If the next version of Windows is version 7, how do you get to that number?
The last version of Windows with an advertised version number was Windows 3.1.1.
So there must be 3 different version of windows in the interim between 3 and 7. But I seem to remember a few more than that.
- Windows ‘95
- Windows ‘98
- Windows ‘98SE
- Windows 2000
- Windows Me
- Windows XP
- Windows Vista
Which looks like 7 versions to me.
Of course, Microsoft are trying to down play it, but most people ignored Vista. Which drops us down to 6.
And nobody really liked Windows Me. So we can discount that one too. Now only 5 versions.
But that’s still too many.
Maybe it’s just a coding error that got overlooked, and output the number ‘7′ when asked which number the next version of Windows should be.
Or is it that a competitor already has mind share in the number 10?
Unless you have been living under a rock, or have no internet connection, you will know that the Australian government is proposing to censor the internet in Austrlia.
The recent events in Iran, and people’s use of twitter, show how effective censoring the Internet in a country can be. Not very. Not without inadvertently affecting numerous other things that depend on the network infrastructure.
Maybe we need to have mandatory filters installed on all computers, just like like China? No, we already know there is an army of 16 year olds waiting to break them.
No other option then, just make accessing sites on the Office of Film and Literature Classification banned list a criminal offence.
Mr Smith goes to answer a knock at the door. Standing there are 3 burly AFP agents holding an arrest warrant.
“Good evening Mr Smith. You are under arrest for accessing sites on the OFLC banned list.”
“What?…I haven’t accessed anything illegal!… What is this about?”
“You have been accessing the web site of dentist in Queensland. Don’t attempt to deny it Mr Smith. We have logs from your ISP.
“And hand over that smart phone too. The community do not need to see any more tweets about your visits to the tuckshop.”
Putting asside the feasibility aspect for a moment. Do we really want Australia grouped with countries with such poor human rights records as Iran and China? Do we want a central regime that controlls all access to information?
On the corner of George and Liverpool streets this afternoon I noticed this altercation between a tour bus and a car. The bus driver was trying to get the car to reverse away.
Looks like the bus tried to turn into Liverpool St from the centre lane, and the car tried to undertake it.
Of course, all this is just the opinion of a untrained casual observer.
It did block traffic down one side of George street for a while.
Can’t seem to find any mention of the incident on the RTA Sydney traffic reports. Which, I find, have been usefuly turned into twitter feeds:
sydneytraffic
sydtraffic_city
sydtraffic_nth
sydneytraffic_nw
sydneytraffic_sw
Recently read on a tweet that Blizzard are looking for people to Beta test StarCraft 2.
Seems nice. You have to login to Battle.Net, and tick an ‘opt me into beta testing’ box. But I can’t seem to remember what my Battle.Net password is, and it says my credentials for getting it reset are not valid.
After some chasing details. Searching how to install StarCraft on Intel Macs. I discovered that I wasn’t actually registered on Battle.Net, just the Battle.Net you access via the game (which expires after not using it for 3 months anyway).
Along the way I found this nice guide for installing StarCraft and Diablo II on Intel Macs. And I got to play a game I haven’t for a while.
To put yourself down as a potential beta tester you need:
- to register a Battle.Net login (and login)
- Add a game to the Manage My Games list, using the CD key from your game
- check the Beta Profile Settings and tick the games you want to be down to test.
After registering I found that you can download CD images of StarCraft and Brood War from the Battle.Net site. Quite nice if you still have your CD key, but lost or damage your game CDs. You need a bit of spare bandwidth though, about 1.4 GB for StarCraft and wasn’t Diablo II in 5 CDs?.
It is also nice to see for a change that Australian games get to have a go before everyone else. Reading the StarCraft II FAQ I noticed that Australia will be in the first batch of countries offer beta testing.
When does the StarCraft II beta test start?
We don’t have an exact start date to share at this time, but note that when it does begin, we will be adding additional regions to the beta test in phases. North America, Australia, and New Zealand will be the first regions to begin beta testing, and other regions will follow afterward in phases. We will have more information to share about all of these phases in the future.
Are people starting to see the worth of Australia as a good English speaking test bed with its fast uptake of technology? Or is it just that being such a small region it was easier to set us up first?
1001
The flickr upload software for MacOS X, 1001, has been updated to version 1.0.17.
This release seems to fix the problems that I recently started to experience with 1.0.15:
- No sets were being listed, and
- Photos were not being added to groups.
Nice to see that the software is still being maintained.
Apple Australia is being sued for allegedly controlling a failed reseller, trading while insolvent for months. This reseller (and by inference, its managers) was so grossly incompetent that Apple did not trust its management’s ability to manage and account for its own business!
read more | digg story
IBM decided not to buy them, though Oracle seems to think it is a good idea. It will be interesting to see how the acquisition of Sun fits into Oracle’s host.
One question that comes out of the acquisition is: what will happen to MySQL? Oracle being the premier product, will it try to push the lesser aside in the business market? And will all the business and open source projects that use it suffer?
There are a couple of articles where people think there is nothing to worry about. Over at Forbes, Victoria Barret thinks it MySQL will fit a missing niche for Oracle, and will help it combat Microsoft.
And Matt Mullenweg of WordPress fame thinks it is the open source nature of MySQL that will save it. Seeing that it is the community that push most of its development at the moment, and its licensing. There shouldn’t be a worry about Oracle axeing it.
Doing an Oracle subject at the moment I can see some of the advantages. But I don’t really want to have to spend large sun on Oracle just to run my blog.
The Pirate Bay court case if over, and the owners of the service have been marched down the plank. The four were found guilty of promoting copyright infringement (2, 3).
Now, are the users of Pirate Bay to be deprived of their bits of torrent?
Well apparently not. The owners foresaw this as a potential ending, and distributed the servers far and wide. So, despite the verdict, all the users can still sail the high seas, and go where their bandwidth will carry them.
Today the Australian government announced its decision on submission to build the new National Broadband Network. Telstra put itself out of the bid last year by putting in an incomplete submission. So who of the remaining tenders were to take the cake?
None of them it seems. The government decided that none of the bids were up to scratch. So awarded the contract to itself.
The government announced its intention to establish a new public company to build the network. Spending $43 billion on the new entity to create a new fibre network. And interestingly, they now intend to do fibre to the home, rather than fibre to the node. Which seems like a much better proposal.
A question remains though, which a friend put forward: If the government is building the network, is this so it can bypass all the ISPs, and more easily implement its own filtering/censorship policy?
Australian politician Stephen Conroy has begun distancing himself from his highly controversial internet censorship policy. Although this is not a complete backdown. There still the intention to implement a list of filtered sites, just changing what is deemed to be filtered.
read more | digg story
