Category: Tech News


US Style DMCA Proposed in Canada

Filed Under: Tech News by Dave — Comments Off
June 17, 2008

On June 12th the first reading of Bill C-61 took place in the House of Commons. This is a terrible bill that takes the power of copyright law out of the hands of lawmakers and into the hands of corporations. I’ve gathered up a few links to get you up to speed on the issue. You can read them here, here & here.

You can get a simple form letter to e-mail your MP here. After e-mailing your MP make sure to drop a copy of the letter in the mail, no stamp needed, to;

Your MP’s Name
c/o House of Commons
Ottawa, ON
K1A0A6

Completing the process takes no time at all. Our MP’s need to know that Canadians will not stand for this loony law. Check out UserFriendly’s cartoon strip for a slightly humorous slant. June 16th & June 17th strips.

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Who is a failure?

Filed Under: Life, Tech News by Dave — Comments Off
June 16, 2008

Everything that I had read said that Google had adjusted their algorithms to combat link bombs, also known as Google bombs. Turns out this may, or may not be the case.

Head on over to Google and search for the term “who is a failure?“. The #1 result should look like the photo below.

This story originally broke back in February. Perhaps this isn’t a true Google Bomb, and is just an unfortunate coincidence for Mr. Bush.

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Wayback Machine Fun…

Filed Under: Life, Tech News by Dave — Comments Off
June 15, 2008

I stumbled upon the Internet Wayback Machine today. It was great fun looking back a the early days of the web. Google, MSN, NBC, CBC have all come a long way since the static web pages that we were treated to in the late 90′s.

MSN then:

And Now

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I’m A Mutant!

Filed Under: Tech News by Dave — Comments Off
January 31, 2008

My wife would tend to agree with that statement, but, she is a mutant as well.  Hell, even our wee lass is one as well.  Science Daily reports that "Blue-eyed humans have a single, common ancestor".  Scientists are doing amazing things with our DNA.

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Anti-Spyware Roundup…

Filed Under: Tech News by Dave — Comments Off
September 1, 2007

PC World has recently updated their top anti-spyware applications.  PC Tools PC Doctor 5.0 comes out on top with a very impressive 95 rating.  PC Doctor 5.0 will set you back $30 but a starter version is available from Google in the Google Pack.  I've tried the starter version of PC Doctor and found it easy to use but no different than the other anti-spyware free-ware options. 

View full article »

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Vista: 9 Months Later…

Filed Under: Tech News by Dave — Comments Off
August 21, 2007

It has been 9 months since Vista has been released into the wild.  Nearly a year ago, and before general release, I posted a comment on Vista.  I had used it for about 2 weeks at work to test the various applications I run.  At the time I thought it was the prettiest bloated cow I'd ever seen.  I made the decision not to migrate our XP/2000 fleet any time soon.  I didn't install XP at work until after SP2 was released.  I think I will be waiting at least until SP2 for Vista as well.  In fact, if M$ decides to support XP long term I may never migrate.

In related news, Jim Louderback is leaving PCMag for Revision3 and has some parting shots at Vista.  Jim was a proud supporter of Vista since the launch, but after using it extensively he has changed his tune.

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WP Update & A Lonely Boy

Filed Under: Tech News by Dave — Comments Off
March 23, 2007

Looks like my upgrade of WordPress to the latest & greatest version has gone as smoothly as one can hope for.  I also took the opportunity to see if any of the plugins I use here have had updates.  Some actually did.  It is good to see that there is a thriving community to support WordPress.

On another note, Kris is leaving for Toronto this afternoon and will not be back until next Wednesday.  Our furry lil beasties will be extra needy while she is gone, so I will have my hands full.  I do have a few things planned already so I will not need a honey do list left for me, and I can always waste time playing WoW.

My Facebook community is really growing.  It started very slowly, then yesterday exploded when I was able to find a number of old school mates, some I haven't seen in over a decade.  It was good to catch up on what they have been doing all these years.

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WordPress & Comment Spam Filtering

Filed Under: Tech News by Dave — Comments Off
January 23, 2007

I am very impressed with the Akismet Spam filtering system that WordPress has integrated into their blogging software.  Recently this blog has gotten quite a bit of spam and Akismet has stopped nearly all of it (99.996%).  I moderate the comments before they are posted here and only 2 of 450+ spam comments were in my moderation list.  I'm not sure why they weren't in the spam folder as they were clearly spam, but I am still thoroughly impressed.

I haven't upgraded to WP 2.1 yet, but I hear that there is an updated version of Akismet included in the update.  Akismet is free for personal use, and if you have a WordPress blog, I urgently recommend using it.

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Firefox v2.0

Filed Under: Tech News by Dave — Comments Off
October 27, 2006

Firefox v2.0 was released earlier this week, just after IE7's release date.  IE7 left me unimpressed with its interface and general look and feel.  Firefox latest release is a much more polished product.  Instead of changing mush of its buttons and interface, the developers left a good thing alone but gave the old interface a face lift.  The only interface change I have noticed is the addition of close buttons to each tab.  I still find myself mousing over to the right to close tabs but I'm sure Ill get used to this change quickly.  The single greatest improvement in v2 is the addition of inline spell checking in web forms.  I love this feature and its implementation was done perfectly.  Good job people. You can read about more features here .

So can these improvements further take a bite out of IE's market share?  Not without an inovative marketing plan or, better yet, a large PC builder installing it on all its PCs.  Dell & Google have a deal to install the Google Toolbar and Desktop on Dell PCs.  Mozilla should explore this type of deal.  Firefox's ~15% market share would quickly improve if our grandma's and mom's had the browser installed and ready to go on their new PC.

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Firefox & IE7

Filed Under: Tech News by Dave — Comments Off
October 22, 2006

With the impending releases of Internet Explorer 7, I would like to remind my readers that there is another option.  In fact there are two other options that would be a good choice as a primary browser, Firefox and Opera .  Personally I prefer Firefox to Opera, the bias is purely subjective.  I just like how Firefox does things and I like the the user interface.  There is nothing wrong with Opera, its just not for me.  With that being said, Firefox is set to release its latest version late this month.  You don't have to wait for 2.0 to come out, the latest stable release 1.5.07 is available and I urge you to at least give it a spin.  Check out TweakGuides.com to learn how to optimize you new copy of Firefox.

In related IE7 news, Microsoft will be pushing IE7 via Windows Update as a high priority update, but will be an optional update.  There have already been a few concerns over possible exploits, but one thing is for sure, this update will be worth the time to download it.  Until website developers stop designing sites to use activeX there will always be a need to keep a IE around.  It may as well be a more secure version than the porous IE6.

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