A Windows guru spends two weeks with a Mac

Benjamin SchollnickNo Comments

\”Editor\’s Note: This story is excerpted from Computerworld. For more Mac coverage, visit Computerworld\’s Macintosh Knowledge Center.
I’ve been on the front lines of the Mac-PC war for as long as I can remember. My first work computer was an IBM PC with an 8088 CPU. I liked it so much I forked out the money to buy my own machine: an IBM PC XT clone running an 8086 chip, and bulging with 640KB of RAM and a whopping 20MB hard disk.
Since then, I’ve written dozens of books and hundreds or thousands of articles, columns and blogs about PCs and Windows. Along the way, I’ve earned the unending enmity of plenty of Mac folks. At one point several years ago, I was targeted by hundreds of Mac fans in an e-mail barrage because I used to write a column about shareware that covered only PC software and ignored the Mac. More recently on my Computerworld Windows blog, I’ve been called various schoolyard epithets when I’ve written anything remotely critical about Macs or people who use them.
So it was with more than a little trepidation that I accepted a new assignment from my editor (sort of a follow-up to my article ‘Living free with Linux: 2 weeks without Windows’) to give up my PC and try living for two weeks on the Mac. Talk about sleeping with the enemy!\”
(View the rest of the article at A Windows guru spends two weeks with a Mac | Business Center – Page 1 | Macworld)

Pirate Bay defendants found guilty | Digital Media – CNET News

Benjamin SchollnickNo Comments

Pirate Bay defendants found guilty | Digital Media – CNET News: \”
A Swedish court on Friday found the four defendants in the high-profile Pirate Bay case guilty, sentencing them to a year in jail. The defendants were also ordered to pay $3,6 million in damages to copyright holders, among them several American media giants. This according to Swedish media.
The four men–Peter Sunde, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Fredrik Neij, and Carl Lundström–were found guilty of having made 33 copyright-protected files accessible for illegal file sharing via the Piratebay.org Web site.\”

(See the Rest of the Story at Pirate Bay defendants found guilty | Digital Media – CNET News.)

DivX 7 video software released for Mac

Benjamin SchollnickNo Comments

DivX 7 video software released for Mac | Video | Macworld: \”DivX 7 video software released for Mac
by Peter Cohen, Macworld.com
DivX has announced the release of DivX 7 for Mac, the latest major version of its video encoding software. The decoder is free — a Pro version with encoding tools is also available for $20.\”

(View the rest of the article at MacWorld – DivX 7 video software released for Mac)

We Won! Time Warner Killing Usage Caps “In All Markets

Benjamin SchollnickNo Comments

I am trying to find a second source to verify this, but according to Stop the Cap (http://www.stopthecap.com ) Time Warner Cable has officially stated that they are shelving plans for the tiering of the internet…

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and I stood side by side this afternoon in front of Time Warner headquarters in Rochester to announce that Time Warner has shelved its broadband tiering nightmare.
“In the face of enormous community opposition and at Schumer’s urging, Time Warner will shelve the plan for all of their test markets,” Schumer wrote in a prepared statement.
StoptheCap! confirmed moments ago with the senator’s press secretary that this effectively ends tiered pricing in EVERY Time Warner market.

Stop the Cap! · We Won! Time Warner Killing Usage Caps “In All Markets” – SITE IS BEING POUNDED… PLEASE BE PATIENT.

Time Warner\’s Tiered Internet Plan Draws More Fire (NewsFactor)

Benjamin SchollnickNo Comments

\”NewsFactor – Time Warner Cable\’s plan for tiered Internet service is running into more opposition and competition. In Rochester, N.Y., the site of one of the trials, competitor Frontier Communications has dropped its own plan for tiered DSL service — and is looking to accommodate any disgruntled Time Warner customers.\”
(View the rest of the article at Time Warner\’s Tiered Internet Plan Draws More Fire
(NewsFactor))

My software package stopped working, what should I do?

Benjamin SchollnickNo Comments

Let\’s take this account:

After I installed Mac OSX (10.5.6), Roxio\’s CD Spin Doctor started to show corrupted and incomplete waveforms. This problem has been reported several times on MacFixIt.com. I\’m not sure if there is a fix to it, or who is responsible: Apple or Roxio. Has anyone on this forum experienced the problem, know of a fix, or the status of a fix??

Now the trigger for this problem, is fairly obvious, installing Mac OS X 10.5.6… But what is the solution?

  1. Check to see if there are any updates for the software.  Very often the bug has already been reported, and fixed…
  2. Contact the manufacturer of the software package, and file a bug report.  This maybe as simple as writing an email, or choosing an option from the Help Screen.  Typically the manufacturer is looking for the following information, for bug reports…
    • A short summary of the problem…  No more than 3-4 sentences…
    • What Steps are needed to reproduce the problem (preferably in numbered format)
    • What the expected results are without the bug
    • What the actual results are with the bug
    • Describe any \”edge\” cases, where this issue occurs, or doesn\’t occur.  For example, Spell checker in powerpoint changes frog to frogs.  Whereas in Microsoft Word, it does not change frog to the plural.
    • Any Additional notes, and more detailed description of the issue (if needed).
  3. Do a google search on the issue, see if anyone else has reported the problem, and see if there are any known solutions on the internet.
  4. Disconnect *ALL* hardware except for the mouse, keyboard, and essentials…  Reboot, and try it with the reduced set of hardware.  A good example, is that original series of F.E.A.R. games (http://www.whatisfear.com ) refused to run, if my 2414U HouseLink adapter was plugged into my computer.  No error messages, it would just exit 5 seconds into the introduction.

The key here is to ensure that the bug is fixed in the future, and the only way to do that is to actually contact the manufacturer of the software.  If it is a bug in the Operating System, the manufacturer will contact the OS manufacturer and they can collaborate on the resolution….
Alas, I have seen far too many people just throw their hands up, and not report the problem…

Inside the \”James Bond Villain\” Data Center

Benjamin SchollnickNo Comments

\"19CABD4D-55F3-4920-A1C0-358A92E02E05.jpg\"
In an underground bunker 100 feet beneath Stockholm lies a unique facility operated by the Swedish ISP Bahnhof. It’s become known as the ‘James Bond Villain Data Center’ after it was featured on the Pingdom web site last year. Dean Nelson of Data Center Pulse recently got a tour of the data center from Bahnhof CEO Jon Karlung, who provided a look at the many unusual features of the facility, a former military bunker designed to withstand a hydrogen bomb blast. Karlung has said he drew his inspiration for many of the center’s flourishes from James Bond villains (especially Ernst Blofeld), hence the waterfalls, greenhouse-style NOC, glass-enclosed conference room ‘floating’ above the colocation floor, and blue-lit diesel engines (supposedly used in German submarines). \”
[youtube http://www.youtube.com?v=qwlATf9xse4]
Updated: 04-24-2011
Google To coincide with Earth Day decided to give a little peek inside its data center in Moncks Corner, South Carolina.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com?v=1SCZzgfdTBo]