Showing 1-10 of 11 results
-
AI is causing concern again
Life, James Hein, Published on 06/12/2023
» There have been two big stories in the IT world over the past couple of weeks. The biggest one concerns OpenAI and its three-day boardroom drama. In a nutshell, the board voted Sam Altman and other members out of the company. The next day, Microsoft picked them up and anyone else who wanted to head over to a new division. That same day, 700-plus employees of OpenAI signed a letter saying they would go if a rogue board member did not quit and bring Sam Altman back. On the third day, Sam was back and three board members were gone.
-
Limiting discourse, leaking borders
Life, James Hein, Published on 19/06/2019
» It is difficult to ignore the latest moves by social media providers like YouTube to change their terms and conditions so as to block individuals and groups they don't like. The shift from an open platform, where all ideas are welcome, to one more concerned with the window of discourse is disappointing, and points to the huge pressure being applied by a small number of special interest groups, mostly via advertisers. The really sad part of this is that there are already indications that Minds, a supposed open alternative, is already censoring content, so for the moment at least I need to withdraw my recommendation for that platform.
-
Next-gen Wi-Fi technologies on the way
Life, James Hein, Published on 07/11/2018
» The fixed line versus Wi-Fi debate continues to be a popular one. And with technologies like Wi-Gig and Wi-Fi 6 in the pipeline, the debate will only intensify. Current Wi-Fi technologies work inside the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands; they also have user-friendly version numbers now. Wi-Fi 4 came out in 2009 under the name 802.11n, Wi-Fi 5 arrived in 2014 as 802.11ac and Wi-Fi 6 is due in 2019 as 802.11.ax. In the near future, you'll see these numbers start to appear on your devices, but not every manufacturer will bother to use the new designations. Wi-Fi numbers 1-3 represent even older, now mostly unused versions.
-
Of hacking and international cyber affairs
Life, James Hein, Published on 21/12/2016
» According to some reports Russia was the one that hacked into the Clinton servers and arranged the email leaks to get Trump elected. Many of the US security agencies don't agree with this latest assessment. So what do we know? We don't know for example if the servers are running Microsoft or Linux operating systems, if the emails were grabbed in a single block or slowly over time. There is very little info. This is a classic case of one side blaming the other for a result they didn't want, and I suspect that the real story won't come out for some time.
-
Online training that won't cost you the earth
Life, James Hein, Published on 28/09/2016
» In the ever-changing world of technology, it is often hard to keep up. You can visit expensive training sites that charge thousands of dollars or you can try some alternatives, like the Softonic site found at deals.softonic.com. I've already used them for a project management bundle, chess course, writing for Kindle using Scrivener, and lately a complete web developers course, all for low double digit US dollar prices. So far the content has been quite good and the web developer course includes free web hosting for a year. They may not be quite as slick as the big providers but the info is there so you might as well save a few shekels.
-
Celebrating 30 years of Windows
Life, James Hein, Published on 02/12/2015
» Back in 1985, on Nov 20, Windows 1.0 was released by Microsoft. This was not the first graphic, mouse click-based operating system at the time but it has certainly become the most common. Back then you needed two floppy disks, DOS 2.0, 256K of memory and a graphics card. Around 500,000 copies were sold. It took until about the mid 90s before Windows took off and the first popular version was Windows 3.11. It was recently found still running in France's Orly airport running a weather system. It is also still used in point of sales systems and a few other places.
-
When help is really a hindrance
Life, James Hein, Published on 16/12/2015
» Computer help has progressed to the point where it has become annoying. Microsoft is the master of trying to help and at least in my case, not getting it right. Users of Yahoo Mail will also know what I mean. You will be in the middle of doing something and Yahoo will refresh the inbox bumping you out of a move, a delete or some other half-completed action. Note to Yahoo, this is not helping. I can understand that Yahoo wants to get the latest emails to you as quickly as possible but I wonder how those who get lots of emails every day cope with continually being interrupted by the never-ending refresh. I can understand a drive to continually improve things but there is a point where too much help can be less than helpful, and what some consider help is a hindrance to another.
-
Downfall of Chromebook dynasty?
Life, James Hein, Published on 20/08/2014
» First there was the netbook, then the Ultrabook. Now we have the Chromebook, of which the Gartner Group predicts sales will top 5 million units this year. If it is anything like the netbook, by 2017 people will be asking: "Chromebook? What is that?" Gartner missed predicting that the netbook bubble would burst, and I think they have made the same mistake here.
-
Tablet sales a bitter pill for top firms
Life, James Hein, Published on 14/05/2014
» According to International Data Corporation analysts, tablet sales are starting to flatten and are not making the latest estimated quarterly shipments. There is still some growth, but nothing like the previous steep rise. Hit hardest was Apple, dropping from 40% to under 33% of the total market share. Second was Samsung, which went from 18% to a bit over 22%. Lenovo also jumped, but was still fourth behind Asus that saw a drop of almost 3%. As predicted, the boom time for tablets is almost over. Let’s see where they are at the end of the year.
-
Sysadmins know all the best secrets
Life, James Hein, Published on 11/09/2013
» After all the hoopla about Edward Snowden, now a new resident of Russia, you may be asking yourself how he managed to walk off with all that information. After all, the US National Security Agency, or NSA, is meant to be the be-all and end-all of security. They can supposedly listen to everyone's phone calls and all information is carefully monitored with employees blocked from copying files. So people are calling him a genius who brilliantly made off with all that sensitive information. The truth is a little more mundane. He belonged to a group known as System Administrators.
Your recent history
-
Recently searched
-
Recently viewed links
Did you find what you were looking for? Have you got some comments for us?
