Chad's News

On Jan. 19th, 2038, Unix/Linux systems will run into a major date-related problem. The current method of representing dates/times does not work for dates past 3:14:07 UTC on 1/19/2038. We may start seeing problems beginning tomorrow (Saturday 1/19/2008) because 30-year mortgages will extend past the end date. The migration to 64-bit computers will resolve this issue for many, but the real problem is with embedded systems and some file system formats.

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/…
(via Slashdot)

AOL has announced that it will discontinue any further support for the Netscape web browser, as of February 1st, 2008. Time to switch to Firefox if you haven’t already done so.

Link: http://blog.netscape.com/…
(via Slashdot)

I guess this was inevitable, but still…

Link: http://www.reuters.com/…
(via Slashdot)

Scientists have created a computer program that cannot be beaten at checkers, once the number of pieces gets down to 10. (I guess you could win if you still had 10 or more pieces left.) The way they worked this out is neat. For every possible combination of 10 checkers or less, the researchers have pre-computed the next move to take—a move that has a certainty of not losing. If the opponent also plays a perfect game, it will result in a draw, but the scientists have proven that the computer cannot lose.

Link#1: http://news.bbc.co.uk/…

Link #2: http://www.nature.com/…
(via Slashdot)

Link #3: http://www.foxnews.com/…
(via Kim Komando)

Just a reminder that Congress has mucked around with daylight saving time by advancing the start date. This year it will begin on March 11th instead of April 1st. You may need to update your computer’s operating system and software to handle the change. Of more concern are consumer electronics products, which may or may not have updates available. Chad’s News has several previous posts on the topic.

The linked site gives away one free commercial software program every day. You have to download and install the software on the same day or else it won’t work. Don’t expect stuff like Adobe Photoshop or Microsoft Office, but in the few days I’ve been monitoring the site I’ve seen some decent programs.

Link: http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/…
(via Lifehacker)

The linked web site has a nicely categorized list of freeware utilities.

http://www.techsupportalert.com/…

A web application is a program run over the internet via a browser. So, for example, Writely is a full-featured word processor accessible via the web. The advantage of Writely, as with all web applications, is that you can use the program and access your data from anywhere in the world and on any computer.

An early type of web application was web-based email. Yahoo! Mail, MSN Hotmail, and GMail are examples. But recently we’ve seen the advent of full office suites. In addition to Writely there are Thinkfree, Zoho Writer, Google Spreadsheets, Picasa Photo Editor, Google Calendar, and Google Base (among others). Microsoft, obviously a bit worried about this competition, is planning to make their Works office suite available via the web.

Web applications are catching on—even in the Chad’s News household. I’ve switched mail programs from Outlook Express to Gmail. I did it for the spam filtering, but it’s also nice to be able to check email whenever I’m out of town. I also switched RSS readers from Habari Xenu to Bloglines.

One of the big negatives for web applications is that you’re trusting precious data to a third party. Using Gmail, for example, I have no way of backing up my email data and I’m trusting Google to maintain it in perpetuity. I’m also trusting Google to not go out of business. (This can be a real issue. I have a friend who hosted digital photos in an online repository that went out of business with almost no notice. He happened to be offline for a few weeks, and by the time he got back online it was too late to retrieve his data.) There are also privacy concerns when using a web service for confidential data.

Another negative is that web applications rarely have all of the features found in a dedicated program. For most people this will not be a issue, but power users may run into problems.

Web applications are here to stay, and they’re gaining in popularity. Expect to see them used more frequently.

(Thanks to Josh for the idea behind this article.)
Copyright © 2006 by Chad Cloman

With the majority of software, when you purchase it you are actually buying a license to use the software (rather than the software itself). This scheme was created fairly early in the life of PCs. Most people don’t notice it, but smart businesspeople are aware of the implications. It does occasionally cause problems, and a particularly funny one recently occurred in a New Jersey parking garage.

http://arstechnica.com/…

This is a great resource for web developers: a comprehensive internet browser archive. Need to test that web site on IE 4.0 but don’t have a copy available? Just go download it.

http://browsers.evolt.org/
(via digg)

I know a good bit about how to use Linux, but I’m completely lost when the discussion turns to the merits of the various “flavors” that are available (Debian vs. Slackware anyone?). In the past, I just went with Red Hat because I knew it was a good choice, but that particular distribution has been discontinued. This article compares ten of the most popular Linux distributions. It’s an easy read, good for non-experts.

http://www.linuxforums.org/…

Years after I shelled out money for Adobe Acrobat, I found out there are several open-source, freeware programs that create PDF files. I could have saved my money if I’d known. It’s always been difficult for me to find a good freeware program to do what I want, and I tend to end up paying for software. I knew that SourceForge was a good place to look, but I felt like I was blindly groping in the dark. Well now that has come to an end. Wikipedia—a wonderful site if you’re not familiar with it—has a categorized list of all known open-source software, most (if not all) of which is freeware.

http://en.wikipedia.org/…