4peeps.com Forums: 4peeps.com

Spend an hour talking with me and I'm bound to start droning on about home theater PCs. It's a passion of mine, an obsession some would say, and one that's kept me interested for years now. I've burnt my retinas looking for differences between the various operating systems and programs designed for the 10-foot experience, and wasted countless hours trolling the message boards at sites like thegreenbutton.com. Heck, I bought a copy of Windows XP Media Center Edition. And I used Snapstream. And I built a custom interface for Knoppix, one of many Linux front ends.

extremetech

Gads this MJ crap is sickinging , What is a child molester being remembered for?
MJ = sleep with me in my jamies? Realy strange.

The Fastest Firefox Yet
Things move quickly online, and we’ve beefed up the engine that runs Firefox to make sure you can keep up: Firefox 3.5 is more than twice as fast as Firefox 3, and ten times as fast as Firefox 2.* As a result, Web applications like email, photo sites and your favorite social networks will feel snappier and more responsive.

mozilla

The Pirate Bay, a file-sharing site entangled in a court case over pirated music, will be bought by a Swedish software company.

Global Gaming Factory X (GGF) announced the deal Tuesday. The company, which provides digital distribution tools for Internet cafes, will buy The Pirate Bay for cash and shares amounting to $7.76 million. The acquisition is expected to be completed in August.

The Pirate Bay, a BitTorrent tracking site, is involved in a legal battle with major copyright holders, including Warner Brothers, MGM, and Columbia Pictures. In April, the Web site's founders were convicted by a Swedish court of copyright infringement, ordered to pay nearly $4 million, and sentenced to a year in jail. The defendants appealed the decision and were denied a retrial last week.

Hans Pandeya, chief executive of GGF, said in a statement that his company is looking for a business model that will pay copyright holders for content downloaded from The Pirate Bay.

c|net

Desktop PCs have been in decline for a decade, and countless people have said their piece about it. But new evidence suggests the desktop tower's death spiral is underway—and we're not too broken up about it.

I say this as a guy who was baptized into the tech world with a desktop; who still obsessively follows the latest PC components from Intel, Nvidia, ATI and the like; who has built, fixed or upgraded more towers than I care to remember; and who, until a few years ago, was an avid PC gamer. As someone who would be, by most measures, a desktop-PC kinda guy, I just can't go on pretending there's a future for them.

gizmodo

Here are 24 tips on how to speed up your Windows XP. Note:I recall that changing the various options and settings without understanding what and how they can influence, is very easy to spoil everything. Therefore, first of all you need to worry about safety and benefit of Windows XP available for this all means for backing up: Backup, System Restore, ASR.

computersight

The content-filtering software the Chinese government wants installed on all PCs sold in that country beginning next week was poorly developed and puts users at risk of having their computers compromised, a security expert who examined the code said on Thursday.

The Chinese government is requiring that all PCs include the Green Dam-Youth Escort software to block pornography, but it also blocks access to content related to violent computer games, illegal drugs and political speech, said Ben Feinstein, director of research at SecureWorks, a managed security service provider.

Critics are worried that the Chinese government could use Green Dam, a free download, to block all kinds of content and monitor online activities of users, as well as worried that the software could allow for a massive botnet to be created, either by cybercriminals or the Chinese government itself.

c|net

Chances are you've heard or read about Google's phone management system Google Voice, but you're not really sure what it does. There's a good reason for this aura of mystery. Google Voice got its start as a phone service called GrandCentral, which the search giant bought in 2007. It's been in beta ever since -- but unlike other Google betas that are open to the general public, this one was limited to former GrandCentral users and a select group of industry elite.

PC World

After the electoral success of Sweden's Pirate Party earlier this month, Pirate Parties are a-popping in Europe. The newest ones have appeared in France and the Czech Republic over the last few weeks.

Avast, me hearties! Eyepatches and peg legs have swept ashore in Prague and Paris as new political pirates hope to drink grog and make scurvy copyright landlubbers walk the plank.

(Editor's note: apologies for the embarrassing pirate prose. We have tossed the Orbiting HQ copy of Treasure Island out an airlock and hope that solves the problem.)

New pirate parties began in both France and the Czech Republic this month after Sweden's original Piratpartiet scored a major victory in European elections and saw one of its members shuffle off to Strasbourg to join the European Parliament.

Arstechnica

Microsoft is readying its next major release of the Windows operating system. After months of demos, early testing, beta releases, and finally announced launch plans, here's what you can expect in an upgrade.



When is Windows 7 coming out?

Windows 7, the next major operating system (OS) release from Microsoft after Vista, will be officially available on October 22. The first beta of the OS was released in February and a Release Candidate (RC) followed in May. The beta version will expire next week, while the RC will remain a free download until August 15.

PC World

Dead at 74, Kodachrome leaves a legacy for the ages. A last snapshot blast is planned



We don't expect technologies and human beings to enjoy similar lifespans in this accelerated age.

Rapid obsolescence is the norm, "On to the next!" the prevailing battle cry of the digital era. Small surprise, then, that the announcement this past week that Kodak was finally ceasing production of its storied Kodachrome film line after 74 years provoked so many printed exp​ressions of sadness and nostalgia.

Even if you knew this day was coming – and, most devotees agree, the writing's been on the wall for 10 or 15 years – you had to keep rooting that this epoch-defining slide film unveiled in 1936 and which dominated the gleaming pages of Time, Life and National Geographic well into the 1980s would keep improbably hanging on against the onslaught of point-and-shoot digital cameras.

Toronto Star

Is the Apple iPhone 3GS having overheating issues? I've seen some reports circulating on the Web today that indicate some handsets might indeed be affected. And I have my own tale to add to fray.

The story began at French site Nowhereelse.com, with a piece that showcases a discolored white iPhone 3GS whose owner says the discolorations came from the device noticeably heating up during use of the GPS over 3G wireless. This tale and image has circulated today at other U.S. gadget sites, including Gizmodo and Engadget.

PC World

June 28, 2009 Must install today to get it free

Create you own crazy voice effects. Speak into the microphone and hear your voice at the same time through the speakers. But it will not be your voice. It will be the voice of a monster, killer, alien or any crazy voice you can think of. You can save your recorded voice as mp3 or wav file. You can read in existing mp3 files or music CDs.
The program ships with a couple of predefined effects. But you will be able to create new effects using simple formulas to map one frequency to another frequency.

Giveawayoftheday

The music industry would be in better shape now if it had engaged with Napster rather than fought it.

So says Geoff Taylor, head of music industry body BPI, in a column written for the BBC.

In the column, Mr Taylor expressed "regret" that the music industry did not move faster to work out how to use the net to promote and sell records.

But, he said, many sites that have come in the wake of Napster pose a threat because they are populated by pirates.

Mr Taylor said it was "probably true" that the music industry would be better prepared in 2009 if it had worked with Napster instead of taking the service to the courts.

"I, for one, regret that we weren't faster in figuring out how to create a sustainable model for music on the internet," wrote Mr Taylor.

BBC

TAIPEI (Reuters) - Less than a week before a deadline for PC makers to install censorship software on all computers sold in China, some say they are prepared to implement it even as they quietly continue to lobby against it.

On May 19, China said all personal computers sold in the country must have the "Green Dam" internet filter installed from July 1, a move it says is to protect Chinese youth from pornography, but critics say is a form of censorship.

Sources at PC makers said while they were prepared to implement the ruling, they would probably wait until the last minute before sending the software to their distributors.

"The company will abide by the rule and senior management are on the issue, but they're still considering their position," a source at a top PC company told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the situation's sensitivity.

"They're lobbying for help from the U.S. government, and are really hoping that the current talks will help."

A second source said a recent flurry of statements from officials in the United States to their Chinese counterparts was a result of lobbying by PC companies on hopes that they could convince China to reverse or ease the new rule.

Reuters

After weeks of anticipation, Google is finally accepting a limited number of new users into its Google Voice phone system. Google Voice allows you to unite all of your phones under a single number and then use a powerful set of controls to determine how calls are handled. It packs plenty of other impressive functionality, too, including voicemail-to-text transcribing and advanced call-screening.

At the same time, though, adopting Google Voice as your communications commander introduces some potential negatives, ranging from privacy-related concerns to questions about reliability. Here's a breakdown of five pros and five cons to help you determine whether the service is right for you.

PC World

Google has reportedly obtained over a million phone numbers in preparation for the public launch of its new Google Voice telephony service. Ars gives you an inside look at the closed beta.

Google is preparing to launch a new service called Google Voice that is built with technology obtained through its 2007 acquisition of Internet telephony company GrandCentral. The Google Voice service gives users a single phone number that can seamlessly route calls to their existing phones. It has its own built-in voicemail service that can be accessed from any phone or through a browser, with GMail-like archiving features for audio messages.

The Google Voice service launched in March for closed testing with a limited audience that consisted of existing GrandCentral users. Google introduced a number of highly impressive features such as automatic message transcription and free SMS delivery. The transcription feature will convert voicemails to text and make them searchable. The service can also automatically forward voicemail transcripts directly to your preferred e-mail account.

Arstechnica

Today residents in the US, Canada, and Japan have the opportunity to preorder Windows 7 upgrade versions of both Home Premium and Professional editions (read: no deal for Ultimate) for significantly reduced prices. The deal lasts until July 11 in the US and Canada, and until July 5 in Japan. Microsoft emphasizes that these dates can only be taken into consideration while remembering the phrase "while supplies last." The software giant refused to reveal how many copies it was allowing to be sold at the reduced rates.

Arstechnica

Adobe’s Shockwave Player contains a critical vulnerability that could be exploited by remote hackers to take complete control of Windows computers, according to a warning from the software maker.

The flaw affects Adobe Shockwave Player 11.5.0.596 and earlier versions. Details from Adobe’s advisory:

This vulnerability could allow an attacker who successfully exploits this vulnerability to take control of the affected system. Adobe has provided a solution for the reported vulnerability (CVE-2009-1860). This issue was previously resolved in Shockwave Player 11.0.0.465; the Shockwave Player 11.5.0.600 update resolves a backwards compatibility mode variation of the issue with Shockwave Player 10 content. To resolve this issue, Shockwave Player users on Windows should uninstall Shockwave version 11.5.0.596 and earlier on their systems, restart, and install Shockwave version 11.5.0.600, available here: http://get.adobe.com/shockwave/. This issue is remotely exploitable.

ZDNET

For daring to steal fire from the Gods, it is said, Prometheus was chained to a rock and sentenced to having his liver pecked out by birds.

Steve Jobs can relate.

Not only did Apple come awfully close to losing Jobs over the last few months, but he will never be truly out of the woods.

The bottom line is that Jobs is very lucky to be alive following a liver transplant. The first took place in 1967, but it did not become common until the 1980s, with the introduction of cyclosporine.

About 6,000 liver transplants are now done each year in the U.S., but the waiting list for organs averages 17,000. Those waiting lists could be reduced as more donors can now survive having part of their liver removed for transplant.

How and why did Jobs jump the queue? He was dieing faster than others, the company now admits.

ZDNET