BlizzCon 2009 Recap – Yeah – No

So I was going to, but I got sick last week, so I had little will to write anything.

If you want to read about it, go check out http://www.wow.com.  They have a TON of blog posts following both days.

Share on Facebook

Off to BlizzCon Tomorrow

Tomorrow morning I am haeded off to BlizzCon!! Blog post after!

Share on Facebook

Twitter DDOS, AT&T Blocks 4Chan & New TV

Well, it has been a few days, so here we go.

First.  Twitter (and Facebook and Blog.com (or Live Journal, this is the hard part to find out)) was the victim of a DDOS attack.  For those that don’t know a DDOS (denial of service) attack results in flooding a site or server with so much traffic that it cannot handle it and simple shuts down.  It looks like Twitter (and the others) were being attacked, targeting a specific user.  It seems that the attacker just wanted to take down that specific user, but ended up taking down the whole site.  Twitter was the only one to completely go down.  It was up and down starting around 6am PST on 8/6.  From a few scattered reports the attack is still causing some issues with some Web 2.0 sites.

During the initial attack Twitter was the only one to completely go down.  The other seemed to stay up, though you did have to refresh Facebook once or twice to get it to load.  This is an important note to all those web admins.  You need to not only protect yourself against a high volume of traffic, but also DDOS attacks, since they cause the same kind of problems.  And at the time of this positing, Twitter is still having issue.

AT&T and 4Chan (thus leading to the hacker group anonyms) had a small tiff in the past couple of weeks.  4Chan was the victim of an attack, then turned around and sent a large amount of traffic to AT&T servers.  AT&T, to protect themselves and their customers, ended up blocking img.4chan.org, which is the image server for the 4Chan servers.  Tom Merritt (@acedtect) has a great video on this.  See the following link: http://cnettv.cnet.com/why-blocked-4chan/9742-1_53-50075089.html.  One of these days I will get it so I can post code in here…

And on a personal note I got a new TV.  Got myself a new Samsung 50” Plasma.  Have the PN50B860.  It is nice, though it looks like I have a bum power supply in it…. *sigh*.

Share on Facebook

FCC Probes Apple for GoogleVoice App Removal

So, we could all see this coming from a mile away.  Computerwrold.com is reportig that the FCC Is going to probe Apple’s removal of the GoogleVoice app fromt he app store.

The FCC is specificly demanding to know if AT&T has any say in the apps that get approved for the iPhone.

Will keep on following this, to see where it goes.

Source: Computerworld.com

Share on Facebook

Microsoft + Yahoo = Steady?

Well, this is a few days old, but hey, I’ve been busy!

So Redmond, Washington’s Microsoft and Sunnyvale, California’s Yahoo have struck a deal.  This is not like last years attempt by Microsoft to buy the search engine out (which we all know failed, mostly due to Yahoo), but it looks to be a partnership.  Microsoft will let Yahoo use it’s serach engine (the code base behind Bing.com) while Yahoo will give Microsoft…. what?  Apprently they get some code from Yahoo… yeah?  Oh, and Yahoo’s salesforce will be taking on the responsiblity for advertisments on both Bing and Yahoo.

Is it me, or is it looking like Microsoft is getting the shaft here?  I know they see some logic to this, heck, even I see some of it, but why?  I know the two companies need to figure out a way to take on Google.

I tried to look up some stats, but hte newest I got was Aprl of 2008… which, we can all assume has changed dramaticly since then.  With reports of Yahoo falling more and more behind and Bing being launcehd by Microsoft.  But here is what I got:

Even from back in 2008, Google was dominating.  Again, Yahoo has slipped some since then, and Bing has been launched.

Will this partnership eat away at Google?  I don’t think so.  Google has a strong following, not to mention a very good search engine.  I have used Bing a few times, and while I like it, all the online services I use are on Google, thus making it more convient.

I do admit, however, that if I do a video search, I do use Bing instead.  Google’s video search just isn’t up to par.  Bing serachs more then just Youtube.com or GoogleVideo, plus it gives short little previews, which neather Youtube or GoogleVideo do right now.  Should Google change this?  Yes.  Should they expand their video search to search more then Youtube and GoogleVideo?  Heck yes.  It is limiting.  Once and awhile you will get something from Vimo, but that is it.

Source: Computerworld.com & Web.com

Share on Facebook

Site Updates

Just a quick update.

This site has been updated to the latest version, and the ProjectXFire.com Photo Gallery has been redone some.  A nice basic theme was added, as well as the copyright tag updated.

Other then that nothing.

Update: Finally got the About page public.

Share on Facebook

Windows 7 ~30+ Days

So, I shut my laptop last night.  I had put it to sleep a few times, and it kept on going.  I did start noticing a few small glitches and hangups, but nothing to bad.  So for the RC, ~30 days (sorry, I was REALLY tired when I shut it down – so no screenshot), I am very happy.

Share on Facebook

Rebuttal to the Idiots at Slashdot

If you haven’t read the Slashdot article “The Hidden Costs of Microsoft’s Free Office Online” by Michael_Curator, go read it.  To be fair, Slashdot tends to have a lot of people that, A) hate Microsoft, B) love Linux/Apple… well, mostly Linux.  So, anything that is posted on that site tends to be in one of those two categories.

So the article is going into detail how Microsoft plans on charging business, schools, etc, for Office Online.  Okay, first, how is this a surprise!?  They said that when they released the information on Office 2010 and Office Online!  I posted about this a few days ago when Microsoft released details.  Here is the ComputerWorld article again.  Nuf said on that argument.

Okay, so Google Docs.  For you and me it is free.  Guess what, Office Online is going to be free for you and me.  This means that most people are not going to notice a darn thing.  Guess what people, Google charges schools, business, etc, to use Google Docs!!!  OMG!  Chico State moved to Google Mail a year ago, and they do pay for it.  Guess what, Microsoft is going to do the same thing for Office Online.

There is one thing Google Docs/Mail can’t do, and that is let companies host the services internally.  Microsoft is going to allow companies to host the online services internally.  That is one reason why Google Docs can’t get into larger corporations (and another thing that article is yelling about).  Companies don’t want classified documents on a third party server they have zero control over!  So yes, since the company is hosting internally, it is going to cost more!  Not just cause you need the server software (and it looks like you need SharePoint), but you need the OS, the hardware, the infrastructure.  So for those companies Microsoft still probably wants them to use the suit, and install it on the machines.

Share on Facebook

SF AIDS Walk Tomorrow

Tomorrow I am walking in the San Francisco AIDS Walk.  The main reason is to have a good time, but there is an underlining reasons.  It is a good cause.  AIDS is still a huge problem in today’s world, and not just here in the US.  AIDS doesn’t care about your ethnicity, your wealth, your gender or age.

It is a 10k walk (taking about 2-3 hours) in SF Golden Gate Park.

If you would like to make a donation, please head over to my donation page.

Share on Facebook

Walter Cronkite Dead at 92

“Walter was always more than just an anchor. He was someone we could trust to guide us through the most important issues of the day; a voice of certainty in an uncertain world.” – President Obama 7/17/2009

Walter “Uncle Walter” Cronkite has died at the age of 92.

He started with CBS in 1950 and covered everything from World War II, to Vietnam to the Egyptian – Israeli conflict.  Later he became a critic of the Government and Journalism.

RIP Walter Cronkite.

Source: CNN.com

Share on Facebook