Beyond- The Newsletter: 26.06.2009
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Hello, and welcome to another newsletter here on kkomp.com. In the last week I’ve produced some pretty good articles; although I say so myself. If you haven’t had a chance to read them yet I suggest that you click some links in the list below and have a look at anything that takes your fancy for a short to medium read: -
The above post was more of a link than anything else. Quite obviously WP 2.8 has already been released, and it’s most likely that most WordPress-user-bloggers have already upgraded, even by the time the article was written,and sampled it for themselves. The thing is that not everyone will be aware of exactly what’s been changed straight away, unless it’s staring them straight in the face. – Therefore I thought it a good idea to do a little piece about it and link to the WordPress blog for further details; even if only to somewhat enhance the traffic to the WordPress blog as a thank you.
Something that carries a lot more weight is a computer’s PSU. It supplies quite a vast amount of wattage at low regulated voltages for its size. Only 30 years or so before it was invented and prototyped you’d have been looking at a box at least twice the size of your computer, if not bigger, just to perform the same function and supply the same output. That huge box would have also probably heated your entire house as a side product. Due to significant advantages in manufacturing technology since then, a lot of miniaturisation has been made possible through component integration and also further advances in technology. Voltage regulators no longer require a set of differential amplifiers built from individual large aluminium-canned power-transistors. (2N3055 keeps appearing in my mind’s eye.) These days the differential amplifiers, multiple-output-stages, everything, is all integrated into a single hi-current regulator package about the size of a matchbox or thereabouts, making the unit cheaper, saving resources, producing less in the way of heat and outputting more in the way of power. -But, despite higher tolerances and vastly better performance, things still fail eventually: Nothing lasts forever. – When a computer power supply fails the result can be quite catastrophic in some cases; with damage occurring to other sensitive CMOS-based parts. If you know and understand the warning signs of impending PSU-failure then you can avoid this scenario happening in the case of your machine: Saving you you time, money, and resources. This article will give you some ideas about what to look for: -
Perhaps I’m a bit intolerant, or maybe I just don’t have a high-threshold when it comes to the thoughtless acts of others. – Now when people are thoughtless towards others then that’s just plain wrong, and those people need an attitude adjustment along with having their brain switched on and their thought-processes enhanced in my opinion. However, when a person’s thoughtless actions are detrimental to themselves and/or to the company that they work for, then the expression “thoughtless” takes on an entire new meaning: Brain-dead might be a better description? OK maybe that’s a bit harsh. I have to take into account that not everybody’s a geeky-type; but it should come as no surprise to anybody that if a computer remembers their data it must be stored somewhere. – When the power’s switched off and switched back on it still remembers the data that’s been inputted into it, so it must be filed somewhere inside the computer; it’s just obvious logic. - So when someone puts their old computer in a public place for disposal because they don’t want to use the dinosaur any more, you’d think that they’d remove their sensitive personal data from it wouldn’t you? …But no; many times people don’t bother: They just trust to luck or have too much faith in human nature and hand their identities over to all and sundry to do as they wish with. Likewise when someone sells their old hard-drive on eBay. – Do they bother to clean their data off of it? Do they even attempt to conceal it? In my experience not always, no. If I was a criminal I could now be operating under at least two identities other than my own and have some sort of racket going on with at least one business because of this. – All without even trying! Read this article: -
The following post was one that I pushed out in a bit of a hurry as an extra article, firstly to explain how I seemingly managed to miss the Summer Solstice; or at least I certainly missed posting about it, and secondly to warn about an unpatched security hole that Microsoft don’t appear to be that bothered about; even though exploit code has been written and released to the wild with regard to it.
Above is a brief article in which I basically share my opinion, for what it’s worth, on the idea of using RAID on servers and also on workstations.
In further marketing language; don’t just take my word for it: Read this: -
I’m just about to link you to a video that shows you, step-by-step, how to optimize your YouTube videos to help you drive an insane amount of traffic back to your website.Gideon, the guy who is not only a half of the Become A Blogger course that this article advertises, but who also created the video, tells me that he tried these exact same strategies on one of his own YouTube channels, and got like 67,400 views in just 8 weeks! At first I thought he was just kidding me but then I saw his channel, and my jaw dropped at the - So, yeah… if you want to get more traffic from YouTube, you’ll like this stuff… But that’s only a part of it: Read the actual blog post itself for more links, on to an instructional video that actually features in the Become A Blogger course. – At absolutely no cost to yourself. – and another to a page where you can get another 10 instructional videos to do with the course. Now that’s value in just the advertising alone…
Wednesday 24th June 2009 was this blog’s official first birthday: -
Lastly; when Microsoft launch Windows 7 on October 22nd 2009, they’ll be charging more for the Professional and Enterprise versions that have XP Mode included with them. – But why should you pay Microsoft more for the pleasure when there’s a way to scrub round it using free software? Read this article to find out how you could save yourself a few dollars more: -
That about sums up the week that was here on kkomp.com/Beyond since the last newsletter. Enjoy your weekend. ‘Next publication is scheduled for Monday; but you never can tell; I might get the bug like I did last weekend and publish something impromptu before then, and maybe I might not – ? Namaste’ Peace. |
What the Stats Say
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Today is a “Bank Holiday” in the UK; which is Brit talk for “skive”: That applies to the employed-only populous though: I’m continuing much as usual here, although I did get a chance to finally see a few people I’ve been meaning to see for a while earlier. It’s been a bumper weekend as far as hits are concerned on this blog; and my thanks to all who made it so: I hope you found the information that you were looking for and that it was useful to you. In this blog entry I’m going to be focusing on operating systems and browsers with regard to the statistics of this blog from the last six days, and try to give my perception of exactly what this means for their respective markets. Let’s look at some figures in terms of overall percentages for the operating systems used: |
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I apologise for the fact that the illustration’s not that clear: Nevertheless it can clearly be seen that Microsoft Windows XP is by far the leading o.s. at 75.8% (Of just over 1000 original hits.) ; beating Windows Vista into an un-commanding second-place at only 8.8%. To me that shows a big failure notice for Microsoft’s latest operating system and confirms the fact that people are sticking to XP for the time being, or downgrading their Vista installation to XP where possible. If this graph were to be taken as a representative sample it would indicate that for every person using Vista, there are 8.61 people still using XP. What of the rest? Unbelievably in third place behind Vista is the obsolete Windows 98 at 4.3%: This also speaks volumes about Vista, as this says that nearly half as many people as those who currently use Windows Vista would rather use an obsolete operating system than Vista. Let’s tot up the percentages of all Windows usage excluding Vista: We’ve already got XP at 75.8% and Windows 98 at 4.3%. Also there’s Windows 2000 in sixth place at 1.7%, NT4 at 1.1%, Server 2003 at 0.7%, ME at 0.6%, 95 and CE at 0.1% each. I make that 84.4% of everybody, using Windows but avoiding Vista. Total Windows usage including Vista = 93.2%. What of the others? Well there are two Linux groupings on this graph: “Linux” and “Ubuntu Linux”. I’m going to add those two together and call them “All Linux”; giving 2.4% of total: That’s not that bad a representative score for Linux in all honesty, and indicates some growth in the usage of Linux; I think somewhere in the region of 0.5% growth of market share. Now Apple: There’s Mac OS X coming in at 2.9%, and the iPhone at 1.5%. I’m going to add those together and call them “Apple Platforms”; giving 4.4% of overall usage. This shows significant growth for Apple too; somewhere in the region of a whole percent if I remember correctly. Obviously this isn’t an official survey, and the statistics gleaned from this are only representative of my viewers. If it were an official survey of a small cross-section of users, and there must be at least some parallel with the official figures, it would indicate that:-
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Now onto the topic of browsers:-  |
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To clarify; with apologies for the non-clarity of the graph again:-
The other categories are “Firefox” (No number) 0.6%, Firefox 1.5 0.3%, Generic Gecko 0.1%, and Internet Explorer (No number) 0.1%. I think what I’ll do is group Firefox, Firefox 1.5, and Firefox 1, together and call them “Not Firefox 2 or 3″, giving 1.8%. Also I’ll group Internet Explorer and IE5 together and call them “Not IE6 or 7″, giving 6.2%. OK; so IE6 appears to be a clear favourite: Strange that; I thought that since M$ were distributing IE7 as an auto-upgrade then everyone would start using it. I certainly do, and I prefer it to IE6 – I’m in the minority there it seems. IE7, which I use in XP, comes in second with less than half as many users as IE6. If we assume that all Vista users use IE7, then only 14.9% of XP users have adopted IE7. Fair enough. Firefox 2 in third. Hmm: Although Firefox 3 was a record download it certainly isn’t a record Firefox; 2 still being the prevalent choice out of the Firefox versions. Strangely enough IE5 with all its many vulnerabilities and its funny GUI has more users than Windows 98, indicating that people are using it with other Windows versions such as ME and 95. Firefox 3 with just over half as many users as Firefox 2 eh? : That should be a concern to Mozilla perhaps? Safari at 3.8% – Well there’s the iPhone accounting for some of it, though I’m surprised its usage is that high. Even more surprising to me is that Opera’s usage is so low at just 0.9% in comparison to Safari’s beating it by more than a factor of 4 times: Maybe some people know something I don’t? The rest is pretty much academic anyway – So; in conclusion:-
I found that statistical analysis quite exhilarating: I hope you found it interesting and maybe in some ways useful. What do you think? Are you at all surprised by these results? Do you think that this study is a fair analysis that could be used as a representative cross-section poll of users? Do you think these results are typical? What would you expect the results of an official poll to be; similar, or different? Please feel free to comment. Update: September 1st 2008:- I’m getting some good hits from loads of Open-Source browsers all of a sudden: Keep ‘em coming! (IE6 is still in the lead.)
I’m now going to have to review some of these and blog about them. Excellent!
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A Threat to HumanITy?
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The experts from the scientific institutions such as Oxford Uni and NASA recently convened a gathering aimed at devising ways to prevent information technologies threatening human dominance and possibly bringing about the end of civilisation as we know it. (Personally I think it might be a good idea if done right – I mean look at planet Earth right now: Humans are trying to self-destruct as a species as it is by the looks of it. Maybe it’s time for a change brought about by the cyber-gods we create? Jobsweh and his ilk aren’t doing very well after all; Gates has retired; and a conflict between Redmond, Jobsweh, and “cyber-terrorists” from the open-source community – The dark side in jackets – appears to have kicked off in a small way anyway.)
Is the Matrix to become a reality? I suggest pre-empting it by rewriting Smith if so. Will we become slaves to vast armies of terminators following a nuclear war started by our computers? I think not – That scenario appears a bit too far-fetched to me; considering the fact that such a war would obliterate most of the worlds computers, internet communications, and server units, anyway. |
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The lightning pace of information technology may be of concern to some; but would it be so bad to be controlled to some extent by a higher, if non-human, intelligence? Once again I really don’t see what’s so terrible about that. Humans replaced Neanderthals because they were more adept at survival, so what if some technologically-enhanced race of humans superceded humans as we know them today? OK ignoring thoughts of the Borg that are now running through the heads of Trekkies reading this blog – Forget the Borg collective consciousness and forget cruising the universe in a cube looking for vulnerable civilisations to turn into more of the collective – I really can’t see what’s so bad about having unobtrusive implants attached to increase the sensitivity of the human senses, in addition to being a replacement for worn out parts. OK maybe it might change humanity totally; but is that so bad after all? We already have the capability to self-annihilate within minutes and it only takes some set of power-crazy halfwits with access to the right button to make it happen: What if technology could prevent it from ever happening? What if some implant could correct the chemical imbalances in people’s deranged minds: No Hitlers, Stalins, no warmongering Bush hearing voices from “god” telling him to nuke his enemies.
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The experts say that the reason humans are the dominant species on this planet is because of our intelligence – Pah! – What intelligence? – We’re just clever monkeys having bigger inter-tribal wars with each other and using rocket-propelled sticks and stones that explode and kill more of the enemy; otherwise we’re no better than Neanderthals as a whole, apart from being better suited to today’s environment physically. If technology threatens that position due to having greater intelligence then good: Isn’t evolution wonderful? Isn’t it just engineered evolution taking its natural course? – Or do we fight it and carry on blowing each other up until there’s nobody left to kill? They think that they could create a super-computer with recursive artificial intelligence that could become more intelligent than humans. I say do it: You can’t get more stupid than some humans in some regards; and those stupid humans usually end up leading an army of followers…You know the story – Look at Osama Bin-Laden as one example.
“Anything that has more brains than us, can develop more technology, more quickly – including powerful weapons technologies. It could also come up with strategies and plots much more quickly and would therefore be extremely powerful.” said Bostrom; one of the so-called experts in question. If that were the case then surely it would soon see how the way humans have turned out is only going to lead to oblivion; therefore it might even ensure a future for humanity- rather than the 50/50 chance of self-elimination. The mind boggles! – Aided of course by the latest multi-cored processing technologies. If only…
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