I’m now taking part in the maintenance of the blog section of webgraphics.
With everything going on with IIS and the Code Red worm, I was very surprised to see a measurable jump in IIS usage in this month’s Netcraft Survey at the expense of Apache.
TechTV | Judgment Call: Mac vs. PC My favorite quote from this piece?
"OS X is based on Unix and is probably more stable than Windows. Stability is an important feature that Windows just doesn't have. The average user can counter the instability by saving often."
Using Windows ME on my laptop currently, I watch in horror as my 384 Mb of RAM dwindles throughout my use. As the day goes on, the amount of free memory gets smaller and smaller regardless of what I am doing. Finally, I either blue screen or reboot. Since I switched to Mac OS X on my other laptop, the only time I ever reboot is when I have installed software. My Windows XP (now RC2) machine is a little better in the memory usage department. In fact, now that I have gotten past the hiccups I had, it has been downright stable.
Feeling better, but still coughing up a storm. Man, have I fallen behind this week because of my illness. I’m supposed to close on my house a week from today, so I’ve got a lot of personal stuff to deal with. Guess I’ll be working through the weekend.
This screenshot based listing of Weblogs is an interesting way to start the daily surf.
This quick article on the effectiveness of the pop under ad got me to really thinking about why they have become so popular so quickly when I know they don’t work and are a constant annoyance now. The answer is simple enough, people who generate their revenue from Internet advertising are desperate, grasping at anything that will make them money with no concern for the consequences. It’s clear that no one has figured this advertising on the Internet thing properly. It’s also clear to me that pop under ads are not the answer, nor are banner ads, or rich media advertising and I can’t see clearly what the solution is.
I spend hours a day on the Internet, surfing through content, news and reference materials. I can't ever remember, in the many years I have been doing this, looking at a banner ad and then clicking through to buy a product. To be frank, I don't even see the banner ads anymore, nor has making the ads larger and more intrusive increased my awareness of advertising in a positive way. Even on the page that the article appears on, I didn't acknowledge the ad in the middle of the article until I went back and looked for it. I can't really draw any conclusions beyond the fact that there is very clearly a void here, a business pain that is seeking a solution.
Turns out I have bronchitis and a sinus infection. I must rest, take drugs, and recover.
Arrgh. I have some sort of chest infection. Going to the doctor.
American Pie 2 is pirated on net before release. Over the last couple of years, I’ve wondered several times how Hotline, arguably the first peer to peer file sharing network by a few years, has escaped the attention that some other networks have gotten. Guess that will be coming to an end now.
I read Neil Gaiman’s American Gods and Chuck Palhniuk’s Choke on Saturday. Both books were really good and worth your reading time. American Gods is a more substantial book fraught with nuances that I will go back and re-explore. Choke was amusing, while not nearly as ground breaking as Fight Club, it was certainly amusing and inventive in a twisted way that is in line with Fight Club’s general principles.
Dis adding video game, DVD to ‘Tron’ revival mix Yeah, bring me back some of that Tron!!
Reconsidering the Privacy of Office Computers. His logic seems to make good sense. In the work environments where I have been privvy to the inner workings of IT, no one has really had the time or energy to monitor people’s email or Web surfing habits.
So I’ve been testing out Windows XP RC1 on the system at home I like to call “freak”. It started out as an HP desktop about two years ago, but it doesn’t resemble the machine it once was. In fact, the HP restore disks no longer recognize it as an HP, which has led to ocassional issues in installing software. Prior to installing XP on the system, I had 2000 Professional on the machine. Everything worked, and worked smoothly. So my expectations were that everything device wise would continue to work after the upgrade. Boy was I mistaken.
I should note that I'm something of an idiot. You probably know this if you have read this site on a regular basis or have met me in person, but rest assured that I'm not exaggerating a bit when I say that. I didn't read the install notes, I just burned a CD of RC1 and began my install. If I had read them, I would have noted that installing XP over Windows 2000 is an irreversible process. You can't go back without starting over from scratch.
So I installed. At first, everything seemed normal, then I noticed that my sound card, which is the newest component in my machine, wasn't working. After some surfing and a couple of emails, it was clear that the card wasn't going to work for at least a month. Then, suddenly, the ethernet card, the second newest component, stopped working altogether. Haven't been able to figure that one out yet. So that hampers my use of the machine a little. Then blue screen of death, blue screen of death, blue screen of death. Then constant rebooting without my interference. So now I'm debating whether I should make the huge migration back to Windows 2000 or wait for RC2 and the component vendors to release drivers and see if I can salvage things from where they are. It's a good thing that this machine is more of a test bed for me than a machine I actually do work on.(I was saying the same thing late last year when I installed the Mac OS X beta.) Developing a working operating system is not an easy task.
Radiohead: Creatively Nourished by a Steady Diet of Macintosh (via Exitwound)
Today’s laptop update: I received a battered COD package this morning, and after paying the substantial fee, I unpacked a battered and beaten G4 Powerbook that is clearly mine. My data has returned, and I am now much more scared that someone else had access to all of it than I was previously. One twist I hadn’t expected was that someone who knew Mac OS X well used the laptop while it was gone. Many settings were changed, things were moved around, and most of my customizations to the system were removed. This incident renews my faith in humans somewhat.
Fault-Tolerant File Storage. An interesting concept, which takes a peer to peer approach to file backup and storage.
Great article that clearly outlines why Apache ends up being a more secure Web server choice than IIS. At the bottom of the article, courtesy of ZDNet, you can also get the latest prices for Apache:-)
A list of the Starbucks locations that currently offer Wireless Internet access(802.11b). According to this page, Atlanta will soon be joining the list. Will I ever leave Starbucks again?