Paul Smith's Blog

Today I'm putting together a new server, its based on an Asus T3 barebones system, I've got a 2.5Ghz dual core Pentium for it, and 4GB of RAM. As well as some of the new low power Western Digital disks. This will be replacing my 9 year old system which has faithfully been running almost nonstop based on a 1.4Ghz Athlon Thunderbird, with 1.5GB of RAM and a collection of aging hard disks, this has been running Windows Home Server and a Virtual Machine running Small Business Server flawlessly, so hopefully the new system will be just as reliable....

Go get it here. New features include OpenDocument support, integrating the XPS and PDF functionality that was previously a free add-on (removed before the original release because of Adobe's complaining). More changes here.

So Dr Starkey has found himself in a spot of bother over his remarks he made on Question Time last night. Basically when asked if he supported having a public holiday for Saint George's day: "If we decide to go down this route of having an English national day, that means we become a feeble little country, just like the Scots and the Welsh and the Irish." and "We don't make a great fuss about Shakespeare like the Scots do about that deeply boring provincial poet Burns"...

Photosynth, the online service which creates a 3D "synth" you can explore out of 2D photographs, has moved over to Silverlight for its default viewer. Formally you required a Direct3D based browser plugin to make use of it, and as such this opens up Photosynth to a much larger audience. The biggest advantage from using Silverlight is obviously embedding it in other websites, if I embedded a Photosynth with the D3D viewer - about two people would have it installed, however most people visiting this blog do have Silverlight installed....

Somebody recently commented on my entry describing why the Earth isn't 6000 years old.  I wrote an e-mail reply to them but it seems like they didn't provide the correct e-mail address when they posted the comment.  So instead I'll be posting my reply to them here, in the off chance that they read it. Hello (hidden e-mail address), thank you for your comment on my blog. Unfortunately I can't see much, if any connection between science and the word of god....

I was just going over some of the BBC's coverage of the Obama's visit to London today and caught something rather odd during Mrs Obama's visit to a London hospital. The clip I'm speaking of can be found here. Why the BBC bothers to publish such short and trivial clips is beyond me, and why the BBC calls Sarah Brown the first lady is questionable too, as we do not use the term in this country and if we did it would apply to the Queen....

InformationWeek have managed to prove their brainlessness continues. As they claim "IE8 Users Downgrade To Explorer 7". Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT)'s Internet Explorer 8 appears to be losing market share, even though the browser has been on the market for less than a week. As of 8:00 am Monday, IE8 -- released Thursday -- held 1.86% of the browser market, down from a high of 2.59% on Sunday, according to market watcher Net Applications....

OneOne of the bloggers on ZDnet interviewed Charlie Miller the bloke who nailed Mac OS X through Safari in seconds at the recent Pwn 2 Own contest, one of the questions asked is pretty interesting and nicely sums up the OS security situation over the last 3 or 4 years, of course you wouldn't know it reading the press or if you get your information from Apple's PR department. Why Safari?...

Internet Explorer 8 has been released for Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. Highly recommended, even if IE isn't your main browser grab it from here.

Like last year Apple has again fallen first in the Pwn 2 Own contest. This time just taking seconds instead of minutes like last time round. Charlie Miller won the $10,000 first prize. Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome are being targeted on Windows 7 (I'd imagine build 7000), and Firefox and Safari on the current version of Mac OS X. In addition this year they're also going to be working on mobile phones such as Blackberry, iPhone and Android, Symbian and Windows Mobile based phones....