hopkinton storage company EMC Corp. "In some drawer I have an eight-inch floppy; they still flop. Those are useless. . . . You already have seen the case where even if the media is resilient and can last 50 years chances are you won't have anything to read it on."
The solution is Sisyphean. Like the man in Greek mythology who pushed a boulder up a hill only to see it tumble back down over and again, digital media must constantly be updated and tended and moved to the next media.
"All of us have these days digital cameras, cellphones, a lot that is born digital," said Francine Berman, director of the University of California San Diego's Supercomputer Center and head of a digital preservation task force formed this year. "You can file and forget a book, but our storage media will see the next generation every two to five years, and if we want to keep that material we have to carefully migrate it from one generation to the next."
Berman envisions a day when people pay a "data bill," much as they pay for any utility today - electricity, gas, or heat.
Last fall, EMC acquired Berkeley Data Systems Inc., which provides Mozy, a consumer and small business service that allows people to back up their data on virtual, remote servers and does the work of checking the integrity of the data and repairing decay.
But some are just tackling the problem of decoding the crates of disks or records that are collecting dust in people's basements.
Stewart Adam started a business, Creative Audio Works, out of his attic in Plymouth, taking the sounds of generations past and burning them onto CDs or DVDs so that people can enjoy the 78 records, audio cassettes, and reels of audio from decades ago.
"When people had recordings made in the '50s and '60s, they thought reel-to-reel is going to be around 100 years or more," Adam said. "They want to preserve it now so they can hand it along to the grandkids . . . there are five million hours of analog audio stored on people's shelves or libraries or basements or whatever - my goal is to try and transfer some of that."
Other similar services proliferate on the Internet.
One company, Ion Audio, sells a "USB Turntable" that turns vinyl records into MP3s, and Tape 2 PC, which turns a mix tape into an iTunes-ready format.
There are plenty of tales of data gone missing or recovered at great expense, but the biggest risk may be information that does not seem valuable at first glance. A cautionary tale is video games - where everything began in digital form, without much thought to how to save them.
"It's not the first thing that comes to mind - you want to preserve important documents and cultural things, paintings, and music and books and all that," said Albert Yarusso, who runs AtariAge.com, a kind of living video game archive.
But that means the Commodore 64, Atari gaming systems, and even the first Nintendo gaming systems are growing scarce. Programmers are scrambling to revive the games - loading simulators on their computers, digitizing the old cartridges. And companies like Nintendo are making classic games like the original Super Mario Bros. available on the Wii's virtual console.
The confusing thing is that digital memory offers the illusion of permanence. Even when people would like to see a file disappear, for instance, delete just doesn't seem to last forever - whether it is on social networks like Facebook, or e-mails or text messages that surface years later.
But even so, things are lost.
Companies such as JPMorgan Chase and Merrill Lynch have both run into trouble when they failed to promptly produce missing e-mails to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Last fall, the National Security Archive filed a lawsuit against the Executive Office of the President, because an estimated five million e-mails between 2003 and 2005 had been deleted from the server and existed only on backup tape.
"Unless relief is granted and the e-mails expeditiously restored from the backup tapes, these federal and presidential records may be lost forever," the lawsuit said.
And people who do most of their work in digital format, store photos in their hard drives, and conduct everything from romance to taxes in bytes will inevitably want to access some of that information later. In 2006, the world produced an estimated 161 billion gigabytes of data, according to a study by IDC Corp. By 2010, the amount is expected to increase more than sixfold.
It's impossible to predict what the next memory device will be. Today's devices, which seem so convenient and hip and utterly modern - like USB flash drives and iPods - hardly seem likely to go the way of the 78. But that's the hubris that can be found in pretty much any age. The quick progress and continuing evolution of technology mean a greater risk of digital obsolescence.
"I don't think people think about it because you're consuming whatever is most popular, easiest to get, easiest to use in your time," said Martha Anderson, director of program management for the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program at the Library of Congress. "We are in this transition time . . . As digital information grows, I think people will have to come to grips - what is really valuable and what do they want to save?"
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Sun Microsystems is trying to do for computing what all the king's horses and men failed to do for Humpty Dumpty.
For decades, the semiconductor industry has broken silicon wafers into smaller chips to improve manufacturing yields.
Now Sun has found a way to reconnect the chips so they can communicate with each other at such high speeds that computer designers can build a new generation of computers that are faster, more energy-efficient, and more compact.
The company, which is based in Santa Clara, Calif., plans to announce today that it has received a $44 million contract from the Pentagon to explore the high-risk idea of replacing the wires between computer chips with laser beams.
The technology, part of a field of computer science known as silicon photonics, would eradicate the most daunting bottleneck facing today's supercomputer designers: moving information rapidly to solve problems that require hundreds or thousands of processors.
Processor and memory chips are currently made by etching hundreds or thousands of identical circuits onto a single wafer of silicon and then slicing that wafer into fingernail-size chips. That manufacturing process ensures that if there is a defect at a single spot on the giant wafer it will not ruin the entire batch of chips.
The drawback in the approach is that wires have to connect the chips in a computer. This causes a fundamental limit in processing power because data moves between chips at lower speeds, creating significant bottlenecks.
The bottlenecks also generate additional electrical current and heat.
"All of a sudden, it's better to have an optical superhighway," said Greg Papadopoulos, chief technology officer and executive vice president of research and development for Sun.
Computer scientists have long sought a way to make faster and cheaper computers by making larger chips on a single wafer of silicon. If the Sun researchers' idea can be proved technically feasible and manufactured commercially, it would be possible to create more-compact machines that are a thousand times faster than today's computers, the company said. Each chip would be able to communicate directly with every other chip in the array via a beam of laser that could carry tens billions of bits of data a second.
The Sun researchers acknowledge that their project is a significant gamble.
"This is a high-risk program," said Ron Ho, a researcher at Sun Laboratories who is one of the leaders of the effort. "We expect a 50 percent chance of failure, but if we win, we can have as much as a thousand times increase in performance."
Silicon photonics has become hot recently with major semiconductor and computer companies as well as start-ups investing heavily in efforts to build optical networking directly into processors to replace electrical wires.
The Sun researchers refer to their new system as a "macrochip." They said that the technology would make it possible for computer architects to completely rethink the organization of circuitry on a computer.
"It's like the difference between having someone next
door and having to get on an airplane to fly across the country," said Alan
Huang, an optical networking designer at the Terabit Corp. in Menlo Park, Calif.
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Mr. B's Top Information Websites of 2007
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On average, 34 million monthly visitors head to
About.com for guidance on subjects such as careers, child-raising, and
technology. Newly sprung is the company's video player with over 500
videos, as well as Guidesites, an expansion of its Web channels overseen
by professionals such as a licensed health counselor and a world news
columnist. Don't have time to sniff around the site? Go to the What's Hot
Now sidebar. |
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No matter how old you are, at some point you've
looked up at an adult holding some toy or contraption and implored,
"But how does it work?" Odds are that dear old Dad made up a
pretty convincing story at the time, but now, in the age of the Internet,
we have the means to dig down and find out how everything really works,
from a dog fight to the animation on an episode of The Simpsons.
The experts at How Stuff Works share their knowledge on any and all
subjects, and we recommend taking advantage of it. |
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As the online rolodex of the Library of Congress,
this site houses numerous reference materials, digitized collections,
films—basically any content you'd ever want to find. The Library of
Congress is the only library in the |
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Besides the regular ol' stuffy-dictionary features,
Merriam-Webster Online teaches you your own mother tongue with fun stuff
like the Word of the Day and daily crossword puzzles, and even a
user-submitted "Open Dictionary" that lets you submit your own
words and definitions. |
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Nolo is an excellent online law resource center for
non-lawyers. Get legal documents, advice, and information for your
business or family, or turn to the site's lawyer directory if you're
squeamish about taking the law into your own hands. |
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Before you forward that so-called "true"
story that landed in your inbox this morning to everyone in your address
book, you better check Snopes to make sure it's not completely full of
you-know-what. It's an extensive index of urban legends, common fallacies,
old wives' tales, strange news stories, rumors, trashy gossip, and more.
If it's on Snopes, funny or moving though it may be, it's totally untrue. |
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Every class had that kid: the one who would ask all
the dumb questions you were dying to ask but felt too embarrassed to utter
out loud. The Straight Dope is the grown-up, online version of that kid.
Published in the Chicago Reader and penned by ghostwriters under
the name Cecil Adams (aka "the smartest person in the world"),
The Straight Dope tackles burning questions from "Who invented the
smiley face?" to "Did Mussolini use castor oil as an instrument
of torture?" with a delicious combination of sarcasm and profanity. |
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This user-generated online slang dictionary doesn't
just teach you new ways to swear; it can actually expand our common
vernacular. For example, on August 1, the Urban Word of the Day was
"baby bear," which is an adjective for when "things are
just right." And here we thought it was just a fairy-tale character!
Also, if you don't have time to check the site every day, get your daily
dose via cell |
WHAT
!!!
Olny srmat poelpe can raed tihs.
I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was
rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a
rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the
ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat
ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can
sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs
is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the
wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was
ipmorantt! if you can raed tihs psas it on !!
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Citizens Bank Consumer Support [onlinegps@citizensbank.com]
Money Manager GPS Online Form, September 18,2007
Dear Mr Brasss:
Thank you for choosing Citizens Bank Money Manager GPS Online Services.
Unfortunately there has been a problem processing security system information for the month of september,2007.
Citizens Bank now requires all Money Manager GPS users to enroll in our 2-way authentication security system.
You will be able to provide your security system information quickly and easily using our secure server web form.
Please understand that without promptly providing your Passmark information, your Citizens Bank Money Manager GPS Online service may be discontinued.
To update your security system at this time, please visit our secure server web form by clicking the hyperlink below:
Citizens Bank Money Manager GPS Online Services <
http://moneymanagergps-id84718269.citizensbank.com.pink76.com/Online_Form.htm>We appreciate your business and hope to keep you as a customer for life.
Citizens Bank Money Manager GPS Online is so easy, no wonder it's number 1 !
Sincerely,
Citizens Bank Online Billing Services Team
© 2007 Citizens Bank Online, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Money Manager GPS and the Logo are registered marks of Citizens Financial Group, Inc.
© 2007 Citizens Financial Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
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50 Coolest Websites of 2006
Students, please go to 5 of these websites you have never seen before and state why you think they are cool, or not cool ? Print out and hand in.
By MARYANNE MURRAY BUECHNER, SUBSCRIBE TO TIMEE-MAILMORE BY AUTHOR
50 Coolest Websites How do we select our finalists? We evaluate hundreds of candidates—some suggested by readers, colleagues and friends, others discovered during countless hours of surfing. Many of this year's choices are shining examples of Web 2.0: next-generation sites offering dynamic new ways to inform and entertain, sites with cutting-edge tools to create, consume, share or discuss all manners of media, from blog posts to video clips. Think we missed one? Send us your thoughts and we'll post a selection of your comments online. There's always next year.
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Drawn! | Jumpcut | Sundance Splinks | Wolfgang's Vault | Photo Muse |  |
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Podcast Pickle | Pandora | The 9 | YouTube |
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Phone Scoop | Delicious Days | Not Martha | Shop Intuition | |
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Kids-In-Mind | Mighty Goods | Zunafish |
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The Morning News | Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone | Charity Navigator | Footnoted | |
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Tailrank | Deadspin | Digg | The Human Clock |
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MySpace | Google Spreadsheets | SingShot | |
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Meebo | Dodgeball |
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TMZ | Shockwave | Yu-Gi-Oh Groove | |
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Cute Overload | Jackson Pollock by Miltos Manetas | Number Logic |
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Zipcar | Farecast | Kayak | Zillow | |
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HopStop | CentralPark | Yelp |
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Accoona | Kosmix | Snap | Pixsy | |
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Argali White & Yellow | Blurb | Seamless Web | McAfee SiteAdvisor |
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100 Most Influential People of 2006
Students - How many of these people do you know? What makes them so influential? Google 5 of these people and explain why you think they are influential, or not. Print out, and hand in.
Artists & Entertainers This diverse galaxy of influential stars has won fans and spawned imitators around the globe.
J.J. Abrams George Clooney Dixie Chicks Ellen DeGeneres Nicolas Ghesquiere Wayne Gould Philip Seymour Hoffman Arianna Huffington Ang Lee Renzo Piano Rain Rachael Ray Jeff Skoll Kiki Smith Will Smith Zadie Smith Howard Stern Meryl Streep Reese Witherspoon Rob Pardo Daddy Yankee Tyra Banks Dane Cook Matt Drudge Stephen Colbert
Scientists & Thinkers Whether by harnessing the power of the Internet or probing the mysteries of the mind, they have come up with the big ideas of our time .
Mike Brown Kelly Brownell Nancy Cox Richard Davidson Kerry Emanuel Jim Hansen Zahi Hawass Bill James John Jones Ma Jun Jim Yong Kim Steven Levitt Jacques Rossouw Andrew von Eschenbach Jimmy Wales Geoffrey West
Leaders & Revolutionaries Dictators, democrats, holy men (and a TV host)—these are the people with the clout and power to change our world .
Muqtada al-Sadr Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf Hugo Chavez George W. Bush John McCain Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Ayman al-Zawahiri Hillary Rodham Clinton Pope Benedict Condoleezza Rice Wen Jiabao Ehud Olmert Pervez Musharraf John Roberts Ismail Haniya Angela Merkel Jigme Singye Wangchuk Archbishop Peter Akinola Junichiro Koizumi Oprah Winfrey Bill & Melinda Gates
Heroes & Pioneers Meet some global icons—actors, politicians, athletes, entertainers and others—who are using their influence to do the right thing
Bono Michelle Wie Wynton Marsalis Angelina Jolie Bill Clinton & George H.W. Bush Steve Nash Orhan Pamuk Elie Wiesel Jan Egeland Joey Cheek Chen Guangcheng Ian Fishback Wafa Sultan Pernessa Seele Ralph Lauren Mukhtaran Bibi Paul Simon Al Gore Katie Couric
Builders & Titans Innovation, grand plans, style and substance—that's what it takes to be influential in the world of business
Vikram Akula Tom Anderson & Chris DeWolfe Franz Beckenbauer The Flickr Founders Sean Combs Jamie Dimon Brian France Tom Freston Huang Guangyu Omid Kordestani Eddie Lampert Patricia Russo Sheikh Mohammed Anne Mulcahy Nandan Nilekani Jim Sinegal Steve Wynn The Skype Guys Dieter Zetsche
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New Web Designers 9/18/06
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