Likewise, it isn't plagued by never-ending security dialogue boxes like those in Vista. They're refering to the UAC prompts. On a Windows PC, software (both good and evil) can change the system without your even knowing about it. Not with Windows Vista, nor with an NT system (XP or 2000) properly configured. In order for software to significantly modify Mac OS X, you have to type in your password. You're the decider....
All real time stratagy fans should check out the Supreme Commander demo out. Here's the link to Gamespot's download (you need to be registered). Although I got better speeds from a torrent. It weighs in at just over 1GB, and features some of the single player campaign and skirmish (one map). I suppose the main attraction of this game is the scale of it. Some of the maps are 80km x 80km in size....
Bill Gates has been taking some flak lately in the Apple circles for some comments he made on the state of security in Mac OS. He was being interviewed for Newsweek: In many of the Vista reviews, even the positive ones, people note that some Vista features are already in the Mac operating system. Bill Gates: You can go through and look at who showed any of these things first, if you care about the facts....
It has just came to my attention that Marxists.org will be offline for a couple of weeks. A statement from the website: In early November we came under sustained denial of service attack from Internet hosts in China attempting to exploit a misconfiguration in our server's operating system. The nature and origin of the attack, our previous history with the PRC, and the experience of others suggest that this maybe politically motivated and directed by the Chinese government....
As I promised a few days back, here's a complete video of Comet McNaught passing through the LASCO camera on SOHO telescope. You can really start to see the solar wind fan the tail out as it goes around the Sun, which is why images in the northern hemisphere, show a largely straight tail, yet ones in the southern hemisphere show a much more diffuse tail as the solar wind pushes the tail away from the Sun....
Comet McNaught has now moved into the twilight skies in the southern hemisphere, captured here in this photo by Noel Munford taken from Astronomy Picture of the Day. So if you're lucky enough to live in the southern hemisphere go take a look at this comet. It'll be visible for a few weeks now after sunset in the western skies. It is fading, so go take a look as soon as you can....
Today is the 300th anniversary of the ratification of the Act of Union of 1707; the acts were passed in both the English parliament and the Scottish Parliament, in both cases with large majorities. This basically did two things: 1) Create a new state, the Kingdom of Great Britain. 2) Dissolve both parliaments and create a new parliament of Great Britain. Gordon Brown a few days ago used this to launch a counter-attack on the nationalists (like this guy), and rightfully so....
Comet McNaught is now the brightest comet in over 40 years, its reached magnitude -5 (that's brighter than Venus), which means in theory it is possible to see it in daylight. It's very close to the Sun so it's probably best to position yourself so something is covering the Sun, like a building, but still exposing the sky near it. If you're at mid-northern latitudes it'll be towards the left hand side of the Sun....
Comet McNaught has now entered the joint ESA and NASA Solar & Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO)'s field of view, which has been looking at the Sun continuously for over a decade now. The Sun is in the centre blocked out by a small disc in front of the camera, you can see Mercury to the lower left of the Sun, with Comet McNaught to the left of the image. They've got an animation (under LASCO/C3) of the passage so far, which really lets you see the solar wind starting to push the tail back....
Managed get a few images of Comet McNaught yesterday evening, but only just as its now so close to the Sun and its been cloudy the last month. This was taken with a Canon EOS 350D with a 55mm lens, ISO400 with an exposure of 1/3rd of a second. Gamma tweaked in Paintshop Pro. I'll probably post some more images on my gallery over the next week or so.