FusionMods

This is a great article that touches on a number of recent events.

To start things off, Microsofts ad campaign appears to be working. Menioning an independant study, things are looking for for them. I hate to say it, but I think this ad campaign was completly provoked byMac. The funny part is, it probably would have worked except as soon as Bill Gates Stepped down, microsoft started fighting back.

Now about and beyond the ad campaign, it looks like microsoft will be opening up some of their own stores, and conveniently placing them right next to a few apple stores as well. lol, I think this will be comparable to a fast food war. I think this is pretty great though, because when companies comete, we win.

Do I know how to call them or what? In the Microsoft vs Google game I made mention to the fact that it’s likely we’ll be seeing google netbooks powered by ARM processors. And today I see this article popping out, “ARM Cortex + Google Chrome = Your Next Netbook?“. Looks like I was right

So whats this all mean?

Well google will be starting a big larger of a battle than against just microsoft. It’ll be waging ware on software developers and a few hardware developers. All home and work computers run off the same CPU Model as Intel. They may not have an Intel processor, but odds are, they do.

Now the software developers won’t be too big of an issue since ARM has been around for a while, but they’re still pretty late to hit the mainstream game, and all that software you love for your desktop/laptop will need to be redeveloper to run with an ARM processor.

Whats the difference between ARM and Intel? Well ARM has never had the power to process things like windows. Intel has never had the battery life that ARM has. It’s sort of like comparing a ranger to an F-350 (King Ranch Edition of Course). For a netbook, ARM might be an ideal choice, but I think there is still a lot to come from all of this.

This is something the tech community has been buzzing about and it is pretty big news. While it may not be the mega clash that soo many people are making it out to be, it is still definitely news worthy.

Whats causing the buzz? Each company is trying to squeeze into the others territory. Suprisingly a lot of people are attacking microsoft for the first move, but while most people mention googles online apps, don’t seem to mention that it was created well over a year ago, offering applications such as word processing, desktop publishing, and spreadsheets. add heirchical database managment, and you have the office suite (no need to mention the outlook alternative right?).

The most recent announcements are google is planning to launch an OS, and microsoft who’s found some real success with it’s search engine Bing! will be launching free online apps along with Office 2010. Unfortunately, I don’t expect google to provide real competition to microsoft with their new OS, I could be wrong, but I’m not expecting anything as powerful as windows.

Google only recently entered the OS game with android, the cell phone OS. While this was a great day towards opening up cell phones, they’re low end, and I wouldn’t be suprised if google launches a netbook OS, that runs on ARM processors. The other issue that I think will hold them back will be software compatability. I don’t care if google invents the cure for cancer in an OS. If i can’t run any software i need to do my job, then why would I use it? There is already windows, linux, and macs to program for, in these economic times, google may not only have to reinvent the wheel, they may have to reinvent the axel, the frame, the motor, and so on, because it’s going to be difficult and timly to get new developers on board with their platform.

Microsoft may actually have it a lot easier to enter googles field. The beautifual thing about websites are they are universal. Any computer, and any platform (more or less) can run them. Microsoft is no stranger to web programming either. With the initial presence of VB.net, asp.net, and even their database software, they already have all the necessary tools to work with.

But really no matter how you’re looking at it, you’re seeming something that happens every day. Competition. No matter how this goes, it should be good for us, the end users in the long run.

For all half tech people TPB is a pretty common name. As one of the most well known sites for online torrents (legal and illegal) they’ve been making an even larger stir in the news than usual lately.

The start of their biggest news was their recent loss in court over copyright infringement. It’s unfortunate because it seems like having a generic name more like for example, “google” would have been all it’d have taken to save them from their loss.

Well with all their media attention, a few interesting things have happened. The first is that the pirate party in sweden has gained a couple seats in their government to start pushing for a more open copyright system. The other, has been, the upcoming sale of The Pirate Bay site. Oddly enough, the media giants in their lawsuite, only went after the site owners, and left the site completly alone. (sounds to me like they want to keep that wealth of file sharers alive if you asked me…) This was being heralded as the death of the pirate bay until an announcement came of a new underdevelopment of the Open Torrent Tracker. This will be a software app that allows you to simply do a search, connecting to many trackers, and avoiding the sites themselves all together.

So whats this mean? well from where I’m sitting it doesn’t mean much. The trackers, still include TPB (which I will image will be sold off with the site if it goes through). Additionally, while it does side stepp the site, like i said, people are still going to see TPB being associated with it, and they won’t be too happy over that. Now on the other note, this does bring TPB and other torrent sites much closer to being on the same level as Google, working as an anymouse search engine. This example was cited in court a few times, and the only reason it never held up was because TPB has such a suggestive name for “pirated material”. There were other reasons, but that loose connection was one of the finer points.

So as of this moment, the future of TPB is fairly uncertain. But with how cocky the owners are, I think it’s a safe bet they’re always looking three steps ahead. The last statement I read from them (and sorry if it isn’t the most recent) was that they’ll do what it takes to keep that site alive.

I read this article today and thought I’d share some thoughts on it…

http://ecogeek.org/efficiency/2839-yahoo-data-center-will-be-powered-by-niagara-falls

It’s actually really suprising when you start looking into it, but tech companies are doing some big stuff to go green. Google I’ve read has spent more on going green than the  US governemnt (sorry, couldn’t find  a more recent article).

But whats so interesting about this latest article about Yahoo is the fact that it is Yahoo making this move. Yahoo got into the search game way back in the day. I’d say they’re one of the originals, or atleast close to it. The thing that seperated them from google, was when Yahoo (much like many other search engines of the time) started to transition from being a search engine to a search portal. It crowded it’s site with junk all over the place. Obviously people didn’t love this, and google became a top level search player.

Over the years Yahoo has made a slow decline and has even talked about allowing google and microsoft to buy them out (which would have been interesting since microsoft and google have somehow become bitter rivals). But the deal with google fell through over anti-trust talks, and when microsoft stepped up to the plate, Yahoo wanted too much money, and even after offering to lower the price, microsoft had already moved on.

So now we’re left with a company that just doesn’t have the market share that anyone would want. Now I mean they are still a top level site, but by no means are they the premiere search engine they used to be. Even with microsoft looking to get into the online search business, yahoo will likely continue to see even more improvements.

But this talk of going green, which would unquestionably be a big investment, it makes me think Yahoo must still have a few tricks up their sleeve. I know I’ll be keeping my eye on them to see what they announce next.

I’d love to hear what you guys think on this one.

This is probably some uninteresting news to most, but I did feel it was news worthy. Oracle, one of the largest commercial database companies, has just announced it will acquire Sun Micro systems. Sun, the current owner of MySQL, a very strong up – rising free database, could secure a great deal of business for Oracle. In addition, this will give them a step into the Operating System world with Solaris. With proper business managment, this could be the best thing for the company so as long as they are kept around.

Previously, IBM has been looking to purchase Sun, but deals broke down over the price negotiations. Oracle has agreed to purchase Sun for $7.4 Billion, or $9.50 a share. While this is far lower than that share price a year ago, with the current economy, it’s about double what the stock was priced at just a few months ago. This move is likely to make Oracle the sole competitor with Microsoft when it comes to commercial database solutions.

It’s just been a couple of days since four members of The Pirate Bay have been found guilty and they are already finding immense support.

The Verdict called for each member to spend one year in prison and pay fines totaling $905,000 each.

According to TPB’s official Blog, they do not want any donations made other than support, buy a shirt, and seed their torrents is their official message. They’ve already appealed the case and aren’t expecting the have to pay the fines in the end anyways.

While the Movie and Music industry are celebrating this small victory, they really should be rethinking their strategies. With each legal action they take, they only boost support for TPB and associated groups. The Pirate Party in Sweden has held protests and taking new members. Their membership just jumped from 15,000 to 20,000. They hope to get a seat at the European Parliament later this year.

Above and beyond the political support, probably the most damaging the the movie and music industry is the fact that they left the site out of this ruling and went after only the individuals behind it (a very odd move overall, but i suppose, why take down the source of $$, lol). Membership on The Pirate Bays site membersip has jumped 20% as a result of the recent publicity, and it’s still rising.

Above all is what will come this ruling. Another writer made an excellent point that I had brought up before, both ehre and other sites is what who will be next? In the end, The Pirate Bay didn’t itself commit any crime. Their site indexes torrents, both legal and illegal. They don’t put the files there themselves, people upload them. They don’t force people to download the content, people do that on their own. So we really have to ask the question, when will google, yahoo, or mircosoft have their lawsuites filed? Since just like these sites, The Pirate Bay only indexes information. Probably the only difference is that TPB doesn’t spider the internet as a whole to collect information, they allow it to be submitted to them. This in one view makes Google and Yahoo, ect more liable for content they link to than TPB. One theory could be just the the Music/Movie industry are testing the waters with someone very unpopular, after all, could anyone even imagine this being successful with google? People would laugh if they were served for “providing links to content that you don’t host through an automated system”. But as a web developer, these cases are a bit of an eye opener, because it takes us one step closer to being punished by association. If I link to a site that it later found to be criminal, what types of penalties can I expect? Like I said before, this is a pretty major lawsuite, and this first hearing won’t be anywhere near the last we hear of it.

Well there’s been a lot of news lately, but it’s extremely wide spread with the categories it falls into.

IBM preps to purchase Sun Microsystems.
What is it? – To many this is probably hardly worth a blip in the back page of a paper, but to anyone who uses the web, it’s worth knowing. PHP and MySQL are two of the larest open source pieces of software you’ll find on the web. This blog, mtalks, forum,and find-it-monroe, and an extremely large variety of other sites are built around it.
Whats this Mean? – MySQL is an open source database that had recently been purchased by Sun Micro Systems. Sun while always having excellent hardware and software has always lacked in the competitive market, being bought by IBM will likely be great for them. But the bard part is, now there might be a chance that MySQL will no longer be open source. This will have dramatic effects as the largest competitor to MySQL is ORACLE (as well as SQL SERVER, but lets save that for another discussion another time), which is a largly commercial product. If you pull the database out from under the web, you’ll be left with some pretty lame sites >.<

MPAA President to be Replaced
Appearantly their progress isn’t as nice as they’d like it to be. I don’t think you’ll see too many people feeling sad for this one.

MediaDefender is just about out of business for good
This just seemed fitting to be the next headline. I believe they’ve filed for bankruptcy already. The little known company to most people who don’t live on the web exists for the sole purpose of tracking down people sharing media and gathering your info so you can be sued by the MPAA/RIAA. After their huge hack from last year, their stock dropped almost instantly. They’ve also faced other challenges. Their evidence was often questionable as best. In Michigan it was decided they would need a private investigators lisence for them to operate.

Myspace and Microsoft team up
Looks like yahoo might be out of the microsoft loop after this. After hearing about the many times microsoft talked about buying out Yahoo, and yahoo held out for more $$$, it looks like yahoo might have lost its chance. Microsoft is partnering with parts of myspace. This now has microsoft partnered with myspace and facebook. Google is also currently involved with facebook, but as their contracts come closer to an end, this might give Microsoft the leg up it’s been looking for to get into the internet world.

Android might be coming to a desktop near you
Googles mobile OS is currently being researched for netbooks. I’m sure linux users are unhappy about this. Personally I’ll be suprised if this ever really happens though, everything I’ve heard so far is that andriod is pretty buggy (but what new OS isn’t I suppose?).

And to wrap it up… A great article from CantStrafeRight from FusionMods.net

The DeamTablet is a portable Dreamcast build into a 15″ lcd tablet like system. It not only runs on batteries but also contains the holy grail of Dreamcast modding, an ejecting GD-ROM drive(First time I’ve ever seen one work)

Out of all the Dreamcast mods I’ve seen so far this is easily my favourite.

This mod was created by the Benheck forum member WERD

You can find a worklog on WERD’s blog:

http://modsbywerd.blogspot.com/

Follow this up in the Forum

For any web developers out there, you all undoubtly know of googles advertising program, AdSense. Along with knowing th ename I’d suspect many of you also have heard the rumors, that even while they’re at the top of the ad serving game, there’s a lot of suspescion about their “practices”. In a sign of reliefe, there might be some hope now. In what I’d consider a pretty huge ruling in a small claims court (for under $1000, lol) google has been ordered to pay what they owe to a company that was remaining on their contract after it was terminated. The signifigance of this comes from the fact that many will tell you, google doesn’t issue a payout until you reach $100. And as many will tell you, it seems to be most common that you (if you’re potentially doing anything wrong), once you hit that $100 mark, thats when your account will be terminated, almost never before that. The shady practice deal here is that they just received a free $100 of online advertising. While this isn’t a huge deal on an individual level, imagine this happening to atleast one person a day all year (which I’d have to guess is an incredibly gross understatement), that’s 365 * 100… coming to a profit of 36,500. Thats a pretty solid chunk o fmoney to middle class america, and like I said, this is likely a gross under estimate.

The full story can be located here, and it has some good personality in it too: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-greenspan/why-i-sued-google-and-won_b_172403.html

This isn’t any secret and even though it was part of Macs ad campaign, as it turns out, macs do get viruses… It’s pretty simple logic though, macs don’t have a comparable market share to windows, so hackers go for the largest targets possible. I mean someone could make a virus for my TI-95 calculator, but since I have 4 computers and one calculator, the computers would be easier to hit. So with my little rant that a lot of macs success lately has been due to their lack of success in the past, here’s the story…

Ars reported:

Security researcher Charlie Miller, who last year won $10,000 for hacking into a MacBook Air via Safari in just two minutes, says he thinks Safari will be the first browser to fall at this year’s Pwn2Own contest. “It might be because I’m biased about the things I’m good at, but it’s the easiest browser [to hack],” Miller told Computerworld this week.

This is just some food for thought. I also thought that right now might be a good time to point out that, while windows has the most critical bugs, it also has the fastest turn around (sorry, I can’t find that link to cite this one )