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Vol. 6, No. 30
7-20-06
1 Follow-ups
2 Redmond CIA
3 Blogger info, magnified Googling, PS3 is going down in flames, legal movie downloads
4 IE magnifier
5 Snakes on a Plane
6 Slow Yahoo
Judging from the emails we received after last week’s issue it seems I misstated my assertions about WGA and its relation to spyware. I want to set that issue straight.
WGA by definition is spyware because it installs using subterfuge, collects personally identifiable data and sends said data back to the parent company, in this case Microsoft.
WGA is NOT malicious spyware like those components detected and removed by programs like Ad-Aware and Spybot. It’s a bad idea and a slap in the face of Windows users, basically calling them thieves until proven otherwise, and hopefully the pending lawsuits will have the same effect as the uproar over activation and the inclusion of C-Dilla in the installation of Turbo Tax a few years ago. Intuit removed the activation feature, offered a tool to remove the C-Dilla spyware and henceforth has avoided offending possible customers.
Microsoft may eventually get the hint, but for now WGA exists and 95% of users will not be affected adversely. Removing WGA is a bad idea in that it could prevent you from getting certain enhancements to Windows XP. It’s not sniffing your keystrokes for credit card numbers and passwords, nor is it (to my knowledge) monitoring your browsing habits.
It’s simply playing overzealous cop by knocking on your door every day to ask what you did, where you were and who you were with last night. Heinous, and if carried out in the “real world” unconstitutional, but in the bizarre world of cyber-legalities it might be OK. I don’t like it, I don’t agree with it, but I don’t suggest you remove the program, at least for now.
It may annoy your sensibilities as it does mine, but for the time being the best bet is to wait and see what transpires in court, just to be certain that you have access to all the security fixes that Microsoft has to continuously churn out.
A couple of week’s ago I ranted about the Commonwealth of Kentucky blocking access to emails and websites in a manner that can only be described as haphazard. Some political sites were blocked while others weren’t, same for auction sites, streaming audio sites etc. This very missive was blocked from users on the mail.state.ky.us email servers.
Reader Kathy Stein, who also happens to be a Democratic State Representative from Lexington, has stepped to the plate to draft legislation to prevent “politically motivated censorship”.
Representative Stein says her bill would ban gambling sites as well as sites that host adult content (as most work places do) but would keep other filtering “viewpoint-neutral”.
All intelligent IT managers will block access to sites that may cause damage to their networks via spyware and viruses, and certain content is certainly objectionable to the common man and blocked most everywhere. But the US Constitution specifically protects political speech, and blocking neutral speech, especially useful speech like from us humble Gurus, is just plain stupid.
Ms. Stein’s proposed legislation goes a long way to try to rectify the current situation. Given the sorry state of tech knowledge amongst our legislators (I give you Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, who apparently had the entire Internet emailed to him one morning through tubes: http://blog.wired.com/27BStroke6/?entry_id=1512499) I must give Kathy credit for doing something to try to stop the madness.
You go girl :)
Kevin Mefford, Editor
Terry Wise
www.ratland.com
Tech News of the Week
The Pew
Internet & American Life Project released a survey on
Wednesday that
tells you more about bloggers than you ever wanted to
know:
http://www.sci-tech-today.com/story.xhtml?story_id=11000002XJ2O
Google
is testing a version of its search engine aimed at blind and
partially
sighted users:
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2160757/google-trials-accessible-search
Japanese
giant Sony hopes to duplicate the success of the earlier
versions of the
Playstation. But critics contend that the $600 price
tag could cost the
company big:
http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/jul2006/gb20060720_962759.htm?chan=top+news_top+news
Hollywood
studios will cross a significant technological and
psychological frontier
this week when they offer the first
downloadable movies that can be legally
burned to a DVD:
http://www.theage.com.au/news/technology/hollywood-agrees-to-burning-dvd-issue/2006/07/19/1153166455537.html
Copy
us on the good stuff ;-)
Matthew Dattilo
thepcgurus@gmail.com
www.mattstodayinhistory.com
Download of the Week
As a “baby boomer”, my
eyesight isn’t what it used to be.
This little add-on comes in handy.
Other browsers let you view Web pages at custom sizes--why not Internet
Explorer? EasyRead installs two buttons in your IE toolbar. One looks like a
plus sign, the other like a minus sign. One lets you zoom in to make your Web
pages look bigger, the other zooms out to make them smaller. Version 1.5
introduces the ability to do this with right-clicks as well. Whether you need
things bigger for easy reading or smaller to pack in more information, EasyRead
can make your Web reading, well, easier.
It’s free here: http://www.snapfiles.com/get/ieeasyread.html.
Art
Maley
Contest of the
Week
THE hot topic on blogs, forums and in chat rooms has been the upcoming movie “Snakes on a Plane” starring Samuel L. Jackson. Personally I like Jackson but I’ve never understood this fascination with what is obviously a B movie, at best.
Regardless, if you’re one of the breathless hordes you can win a private screening of the film for you and 100 of your closest friends. The prize includes popcorn, soda and goodie bags for all your guests and a plaque naming you as the biggest “SOAP” fan. Enter at:
http://www.snakesonaplane.com/fansweeps/index.html
Email Question of the Week
Q: I recently switched to Foxfire and pages
load pretty fast except in
yahoo mail, which is very slow and will often
"hang" and timeout.
Clearing the cache and increasing its size to 70 mb makes
no noticable
difference. I'm using a 512k cable modem. Incidently, the IE
browser
is also slow when using Yahoo mail on my home computer. I have
a
compaq with pentium 4 processor. (Using yahoo mail on the computers
at
the public library is much faster than my computer.) Any
suggestions?
A: I have heard many complaints from Yahoo
users recently about the
pages loading slowly or not at all. I think
the problem may be
something they've done on their end, especially if other
pages load
normally. The fact that the library computers load faster is
likely
due to their connection rate (likely at least a T1 link at 1500Kb)
as
opposed to your stated rate of 512Kb. Even slow pages load
faster
with bigger pipes.
Not much
help and I may be completely wrong, but the increase in
complaints of late
pretty much points to the problem being at Yahoo.
Kevin
Mefford
Contact info and legal
stuff
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