Wired: San Francisco company BitTorrent have announced content distribution partnerships with some of Hollywood's major media houses, including 20th Century Fox, MTV Networks, Paramount Pictures, Palm Pictures and video game industry news channel G4.
Bittorrent press release.
Tags: bittorrent, hollywood, movies, networks, deal, partnership
Just released today, Remote Desktop Connection (Terminal Services Client 6.0) provides a way to use any new Terminal Services features introduced in Microsoft Windows Vista and Microsoft Windows Server Code Name “Longhorn” from a computer running Microsoft Windows XP with Service Pack 2 or Microsoft Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 1.
Read more and download it: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/925876
Tags: microsoft, terminal, server, remote, desktop, upgrade, connection
A couple weeks ago I posted about Windows Powershell 1.0, the new command line shell and scripting tool from Microsoft. There is also a new documentation pack that has documentation on the Windows PowerShell 1.0, including the "Getting Started Guide", the "Windows PowerShell User Guide" and the "Quick Reference" documentation.
Windows PowerShell 1.0 Documentation Pack
Tags: microsoft, windows, powershell, scripting, administration, command, reference, how to, help
News.com: A crush of online shoppers paralyzed Walmart.com, the Web site of the nation's leading retailer, for long periods on Friday.
Looks like Amazon and Disney.com had some small hiccups on Thursday and Friday as well.
Tags: wallmart, outage, black friday
photoshoptalent.com: Perhaps one of the most useful uses for photoshop has got to be repairing all those old photos that are slowly rotting up there in your attic. You now have the chance, not just to maintain alive a piece of history (which by itself is important enough), but also to learn more about your old, old folks, and let me tell you, you'll be amazed at how much you'll learn from one repaired old photograph.
Nice tutorial. Provides some old photos for you to practice on.
Tags: photoshop, how to, tutorial, repair, fix, photos, photography
HollywoodReporter: The U.S. Copyright Office has rejected an exemption that would have allowed owners of DVDs to legally copy movies for use on Apple Computer Inc.'s iPod and other music players. But film professors now have the right to copy snippets from DVDs for educational compilations, the Copyright Office said Wednesday.
This is quite interesting. A lot of people go around quoting 'fair use'. I'll not exclude myself from that group so let's have a look at what the U.S. Copyright Office has to say. Fair use is spelled out in Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U.S.C. § 107.
§ 107. Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include —
(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.
If you choose to take your own CDs and make copies for yourself on your computer or portable music player, that's great. It's your music and we want you to enjoy it at home, at work, in the car and on the jogging trail.
Flickr has started a new feature that is pretty cool. They have gathered the stats from picture data and created graphs to show which ones are gaining and declining in popularity. These graphs show the number of Flickr members who have uploaded at least one photo with a particular camera on a given day over the last year. You can also click and view photos by camera type.
Judging from what I see today, buy a Canon camera or a Sony camera phone.
Flickr Camera Finder
Tags: flickr, photos, camera phone, chart, graph, statistics, data
[via: BoingBoing]
Slashdot: "At 2:46 CST today, the game Second Life was hit by a massive attack by a rogue programmer. Spinning gold rings began to appear in the air and on the ground, and as users interacted with them they began to chase and replicate. Apparently, most people are willing to touch an object they've never seen before and this invoked a worm script that was designed to multiply and spread across the 2,700+ servers run by Linden Labs in California, the game's owner."
Yikes. Be careful out there gamers.
Tags: second life, wom, virus, security, game
Buy Windows a beer!
MSTechToday: Microsoft Windows 1.0 was released on November 20th, 1985.
Tags: microsoft, windows, birthday
MediaShift: MediaShift is a weblog that will track how digital media technologies and techniques such as weblogs, RSS, podcasting, citizen journalism, wikis, news aggregators and video repositories are changing our world. It will tell stories of how the shifting media landscape is changing the way we get our news and information, while also providing a place for public participation and feedback.
Tags: new media, weblog, rss, podcasting, journalism, wiki, aggregator
[via: Podcast Gazette]
Interesting article from Microsoft about RSS from a business users perspective.
Microsoft: Really Simple Syndication is a new model for keeping employees, customers, and business partners up to date. It pushes relevant information to them via subscription rather than relying on their ability to find the information.
Read the whole article.
Tags: microsoft, rss, business, news, feeds, subscription
Interesting article from Microsoft about RSS from a business users perspective.
Microsoft: Really Simple Syndication is a new model for keeping employees, customers, and business partners up to date. It pushes relevant information to them via subscription rather than relying on their ability to find the information.
Read the whole article.
Tags: microsoft, rss, business, news, feeds, subscription
Xerox has set up a program to create a postcard that will get sent to an American service person over seas. You choose some art (all done by kids) and either a stock message or write your own. Their system will print it all out and some volunteers will mail the package.
Let's Say Thanks
Tags: thank you, troops, army, navy, air force, marines, postcard, art
Microsoft has released Windows Powershell 1.0
Microsoft Windows PowerShell command line shell and scripting language helps IT Professionals achieve greater productivity. Using a new admin-focused scripting language, more than 130 standard command line tools, and consistent syntax and utilities, Windows PowerShell allows IT Professionals to more easily control system administration and accelerate automation. Windows PowerShell is easy to adopt, learn, and use, because it works with your existing IT infrastructure and existing script investments, and because it runs on Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server “Longhorn”. Exchange Server 2007, System Center Operations Manager 2007, System Center Data Protection Manager V2, and System Center Virtual Machine Manager leverage Windows PowerShell to improve efficiency and productivity.
Go check out Windows Powershell. There are also links to FAQs and webcasts.
Mercury News: By releasing the code under the most common type of license in the open source community and relinquishing control, Sun is acknowledging the rising importance of the software development community where programmers share their code with each other for free and hoping it will help fuel the Santa Clara company's financial turnaround.
Tags: sun, java, open source, gpl
Research Buzz: Ancestry.com has announced that they’ve added “all readily available” passenger lists that span 1820 to 1960. This collection represents information on millions and millions of passengers.
They offer free access to the info through 30 November.
Ancestry.com
Tags: ancestry, passenger, manifest, ship, list, free, research
Microsoft has released test versions of it's software as virtual disks. All you need is their free virtualization software (PC or Server). Nice way to distribute test environments.
# Virtual Lab: Windows Server 2003
# Virtual Lab: SQL Server 2005
# Virtual Lab: Exchange Server
# Virtual Lab: ISA Server
Tags: microsoft, test, demo, software, sql, exchange, server, isa
Microsoft Office 2007 has new file formats. If you aren't going to upgrade or at least not for a while, you might want to get the compatibility pack.
Microsoft Office Word, Microsoft Office Excel, and Microsoft Office PowerPoint versions 2000 through 2003 cannot natively open documents that are stored in the Office Open XML Formats in 2007 Microsoft Office programs. You can install the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats to open or to save 2007 Office files.
I wasn't going to cross post this but I think it is an important enough security/privacy problem that I think it is worth it.
From Firefox Help, Tips and Tricks:
There is a bit of a storied history with Firfox and 3rd party cookies. There used to be an option to disable them in the options dialog box but that was removed in Firefox 2. Fortunately you can easily modify the preference by using about:config.
In your address are, type about:config
Find the line that says network.cookie.cookieBehavior
Right-click on the line click Modify
Change the entry to a 1
Click OK
Restart Firefox
More details:
About the network.cookie.cookieBehavior from Mozillazine Knowledge Base
Recent thread about 3rd party cookies on Mozillazine Forums
Tags: mozilla, firefox, browser, cookies, how to, help
BlueScreen Screen Saver v3.2: Bluescreen cycles between different Blue Screens and simulated boots every 15 seconds or so.
Tags: screen saver, bsod, microsoft, windows
Worldwide availability January 30, 2007
Jim Alchin Video
Vista Team Blog
Tags: microsoft, windows, vista, beta, rtm, released
news.com: An "extremely critical" vulnerability has been discovered in Microsoft's XML Core Services, according to several security firms.Microsoft acknowledged that the bug is already being exploited by criminals, according to a note posted to the company's site.
Tags: microsoft, windows, bug, security, xml, core, vulnerability
Looking for something you think might be on bittorrent? Someone has built a site called Google Torrent. This site was built using the new Google Co-op service. Interesting.
While they use Google on the back end is it ok that the site has Google in the name?
Tags: google, torrent, bittorrent, search, co-op
Read/Write Web:WebOS services are going to be utilized by thousands of companies - and will power the next generation of web applications. Amazon is at this point leading the charge of the big Internet companies to capture this potentially huge market.
Add this Business Week article to this weeks reading list: Jeff Bezos' Risky Bet
Tags: amazon, web, services, web 2.0
Lifehacker points to a nice guide on BitTorrents: Brian's BitTorrent FAQ and Guide
Personally, I use utorrent as my client. It's small and easy to set up. Not much configuration is necessary but I recommend looking through the connection set up guide.
Tags: bittorrent, how to, set up, guide, tutorial
Adobe is testing a new ebook reader called Digital Editions. It appears to be a light weight version of Adobe Reader.
Digital Editions is a focused, lightweight solution (2.5MB download). It extends the eBook capabilities that were integrated in previous versions of Reader and Acrobat, delivering a simplified, content-centric consumer-friendly user interface. Digital Editions is distributed as a web-based RIA, ensuring that users will always have the current up-to-date version of the software.
Apple has just posted a 3-part seminar all about podcasting:
Podcasting is one of the most explosive technologies to hit the Internet. And with literally thousands of podcasts available on Apple iTunes, the need for high-quality production is critical. In this free, on-demand, three-part seminar Apple experts take you behind the scenes to see what it takes to perform a great-sounding podcast, produce a professional show, and promote a podcast to reach as many people as possible.
Today Microsoft and Novell announced a collaboration agreement for building bridges between Linux and
Microsoft Corp. and Novell Inc. today announced a set of broad business and technical collaboration agreements to build, market and support a series of new solutions to make Novell and Microsoft® products work better together. The two companies also announced an agreement to provide each other’s customers with patent coverage for their respective products. These agreements will be in place until at least 2012. Under this new model, customers will realize unprecedented choice and flexibility through improved interoperability and manageability between Windows® and Linux.
Reuters: The U.S. Air Force plans to set up what could become a major command aimed at safeguarding U.S. military and civilian cyberspace.
So I thought...AIR Force protecting computer networks? Odd. Apparently, in '05 the Air Force mission statement was amended to bring cyberspace into its area of operations.
Tags: air force, cyberspace, security, internet
There has been a lot of talk about Windows Internet Explorer 7 over the last couple weeks as it is finally out of beta. Are 
you ready for it? I'm not sure I am. I installed it on one of my machines and it wouldn't work so I promptly uninstalled. At least they give you that option.
If you are a little worried that Windows Update is going to push it down on your systems you might want to check out this new tool from Tim Fehlman over at Daily Cup of Tech. It lets you keep IE7 blocked or at arms length until you are ready for it. I say let the rest of the world debug the thing.
Tags: microsoft, windows, ie7, internet explorer
VOA
In the December issue of MacWorld, Derek K. Miller has a nice article on how to encrypt files on your Mac.
