A Microsoft official admitted that Windows 7 is inspired by Apple’s operating system (Microsoft official admits Windows 7 design inspired by Mac OS X).
In other news, the Droid is inspired by the iPhone, cigarettes lead to cancer, consuming alcohol will get you drunk, and the Pope poops (when he’s having a good day).
Reading that post gave me the urge to state the obscenely obvious.
- verb
to be owned, to have your rear kicked, to be destroyed in a spectacularly manner.
Origin
The is word common among gamers, geeks, and nerds.
Related Forms
Pwned, Pwn3d, and Pwnage
Usage
“Did you see that? I just pwned your ass!”
After crazy Uncle Rupert (Murdoch) claimed that he was contemplating hiding all of his news sites from Google and other news aggregation services (Rupert Murdoch Threatens Seppuku), the Internet was all a-buzz. While everyone was writing about how epicly stupid the idea was, Mike Masnick of Techdirt did some research.
Masnick realized that many of Murdoch’s own sites “parasited” content in exactly the same manner that he endlessly complains about with Google and Microsoft. Prestige sites like The Wall Street Journal and Fox News “steal” stories from blogs, other sources, and even Techdirt itself. Many of Murdoch’s most successful web properties “steal” stories, or have searches powered by Google that allow users to search the broader Internet within a News Corp branded user experience (Techdirt – the original post is worth reading).
Boom head-shot!
Mr. Murdoch, you’ve just been pwned.
Earlier this year I read a novel that captivated and simultaneously scared the shit out of me. It didn’t scare me in a horror movie kind of way… It scared me in a “large portions of this could work” kind of way. The book was Daniel Suarez’s Daemon.
Daemon has it all, crime, technology, compelling characters, unexpected plot twists, and a brutal look at alternate applications of technology.
“Originally self-published, Suarez’s riveting debut would be a perfect gift for a favorite computer geek or anyone who appreciates thrills, chills and cyber suspense. Gaming genius Matthew Sobol, the 34-year-old head of CyberStorm Entertainment, has just died of brain cancer, but death doesn’t stop him from initiating an all-out Internet war against humanity. When the authorities investigate Sobol’s mansion in Thousand Oaks, Calif., they find themselves under attack from his empty house, aided by an unmanned Hummer that tears into the cops with staggering ferocity. Sobol’s weapon is a daemon, a kind of computer process that not only has taken over many of the world’s computer systems but also enlists the help of superintelligent human henchmen willing to carry out his diabolical plan. Complicated jargon abounds, but most complexities are reasonably explained. A final twist that runs counter to expectations will leave readers anxiously awaiting the promised sequel. (Jan.)”
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
To add a spoilerish piece to the description I pulled from Amazon, Sobol’s Daemon works by spidering Internet news sites and looking for events. Once those events transpire, they trigger new ones. The first event was Sobol’s own death; his obituary was published. Then the Daemon murders a couple of people; stories of their deaths trigger more events, and so on. It makes insanely good sense.
One big plus of the book is that it explains a lot of the technology, so you don’t need to be too geeky to understand it.
Most of the technology in the book is incredibly grounded, while the story takes off in fanciful directions. All-in-all, a great and compelling read that I should have written about months ago.
Why am I writing about this now?
Why did I spoil a portion of the early story?
Back when I read the book I subscribed to the Daemon Technology Feed on my Google Reader. The feed linked to interesting tech stories and other geeky things, then it went silent after February 25, 2009. For some reason I never unsubscribed, but yesterday, it started publishing new and cool things again.
I’m sure the Feed turned back on because the Daemon sequel, Freedom is hitting bookstore shelves on January 7, 2010… but after reading the book, I have to admit there was something mildly frightening about seeing it become active again.
I missed my favorite browser, Mozilla Firefox’s fifth birthday by one day. I hope it forgives me.
Firefox isn’t perfect, but what is? I’ve been using it for probably 4.5 years because it’s open source, it has tons of fun plug-ins, it doesn’t share my user-data, and it is generally stable (although it certainly has it’s quirks and problems).
Firefox is a model of what the Internet should be, not what media moguls, record producers, and other proponents of dying business models want to make it.
About a month ago I wrote about a bug in Apple’s Snow Leopard OS that has the potential to delete everything on your computer if you use the “Guest” account.
Got Snow Leopard? Don’t Use Your “Guest” Account
I’m pleased to inform you that the latest patch fixes that (Mac OS X 10.6.2). So update you Mac to inoculate your computer.
Practice safe computer by installing software updates.
Seppuku – a ritualized disemboweling that originated among the Japanese Samauri.
Rupert Murdoch, the media mogul chairman and majority shareholder of News Corp (The Wall Street Journal, Fox News, and pile of other news outlets) wants to force his business model back into relevance. According to this recent interview, he wants to put pay-walls up around most of his content, sue fair-use into oblivion, and make his sites invisible to search engines like Google (mUmBRELLA).
I was going to write a full response to Mr. Murdoch’s ideas, but Perry de Havilland of Samizdata really hit the nail on the head:
“Not only will people not be motivated to pay Rupert Murdoch for content if they cannot find it via google, they will not even be aware of the content Murdoch is hiding from them. In short, Murdoch will become completely irreverent irrelevant on-line almost overnight and I am not sure why he thinks all too many people will care one way or the other. This is a bit like threatening someone that if they do not give him their money, Murdoch will cut his own throat. Er, sure Rupert, whatever. I suspect folks at the Guardian (who may not be my favourites ideologically but they certainly ‘get’ the internet better than most) and elsewhere can hardly believe their good luck (From Samizdata Murdoch’s suicide threat).”
Rupert, Rupert, Rupert, Rupert… your plan will fall to pieces if a single online news outlet keeps their content free. No one with half a brain will pay for it. Your best years are behind you. Long behind you.
Ruperts words made me think of a line from last night’s Mad Men Season Finale when Don snapped at his fellow partner Bert Cooper saying, ”And you old men love building golden tombs and sealing the rest of us in with you.” Mr. Murdoch is an old, rich, proud man, the people who will suffer from his decisions are his employees, and their families.
I picked my Droid on Friday, and so far I’m very happy with it. I will write a full review in a day or so after I’ve really played, and gotten to know it.
Immediately after getting my Droid, I went to my friend Eric’s wedding. His wife baked a special cake for him, so I took a picture of it with my Droid.
Eric, you chose wisely.
I’m still hard at work fixing up my computer, but I did drive over to Best Buy to pre-order my Droid. I should be getting it on Friday!!!
If you are going to get a Droid, you should purchase it at Best Buy. All Droids come with a $100 rebate, however Best Buy gives you the $100 back in gift cards immediately. Then you can use the gift cards towards the purchase of the phone, as opposed to mailing the rebate in and getting a check sometime in the future.
One final point about the Droid. There has been a lot of misinformation circling around teh Internets regarding the Droid’s data plan price. I checked, and the data plan costs $30.
Back to work & the Yankee game.
I should have another post up in a few hours.
There is a growing number of quality web video series that are mostly target towards geekier audiences, in large part because geeks are the web pioneers, and geeks are also the early adopters of this kind of stuff.
With that in mind, I present to you, The Legend of Neil.
The Legend of Neil is a web series that is based on the classic videogame, The Legend of Zelda. Basically, a loser named Neil is sucked into the videogame where he is the game where he assumes the role of the hero.
The show is ridiculously funny, but it’s one of those things where you probably should have played at least one Zelda game to fully appreciate. For instance, if you don’t know that the hero of the Zelda games is a guy named Link, you most likely won’t have enough background knowledge to completely enjoy the show.
Actress and geek queen bee, Felicia Day shows up to costar in a few of the episodes as the Fairy. All I’ll say is that Ms. Day is usually typcast as the crazy cat girl or the geeky friend by Hollywood… her role here is absolutely not the crazy cat girl or the geeky friend.
Finally, The Legend of Neil is not safe for work. In terms of humor, it takes quite a bit to really shock me. The Legend of Neil made me blush on a number of occasions.
You can watch all 14 (4-9 minute) episodes on the show’s website: http://effinfunny.com/legend-of-neil
Let’s add to the hype, shall we?
I’m so excited about the Motorola Droid that I stopped by a local Verizon Store to check and make sure that nothing with my account would prevent me from getting one. No joke. In case you worried for me, I will have no problems attaining one… except for the fact that my friend just has to get married on Droid’s release date (seriously Eric, WTF?).
So on that note, we do have a release date for the Droid, and it’s November 6th. It will cost $199.00 with a contract after a $100.00 mail-in rebate. That’s more good news because I budgeted a bunch more money than I will need.
Engadget got their hands on the Droid, and this is what they had to say:
“* That big screen is killer. Bright, crisp, and tons of room for your icons and widgets.
* Speed is noticeably improved — particularly when moving from app to app. We did notice that some of the home screen scrolling looked laggy.
* Android 2.0 is definitely cleaned up — but it’s most definitely still Android
* The browser seems significantly improved — pages now load up in a fully zoomed-out mode, and the load times and scrolling are way snappier.
* The keyboard takes some getting used to, and it suffers from a similar hand-position issue as the G1, but it’s fairly usable. We think it’ll be second nature once we spend some time with it.
* Facebook is integrated into accounts, which means some of that BLUR functionality is here (though now it’s part of Android 2.0 natively). The good news is that when you add a Facebook account you can choose to pull all Facebook info and contacts, or just info related to your existing contacts — a real clutter buster.”
They also have some video of the phone, if you’re into that sort of thing.
Finally, Droid is going to have free Google Maps GPS Navigation. Score. Again.
Oh BoingBoing, you give me the greatest gifts… and now I’m sharing.
Behold! My Parents Were Awesome.
For the record, these people are not my parents.
Yeah, that’s right, people can submit photos of their parents from long forgotten era (perhaps they never remembered in the first place).
~ syndicated by TheGeekWhisperer.com
This is incredibly an incredibly useful chart if you are looking to buy a new mobile device.
AT&T doesn’t even look good on paper.
Thanks to @takabanana for making and sharing this spreadsheet.
Windows 7 is available and has been well-received (especially compared to Vista). If you are running Vista, you should upgrade.
The tricky part for consumers is that in typical Microsoft fashion, they have released a number of different versions. Which version is right for you?
Fortunately CNET has released a chart of functionality that compares the four different versions.
Check out the full chart; it’s extensive yet digestible.
Only you can determine what version will meet your needs, but my basic suggestion is that “Starter” is just too lean, and “Home Premium” should suffice for most day-to-day users with an average PC. If you are running a beefier powerful computer (two physical CPUs), you need “Professional” or “Ultimate.” If you are a power-user… figure it out for yourself.
If you are reading this site on a computer running Windows XP, Vista, or something unspeakably older, you are probably trying to decide what computer and/or operating system you are going to buy over the coming months.
With the launch of Windows 7 on 10/22, and the already available Snow Leopard, there are actually two competitive operating systems to choose from.
Windows is a solid choice
Let’s get this taken care of immediately. If you are a dyed in the wool Microsoft or Mac person, just stop reading. Your mind was made up a long time ago.
Now that that’s out of the way, let’s move on.
CNET did a review of the two platforms benchmarks which you can read in great detail.
Here’s the Cliff’s Notes version:
Snow Leopard performed a better in the study than Windows 7. It also has better battery life.
However, Windows 7 had better benchmarks for gaming… which is good since damn near any serious PC gamer is running a souped up monster PC anyway.
Personally, I will stick with Apple for now, and run Windows 7 on Parallels, not because I need it, but because I can.
That’s about it.
In a week or so we will be posting a Windows 7 PCs buyer’s guide that will list a variety of PC’s in all price ranges that are worth purchasing.
~ syndicated by TheGeekWhisperer.com
The first real challenger to the iPhone looks like it will be Droid. I haven’t read anything but great stuff coming from the people who have seen the über smart.
It has an iPhone look complete with touch screen, but it also has a slide out QWERTY keyboard (WIN)
The device is made by Motorola; powered by Google’s mobile operating system, Android; and it will be sold through Verizon, thus it will be on Verizon’s awesome network.
Droid will run the latest version of Android, which looks incredible (see The Boy Genius’s write-up).
If the hardware reports are true, then Droid will have the same processor core as the iPhone, making it far more powerful than previous Android phones (Engadget).
Google CEO Eric Schmidt is decrying Android’s imminent explosion in the marketplace, while analysts’ are talking about Android’s potential for market domination by 2012.
Verizon is also going all out with their marketing. In the lead up to the announcement of Droid, they have been bashing AT&T’s flimsy network with their cleaver, “There’s a map for that” ads.
Then their Droid announcement ad launched a flurry of attacks on the iPhone’s limitations.
“The Droid poses a different and more significant challenge to the iPhone than any other phone to date. The Palm Pre could have been that challenger, but it lacked the Verizon network, and users were unimpressed with the hardware. According to people who’ve handled the device, the Droid is the most sophisticated mobile device to hit the market to date from a hardware standpoint. When you combine that with the Verizon network, you’ve got something that is most definitely a challenger to the Jesus phone” (TechCrunch).
If Droid is everything that Motorola, Google, Verizon, and the tech writers are claiming it should be incredibly exciting (The claims are pretty much confirmed). Better still, Droid should be available within a few weeks.
Pay close attention to the oddly placed umlaut under the "r"
It’s clear to me that Droid means business because it has an unnecessary umlaut in its name.
~ syndicated by TheGeekWhisperer.com
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