abestic9

A group of people fed up with the recent Privacy Policy changes (and the difficulty in completely locking down your information) on Facebook have banded together to form “Quit Facebook Day“. On May 31st, those people (the number is currently at 1889 and growing fast) plan to permanently leave Facebook – unless, I assume, the social network’s coordinators change their policies and user-unfriendly privacy interface.

Personally I don’t have a big problem with the changes, albeit they are quite annoying and just keeping on top of the Privacy Policy is more of a weekly chore than anything else. My history on Facebook cannot be described as a pleasant one, however. Read the rest of this entry

There’s a nasty little feature in Windows Vista & 7 64-bit editions that require drivers to have an authority signature on them. This was very inconvenient for me as I use a piece of software called Virtual Audio Cable to route my mixing software to various audio interfaces and loop-backs. VAC does not contain signed drivers for the audio hooks, so I set out to find a fix.

The problem with this is that independent software developers will be forced to pay a very nasty fee to allow their drivers to be installed on Windows 64-bit systems. Unfair, much?

Microsoft claims this enforcement is to prevent root-kits and malware from accessing the kernel level of the operating system (why they would need to do that is beyond me), but I have another theory: DRM. More information and a fix after the break. Read the rest of this entry

Another month has passed. With that, a look back on the recent happenings in 2010.

Canonical has packaged and released Ubuntu 10.04 LTS “Lucid Lynx” to the masses. Changes include removing HAL, a new open-source NVIDIA driver, and integration of social networking (Twitter, Facebook) into the operating system.

HP bought Palm. Not much else to say on that. (Insert HP versus Palm product quality joke here.)

Apple release their new MacBook Pro lineup in April. The new laptops include the Core i5 and i7-series processors, a welcome change for many Apple enthusiasts, from what I’ve heard. They also released the iPad. I won’t go too much into that, apart from it being the last Apple product I would ever own.

Chrysler and NASA have agreed to collaborate on automotive/space exploration technologies which will apparently benefit both companies.

Everything else happened in February. Read the rest of this entry