Idly doing a crossword today I concluded that the only possible solution to a particular clue was ‘Lothario’. I Googled it to see whether it was plausible — and then noticed this ad, carefully placed by Google on the right-hand side of the screen.
It’s the kind of thing that got Lord Browne, the former CEO of BP, into trouble.
Well, well!
Who’d have predicted this — the Torygraph encouraging its readers to dip a toe into the Web of iniquity?
One of these chaps won’t be going to Iraq, ‘cos it’s too dangerous, apparently.
Nice hats, don’t you think. Perhaps they’re thinking of joining the Orange Order.
Charming message in my university in-box this morning reads:
We are aware of a significant number of people experiencing problems starting their computers this morning. After initially starting up normally, the machine becomes ‘bogged down’ as applications are started. This is apparently down to a widespread problem with Windows Update and Microsoft think they have a solution.
There is a process on machines called svchost.exe running under the System username and during updates, some machines find this takes up 99% of the processor’s resources. If you press Ctrl-Alt-Delete and select Task Manager, under the Processes tab, you will find references to svchost.exe. If the instance running under System is showing 99%, then leave the machine to run through this for 20 minutes by which time the process should have run its course and the machine will operate normally.
If you cannot raise the Task Manager, then a manual shutdown of the machine might be the best approach before attempting the advice above.
As advised, there is a proposed fix from Microsoft and this will be applied during the next month.
Hmm… Just as well I don’t use the desktop PC so kindly provided by my employers. And it’s so consoling to know that the bug will be fixed “during the next month” too; I’m sure my colleagues will be delighted.
Photo courtesy of BT
From Technology Review…
British Telecom (BT) is working on a plan to eliminate the keyboard and mouse, and use accelerometers with tablet PCs instead.
The pilot project enables a user to scroll through menus or applications simply by tilting or rotating the tablet PC. The system starts with a specially designed adapter containing tiny accelerometers, which measure acceleration. The adapter plugs into any tablet PC via a USB cable. When a user moves the PC, the sensors detect the motion. Special software then interprets the PC’s movements and translates them onto the computer screen.
“What we want to create is a kind of broadband Etch A Sketch,” says BT researcher David Chatting, who wrote the applications for the prototype.
The trick, he says, is getting people sensitized to how moving the PC affects what happens on the computer. “One of my initial applications entails using the PC to manipulate a marble on the screen. I want to demonstrate to the user that how they’re holding the device affects what’s happening–that they have an almost physical connection to the content on the screen.”
For now, Chatting’s applications are simple. A user moves the machine left or right to toggle between a few menu choices on-screen, and then pulls the machine forward to select a menu item. “We aren’t trying to duplicate all [of] Windows Vista or Mac OSX,” Chatting says.
Phew! That’s a relief.
When told that Prime Minister Tony Blair was stepping down as Britain’s leader, a confused President Bush said, ‘Hey, wait a minute. If he’s the leader of England, who was that old lady with the crown who was just here?’
–Jay Leno
Mmmm…. Here’s an interesting gizmo. You plug it into your video iPod and — Bingo! — you’ve got a 50-inch virtual screen.
Alas, I do not possess such an iPod. But even if I did, would I want to look like this?
Er, no, thank you very much.
Wonder what he’s watching.
Readers with thicker hides can get one for £149.00 from here.
Useful when depressed. Late Night Political Jokes. Sample:
“Tony Blair, prime minister of England, is stepping down. He said he wanted to spend more time humping Bush’s leg. … He said he hopes people remember him as the people’s poodle.” –Bill Maher
“They didn’t have the heart to tell Bush. They didn’t say Blair was gone. They just said he went to live on a farm.” –Bill Maher
Following my post of yesterday, James Cridland has done some really interesting digging into the statistics from his Media UK site, which gets over 2m page-views a month. Since it’s his site, he knows what’s going on. He then compares what Google Analytics, Alexa and Compete claim is happening on the site.
He found some curious discrepancies, and concluded that
Compete is under-representing my traffic by over two-thirds – as well as demonstrably not following any trends in mediauk.com’s site traffic. The figures are almost entirely unrelated to my website’s traffic. This is bad. Are websites basing purchase decisions on Compete’s data? In which case, do I have a legal case against them?
We’ve not, yet, mentioned comScore. That’s a blog post for another day, I suspect: because there’s so much more there than meets the eye, it’s not funny.
And to think that investors and VCs base valuations on these numbers…
From Tech News on ZDNet
Microsoft claims that free and open-source software violates 235 of its patents, according to a magazine report published Sunday.
In an interview with Fortune, Microsoft top lawyer Brad Smith alleges that the Linux kernel violates 42 Microsoft patents, while its user interface and other design elements infringe on a further 65. OpenOffice.org is accused of infringing 45, along with 83 more in other free and open-source programs, according to Fortune.
It is not entirely clear how Microsoft might proceed in enforcing these patents, but the company has been encouraging large tech companies that depend on Linux to ink patent deals, starting with its controversial pact with Novell last November. Microsoft has also cited Linux protection playing a role in recent patent swap deals with Samsung and Fuji Xerox. Microsoft has also had discussions but not reached a deal with Red Hat, as noted in the Fortune article.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is also quoted in the article as saying Microsoft’s open-source competitors need to “play by the same rules as the rest of the business.”
“What’s fair is fair,” Ballmer told Fortune. “We live in a world where we honor, and support the honoring of, intellectual property.”
The story notes that some big tech proponents of open source have been stockpiling intellectual property as part of the Open Invention Network, set up in 2005 by folks like Sony, Red Hat, IBM, NEC and Philips. The article surmises that if Microsoft were to go after open source, these companies’ combined know-how might give it some patent weapons to go after Windows…