LOL.

Image: imgur.

Ubuntu made a minor leap this week to 9.10, and with that came a major upgrade to their Netbook Remix, which until this point has been interesting but less than spectacular. The UNR not only comes with a newly-refreshed look, but also a much-needed kernel upgrade to 2.6.31 — which along with the removal of HAL (which seems to consistently live up to its holywood-namesake’s penchant for shenanigans) means for a much smoother initial setup.

In earlier versions, users were met with considerable roadblocks as they booted into an environment completely devoid of networking. They then had to actually figure out why they were unable to use their hardware, and usually ended up ferrying a new kernal over to their netbook on a USB key. This is nothing short of ridiculous, considering the entire purpose of a netbook is to be connected to a net.

It’s Easy on the Eyes.

The new look of the UNR is not only gorgeous, as you can see from the screenshot above, but also extremely pragmatic. Learning from the considerable success of other netbook-centric releases of competing linux distros, Ubuntu has gone the route of absolute efficiency with regards to the desktop. The new wave of netbook-desktops are no longer vast empty spaces with a menu, now they are vast, beautifully streamlined, transparent menus layered atop a wallpaper. The overall look is stunning, while giving the illusion that very little has changed at all. Applications now fill the entire screen when opened, and are quickly minimized down to icons as needed.

Download UNR 9.10 Here.

The entire package is really something, and I have to say that it may be the most enjoyable, silky-smooth distribution of Linux that I’ve had the pleasure of using yet. I also have to say that Windows XP is still far snappier on my Asus Eee. While I may love Linux, I use XP. It’s slightly painful, but I’m a pragmatist at heart, and I like my systems not just smooth and stable, but fast. The single drawback I’ve found with using Ubuntu Netbook Remix is that it’s just plain sluggish. Every action seems to be delayed, prolonged, bogged-down. Perhaps in time these kinks will be worked out, and the archetypal speediness of Linux will begin to shine through. I hope that’s the case, but I’ll keep dual-booting for now.

“These widespread abuses of printed type threaten to erode the very foundations upon which centuries of typographic history are built.”

The twitition is currently being passed around, and is extremely low on signatures. I don’t expect it to pick up… since most people don’t know or give a rat’s ass about the disgusting pile of type to even click a link concerning it. That’s neither here nor there — If you hate Comic Sans as much as I do, or even a hundredth what I do, then please, Sign the twitition.

One word of warning, for the squeamish out there; twititions do require access to your twitter account, and they do send out an automatic tweet from your account propagating the twitition. This is normal, and relatively secure.

Death to Comic Sans.

Kill it with fire.

Yesterday, I read in Mashable that big Redmond released the newest beta adventure for their upstart search engine, Bing. I wasn’t originally planning on posting anything about this, because it’s non-news, but it’s been irking me all day.

So what was this release? They’ve apparently come up with a visual search. This idea all on its own isn’t so bad, it’s even novel, and I think it’s worth a shot just to see how it goes, but that’s not the issue here.

The issue is this: In order to use this experimental search, and that’s bold for a reason, you must install Silverlight. Really Microsoft? You want to try to force the most unwanted of all media software in the history of media software on the public just to try an experimental feature for your crappy search engine?

Try it yourself: Bing Visual Search.

In what universe, exactly, is Microsoft living? Becuase it’s certainly not this one. They don’t seem to have the simplest grasp on reality — not one decision they make seems to make any sort of business sense.

I’m glad it really doesn’t affect me personally, since I absolutely shun any shred of the garbage they push as software. That doesn’t mean that I’m not bothered when I see it happen, considering most people do actually use their rubbish. I’ll end my rant now, before it goes all Dennis Miller and consumes the rest of my database.

This vile competition is on the level of tearing a teddy bear out of a child’s arms and then ripping it apart into a pile of fuzzy remains on the spot.

- Rosa Golijan

To sum it up, what could have originally been a great thing has turned into a sick, twisted marketing ploy. Microsoft set up a competition, complete with public, popular voting, to decide which children’s hospitals would receive (and more importantly, not receive) a Microsoft-funded gameroom. Maybe the PR Guru’s who bought and paid for the ridiculously misleading Laptop Hunters adverts have finally lost their minds. Maybe I’ve been right for the last decade and Microsoft truly is just plain evil. Either way, even the most die-hard loyalist can’t deny how wrong this entire endeavor is.

Again, head over to Gizmodo to read the full story.

Let’s be honest, Skype is a great service with a valuable chat system built into it, but sometimes it kind of sucks. There’s just no better way to put it, but griping about Skype in general could take pages, so we’re just going to laugh at this beauty of a spam-scam instead.

Main lol Factor: I’m Not Running Windows

The way skype chats work is that the name of the party you’re chatting with takes up the whole menu bar of the chat-window. In this case, the window suddenly looks very official because it’s now (rather ominously) named “Registry Security.” It’s partly what makes this scam so well-engineered. If I had been running Windows, this would have looked similar to an official notice from Microsoft. That’s the first thing they did right when they cooked up this scheme.

The other two parts that make up the Trifecta are the fact that the scammer managed to register a domain that looks extremely trustworthy (updatealert.net) and the well-polished presentation of the scam itself. They actually put some effort into mimicking real malware warnings.

The sad fact is that many people would actually be fooled by this. It looks legit enough for people to suddenly forget the fact that Microsoft wouldn’t contact them via Skype.

Here’s what Norton had to say about updatealert.net

Image: Norton SafeWeb