Archive for May, 2008

Yes folks, Service Pack 3 is just another wonderful update from Microsoft.

Users who thought the Windows XP operating system would be more reliable than its younger sibling Vista are being buffeted by reports that the latest update for XP, Service Pack 3, has its own problems.

A variety of complaints about SP3 are being posted on the Web, with users complaining about system crashes, spontaneous reboots, and other issues. On the Windows XP forum at Microsoft.com, for instance, a poster named Doug W. said that, after installing SP3, he had to use system restore “after three attempts, with different configurations each time.” He mentioned that his system has an Athlon chip from Advanced Micro Devices, and other users have reported similar problems with SP3 on AMD machines.

I ran the update the other day and haven’t had any problems. I have an AMD Athlon 64, so I guess I should just shut up and be thankful. It wasn’t like I was trying to install a walk in tub or anything like that.

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Comcast has sold their service as ‘unlimited’ for a while now. With the influx of movies and other high-bandwidth using attractions on the internet, it’s only natural for people to be using more bandwidth.

Comcast Corp., the nation’s second-largest Internet service provider, is considering setting an official limit on the amount of data that subscribers can download per month and charging a fee for those who go over.

As more consumers download movies and music online, Internet service providers have to grapple with how to manage their traffic so that bandwidth hogs don’t slow down the network for the lighter users among the company’s 14.1 million subscribers.

For years, Comcast directly called customers who used up several times more bandwidth than the typical subscriber’s 2 gigabytes per month — for instance, by downloading hordes of movies. The big users were asked to reduce their use or have their accounts canceled.

Movies and music didn’t just suddenly appear on the internet. People are going to want to download them, whether or not they use Comcast to do so. Comcast should have prepared for this, and the service that doesn’t cap people’s bandwidth will be the one left standing at the end of the information superhighway.

Companies just don’t prepare anymore. If they did, we would have this issue, foreclosure wouldn’t be an issue for so many people, and the world would be a better place.

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While it never should have happened in the first place, it’s good to see Mozilla doing something about this. Then again, with all the different sources of code out there in the hundreds if not thousands of plugins for Firefox, I am surprised we haven’t seen more of this already.

Mozilla warned Wednesday that a malicious program inserted adware code into a Firefox plugin that has been downloaded thousands of times over the past three months.

Because of a virus infection, the Vietnamese language pack for Firefox 2 was polluted with adware, Mozilla security chief Window Snyder said in a blog posting. “Everyone who downloaded the most recent Vietnamese language pack since February 18, 2008 got an infected copy,” she wrote. “Mozilla does virus scans at upload time but the virus scanner did not catch this issue until several months after the upload.”

Mozilla is now going to add additional scans of its software to prevent this kind of thing from happening in the future, she said.

Maybe next time they will send the code to drug rehab before releasing it to the public? The sad part is, they have no idea how many people’s computers might be infected already. Yikes.

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I don’t think today is going to be a very good day for Jerry Yang.

Yahoo Inc. Chief Executive Jerry Yang has gotten what he wanted: a chance to prove his company is worth more than the $47.5 billion that Microsoft Corp. offered to buy the Internet pioneer.

It will be a daunting challenge, as Yang will be pointedly reminded Monday when investors are expected to show how little they think of Yahoo without a takeover bid on the table. Faced with resistance from Yang and the rest of Yahoo’s board, Microsoft withdrew its offer over the weekend.

Many analysts believe Yahoo’s stock price, which had climbed nearly 50 percent since Microsoft’s initial offer, will surrender most, if not all, of that gain, leaving the Sunnyvale-based company’s market value around $30 billion.

How do you justify rejecting an offer of $47.5 billion when just 24 hours later the company won’t be worth much more than $30 billion, if that? I wonder how many bottles of Tums he downs every day?

Before you know it, they’ll be selling everything down to the kitchen faucets.

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Personally, I would have been running. Yahoo has nothing I find of particular value.

Steve Ballmer had previously said that he knew what they would pay for Yahoo, and if Yahoo! wanted too much, they would walk. It looks like those boots were made for walking.

Microsoft Corp. has withdrawn its $42.3 billion bid to buy Yahoo Inc., scrapping an attempt to snap up the tarnished Internet icon in hopes of toppling online search and advertising leader Google Inc.

The decision to walk away from the deal came Saturday after last-ditch efforts to negotiate a mutually acceptable sale price proved unsuccessful.

I bet this isn’t the last we’ve heard of this. In fact, I can guarantee it. Microsoft doesn’t walk away from anything, unless it’s labeled “customer satisfaction”. Maybe they’re just waiting for the lipovox to kick in and save a little cash?

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