Paul Smith's Blog

Oh jeez, so over on ZDNet, Robin Harris threw up what apparently he thinks is a news story about how Microsoft have been forced to retreat to Windows XP on ultra-low-cost PCs, like Asus' Eee PC. He calls it further evidence of the Vista fiasco. What do I think? I call it evidence that Windows Vista won't run on these low powered machines, and as Microsoft is a company that wants to sell Asus something to put on these machines they'll sell em what they've got....

I can't say I'm honestly surprised judging on how crappy Apple's record is at patching vulnerabilities over the last few years. Windows Vista has consistently out performed all other major operating systems in this regard and Microsoft have spent a considerable sum on improving their development process in regard to security. So anyway at the PWN to OWN contest held over the last three days crackers have been competing for a $10,000, and $5,000 prize....

I'm slowly getting through my e-mail, anyway I had a question e-mailed to me a few days ago from a chap called Nathan. Could you please make a list of differences between leninism and marxism i cant find one anywhereand you seem to know alot, it would be greatly appreciated. This is one of those questions you can ask 10 different socialists and get 10 different answers, unfortunately there is no such thing as the Communist Check-list, where everything is neatly divided up and we can just quickly run down and decide what is what....

So a few days ago there were reports in the news of a gamma ray burst visible with the naked eye. Unfortunately I wasn't able to see it, I was clouded up pretty bad down here. Let me say that again, last week it was possible to see a gamma ray burst with the naked eye. This explosion was 7.5 BILLION light years away. To put that in perspective, the most distant object visible with the naked eye usually is the Andromeda galaxy at 2....

We desperately need the separation of church and state in this country. As I previously wrote about in January those indoctrinated into a religious ideology are up to their usual tricks trying to shoot down, or water down the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill. I don't have time to go into all the details here, so I refer you to my previous post on the issue. We've got Des Browne, Ruth Kelly, and Paul Murphy all Roman Catholics blabbering on about saving embryos (read babies), I suppose secretly they all want to ban abortion as well, persecute homo-sexuals and stone to death anybody who tempts them to another god, or anybody who works on a Sunday (it's all in the good book)....

I had a few comments from creationists left on my blog lately. One from somebody who identified themselves as '?': i have a question...how did creatures change from generation to generation to be better suited for their environments? i mean, if i moved to (i don't know) africa, and i had kids with an another person with my skin color, the color wouldn't change in my great grand children to make them better suited for their environments....

So Apple announced 'The world's thinnest laptop' a couple of months ago now. After a few minutes on Google however it looks like it isn't. The Sony Vaio X505 released back in 2004 comes pretty close at 20.8mm which a lot of people used in comparisons with the Macbook Air, which comes in at 19.4mm. However both of those are beaten out by the ten year old Pedion, built by Mitsiubishi and Hewlett-Packard which is only 18....

Microsoft have just released Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1! You can download it from here. Seems solid so far, you can tell it to Emulate IE7 if you need a website that won't work correctly in IE8 at the moment. As IE8 will now be using standards mode by default it'll probably effect a great many websites (even the back end of the blogs here doesn't work properly in standards mode IE8), so they'll need to be updated, or use the following to tell IE8 to render in IE7 mode:...

So today is the day I've been waiting for Microsoft officially announced WorldWide Telescope. Sadly it isn't available yet for general download, but it will be sometime during the Spring. WorldWide Telescope (WWT) is a rich visualization environment that functions as a virtual telescope, bringing together imagery from the best ground and space telescopes in the world for a seamless, guided exploration of the universe. WorldWide Telescope, created with Microsoft's high-performance Visual Experience Engine™, enables seamless panning and zooming across the night sky blending terabytes of images, data, and stories from multiple sources over the Internet into a media-rich, immersive experience....

So for those that don't know how right-wing and reactionary the Daily Mail is check this e-mail that one of their writers sent out. From: rsreply@dwpub.com [mailto:rsreply@dwpub.com] Sent: 13 February 2008 15:57 To: (hidden) Subject: Response Source - Diana Appleyard , Daily Mail (Request for personal case study) PUBLICATION: Daily Mail (Request for personal case study) JOURNALIST: Diana Appleyard (staff) DEADLINE: 14-February-2008 16:00 QUERY: I am urgently looking for anonymous horror stories of people who have employed Eastern European staff, only for them to steal from them, disappear, or have lied about their resident status....