Here’s today’s round up of stuff you should be interested in….
Open Office is Bloated
Yep. The open-source MS Office alternative is a resource pig, as tested by ZiffDavis. In fact, it’s so bloated, that judging from its overwhelming memory usage and processor utilization, I’d almost say that it’s unusable for any serious work.
Bag on Office’s bloat all you want, but don’t explain how you’re getting away from it by moving to some open source piece of trash, k?
How professional of him…
CBS’ future man at the anchor desk, John Roberts, is quite the class act, referring to Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito as “sloppy seconds.” Here’s how Roberts put the question to White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan:
“So, Scott, you said that — or the President said, repeatedly, that Harriet Miers was the best person for the job. So does that mean that Alito is sloppy seconds, or what?”
Nice Job, Johnny.
For the six of you who have never heard the phrase, sloppy seconds refers to the condition of the female anatomy after another man has “been there.”
Yeah. He went there.
Sony DRM Includes Rootkit Lovin’
Apparently, not content with merely crippling your ability to copy your music, Sony has added rootkit technology to one of its latest. From Slashdot:
An anonymous read writes “SysInternals.com guru Mark Russinovich has a detailed investigation of a rootkit from Sony Music. It’s installed with a DRM-encumbered music CD, Van Zant’s “Get Right with the Man”. (Mmmm, delicious irony!) The rootkit introduces several security holes into the system that could be exploited by others, such as hiding any executable file that starts with ‘$sys$’. Russinovich also identifies several programming bugs in the method it uses to hook system calls, and chronicles the painful steps he had to take to ‘exorcise the daemon’ from his system.” This house is clear.
For those unaware of what a rootkit actually is, suffice it to say, it’s not good. A rootkit actually hooks into your system and changes the way information is presented to you by your operating system. Rootkits are almost undetectable because they run at a lower level than the applications running on your OS, so in this case, if the rootkit blocks $sys$ files, no application will be able to see it because the rootkit has the OS ignoring it, and applications rely on the OS for file listing.
Surely you see the problem now. For more information on Rootkits, check out Sysinternals.com. If you already have Microsoft’s excellent Anti-Spyware tool installed, you’re mostly protected as it does detect some of the more popular types of rootkits.
Few Searches, No Results
Since July 22, 2005, the NYC MTA has been ignoring people’s privacy in an effort to stamp out terrorism on the Subway. They’re searching people, randomly, at random stations on random days, in an effort to keep terrorists off-balance. Apparently, however, it ain’t doin’ anything. The NYCLU, not one of my favorite organizations, hits the nail on the head with a recent press release:
In addition to violating the constitutional rights of millions of subway riders, the NYPD policy appears to be ineffective as a security measure. The NYPD is not conducting searches at most subway entrances at any given time, is giving advance notice about searches at those entrances where searches are being conducted, is allowing people selected for a search to walk away, and is not basing the searches on any suspicious activity of individuals. As common sense would suggest, the NYPD’s program is virtually certain neither to catch any person trying to carry explosives into the subway system nor to deter such an effort. Indeed, given the way the Department has implemented its search program, the only people being searched are innocent users of the subway system.
Not enough searches, at not enough stations, on not enough days, with not enough cops. I feel safer already. All I can say is one of these police officers better never try to search me, or he’ll get some serious resistance. I’m not some submissive sheep.
Unlock your Cingular Sony Vaio T350
Engadget has the goods on how to get your Cingular Sony Vaio laptop rockin’ on T-Mobile’s EDGE network. Oh sure this won’t matter for most of you, but hell… It’s pretty nifty anyway.
UFO Mapping using Gmaps
Google Maps really is the coolest mapping technology ever. Aside from it’s awesome interface and neato features like Satellite imagery, it also has a wide-open API and people have done some amazingly neat things with it, like this site which shows you some UFO sighting info. I did notice that, consistent with popular stereotypes, the midwest really is a hotbed of martian activity. Guess they don’t have corn on Mars…
National Novel-Writing Month Underway
Oh yeah, baby. Better get going if you’re gonna hit that 50,000 word minimum by November 30th. Tonight I’m getting started. Have the plot, the characters, and everything else ready to go. I’ll keep you updated on the progress.
Online Organizer
Want an online organizer available from everywhere instead of just your desktop? Try Planzo. A slick UI and nice sharing features make it a must-check-out for those of you who are not quite as organized (or centralized) as you’d like to be. Planzo also has an open API, so the potential is enormous.
Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann are Not Liberal
I’m sure that comes as a major surprise to you, as it does to me. FAIR recently indulged Keith Olbermann in his complaint to liberal-loudmouth Al Franken that MSNBC was upset that he had too many liberal guests on his show. FAIR pointed out that MSNBC had two well-known conservative hosts (Joe Scarborough and Tucker Carlson) but failed to mention that Matthews and Olbermann are both quite liberal:
But has MSNBC truly “steered out of that time,” as Olbermann suggests? If MSNBC management were genuinely worried about ideological balance, then the fact that the channel currently has two one-hour programs hosted by well-known conservatives (Tucker Carlson and Joe Scarborough) and none hosted by liberals would be of considerable concern.
Wow. No liberals. I’m sure Keith and Chris would be devastated if they saw this.
Freshmen No More
Amherst Regional High School will stop using the term ‘freshman’ to refer to ninth-grade students because the term is not inclusive enough for some members of the faculty there, according to the Concord Monitor.
Students in ninth grade will now be referred to as … wait for it … “ninth-graders” in all official documents and morning announcements.
ARHS Assistant Principal Marta Guevara, who pushed for the change, said the decision to move away from ‘freshman’ came about after a production of the The Vagina Monologues two years ago.
Guevara said the school wants to make students “aware of the possible misogynistic, oppressive or non-inclusive language.”
via TongueTied
Read the EULA
Holy crap, there are some pretty insane things inside those End User License Agreements that most of us click past when installing software… Check this one out:
[you] may not without Microsoft’s prior written approval disclose to any third party the results of any benchmark test.
That’s in the EULA for SQL Server. Imagine that; you can’t benchmark and report the results of one of the most widely used corporate database systems. Read more, if you dare.
That’s it for today folks. To those of you participating in Nanowrimo, good luck, and I’ll see ya in the ’sphere!
