Vista DRM: Security Researcher claims he "cracked" Vista DRM

I thought that tag was pretty funny. Don't you just love Slashdot?

Read the full story "Vista DRM Cracked by Security Researcher" on Slashdot.

On a serious note: that's not a very good news for Microsoft.

Carly Fiorina's Tough Choices

During my college days, I wrote a paper on Carly Fiorina's strategic management during her career at HP. No, it wasn't in her favor, rather against her. Now, I have been reading her book, Tough Choices, and I am thinking of altering my opinions about her a little bit.

That said, I still think her decision to merge Compaq with HP was a disastrous one.

The book, Tough Choices, is extremely interesting and gives a very detailed look on Carly's life.

The Register has published a review of her book, Carly of La Mancha. From the review:

With Tough Choices, I hoped Fiorina would be brave enough to cast off her shield of unaccountability and present a more accurate picture of the real gal. Fiorina has spent years complaining about the media's unrealistic, unfair portrayal of her character. What better way to set the record straight than by giving the readers the good, the bad and the ugly.

Fiorina comes closest to looking human on pages 6, 36, 55,56, 69, 148 and 168 when she breaks down in tears. The crying fits occur for a variety of reasons ranging from professional to personal. The reader receives a vulnerable Fiorina quite different from the unflinching CEO.

Wikipedia Usability

I hate how Wikipedia won't automatically strip the trailing slash on URLs like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MVC/ and redirect a user to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MVC instead of presenting "Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name." I would really like to see this implemented.


On a side note, Wikipedia is now being used as an artificial intelligence tool, specifically, to "make computers smarter."

Bill Joy: Creator of the vi editor

I am a big fan of Bill Joy, creator of the vi editor and co-founder of Sun Microsystems. Like many, I seriously don't know what I'd do without it. Even though it was created in 1976, working with vi just feels so natural.

The vi editor is not the only contribution of Bill Joy. He's also the man behind UltraSPARC, BSD Unix, NFS and more.

While googling around today, I came to the following articles about Bill Joy.

From an interview given by Joy to Linux Mag. in 1999 (courtesy The Register):

What happened is that Ken Thompson came to Berkeley and brought this broken Pascal system, and we got this summer job to fix it. While we were fixing it, we got frustrated with the editor we were using which was named ed. ed is certainly frustrating.

We got this code from a guy named George Coulouris at University College in London* called em - Editor for Mortals - since only immortals could use ed to do anything. By the way, before that summer, we could only type in uppercase. That summer we got lowercase ROMs for our terminals. It was really exciting to finally use lowercase.

So we modified em and created en. I don't know if there was an eo or an ep but finally there was ex. [laughter] I remember en but I don't know how it got to ex. So I had a terminal at home and a 300 baud modem so the cursor could move around and I just stayed up all night for a few months and wrote vi.

1. "Bill Joy's greatest gift to man"
   
2. See what inspired Bill Joy to write vi
   
3. Mastering the vi editor is a great vi tutorial published by University of Hawaii at Manoa. A PDF version is also available.
   
4. VIM (Vi IMproved)
5. vi on Wikipedia
6. Nicedog.com
   
7. SPARC and UltraSPARC T1 on Wikipedia

Hitachi's 1 Terabyte Hard Drive

Hitatchi has launched two 1TB (terbyte) hard drives which are expected to retail around $400.

RIAA seeks $1.65 trillion in damages from AllofMP3

Yes, you read it right. RIAA is actually seeking close to $1.65 trillion in damages, based on a maximum of $150,000 for every MP3 downloaded from the website from Russian operated AllofMP3.com, ZeroPaid.com reports.

2006 Books and Stories of note Part 2

If you remain thirsty, guess what? You feel more pain than those who are well hydrated.

Newspaper publishers notice Google News.

The NY Post publishes, Google interested in buying Napster.

Cisco eyeing to buy Tivo and Nintendo.

Microsoft Office Patent Case: Microsoft loses

Linux power Military unmanned ground vehicle (UGV).

Is there "overwhelming bureaucracy in the IT Department"? Slashdot

Newpapers distributed that were wrapped in credit card data of 240,000 customers.

What would Google's future hold?

Bill Gates' taxes need its own computer at IRS.

IEEE Spectrum proposes a new version of patents that are short lived.

iPod causes hearing loss? Apple sued

IE7 Beta 2 Bug reports pouring in

Western Union will no longer send telegrams.

Google creating a private Internet.

Creating a crash free program in C++

BMW-Germany delisted from Google.

How Firefox came into being

The new RFID chip (mu-chip) ten times thinner than a paper with 128-bit capability.

Open-source vs. database vendors. (MySQL/Oracle)

A new compound that can kill HIV/AIDS virus.

Software patents vs Hard patents.

Zoep: an open source VoIP project

EFF urges users not to use Google Desktop.

Halo 2 to come only on Vista

US Government to index the Internet