News items and other various tidbits that Chad Cloman finds interesting enough to share with his friends.
The linked article performs various speed tests on four different browsers: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, and Safari. There wasn’t really a clear winner, but Internet Explorer was definitely the loser.
Link: http://lifehacker.com/…
Adobe has posted a fairly important update to its Flash player. You can download it from this link. (I’m not totally sure about this, but it appears that Firefox users on Microsoft Windows may need to install it twice: once under Firefox and once under Internet Explorer.)
The linked article gives a good explanation of how JavaScript negatively affects one’s web browsing experience. I know that for me, heavily scripted sites such as digg.com significantly slow down my computer. Not only do they prevent the browser from multitasking effectively, but they peg my CPU at 100%. (Note: the WebKit product discussed in the article is part of Apple’s Safari browser.)
Link: http://arstechnica.com/…
This Lifehacker poll provides a nice list of free Windows firewalls and their relative popularity. I used ZoneAlarm for a while but gave up on it because it didn’t allow me to unblock specific incoming ports. (Or at least, I couldn’t figure out how to unblock them.)
Link: http://lifehacker.com/…
BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer file transfer protocol that was used early on to distribute Linux kernel builds. It’s great for quickly distributing large files when you don’t have much server bandwidth. In recent years, however, the protocol has become synonymous with illegal file-sharing of movies and music. So it’s really good to see BitTorrent being used as it was originally intended—in the linked article a Dutch university uses BitTorrent to push Windows updates out to 6500 PCs. Where they originally needed 22 servers and 4 days to distribute the updates, now they only need 2 servers and less than 4 hours. BitTorrent has saved them a lot of time and money.
Link: http://torrentfreak.com/…
(via Ars Technica)
Ars Technica has a review of the new features in the beta version of IE8. The primary change is better adherence to web standards, which really only matters to developers—the other features are pretty minor.
Link: http://arstechnica.com/…
I did instant messaging “back in the day” with ICQ, but it’s only in the past year or so that I got serious about it. And what a mess! Because the people I chat with are on different networks, I had three IM clients running at the same time. But there is a solution. Pidgin is a free, multi-platform IM client that can simultaneously connect to 16 different IM networks, including Yahoo!, AIM, MSN, Google Talk, and, yes, ICQ.
Link: http://www.pidgin.im/…
On Jan. 19th, 2038, Unix/Linux systems will run into a major date-related problem. The current method of representing dates/times does not work for dates past 3:14:07 UTC on 1/19/2038. We may start seeing problems beginning tomorrow (Saturday 1/19/2008) because 30-year mortgages will extend past the end date. The migration to 64-bit computers will resolve this issue for many, but the real problem is with embedded systems and some file system formats.
Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/…
(via Slashdot)
AOL has announced that it will discontinue any further support for the Netscape web browser, as of February 1st, 2008. Time to switch to Firefox if you haven’t already done so.
Link: http://blog.netscape.com/…
(via Slashdot)
I guess this was inevitable, but still…
Link: http://www.reuters.com/…
(via Slashdot)
Scientists have created a computer program that cannot be beaten at checkers, once the number of pieces gets down to 10. (I guess you could win if you still had 10 or more pieces left.) The way they worked this out is neat. For every possible combination of 10 checkers or less, the researchers have pre-computed the next move to take—a move that has a certainty of not losing. If the opponent also plays a perfect game, it will result in a draw, but the scientists have proven that the computer cannot lose.
Link#1: http://news.bbc.co.uk/…
Link #2: http://www.nature.com/…
(via Slashdot)
Link #3: http://www.foxnews.com/…
(via Kim Komando)
Just a reminder that Congress has mucked around with daylight saving time by advancing the start date. This year it will begin on March 11th instead of April 1st. You may need to update your computer’s operating system and software to handle the change. Of more concern are consumer electronics products, which may or may not have updates available. Chad’s News has several previous posts on the topic.
Chad Cloman
Denver, CO USA
