Month: January 2005

What is it with big companies trying to squash bloggers lately? First it was Apple going after a 19 year old blogger concerning a scoop on Apple’s new iPod shuffle and mini Mac before they announced at Mac World. Now it seems Microsoft wants to get some bad PR by going after a couple of sites blogging about the future of their mobile technologies. It is a shame that since these bloggers are not large publications, companies like Apple and Microsoft can have their way with them. Since most of them couldn’t afford to protect themselves in court against them they usually back down due to threats from these companies. The fact is that these companies are not under any NDAs (Non Disclosure Agreements) so why go after them. Go after the people who leaked the information rather than these individuals only reporting on the information that has been given them. If the people reporting the information were CNN or the New York Times, would the companies even attempt to sue them let alone strong arm them? If you ant to read some more info on these instances follow the links below.

Microsoft Boggers Recieve Legal Threats Think Secret Gets Legal Defense

I was taught by my parents to show kindness and help your neighbors. After my current interactions with my neighbor, I might have to re-think that idealistic concept. My car has custom license plates with the word ‘PC-Doc’ imprinted on it. Well my neighbor saw this and knocked on my door one night. They asked if I fixed computers and I told them that I was a Network Engineer but asked “what was the problem they were having?” After hearing her reply I said I would drop by since it sounded like a spyware / virus problem. I loaded Adaware, Spybot and AVG Anti-Virus onto a USB thumbdrive and went over. Once I got there the machine was infested with viruses and spyware. The file / registry key count was in the thousands. I spent an hour and cleaned the system out for them. They then asked how much they owed me for the service and I did the neighborly thing and told them not to worry about it. I also told them to do themselves a favor and purchase Symantec AntiVirus and a Linksys DSL/Cable router since their cable modem was directly attached to the workstation. Well they didn’t listen to me about the router and I have since had to pay them two more visits. They have now turned into the bane of my existence. Looking back at things now I should have charged them my regular rate of $150 an hour and they would have thought twice about asking me again for help. Since I was kind and helped them, I am now their personal computer guru (pulls hair out of head just thinking about it). Take a tip from your uncle Doc, avoid helping out friends and neighbors with computer problems unless you truly want to have the little personal time you have for yourself stripped away.

Sounds like something on the McDonald’s Kids menu, but this mini belongs to Apple. I have a love hate relationship with Apple. I have owned many Macs over the years and I have sold them all on eBay.  I love Apple’s OS X interface however it always comes down to issues with me. The two issues being cost of ownership and the miniscule amount of software available compared to a PC. Well it might be time for me to plunk down some money on a new Mac. Apple introduced a new headless inexpensive Mac they call the “Mac mini”. The base model is priced just below $500 the specs aren’t much to talk about, but at least you’re not out a lot for something to play around with. To find out more about Apple’s new offering, just follow the link.

More Information…

Over the weekend I built a Microsoft Media Center 2005 system. I have been a serious DirecTivo user for the past couple of years. I have hacked them made them network accessible to offload recorded shows. I have also added larger hard drives so I can record over 200hrs on one box. The DirecTivo also lets you record two channels simultaneously. The only problem I had was the lack of being able to offload recorded shows to DVD. Stand alone Tivos have been able to do this for over a year. With the recent announcement that DirecTV is going to start selling there own PVR, it looks as if the DirecTivos are close to end of life. So I decided to build my own MCE system with a terabyte of storage and give cable a try. So I have two tuners built into it, which are attached to two cable set top boxes. So now I have the same functionality as my DirecTivo with a slicker interface and a DVD burner. So far I am very happy with it and it was worth the investment. In the near future I will write an article on the construction and installation of the software. I took a lot of great pictures during the construction of the system. Also I just started using a service offered by Orb that allows me to stream live TV, recorded TV, photos and MP3s to any network device (laptop, PDA, smartphone) from my MCE system any where in the world. It was very simple to setup and the quality was pretty decent. Hardwarezone.com has an article on an announcement made at CES regarding Orb and Netgear partnering. Check back soon for more of my impressions of Microsoft’s upgrade to its Media Center and the article I am writing.

Well Microsoft got this out pretty quick, considering they just acquired the Giant Software about 2 weeks ago the maker of the AntiSpyware. For details on the recent acquisition read the InformationWeek article.
You can download the beta version of MS AntiSpyware here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=321cd7a2-6a57-4c57-a8bd-dbf62eda9671&DisplayLang=en