Techno

M$: Digitally Real Mugging: DRM rips off customers…

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I was reading the list of 10 reasons not to buy Vista, I guess there was one for XP, too! I am most concerned about the problems caused by the DRM that Vista installs for videos. It’s odd that in the rebuttal this is one of the few points NOT specifically rebutted. It goes onto to state:

10. The draconian license — somehow, Microsoft has forgotten that it built its business from products that empowered its customers, not hampered them. … Aside from the backward thinking that is licensing, and not actually owning, your software new terms with Vista include being able to transfer the license only once; half the limit compared to XP for Home Basic and Premium on how many machines can connect to yours for sharing, printing and accessing the Internet; limits on the number of devices that can use Vista’s Media Center features; activation and validation governing your ability to upgrade hardware and use Windows itself; and outlawing the use of Home Basic and Premium with virtualisation software, and Ultimate only if DRM enabled content and applications aren’t used…

For more on this M$, have a look at my other blog!

PCLinuxOS 2007

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Anyone here looking to replace Windows XP or Vista? Well, I found references to this software:

PCLinuxOS 2007 Test release 1 is now available for download.
PCLinuxOS .94/2007 Test release 1 is now available for download. Please note this is not the final release. PCLinuxOS 2007 final will be released at the end of the month.

Features include:

* Kernel 2.6.18.6-dev3
* KDE 3.5.6
* Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.1
* Flash 9
* Mozilla Thunderbird 1.5.0.9
* Open Office 2.1.0
* Xorg 7.1
* Beryl, Compiz, Aixgl and Xgl for 3D graphics support
* Gcc 4.1.1 and updated glibc
* Updated bootsplash, icons, and more from the mypclinuxos.com beautification project.
* Xdg Menu system
* Rebuild and update of our entire repository against new gcc and glibc
* Simplified Livecd boot options.

It’s got Openoffice 2.1, updated Firefox and can be installed or LiveCD, too. So you can try it out safely.

Good News/Bad News: A new version of Wordpress is out…

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2

Wow! It’s exciting, Ella’s here! Yes, the new version of Wordpress 2.1 is already here, and I just installed the previous version! Anyway here’s the details about it…

  1. Autosave makes sure you never lose a post again.
  2. Our new tabbed editor allows you to switch between WYSIWYG and code editing instantly while writing a post.
  3. The lossless XML import and export makes it easy for you to move your content between WordPress blogs.
  4. Our completely redone visual editor also now includes spell checking.
  5. New search engine privacy option allows you take you to indicate your blog shouldn’t ping or be indexed by search engines like Google.
  6. You can set any “page” to be the front page of your site, and put the latest posts somewhere else, making it much easier to use WordPress as a content management system.
  7. Much more efficient database code, faster than previous versions. Domas Mituzas from MySQL went over all our queries with a fine-toothed comb.
  8. Links in your blogroll now support sub-categories and you can add categories on the fly.
  9. Redesigned login screen from the Shuttle project.
  10. More AJAX to make custom fields, moderation, deletions, and more all faster. My favorite is the comments page, which new lets you approve or unapprove things instantly.
  11. Pages can now be drafts, or private.
  12. Our admin has been refreshed to load faster and be more visually consistent.
  13. The dashboard now instantly and brings RSS feeds asynchronously in the background.
  14. Comment feeds now include all the comments, not just the last 10.
  15. Better internationalization and support for right-to-left languages.
  16. The upload manager lets you easily manage all your uploads pictures, video, and audio.
  17. A new version of the Akismet plugin is bundled.

I guess I’ll be upgrading my other blog to the new version first!