Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Limewire busted

Diaspora - 4 nerds working on a private social network for the general public

About New York - Creating a Network Like Facebook, Only Private - NYTimes.com
4 students at NYU are working on a private, open-source social network alternative to Facebook.

Here is a link to their project site Diaspora.



Update:
Facebook Rival Raises $200K Without A Single Line Of Code

Why to not get a Mac - by Murphy at MaximumPC

Murphy's Law: 5 Reasons Why I Don't Want Apple's OSX | Maximum PC
He recently wrote an article about some utilities to make your Windows operating system look more like a Mac's. After getting a lot of flack for that article (basically, why would you want to do that when the Windows OS is already better than the Mac OS) he wrote this article.

For me and my tech support experiences, the areas where Macs fall short are:

- Price - for the same hardware in the system, you can buy a Windows PC for 2 to 4 times cheaper (in other words, for the same quality and power of hardware, a Mac is anywhere from 2-4 times the price of a Windows PC). When Apple says this is not true, that Macs are cheaper, they are comparing to very specialized brand-name Windows-PCs, not most Windows PCs.

- Compatibility (hardware and software) - I often run into situations with Macs where the person has installed an upgrade patch and now some of their software and or hardware won't work (also including external devices like printers, scanners, etc). Meanwhile on a Windows PC, when you install updates and service packs to the OS, in most cases, your software and hardware will continue to work. Or, the Mac owner wants to add a new part. But, we find out the only manufacturer of said part is Apple and that it is obsolete and you can't buy it, or, if someone else makes it and you can get it, it won't work with their machine. The end solution in many of these cases is that they have to go buy a whole new computer or a new printer or such. In all of these cases in a comparable situation with a Windows PC, I could easily buy a new part, it doesn't cost much, plug it into the computer, it works and there are no problems with the OS or the drivers or such.

- User Interface - No right-click mouse. Extra steps to open or close something. Not able to customize things. - Even Mac users are frustrated by some of the counter-intuitive things about the interface. In my experience with Mac clients, we have found that there are more steps to do things, or that certain things that you should be able to do, cannot be as easily done on a Mac as on a PC.

Want a system that is easy to use and intuitive, that you will be able to easily buy replacement parts for years from now, and that you will be able to add components to easily and inexpensively as the years go buy, and that most software and hardware is compatible with - get a Windows PC.

Britain's Conservatives and Liberal-Democrats to form government.

Britain’s New Labour era ends with Cameron taking power - The Globe and Mail
You can bet that the Conservatives will make sure the referendum they promised will fail (badly worded, little or confusing information to the public beforehand, etc).