It seems that the wait is coming to a close, Windows 7 has been confirmed by Microsoft as set to release on Oct 22nd. Windows 7 has so far been a much awaited version of Windows, and claims to be a faster and better version of Windows Vista, which seems to have been a failure overall.
If you do not want to wait for the official release, or just want to try it out first, the release canadite is availible right now for free from Microsofts official site, http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/download.aspx
Now its time to just sit back and see how it goes 
Not long after the release of Ubuntu 9.04 (which LinuxMint is based on), LinuxMint 7 has been released. It looks like the developers put a lot of work into making this disto an improvement over the last one, with a nice new green spin on things.
LinuxMint 7 Gloria Screenshot
Other than a new look, the rest of the work has been done by Ubuntu, stability fixes, etc. So far I have run into almost no problems with this new distribution, except one problem with the sound drivers, which I easily fixed.
If you are already a LinuxMint user, the instructions to upgrade can be found here: http://www.linuxmint.com/blog/?p=861 although it is suggested that you completly refomat your computer when upgrading.
If you are a new user, you can find the download information here: http://www.linuxmint.com/download.php
It seems that yesterday, May, 14th, that google was very slow throughout the whole day, with packets timing out, etc, and a little later it even wouldn’t load. This seems to have been quite a big surprise for a lot of people, as if you go on google (now that it is back up) and google “google down” you get one hell of a lot of hits! Anyway, it seems that they mis-routed their traffic to an Asian network that couldn’t handle the flood, or so they claim. So far I haven’t quite figured out why they would have done that in the first place.
On a side note, I was talking to someone today and they claimed that someone apparently made a modified version of Conficker, and spread it, and then yesterday used it to ddos google. I am not sure of the factuality of this claim at this time, however I will keep looking to see if I can find any other references to this being what happened yesterday.
Well, I don’t even know if this is my personal blog anymore, guess I don’t know much anymore, including why I put the title in parentheses, but hell, its summer soon so I guess its alright. Nonetheless I don’t think I’ve auctually made a blog post before that was auctually not totally centered around one technology issue, instead of basically something random that has happened been happening to me. Nonetheless, I’m not sure if I should do stuff like this more often or less often…
Well anyway, I guess I have been getting lazy or something lately, because although I generally try to be of the more secure type, I still managed to get my hotmail account hacked, and another site which is owned by one of my friends having some malicious code inserted into it. The malicious code “mystically dissappeared” so I’m assuming that issue was with godaddy, not security, however the other issue, my hotmail account, I’m still not sure about. The whole problem there started on Monday, when I got to school, and could not login. Me being stupid decided that if I tried it 15 more times, I would eventually get in. Guess I was wrong with that thought, all that did was lock me out. I of course tried the forgot your password feature, and that locked me out after guessing wrong 5 times also. I somehow managed to get into contact with the security support people, and they managed to help me by providing me with my “Reset Your Password” information, however it seems that it was wrong, so I’m assuming somebody changed it since that. Anyway, for now I am without my main hotmail account, and a lot of security paranoia Cheers xD
(Wonder if I should publish this, lol wait…no its already published, damn)
Yahoo has been providing their free web hosting services via Geocities for many years now, and is one of the longest standing free web-hosts, but now it seems that its also is leaving the scene before the end of the year. According to Yahoo, they are doing this in an attempt to streamline what services they offer. If you have a site there, you do not have to panic, as you still have until sometime this summer before they are going to close it. There is no exact date mentioned, however I’m sure that as more time passes there will be one.
They did not say why they needed to streamline their services, but I am pretty sure it is for the same reason everybody else is tightening their belt, the current state of the economy. This will be the second of one of the long-standing internet giants to shut down their web hosting service this year. In case you don’t remember, AOL did something similar to this with AOL hometown late last year. When that happened, there was a frenzy of people looking for their files for the many days after the site closed. I am almost positive that this will happen again with Yahoo, unless they make absolute sure that all of their customers know that it is closing, and even then some poeple will somehow get left in the dark. You can see what I am talking about just by looking at the long list of comments containing something similar to “I need my files back. This is crap. You can’t just close it and delete our files!!!” on http://www.peopleconnectionblog.com
It is a shame they are doing this, however they will still be offering a non-free (paid) version called Yahoo Web Hosting. Yahoo Web Hosting Can also be found here: http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/webhosting/ Also, for anyone interested, there are many other good free webhosts out there, a lot of which can be found at http://www.free-webhosts.com/
Please comment and digg
Yep, canonical has released the newest version of Ubuntu right on schedule. So far I have had no problems with it, as it seems they did less modification and more under-the-hood fixes. Not only that, they also decided to release a new version for netbooks in which I intend to test out as soon as I can get a download of it. In the mean time, you can find some screenshots below:
Ubuntu asking to update
Ubuntu beginning to update.
Ready to restart after update?
The brand new Ubuntu completely updated.
If small updates keep being made to Ubuntu like this, from what I have seen in this one so far, it will help the operability of Ubuntu a lot, and add I think in effect expand the user base.
Please digg and comment
If you have ever wondered if the person on the other end of the phone is really who it claims, well wonder no more, thanks to this new technology that can verify people’s identity based on sounds emitted by their ears. This technology is based off of the response power of the persons ear, which is different on everyone. What I mean by this is, it sends pulses into the ear, and based on the amplitude, etc of the response, it can tell whether it is the person that it claims to be.
Unfortunately, this new technology is not fully developed yet, and still has to work around basic problems, like the fact that ear wax buildup, along with many other things, will alter the amplitude of the response of the ear. Once this technology is fully develolped, however, it will have many uses, anywhere from disabling stolen cell phones, to verifying identies, as mentioned earlier.
More information can be found here: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227035.200-our-ears-may-have-builtin-passwords.html
Microsoft finally decided to release its newest browser, Internet Explorer 8 this week. I originally did not download it since I don’t use IE myself, and they have not yet forced it out via Microsoft Update, however for the purpose or writing a review, I decided I might as well.
The installer is of course one of microsofts fancy ones, and was slow like every other Microsoft installer…
Once it was finally installed, it required me to restart before auctually installing, quite annoying but nonetheless it installed without any problems. Unfortunetly it made me restart, which I hate doing, however the browser literally does not install until you restart. After restart, I finally got it started up
To be honest, I don’t see what they really improved, it looks just like IE8, only in my opinion its a bit uglier. I can say for sure that this is definatly not going to get me using IE again. I’m pretty sure Microsoft wasn’t thinking straight with this one.
Vista Transformation Pack, the emulator for the Windows Vista theme on Windows XP has been released. It is an upgrade to the last version 8.01. New features Include x64 and Windows XP SP3 support. Also, all the programs built in have been upgraded to faster and better compatibility.
Vista Transformation Pack allows you to make your computer which is running either Windows XP or 2000 to look like it is Windows Vista, using a mixture of programs which are programmed to add different capabilites of Vista to earlier versions of Windows. This pack is the closest you can get to Vista without auctually getting it. If you would like to download it, it is availaible from the following link: http://www.winxtp.com/vtpdl.html
I started off as a windows user, many years ago. I was somewhat happy with it due to its user-friendliness to an extent. However unfortunately it is not very secure. So just a few years after I started using Windows, I ran into a problem on my laptop, Windows would no longer work. I went out and got a CD for Ubuntu, and got rid of my Windows partition forever and started using Ubuntu. At first I was not very satisfied, due to the amount of customization it took, but after a bit of customization, you get used to it, and find that you can do much much more with it than Windows. I used Ubuntu for a good year, then I ran into Linux Mint.
In Linux Mint, it is pretty much customized right out of the box more so than Ubuntu. It is based off of Ubuntu, however it has been tweaked by the programmers of Linux Mint before it is sent out. It has a much better software manager than Ubuntu also, and contains much more software that can be installed. Also, by default it has a start menu, which is almost a merge of Windows Vista and the one that generally comes on a Linux distribution. It contains a Search Filter to search for your programs (A feature that I miss in Ubuntu) and a Control Center, much like the Windows Control Panel. Not only that, it comes with a firewall that has a GUI installed, and so far I have not had to use Terminal yet, due to the fact that everything I use either was already installed, or has an install option built in. To top it all off, if you have been using a different linux distribution this whole time, this one will not take much getting used to at all. It is a great OS for the entry level Linux user, or any other Linux user that perfers a Graphical User Interface over terminal.
Link to read more about Linux Mint or to download: http://linuxmint.com