Beyond

A transistor is an electronic component. It is defined as an "active" electronic component because it is able to perform more than one function at more than a single level.

The most basic of transistors is the bipolar transistor. It has three connections; those being the base, collector, and emitter. A circuit-diagrammatical representation of the bipolar transistor is shown in Fig.1 below. The collector is the connection at the top, the base is the one in the middle, and the emitter is the one at the bottom with the arrow on it. In addition to the transistor’s amplification factor, the base and emitter act as a diode. (See Fig.2 (i) and (ii).)

The direction of the arrow indicates whether the type of bipolar transistor is NPN or PNP. (Which stands for Negative Positive Negative or Positive Negative Positive.) The difference amounts to the way that the transistor is connected in a circuit with regard to the DC polarity. This polarity is caused by the transistor’s substrate layers being doped with a P-type and an N-type substrate. (See table of links.)

Fig.3 shows a PNP transistor connected into a basic circuit. Fig 4 shows an NPN transistor connected into an equivalent circuit. The resistors in the circuit limit the current flowing through the device and set the device’s voltage potential point with respect to the supply rails. The capacitor drawn in with dotted lines is a decoupling capacitor which, along with R3, decouples the collector (PNP) or the emitter (NPN) to ground; limiting distortion in the output and/or compensating for any residual ripple present in the supply rails - depending upon its value combined with that of R3 giving a certain AC reactance. (A subject beyond the scope of this article.)

Resistor, R1, is connected as a DC current-limiting resistor in both cases, to the base of the transistor; limiting the base current which in normal operation should not rise above approximately 1/10th of the current flowing between collector and emitter. (As low as 1/100th is the preferred quiescent value for maximum amplification in most high-gain devices.) The differential between the two sets the transistor’s working amplification factor or beta. This is limited by the actual electrical characteristics of the chosen device itself.

This article cannot hope to go into the full details and various functions of the bipolar transistor under all conditions, and even the AC amplification operations of said device are far too in-depth to discuss in the space allocated.

For further information on this device please visit links in the table of links below.

Table of Links:

The prefetch folder is a software cache where Windows stores a lot of operations data. When Windows runs a process(Even boot processes.) the processor goes through many complicated calculations and sub-processes in order to get your process or program running. Windows saves some of that work in the prefetch folder for future reference, should it be needed at a later time, such as if you run the same process or program again. If you do then Windows consults the prefetch folder in order to avoid having to process all those calculations and sub-processes again, with the result that the system is a little faster having saved the use of the extra CPU cycles.

Some websites claim that if you regularly empty your prefetch folder it’ll speed up your machine: This couldn’t be further from the truth. (Linked page is over 3 years old but nevertheless relevant.) If you do so then Windows has to do all those calculations again, run all those .DLLs and sub-processes again, thus using up many extra CPU cycles and causing your computer to run slower: Windows will have no pre-processed information to consult, and therefore will have to compute the whole lot all over again.

"OK I see what you’re saying. Exactly how much information does Windows actually store in the prefetch folder?"

At most Windows stores calculation information for the last 128 recent processes. Files stored for prefetch have the suffix .pf. Delete that lot and Windows may end up having to do 128 sets of complicated calculations all over again: Your CPU won’t exactly be happy with you after having to process all those algorithms again unnecessarily - And your computer will work slower as a result.

Leave prefetch alone: It’s there for a reason, and removing part or all of it will not be beneficial to you or your computer.

If you’ve just installed new antivirus software, but Windows Security Center says you have no antivirus software installed, don’t be alarmed: It more than likely has installed properly and it probably is working. It’s probably that Windows Security Center can’t see it; that’s all.

If Windows doesn’t detect it and/or the program doesn’t tell Windows that it’s installed then Windows thinks there’s no antivirus software installed and reports to you that there isn’t any installed; simple as that.

Can you make Windows see it? Not really, no; but you can tell Windows that you do have antivirus software installed that it can’t see, and that you know it’s there and will keep a check on it so that Windows doesn’t have to.

Depending upon whether you’re running Vista or XP, there are different ways of doing this:

If you’re running Vista go to Control Panel and click on Security Center.

Click "Check settings" with regard to the "Malware protection" line.

This might not be exactly what your screen looks like; but in any event click the button marked "Turn on".

Once again this might not be exactly the same as the screen that you get. In any event click on "I have an antivirus program that I’ll monitor myself".

Malware protection changes from red to yellow and the state changes to "Not Monitored".

Now Windows Vista will stop nagging you. Ensure that you monitor your new antivirus program yourself.

In Windows XP go to the Control Panel and click on Security Center. The process is similar but a lot less hassle: Click on "Virus protection" and click on "I have an antivirus program that I’ll monitor myself".

Again Windows XP will stop nagging you; but you must ensure that you monitor the state of your new antivirus program yourself.

I’m only going to touch briefly on Microsoft’s cloud computing platform that they’ve revealed at their Professional Developer’s Conference will be called Windows Azure: It sounds too complicated, and to be frank, details are still to sketchy to make any decent report on it yet to my mind:

Having said that; Mary Jo Foley of ZDnet has made an outstanding effort to make something out of the intense mayhem of the Microsoft version of cloud computing, and I suggest that you read her article which can be found here.

The softies are revealing more about Windows 7 today and are releasing the first pre-beta code:

It’s reported to include many new features including a better desktop and user interface, multitouch controls, improved boot-time, USB drive encryption, among other things.

Microsoft admitted in so many words that it had made a mistake with Vista: "The ecosystem wasn’t ready for the release of Windows Vista," said Windows senior vice president, Steve Sinofsky, who then went on to list a small catalogue of Vista-related failings.

Sinofsky cited the decision to change the underlying Windows version number to 6.1 rather than version 7 as a sign of its intention to ease the task of upgrading. (See this article on PCMech.com.) "If it works on Windows Vista, it’ll work in Windows 7. The move from Vista to Windows 7 we expect to be seamless." He said.

It was also indicated that Windows 7 would perform well "…on a netbook with only 1GB RAM.": Does this mean that the system requirements will be less than Vista’s and more like XPs? It appears to hint that this may be so, and if so that is definitely a step in the right direction, away from the bloatware of Vista.

What Microsoft refused to disclose, though, is how many different versions of Windows 7 there’d be, and also the cost of the operating system. (Please don’t have more than 3 or 4 versions: Vista was a joke with all of its many version; only a couple of which were any good!)

Microsoft still refuse to provide details of a final release date for Windows 7. They’re probably being cagey this time round: Last time with Vista, development took a lot longer than originally intended, but to stick to the announced target as much as was possible, to save face, and to satisfy the whining customers; they released too early despite being well behind schedule, and gave us a buggy mess of underdeveloped faulty codebase that took everyone by surprise as well as losing a lot of their existing customer base. I don’t think they want to make such a massive balls-up this time around.

What do you think? Are they just being more careful, or could they be having secret development problems?

Addendum

See the BBC’s news coverage of the cloud-computing race.Click here.

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"Religulous" has outsold the pro-ID film "Expelled", which has been running for 6 months, in only 20 days, despite attempts by US churches to get bums on seats in the cinemas for the latter. I’m now expecting Sarah Palin to try to ban it and/or build a bonfire outside her local movie-house and demand that the reels be thrown on. (In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if she tried to have this blog banned now.) Take a look at the trailer:

“Religulous,” directed by Larry Charles, is an entertaining, funny, angry, thought-provoking journey from the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Via Dolorosa, the Qumran Caves, to Stonehenge, Habibi Ana (and a Moslem Gay bar), the Vatican, the Holy Land Experience Park in Florida, the U.S. Capitol, Mormon Tabernacle, and many others.

Everywhere, Maher is asking a few simple questions: What do you believe, why, and how can you possibly…? Half Catholic, half Jewish, and fully agnostic, Maher is incredulous, in every sense of the word, but curiously warm and gentle asking questions about the “the final battle between intelligence and stupidity that will decide the future of humanity.”

See more of the review.

What do you think; comedy or religious sacrilege? Leave a comment below.

In electronics a resistor is a component that offers resistance to current. The main DC function of a resistor in an electronic circuit is as a current limiter; such as in the collector circuit of a single-NPN transistor stage, ensuring that the transistor doesn’t pass more current than its rated value causing it to overheat and burn out. It can also be used in conjunction with a capacitor to give a form of AC resistance known as reactance, the value of which is dependant upon the values of the chosen components combined with the AC frequency passing through the resistor/capacitor pair - However this article is concerned with calculating the DC resistance of resistors only.

Single resistors are available in a number of predetermined values. The unit of DC resistance is the Ohm; symbolised by the Greek letter omega. The value of the resistance of an individual resistor in Ohms can be read by means of the coloured stripes on the body of the component:-

Black = 0

Brown = 1

Red = 2

Orange = 3

Yellow = 4

Green = 5

Blue = 6

Violet = 7

Grey = 8

White = 9

Starting from the first and usually the largest stripe marked on the body of the component; the colour of this stripe indicates the digit furthest left. The next stripe indicates the next digit, the third stripe indicates multiplier to the power of 10 (Or put more simply; the number of zeros after the first two figures.): Thus a resistor marked red, brown, red would indicate that its resistance is 21 x 10 to the power of 2 - or 21 x 100 = 2100 Ohms; 2.1 kilohms. (2K1)

The last stripe(s); usually silver or gold, but maybe another colour, indicate the component’s tolerance or degree of accuracy at staying true to its marked value.

When 2 resistors are connected in a series circuit their total DC resistance can be ascertained by the equation

RT = R1 + R2

Therefore if we connect two 2100 Ohm resistors in series they have a total resistance of 2100 + 2100 = 4200 Ohms, or 4K2.

That’s pretty simple eh? But what if we want to calculate the resistance of two resistors in parallel? The equation becomes slightly more complicated. The total resistance of two resistances in parallel is calculated by the equation:-

RT = R1 x R2 / R1 + R2

Therefore a 2100 Ohm resistor in parallel with a 4200 Ohm resistor gives a total resistance of (2100 x 4200 = 8,820,000) divided by (2100 + 4200 = 6300) = 1400 Ohms; 1.4 kilohms. (1K4)

At NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland they have a problem: The Hubble Space Telescope went tits-up on September 27th 2008. When the team tried to activate redundant backup systems they hit a couple of snags which caused the telescope’s 486-processor-driven systems to go into what they describe as "safe-mode" and halt most of its science operations. No that wasn’t a typo: The processor running the main computer is an Intel 486 from 1989.

The Hubble Space Telescope: I wonder if the aliens thought it was an orbiting trash-can at first?

From what I hear they have worked things out and now have the issues under control. They’re hoping that operations will restart this weekend; 25/6th October 2008. The 486 will probably take a month to add a few numbers together and realise it cocked-up perhaps?

Let’s face it though: This massive machine has been in space for 17 years beaming back some amazing images of things we could never hope to see from earth-based equipment. When it was designed back in the 20th Century an Intel 486 was leading-edge technology. - But having now related the truth that we have many tons of ancient technology orbiting our planet; a lot of it still working, the people at NASA say that the old technologies are reliable.

If they do the job that they are supposed to do and keep doing it regardless then there’s no reason to complain. What’s that adage? "They don’t make things as good as they used to."

You could even build it using a 486 if you wanted?

Do you think the technology we put into space is too old; keeping in mind that most of it starts off being designed up to 10 years before lift-off?

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As a Pagan I’d be failing if I didn’t mention Halloween; which is only a week away now. Basically all religions afford it some significance of a kind; particularly the mystic and Pagan religions.

I received the following video today from Lisa Jackson, a Pagan friend of mine, on the subject of-. Lisa always manages to combine the artistic with the informative. Her creativeness seems to be somewhat unbounded. I’ve even told her that she should be producing documentaries for the BBC in the past. I just know that she’s going to present the Pagan view of the festival so much better artistically than I ever could verbally.

Surprisingly she’s a You Tube artiste’; but unlike some of many she’s a real artist and a good one at that. I’ve featured her work on this blog more than once before - Not solely because I want to do her a favour but because I truly believe in her talents and abilities. There is no point in putting crap on this blog as a favour to someone unless I want to achieve audience figures of zero: If I didn’t truly think there was talent there I’d give it a miss.

Take a look at the latest Lisa production; even visit her You Tube page and view some of her other works why not?

This time of year is when the Celtic year draws to a close. Most Pagans see this as the ending of an old and beginning of a new cycle of nature’s wheel - Ever turning, repeating year in, year out. For there to be plenty there must be also depletion: That is the balance of nature. The winter is the time of lean; when the supplies no longer come in, and we live from what we have gleaned in the summer of plenty that has just gone by.

We live in the knowledge that the Sun god will be reborn on the Winter Solstice and will rise up in the sky day by day to warm the barren frozen wilderness that has transpired from the luscious fields of plenty. We live in the knowledge that the wheel will turn again and the lean will become the fill of the earth, the harvest, and then it turns again.

We also see Samhein (pronounced sow-een) as a time when the worlds collide; when just for a short time the realms of the three paths entwine: When the lair of the dead, the emptiness of the future unfulfilled; the unborn not yet conceived, joins with our world and becomes a part of our dimension just for that fleeting moment; those few precious hours.

We use this as a time to reflect upon the year that has been and to remember our departed ones: Ancestors we may have never known and loved ones that we still hold dear alike. We are ready to embrace the new year and plan for the times ahead. First we must let the world of those passed take the remains of the old year to its final resting so that we can move on unobstructed.

The great goddess is withering and in solitude from the loss of her lover. We bid the old cycle farewell and all must die to be reborn.

Enjoy the video:-

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Every now and again hardware manufacturers write a new device driver version for their products: They do this to iron out bugs in previous drivers, to add extra or better functionality to an existing product, or to allow better integration with new technologies used by websites etc. Maybe even for security reasons too.

It is always good practice to keep your hardware’s drivers up to date, as it will allow your computer to function better if you do.

Microsoft sometimes announce and allow you to download drivers from Windows Update: Personally I don’t think it’s a good idea to always trust drivers from Microsoft Update. It has been known for WU to advise people to update a driver only for it to be the wrong driver which crashes the system. Also these driver update sites which scan your drivers and find the latest versions don’t always get it right. Whilst they are generally accurate they do tend to boob at times: I once was offered a driver package by such a site which was supposed to be the latest drivers for the chipset in the machine which I was using at the time. The drivers were the latest drivers for an Intel chipset; yet there was a Silicon Integrated Systems chipset fitted to the motherboard.

The only fully reliable way to do it is to take the long route and go direct to the manufacturer of the device in question to search for the latest correct driver. To do that you need to know who the device manufacturer is, what the device in question is, and also any particular model number of a specific device.

This can be easier said than done, as there are many devices on the motherboard itself; all of which need their own individual unique driver. If you know which device needs a driver, and what it is + its model number and manufacturer, then you’re almost there. If you have a motherboard that needs drivers but you don’t have the corresponding installation CD, you’ll need to either order a corresponding driver CD from the board’s manufacturer, or download it online as an .ISO file and burn it to CD on another computer.

If you’re already running an existing working PC then it’ll be worth checking your drivers to see if they can be updated. Old or corrupted drivers can result in anything from less-than-tip-top performance to a stop error. (BSOD) Assuming that you’re not someone with lethargic loser mentality; "Oh I can’t be bothered - My computer works as it is, so I don’t need to improve it.", you’ll want to keep your computer working at its best as much as possible.

The place to start is in Device Manager. In earlier 9x versions of Windows this was readily accessible. In Windows XP they’ve hidden it. I wrote an article on creating a Device Manager icon on your desktop, which it might be useful to read. If you haven’t yet created that icon then there are 2 ways to get to the Device manager window:

The first; the short way, is to click Start>Run and type "devmgmt.msc", then click OK. The second; the long way, is to click Start>Control Panel>System(In Classic Mode.)>Hardware and on the Hardware tab click the Device Manager button.

There you will see a list that looks something like this:-

The top icon is your computer itself, and it has your computer’s name next to it. (In this case "INXPENSE2X"; because the computer I’m using is an ex-demo model from the Kustom Komputa INXPense range with a dual-core processor.) Below that you’ll see various sections which expand if you click the corresponding + signs in the boxes to show which devices you have installed:-

As you may note I expanded the "System devices" section, which is in essence most of the drivers associated with the components the motherboard, and as you will also note there are a lot of them. Don’t fret; they won’t all require updating.

Double-click on a device and a spec.s box appears which has information on that particular device:-

As I insinuated earlier; there are certain drivers that won’t need updating. These are the system device drivers that are provided and installed along with the operating system:

When Windows is installed it installs a number of drivers by default during the installation process. Some of these drivers are stand-ins and are installed pending installation of a better and updated driver, which usually occurs when the drivers on the motherboard’s accompanying CD are inputted on initial power-up after build - And/or in the case of using a supplemental graphics card; when the graphics card’s driver CD is installed after the motherboard’s devices are installed. Some of the drivers that the operating system installs, though, are only licensed to Microsoft, and form a part of the Windows operating system; such as the drivers for the COM ports, the motherboard resources drivers, the PCI standard host CPU bridge drivers, etc. These are normally set in stone with the operating system and cannot be updated unless you upgrade the operating system: For instance from XP to Vista. Occasionally but rarely Microsoft may offer an updated driver of this type on Windows Update -  And in such rare cases it is worth taking the new driver and upgrading your existing driver as you won’t get an update from anywhere else. Usually, though, if you double click on a device and the driver manufacturer as written on the Drivers tab is Microsoft plus the year of manufacture is the same as the year that the operating system was released, then there’s no point in attempting to update that particular driver.

It’s drivers such as "VIA standard PCI to PCIe Bridge" which might be able to be updated: In the case of this one it comes in a package of system drivers from Via at the ViaArena website, and which is updated somewhere in the region of every 9 months to a year. Also drivers such as Asus nVidia GeForce 6200 graphics card… Basically anything with a manufacturer name in it, is a great place to start looking for updated drivers.

Go to the device’s manufacturer’s website, search for an updated version of the correct driver, and install it:-

Some drivers are supplied in their own .exe package and can be installed with just a click + follow any instructions. Other drivers aren’t quite so user friendly, and require a different approach; such as unzipping to a .temp file, opening the device’s installation program, pointing it to the temp file that has been unzipped, and allowing Windows to install the files for you. (Canoscan FB620U scanner driver for example.) Yet others are so primitive that I’ve known at least one case where it’s best to just dump the files on C: drive and the installer usually finds them and installs them on reboot. (- An old Xerox printer I used to use once, years ago.)

That’s given you some idea of how. As for why; well as I already said: It’ll give you better performance, and greater stability - So keep your drivers up to date. Maintain a healthy computer.

Today an emergency "out-of-band" Windows update was issued by Microsoft.

MS08-067: Vulnerability in Server Service Could Allow Remote Code Execution

Please go straight to Microsoft Update or click the above link to download this update. You will need to restart your computer after the update is installed.

My source for this information is here. I checked the authenticity of this alert by going to Microsoft Update myself on a fully-patched and updated computer. Microsoft Update offered me this update all the same with a critical rating. If you have doubts or you wish to check out the authenticity yourself, then please check this out yourself: You don’t have to use my links either: Go to Microsoft Update by whichever route you like.

(I’ve downloaded this update to both of my computers running Windows XP Professional and not seen any adverse side effects myself nor am I expecting any: Such effects are extremely rare in the case of Microsoft’s patches and updates.)

It is admittedly rather unusual for Microsoft to issue any updates at any time other than Patch Tuesday, so they must have a very good reason for doing so. I was slightly cynical when I first saw news of this; so I checked it out and it’s genuine, as you’ll see when you go to Microsoft Update.

If you have automatic updates switched on then this update will automatically be delivered to your computer at the time you specified to check for updates. Owing to the way in which this update was issued, however, I do advise that you check this out as a matter of priority.

If you don’t have automatic updates switched on then I suggest you visit Microsoft Update  as soon as possible to check this one out.

This alert was brought to you outside of and extra to the normal scheduled articles on kkomp.com due to the nature of the issue of the bulletin from Microsoft. The security of your computer(s) running Microsoft Windows is a priority. As such I am taking the unusual step of mailing this article to all signed-up subscribers to this blog despite not having the intention to begin a proper mailing list at the present moment.

This alert carries no advertising with it.

Next week from the 27th October 2008 onwards, Microsoft is hosting its Professional Developers Conference. On offer at the PDC are sneak previews of the Windows 7 operating system; which is still in alpha, their cloud-based operating system, appropriately nicknamed "Windows Cloud"; at least for the interim, as well as its latest office suite; currently known as Office 14.

Microsoft have so far kept quiet about their latest office-worthy toolkit, other than hinting on a RTM date of late 2009/early 2010 in a leaked Powerpoint presentation.

Back in February 2008 , Bill Gates hinted at it having a greater online presence. Does this indicate an office-in-the-cloud? Maybe after the week is out we’ll know for sure.

Multinational British-based telecommunications company BT has chosen  around 15,000 homes/businesses in Muswell Hill, London, and in Whitchurch, South Wales, to be the launching-points for its new internet service  of its "Fibre-to-the-Cabinet" internet-delivery-system.

BT are claiming this service could give customers speeds of up to 40Mbps, and is scheduled to be in operation in the summer of 2009.

BT are unclear as to which ISPs will be using the scheme as yet, but have said that those ISPs will be setting the prices for their services once this matter has been further sorted out. Further details for the next stage of the operation, in which the service will be on offer on a larger (Nationwide?) scale, is to be announced in 2010.

According to David Campbell, director of next generation access at BT Openreach:-

"Services in these areas will be available to all UK communication providers on a wholesale basis. The sites were chosen in consultation with communications providers and took into account feedback from regional development agencies, devolved authorities and similar organisations."

"It was also necessary to take into account current network topology and our ability to run testing procedures in the chosen areas. We have a good mix of areas, allowing us to test our products in both urban and semi-rural environments."

What’s the big deal though? Is this all too little too late? In 1994/5, the then NTL cabled most of the more easily-accessible areas of the UK with its fibre-optic cables, on which, since the merge with Virgin Media, a 40Mbps internet connection has been available for quite some time.

It would appear that BT are intending to do exactly the same; thus giving the already-cabled areas a choice of hi-speed internet, while leaving the rural outlying areas with the paltry choice of slow-dial-up or expensive satellite internet services.

If the above paragraph is true, then nothing changes other than an increase in variety for the select recipients in more densely-populated areas; screw the rest of them.

Having areas of 40Mbps connection whilst continuing to have areas where, to keep costs down, customers opt for a 56Kbps dial-up connection, isn’t really going to be productive: The most vulnerable point in any chain is its weakest link; so if little Jenny, who has a 40Mbps connection, is sending her granny, who has a 56Kbps dial-up connection, a 500MB file of her favourite cartoons, then Jenny may as well have a 56Kbps dial-up connection also for all the time it’ll take to reach granny.

Maybe I’m being a bit melodramatic in the above paragraph; but unless everyone gets a decent deal out of a new development which affects society as a whole, then what is the point of it if it’s just going to produce bottlenecks? I mean what is the point of having a 10-lane motorway for 99% of the distance between towns A and B, if at the end of the motorway is a single-track winding lane making the final connection?

Meanwhile Thailand (Which isn’t exactly a technological superpower.) continues to have its hyperfast-internet which is available to almost everyone; and the traffic between Thailand and the UK is not a massive amount. I wonder why? Perhaps it’s because they get fed up with waiting for the British to receive their message? It leaves Thailand within the second; gets to the UK 3 seconds later, and reaches its final destination as a complete download later that week! Am I being melodramatic again? Not in all cases: I’ve known email from abroad to reach its UK destination 3 days later. In some cases even longer than that. When snail-mail becomes faster than the internet it’s clear that someone somewhere is doing something wrong.

So come on BT: I hope everyone, regardless of area, local population, and accessibility, is going to benefit from this: If they don’t it all seems pretty pointless and just another one of the UK’s famous postcode-lotteries.

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“There’s a new trend out there designed to scam computer users: web sites that sell bogus software. Not only does the software not do what it claims to do, but the companies that sell this “software” get a hold of your credit card and can do even more damage to your bank account."

Sunbelt Software , who have exposed a lot of crapware (Rogue software) aimed at the Windows platform, have now at last found crapware aimed at the Mac OSX platform. They know it’s crapware because it’s brought to you by none other than the same people who gave Windows users scareware like Antivirus XP 2008 and XP Antivirus.

There aren’t many malware components aimed at OSX; but the number has seemingly increased by at least 1 recently. However they only found the site itself for the new MacGuard malware program, but were unable to get hold of any program. The site itself appears to have now also been disabled; possibly by Apple themselves?

Macs have appeared relatively untouched by threats for a long time; but now it seems that malicious software targeted at OSX is about to awake Mac users from their sleep of complacency. Previously in March of this year, 2008, a Mac security site, Macvirus.org, with a forum full of links to malware which targets Apple computers; the RSPlug-Gen trojan in particular, as well as the Zlobar-Fam trojan for distribution to PCs running Windows. They were posing as fake codecs supposedly needed to view a non-existent pornographic film of Britney Spears.

There are a number of ways of looking at this: Either you could say every virus targeted at a Mac is one less virus targeted at Windows (Aren’t there enough already?), or you could say that those people who use alternative operating systems to Windows aren’t as safe as they might imagine; and their complacency could be their downfall at the end of the day.

What do you think? Do non-Windows users need to bother with anti-malware programs?

Paul Boutin today claimed on Wired magazine that blogs are a 2004 relic that have been superceded by the likes of Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook etc:-

“The blogosphere, once a freshwater oasis of folksy self-expression and clever thought, has been flooded by a tsunami of paid bilge. Cut-rate journalists and underground marketing campaigns now drown out the authentic voices of amateur wordsmiths.

It’s almost impossible to get noticed, except by hecklers. And why bother? The time it takes to craft sharp, witty blog prose is better spent expressing yourself on Flickr, Facebook, or Twitter.”

This argument was later described as "flamebait", and at least one blogger admitted that they had fallen for it.

If indeed it was such, then this would be tantamount to trolling in the blogosphere: An open invitation to the kooks to migrate from the realms of Usenet and various esoteric online forums to infest the alleged "tsunami of paid bilge" with their incessant idiosyncrasies and four-letter-word-laden flame-wars.

Is the blogosphere really destined to become a domain of Kadaitcha-Man-like supertrolls and macho insult-contests run by over-testosteronised individuals attempting to score points off one another by means of character-assassination and flagrant depersonalisation of lesser mortals deemed as "f*ckwits"?

Hopefully not: That kind of thing has its rightful place in certain newsgroups on Usenet and the like; but hopefully won’t be spilling over into the adult blogosphere anytime soon.

As mathewingram.com puts it:-

"I’m hoping that Boutin’s post took about the same amount of time as it did to come up with that Twitter message, because it has about as much value. Is everyone going to have a blog? No — and they never were. Facebook and Twitter are probably enough for many people. Not writing at all is enough for many people. But why does it have to be all or nothing? What we have now is the option to micro-blog (i.e., Twitter) some thoughts, post others to Facebook, share things on FriendFeed or through Google Reader, and blog things that take longer to think through. But I guess that’s not as catchy as a “blogs are dead, Twitter killed them” scenario."

It is my sincere hope that blogs will remain a focal point of online self-expression without invasion from kooks and trolls from Usenet or anywhere else. It would be a great shame to see this proud channel of online-individuality fall victim to the cyber-thuggery and neo-macho-egoism of the newsgroup terrorist or die out as a result of the rise of microbloggers. I very much doubt that this is or will ever be a realistic scenario in all honesty. The mere possibility of it ever being the case could be quite unsettling to some people though.

Do you think it possible? Is there any danger of an "asswipe-invasion" at any point? Your thoughts please:-

Panic set in at kkomp.com office when first it was discovered that the blog posts were no longer being notified on Facebook, followed by the discovery that Ping.fm had vanished. In the broadcasting social-network’s place was a Go-Daddy advertisment but no ping.fm dashboard.

kkomp.com use ping.fm’s free broadcasting notification service by means of a plugin attached to the WordPress blog which you’re reading now. This plugin allows notification of any new posts to be sent to ping.fm, and then subsequently onwards from ping.fm to Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, FriendFeed, Plurk, and the like.

I immediately Googled for any further news; of which there was none, and consulted Twitter. I was told that ping.fm were having domain problems. During the short rally of tweets the ping.fm site reappeared and seems to be back to normal operation. I have no idea how long exactly the site was down for: All I know is that it was for somewhere between 0 and 36 hours.

This post is partially news and partially a request for further enlightenment: If anyone knows any further details then perhaps they’d be good enough to add a comment below? Is there an ongoing problem or was it a one off outage? How long were they down for? … And other information of that nature.

Testers report that they have been invited to test the Windows Vista Service Pack (SP) 2 beta as well as the Windows Server 2008 beta.

It was initially acknowledged by Neowin that the delivery of the SP2 invitations had been received earlier. That report is now being confirmed by other testers. Further testing of SP2 betas is expected to happen during the next few weeks in the case of Neowin. The goal of Microsoft appears to be to get the final version of both delivered before Windows 7 is released.

Windows 7 is currently expected to be released to manufacturing in 2009, as this blog earlier predicted. M$ seems to think that getting the service packs released before then will reduce the inevitable customer confusion normally associated with their strange schedules and confusing product titles/releases. To me it would seen rather counterproductive to release Windows 7 and then announce a second service pack for Vista anyway. Having said that they (M$) did release Vista and subsequently release a third service pack for XP; so there’s no knowing what they might get up to nevertheless.

The exact intended date for RTM seems unclear as yet, but who knows what could be going on in the backrooms at Microsoft, who won’t be drawn to comment further on the timing of the releases. This could mean that they themselves have no definite schedule at present, and are undergoing a suck-it-and see testing phase before making any announcement of a definite release schedule.

Here’s another weird Windows experiment for you to try in your spare time:-

If you’re running Microsoft Word 2007; open Microsoft Word 2007 and type the following:

=rand (200, 99)

Now press ENTER.

If you’re running Microsoft Word 2003 or earlier; open Microsoft Word and type the following:

=rand.old (200,99)

All of a sudden a load of text has appeared: More Windows magic?

You ain’t seen nothing yet: Let’s try again in a foreign language:

Open Microsoft Word 2007 again and type the following:

=lorem (200,99)

Press ENTER.

(You may have seen this text associated with some third-party aspect of WordPress also perhaps?)

(Unfortunately for users of Word 2003 or earlier, =lorem … only works in Word 2007, or so I am led to believe.)

Crazy Glitch ( Type In =rand(200,99) In Mircrosoft Word - Click here for the funniest movie of the week

What’s going on here?

The rand() or =rand.old function in Microsoft Word specifically generates (random) text. The text that it generates may vary from version to version: In Word 2003 and older versions the text produced is different to that produced by 2007

The first number  inside the brackets is the number of paragraphs of text to generate. The second is the number of lines in each paragraph.

See the following Microsoft help and Support article: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=212251 .

In the headlines today are 2 new ads from Apple. The first of the "I’m a Mac and I’m a PC"-style ads slam Microsoft’s advertising spending on Vista and highlight the problems people have had with M$’s latest operating system:-

Do people really care about Microsoft’s advertising budget though? OK the money has to come from somewhere, usually from the customers. In general, though, people don’t consider that when going out to buy a Microsoft product.

"Oh I don’t think I’ll buy Microsoft’s product because they’ll just spend any profit they make from me on advertising Vista."

Was it actually slamming Microsoft’s advertising budget though; or was it just emphasizing the problems associated with Vista?

The second ad pokes fun at Vista in a bleep-out; again highlighting the issues that people have faced with the operating system:-

The question is: How does any of this kind of negative-advertising actually promote Apple or the Mac? None of what I see makes me think "Wow; I should go out and buy myself a Mac."

I have 2 PCs; each running XP. Why XP? Because Vista has too many issues for my liking and I really don’t think it’s worth upgrading. When Windows 7 is released, if it’s much better than Vista, I’ll build a new PC for myself and install Windows 7.

I see a Mac as an expensive PC running Unix. Granted the OSX operating system hasn’t had the number of issues that Vista has had; but ME was another of Microsoft’s mistakes and I’m running the operating system that they released after ME. Why do I want a Mac? I can’t build a Mac; I’m not allowed to. I have to buy one ready-built. I can’t upgrade a Mac myself: I have to take it to Apple to be upgraded with what components they say I can have in it.

A ready-built PC will cost me slightly more than a self-build PC and it won’t be built as I want it to be built. A Mac will cost me even more than that, and it will be built as Apple and the Great Jobsweh; god of all things Apple, has decreed it shall be built - So saith the LORD.

I’ll continue building my own PCs, and I’ll continue to install Microsoft software. Why? Because I’m not allowed to install OSX on my home-built PCs. Apple can knock Microsoft all they want; but I’ll still buy Microsoft’s products. I’ll skip Vista, just like I skipped ME.

Apple should be addressing the fact that I don’t want their Mac for the reasons stated herein, rather than slagging Microsoft off.

If I could build and upgrade my own Mac I’d probably have one. OK I’d have to abide by the limited choice of components that Apple say I can upgrade it with probably, and I may have to build it according to certain specifications and conditions, granted; but I’d have my own personal Mac rather than Steve Jobs’ computer.

If I could run OSX on one of my PCs I would do just that; and Apple would sell me the operating system: But they won’t, so I lose out and they lose out.

If I could repair a Mac that I’d purchased when it went wrong then I would and I’d buy one in the knowledge that I could do just that. I don’t want to have to take it to an approved Apple stockist to be mended for 3 or more times the price I’d otherwise pay. I have the capabilities to do it on site, and I’d want to do it on site.

So Apple can spend as much money as they like on slating Microsoft and telling me how much better a Mac is then a PC, (Although there is very little difference in my mind: To me a Mac