Cody Taylor

Google Drive, or Gdrive as it is better known, has to be the most anticipated Google product so far. When it arrives, Gdrive will likely cause a major paradigm shift in how we use computers and bring Google one step closer to dethroning Windows on your desktop.

nk497 writes “The worm that’s supposedly infected almost nine million PCs running Windows, dubbed Cornficker or Downadup, could lead to a massive botnet, security researchers have said. The worm initially spread to systems unpatched against MS08-067, but has since ‘evolved and is now able to spread to patched computers through portable USB drives through brute-force password-guessing.'”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Security analysts at F-Secure believe more than 8.9 million computers have been infected by the virus, a worm, which is known variously as Conficker, Kido or Downadup, and targets the Windows operating system

“First off, let’s dispel a couple of things. I have sat in meetings with principals and school administrators and listened slack-jawed as system administrators (mostly MSCE’s) told their employers that it was illegal to remove Windows from their current computers. They didn’t say it violated their contracts or licenses…they said it was illegal.”

Back before Apple Inc. made computers that fit in your pocket, it made computers that fit on your desk. Some were big-box machines, others were not so portable portables and still others were — literally — cube-shaped. But the first Macintosh, the one that started Apple’s rise to iconic status, is to the computer industry what the wheel was…

narramissic writes “Doing a download speed test of his Time Warner cable connection, James Gaskin discovered something odd, something that he is quick to note isn’t a rigorous benchmarked lab test. The discovery: His Ubuntu machine ‘returned a rating from the Bandwidth.com test of 22-25mbps over several tests’ while the same test done from a Windows XP PC returned a rating of 12-14mbps. The two computers used in the test are ‘almost identical: both off-lease Compaq small form factor D515s, part of the very popular corporate desktop D500 family. Both have Pentium 4 processors running at 2GHz. The Ubuntu machine has 768MB of RAM, while the XP box has only 512MB of RAM. Both run Firefox 3 as their browser.’ Gaskin’s question: Can a little extra RAM make that much difference in Internet download speeds or does Ubuntu handles networking that much faster than Windows XP?”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Set in the 23rd century, Star Trek follows the adventures of Captain James T. Kirk and his crew, as they travel across the galaxy and battle everything from aliens to megalomaniacal computers. The show premiered in 1966 and has the largest number of spin-offs among all television shows in history, according to Guinness World Records.

nandemoari writes “The damage isn’t just limited to the United States. Shipments of PCs in Europe, the Mid-East, and Africa dipped to records posted around the turn of the century. It was even worse in Asia, which according to Gartner, posted its worst growth rate ever — just 1.8 per cent. Within the industry, desktops took the hardest hit, as was expected. Sales of non-portable computers were down about 16 per cent as consumers opted instead for the rising ‘netbook’ and similar hybrids. That fact alone is troubling for PC makers, given that 0-0 netbooks offer a far lower profit margin than more expensive and more powerful laptops and desktops.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

stonedcat writes “A Wisconsin woman has claimed that Dell computers and Ubuntu have kept her from going back to school via online classes. She says she has called Dell to request Windows instead however was talked out of it. Her current claim is that she was unaware that she couldn’t install her Verizon online disk to access the Internet, nor could she use Microsoft Word to type up her papers.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.