Category: Geekdom

I’m an online-news technology buff, and I can see this as a wonderful tool for online news photos. It’s called Fotonotes. Basically, it’s a tool for annotating JPEG pictures inside the pictures themselves. With the software, you can map out specific parts of a photo (say, a person’s face) and then attach mouseover text to it. When you pass your mouse over a mapped piece of a photo you get pop-up text identifying that part of the photo, and a highlight area where the rest of the image is darkened to emphasize the highlight area.

Am I the only one that finds this really cool? The link I got this from has an example.

Gotta love the Internet. I submit the item and have it published on Langalist, it shows up 10 minutes later on Bits & Bytes. Does somebody read the same mailing list I do? I think so ;-).

Anyhow, this lunatic has 36 operating systems on his PC (53 if you count DOS window managers) using some nasty partitioning, 6 hard drives, and XOSL, a great freeware boot manager (I’ve used it before, too). What’s sad about the whole thing is that it was published in Maximum PC about 6 months ago (which is where I first read about it), and people are just now thinking it’s cool. Ah well…

Google Labs is now offering Google Compute. What is it? From ResearchBuzz:

“So is Google Compute a cool new Google search feature? Nix. Google Compute uses your computer’s idle computing power to work on a research problem — if you’ve heard of SETI@Home you’ve got the idea. (The current Google Compute project is a protein research project called Folding@Home, though the page indicates that you may have a choice in the future of what projects your computer works on.)”

Lately I’ve been listening to more talk radio on the AM dial, mostly KBND 1110. Why, I don’t know. But one day I was driving home (I have a 30-minute commute) and Dr. Laura was on the radio. I had never heard her show before, but I noticed one thing about her:The advice she gives to the people who call is, generally, for the caller to change their attitude/outlook/whatever about things, going by the attitude that you need to change yourself before you can change others (which I agree with — mostly). Granted, I’ve only listened to 30 minutes of the show about 4 times, so this opinion is a very unsupported one. Most of the time its the appropriate action, but there are sometimes where I think to myself “Is this really the caller’s fault?”

Then I thought a little bit more. I’ve worked answering phones for software companies doing tech support, and generally, user-errors accounted for most of my calls. But at Microsoft, for example, many calls they probably get are bugs in their software.

So what if Dr. Laura answered phones for Microsoft? I think the conversation might go something like this:

Dr. Laura: Jim in Delaware, thank you for calling Dr. Laura.

Jim: I thought I was calling Microsoft?

Dr. Laura: My name is Dr. Laura, Jim, how can I help you.

Jim: Whatever … Anyway, my computer is brand new and doesn’t have anything installed on it except Windows XP, and I installed Office XP on it, and after I rebooted, I got a blue screen with a bunch of code and a cryptic error message. What do I do?

Dr. Laura: Are you sure the screen was blue?

Jim: Yes. Very much blue.

Dr. Laura: Are you really sure?

Jim: Well, if I squint, it kinda turns green.

Dr. Laura: No, blue is OK, I just wanted to make sure you were sure.

Jim: Oh…uh, OK. So what can I do?

Dr. Laura: What would you like to do?

Jim: I’d like to have a functional computer — what do you think?!?

Dr. Laura: That’s fine, Jim. But are you sure the computer’s the one that needs to change?

Jim: Well, the computer is running your operating system, and I tried to install your Office software, so I’m pretty sure the problem is yours.

Dr. Laura: Let’s not make accusations, Jim.

Jim: Fine. Just tell me how to fix this and I’ll get on my merry way.

Dr. Laura: I think you know what you have to do Jim.

Jim: Buy a Mac?

Dr. Laura: *click* Cindy in Detroit, thank you for calling Dr. Laura.

Or something like that…

Disney/Go/whatever-they-are-called-this-week has had inquiries about the search technology and patents left over from when they acquired Infoseek. According to the article, the last time the Infoseek spider did an index crawl was over two years ago. So while the search technology is useless, there’s probably something in the patents that Infoseek holds that might interest some parties, if only for the sole purpose of avoiding future litigation. Full Story

Their quote, Microsoft’s quote from The Register: “The architectural limitations of Windows NT 4.0 do not support the changes that would be required to remove this vulnerability.” Please tell me I’m not the only one that manages a few NT 4.0 servers and don’t have the money to pay the Microsoft Tax to upgrade? You can firewall off the problem (which I’ve already done), but should you have to? MS’s security bulletin and more discussion on SlashDot.

Adobe, makers of the popular Photoshop software and long a supporter of Mac users, has finally conceded that PCs are faster at running their company’s software (not better, necessarily, just faster). If I were Apple, I’d consider this a challenge.

If you’ve been dealing with Microsoft products for any amount of time, you probably remember various product code names: Chicago (Windows 95), Memphis (Windows 98), Daytona (Windows NT 3.5), Whistler (Windows XP), etc… . But you probably didn’t know that nearly every product that has ever left those Redmond, Wash., offices has had a code name during the development cycle. And you can find nearly all of them here.

It’s an interesting thought, and typical of the radical thoughts of John Dvorak‘s columns. His prediction: Apple Computer Corp. will switch to Intel processors within the next 12 to 18 months. He has some good argument as to why it might happen (or at least, why it should happen), but he goes one step further: run new Apples on Intel’s poor-selling (but very powerful) 64-bit processor, Itanium. Get OS X to run native on that proc, and it would haul-ass. But getting Intel and Apple to play nice with each other, without pissing off Microsoft, may be another chore entirely.

Another question I have: Where does AMD fit in all of this? AMD processors have always had a more efficient architecture, but haven’t been able to hit the high-gigahertz range to make them a complete knock-out of Intel (and their constant delays in releasing AMD 64 haven’t helped). If Intel wants to knock out AMD for good, a deal with Apple might be the way to go. However, I could also see AMD’s relationship with Microsoft flourishing if Intel works with Apple. But this is all speculation, obviously, and will probably never happen, but it’s sure fun to think about.

Just take your Dell XTS tower and paint the mofo!

No windows, no cold cathode, no special LED’s. Just some metallic paint, and time. (click thumbnail to enlarge)

I dig the copper…there’s not enough good lookin’ copper out there. Way too much gold.

I have no clue if the CD drives still function..I tried to tape them off, and used fun tack to cover any LED’s on the whole tower.

I like it!