Sun, which has spent the past decade constantly moaning about the worst excesses of Microsoft’s behaviour, is clearly not averse to employing underhand tactics of its own.
Having spent the past couple of days wilfully ignoring the Java update nagging away in my System Tray, I finally relented and installed the latest version, only to be confronted with the following screen:
Admittedly, Sun was only trying to force the OpenOffice installer on me, rather than automatically downloading the hundreds of megabytes that comprise the full suite. But after the furore caused when Apple automatically ticked the Safari installation with iTunes updatesearlier this year, it’s amazing that companies are still resorting to such cheap tricks.
The technology world moves at such a Leopard-like pace that, after only a fortnight off, it’s easy to feel out of the loop.
Yet, when I returned from my cloud-addled holibubs this morning, I was beginning to wonder whether I’d been away two years rather than two weeks. Before I went away Adobe was trundling along on Premiere Elements 4. I come back this morning, and the company’s announced Premiere Elements 7!
Had those crafty Adobe folk launched 5 and 6 whilst I was rain dodging in Devon? No, the lovely PR manager explained, Adobe has simply decided to skip versions 5 and 6 so people don’t get confused when they see Photoshop Elements 7 bundled with its seemingly two-versions-behind video brethen, and think they’re being saddled with old software.
There’s nothing quite like strapping a jet-powered wing to your back and soaring over the majestic snow topped alps at 180mph. We at PC Pro do it every morning, in between our 12,000 push ups and warm-up half marathon. Or at least we would, if we didn’t eat quite so many pies and spend half our time lookng for minuscule David Bayon down the back of the settee.
However, there is hope for the jet-powered wing part of this dream thanks to Swiss daredevil Yves Rossy (no idea how you pronounce that), who intends on crossing from Calais to Dover on just such a device. No, rowdy English tourists for this chap, just the clear open skies, smell of jet fuel and the hope of not dying horribly when the wing bursts into flames and sends him plummeting into the icy depths of the English channel.
Gordon Brown is a very intelligent man. Unfortunately, this is tempered by the fact that he has the charisma of a bag of cabbage. However, somebody in Downing Street clearly saw an opportunity to rectify this when they responded to little England’s petition to make Jeremy Clarkson Prime Minister with a video posted on YouTube.
If you’ve not seen it, watch it here. Otherwise, bear with me for a thirty-second summary: The video opens with the words: “Thanks to the 49,447 people who signed the petition to make Jeremy Clarkson Prime Minister. You make a compelling case… ”
We then see the doors to number 10, which open and we pan up the staircase, which is lined with photographs of past prime ministers before we arrive at the top, and a picture of Clarkson. This is then followed by by the words: “But on second thoughts… maybe not.”
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not barrelful of monkeys, farts in the bath, Arrested Development funny, but it’s worth a wry smile and a blog post. It’s a sign that this Government does have some charisma about it, and, perhaps more importantly, imagination.
Yesterday, we ran a blog post suggesting that Computeractive may have gleaned the inspiration for its latest cover from a recently published copy of PC Pro.
Make your own mind up from the picture below:
Last night we received an email from the group publisher of Computeractive, reminding us that “scanning our cover falls into copyright infringement”.
We would like to take this opportunity to apologise to the publisher of Computeractive. Copying content from a rival publisher is, of course, utterly reprehensible.
Don’t worry. We’ve not gone mad and decided to reprint the same cover we had three months ago…
They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and so to our colleagues at Computeractive, can we just say we’re very flattered indeed. And to Computeractive’s readers, can we suggest you save yourselves £1.59 and read our Double Your Broadband For Free feature here.
And if you’re curious to know what’s likely to be on the front cover of the next issue of Computeractive, here’s our prediction:
Let’s get this straight, Gazza did it. There’s no second gunman lurking, he wasn’t framed by the mob, nobody forced, threatened or otherwise made him hack into US military computers. He was bored and decided to peek up America’s skirt. 97 times.
Happily though, Gazza, the cheeky little scamp he is, decided that merely hacking into their machines wasn’t enough and also left mocking little messages critiquing US foreign policy, which is a bit like kicking a big, angry bear in the bottom and then sticking your head in its mouth when it doesn’t immediately bite your foot off.
Granted, McKinnon has suffered some misfortune. His case dragged on just long enough to see the US Government royally embarrassed by Chinese hackers, an enemy it had no chance of striking back at. Make no mistake, McKinnon is a statement. However this started, the US now wants to make an example of somebody, to prove it’s not so impotent as the Chinese have made it appear - and now McKinnon has obligingly climbed on the pyre.
Dave Gorman is a very funny man. However, he’s lost his sense of humour over his faltering BT broadband connection, which disappeared down a black hole three days ago.
“I’m not a violent man but right now I would cheerfully hurt someone from BT,” Gorman writes on his blog. “In fact my sense of proportion has diminished to the point where I can’t work out if it would be in particularly bad taste to suggest that running Kris Marshall over again would be, well, satisfying. Probably.
Still, if he will advertise BT’s services…”
However, what piqued my interest was his superb suggestion of ISPs providing mobile broadband dongles to people whose landlines have given up the ghost: a courtesy connection in the same way garages provide a courtesy car when your runaround is being repaired.
Back in January I decided to chase up a rumour that the Government was planning to radio-tag serious offenders so it could track their movements. So, I did my research, wrote some words and rang the prison’s service to see if anybody fancied having a chat about it - confirm, deny, ignore. Whatever. Seven months later, I got my response.
Seven months… that’s 213 days, 639 meals, five and half million breathes, 1,704 hours of sleep. Empires have fallen quicker than that.
WiMAX wireless, as we were discussing in the office just the other day, has so far proved as popular in the UK as a Gary Glitter comeback tour.
And now, courtesy of a particularly peculiar piece of research from BT, we have the stats to prove it. When BT asked more than 2,000 adults which technology they would like to have access to by 2012, WiMAX came below H20-powered cars, powered exoskeletons, On-demand access to media on any device, and a robot cleaner, registering interest with only 13% of respondents.
Personally, I’m hoping for a broadband connection that gets even close to the up to 8Mb/sec promised on the tin. The powered exoskeleton is probably a more realistic proposition.
