Archive for September, 2008

Microsoft Corp., the world’s largest software maker, urged the House of Representatives to reconsider its vote against the $700 billion financial bailout plan Monday.

…

“Microsoft strongly urges members of the U.S. House of Representatives to reconsider and to support legislation that will re-instill confidence and stability in the financial markets,” Smith said in a statement. “This legislation is vitally important to the health and preservation of jobs in all sectors of the economy of Washington State and the nation, and we urge Congress to act swiftly.”

Hmm. I’m not so sure I trust Microsoft (as a company) trying to persuade politicians to change their minds. Where have I heard this before? I would suck at futures trading, because I never saw this coming. All I can do is turn the focus to those who know what they are talking about.

Oh well, it doesn’t matter, because I think Thaddeus McCotter said it best,

For the past seven years or so, I haven’t had any luck with McAfee applications.

Computer security company McAfee Inc (MFE.N) plans to buy Secure Computing Corp (SCUR.O) for $465 million, adding specialized equipment that keeps hackers from breaking into computer networks.

The move, McAfee’s biggest acquisition to date, helps the No. 2 computer security company expand the bundle of products it can sell to businesses. The deal also boosts the number of companies that use its products.

I used to run McAfee anti-virus and I always seemed to have issues. Then I ran AVG and it found hundreds of items that McAfee never found. I love running avg, whether it’s installed on my home servers, or on the memory cards I carry for work, it never fails. So, if this new acquisition means they will offer the same quality of service they offer with their anti-virus line, I’ll pass thank you very much.

I am all for competition. Competition is good. Does Best Buy really think they are coing to compete with iTunes? Seriously?

Best Buy Co Inc plans to buy digital music service Napster Inc for $121 million in cash in an effort to compete with Apple’s dominant iTunes service and its iPod music players.

Best Buy, one of the largest retailers of CDs, and Napster, once the best known name in digital music, both offer digital subscription services, but neither have mounted much of a challenge to Apple, which holds more than 70 percent of the U.S. digital music market.

As the owner of an iPod Nano 3G, I cannot see myself every using Napster or best Buy or whatever they become once they are merged. Why would I? Hell, even if I fired up my Zen Jukebox, which I still do from time to time, I would use iTunes long before anything else.

How are all those other iTunes competitors doing anyway? Bueller? Bueller?

Yeah, got it. If Best Buy wants to keep tossing money away like that, they can feel free to toss a couple million my way. I bet I can make it last longer than the deal with Napster will. Once this deal goes through, they’ll find their company shrinking and it won’t be caused by weight loss diet pills. It’s a no-win situation for them, I believe.

I like the Chrome browser. It’s fast. It’s ridiculously fast. I don’t use it while finding items to blog about, or for anything else “productive”. But when I want to kick back and just surf the web, and look at promotional items, I have been testing Chrome.

Bach Khoa Internetwork Security, a security-research firm in Vietnam, claims to be the first to discover a critical vulnerability in Google’s Chrome browser.

“This is the first critical Chrome vulnerability permitting [a] hacker to perform a remote code-execution attack and take complete control of the affected system,” the firm wrote in its Sept. 5 advisory. While four Chrome vulnerabilities were discovered, Bach Khoa said the “Save As” flaw is the only one that can allow an attacker to launch remote attacks from a victim’s PC. Other vulnerabilities just crash the browser.

Thank goodness I don’t save anything while using Chrome, huh?

Did you hear the news? Google is going to start offering their own web browser. Wow. Just what we need. Another browser. I can hear the web developers whining already. This doesn’t work, that doesn’t work. Browsers always have their own quirks.

Google Inc is set to introduce on Tuesday a new Web browser designed to more quickly handle video-rich or other complex Web programs, posing a challenge to browsers designed originally to handle text and graphics.

Google officials confirmed news of long-rumored plans to offer its own Web browsing software, entitled Google Chrome, in a company blog post after it mistakenly mailed details of the plan to a Google-watching blog, called Blogoscoped.com.

Of course, since it’s Google, everyone will bow down at their feet and accept their ‘Chrome’ browser, with no questions asked. Well, there might be one question.

Couldn’t they come up with a better name than ‘Chrome’? When I hear the name chrome, I think of old cars or online auto insurance quotes. And it isn’t chrome anyway. What gives?