DEADLINE post-it stop motion

I love this little stop motion video. If you want to know how it was made, there is a video of that as well.

Sounds from Windows XP and 98: Strangely Hypnotic

The Emperor's New Laptop

Hot on the heels of the sexy MacBook Air comes the even more orgasmic iNvisible iBook.

Our Hero Steve Jobs has really surpassed himself here, but I'm not sure if I'm cool enough or smart enough to even see today's ultimate gadget. I would certainly agree it's a steal at $2,999.

It could be enough to make me forsake the joys of Windows Vista: and that is serious!

Not a Windows Vista Fan?

I've now got 2 computers running Windows Vista Home Premium. As usual, it seems to be fashionable to criticise the latest version of Windows, but having used Windows 3.1, Windows 98, Windows NT, Windows 2000 and Windows XP, I find the latest incarnation more visually attractive and no more likely to crash or freeze than any of the previous versions. Perhaps I should have higher expectations than this, but having worked with computers for 20 years or so I have learned not to hope for too much!

I'm periodically tempted to defect to a Mac, and their machines certainly look trendy. The user interface looks good too, but at the end of the day most of the software I use runs just as well, I suspect, on pc's as it does on Macs. The rest of the stuff I do is on the Internet, and I doubt if it matters what sort of computer I use to access the Web.

As far as work goes, it seems to me that it tends to get done more often in spite of the computers rather than because of them.

But maybe I'm just an old cynic?

A Zombie In Every Home?

I've become a bit disillusioned with Michael Jackson in recent years, but I always thought the Thriller video was a classic. I could never take the zombies in it seriously though, and films like Shaun of the Dead haven't made them seem any scarier.

However, it appears that I (and you) should be treating zombies with more respect, if only because you may be looking straight at one! A recent article recounted an experiment in which Microsoft deliberately set up a zombie pc, put it online and waited to see what would happen. In the 3 weeks of the test, reseachers noted 5 million requests for connections to the machine, and attempts to send 18 million spam messages carrying advertising for 13,000 websites! The article makes the point that spam is not the only problem. Networks of zombie computers, or botnets, can be used to launch phishing attacks, seed new viruses, launch denial of service attacks and be put to other sinister uses.

Help is, however, at hand in the form of the FBI, those well known zombie killers. The boys in blue have recently put the creator of one zombie network in the slammer. Apparently he could be facing 50 years behind bars, which I think is much longer than he would get for murder in the UK!

Call me cynical if you like, but didn't I hear that Microsoft were moving more into the computer security business? And don't you think botnet is too cute and cuddly a name for a network of zombies?