Translation

You gotta love Microsoft and their stupid funded studies. I find that some experience in journalism paints a completely different picture of what is being said:

I couldn't help but translate a bit. Here's an exerp from LXer.com:
"We believe there to be inaccuracies," Mark Cox, the leader of Red Hat's security response team.

Translation: These people are smoking crack. Tell them to back away from the pipe for a bit and let the smoke clear.
--FeriCyde

Tires on the Internet

Okay, you can order a ton of things off the web -- I usually buy electronic items via the Internet -- the selection is high, the ability to learn about the products fits the medium. For an experiment to contrast the power of the web over say, Circuit City help personnel, memorize some basic facts about an electronic device you are very familiar with -- then try and buy that exact same device, asking for help from local store staff. Depending upon the item, the results can be hilarious. Most tech sales people's advice is dwarfed by a good google search when it comes to learning about the future usability of an electronic device.

So I was blown away when I saw something just about as good for tires. Before I post that forum name, I'd like to use the service and see how it turns out, but from what I see, tires are another item kind of like electronics. Expensive, extremely technical -- and when you go to local help you come up with the human equivalent to /dev/null.

Some background: The tires on my late model Mustang GT -- stock OEM tires -- are over 150 bucks a piece, and most people are lucky to get 20k out of a set. The latest set would have netted me 60k, had the fine folks that maintain Ohio roadways simply done their job -- one bent rim, $400 bucks worth of tires, about a year ago, cost me dearly. One pair of the tires survived though, and that's the record -- something like 65 k on a pair of GoodYear Eagle GT ZR rated, 17" tires.

I never thought I'd see the day :)

I'll be back here after buying my first set of on-line tires only (Okay, I bought a set of take-off wheels and tire in 2002 for the beast, right off the web, but that's another story...
--FeriCyde

Oh the horror of added capability

Reading this horror story about adware (a type of virus that installs onto Windows PC -- is there anything else?) I couldn't help but wonder what a boatload of exploits we're going to see going forward. The problem with Windows is the enormous complexity -- there are likely billions of combinations of harmless protocols that can be exploited to do God knows what on a PC. Mere mortals aren't going to be able to know, that's for sure.

They had their chance to listen a decade ago when people warned and warned. Now we're in the thick of it. I doubt very much Microsoft is going to get the world switched off of XP overnight.

But I've been wrong before. I guess time will tell *sigh*
--FeriCyde