Journal Journal: Vista Death Watch is PCMag.com's Most Read Column
The Vista Death Watch is PC Magazine's most popular column. That is just one of many items in Dvorak's review of yet another dissappointing year in Tech under the M$ monopoly.
Information Overload Predicted Problem of the Year for 2008 146
Wired is reporting that information overload is being predicted by some analysts as the problem of the year for 2008. "'It's too much information. It's too many interruptions. It's too much lost time,' Basex chief analyst Jonathan Spira declared. 'It's always too much of a good thing.' Information overload isn't exactly new, but Spira said the problem has grown as technology increases societal expectations for instantaneous response. And more information available, he said, also means more time wasted looking for the right information, whether in an old e-mail or through a search engine."
Submission + - In Microsoft Patent Application, Lion Tames You! 1
theodp writes: "Remember how the press gushed over Bill Gates' plans for a spam-less future? Well, some of the details are on display in Microsoft's recently published patent application for Order-Based Human Interactive Proofs (HIPS), and the annoying little puzzles that are the CAPTCHAs of the future may leave you less than wowed. For example, take Microsoft's exemplary maze (please!), which you may be asked to navigate while avoiding things that are dangerous — such as a lion and a canon — to prove you're Human and worthy of e-mail access (path D-A-F-O-B-H-K should be your final answer!)."
BioShock Installs a Rootkit 529
An anonymous reader writes "Sony (the owner of SecureROM copy protection) is still up to its old tricks. One would think that they would have learned their lesson after the music CD DRM fiasco, which cost them millions. However, they have now started infesting PC gaming with their invasive DRM. Facts have surfaced that show that the recently released PC game BioShock installs a rootkit, which embeds itself into Explorer, as part of its SecureROM copy-protection scheme. Not only that, but just installing the demo infects your system with the rootkit. This begs the question: Since when did demos need copy protection?"
Web 2.0 Bubble May Be Worst Burst Yet 417
athloi writes with a link to an editorial by John Dvorak over at the PC Magazine site. Rather than his usual tilting at windmills, Dvorak turns his attention to possibility of another big internet economy 'pop': "Every single person working in the media today who experienced the dot-com bubble in 1999 to 2000 believes that we are going through the exact same process and can expect the exact same results — a bust. It's déjà vu all over again. Each succeeding bubble has been worse than its predecessor. Thus nobody is actually able to spot the cycle, since it just looks like a continuum. I can assure you that after this next collapse, nobody will think of the dot-com bubble as anything other than a prelude." It certainly seems like another burst is imminent; will this one be worse than the original, or have less of an impact?
