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In November 2008, a worm quietly sounded the geek alarms as it set about to infect millions of personal computers around the internet -- to date, estimated at 6-7 million. It was christened Conficker by MS security staff. It exploited a flaw in MS Windows operating systems -- got into the computer, closed the flaw, and went about replicating itself. It communicates to its home base with an encryption level that is so powerful, it's still in the lab -- and is one of the contenders for a new security standard to be published in 2013. It is part of a powerful botnet that was used only once, in what looks to have been designed to test its viability. Ever since then, it has sat dormant. Waiting. Not much is known about it's purpose or who controls it. What is known however is scary, because there is no way to stop it, and it can be used to cause severe disruption if needed. The good guys put up a good fight, but may have lost to the bad guys on this one -- but no one knows ...

MilkyWay@Home, the distributed computing project using the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing platform, is now the fastest computing project on that platform -- and probably the second fastest public distributed computing program, behind Folding@Home. MilkyWay@Home, using volunteer computing power from home users across the planet, has achieved 1,382 TFlops, as of January 12. Just for context -- that's just behind Jaguar, the Cray XT5 supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, that has performed at 1,759 TFlops and uses 224,162 Opteron cores -- compared to the 45 thousand users volunteering on MilkyWay@Home. For more on the MilkyWay@Home project, click here . in reference to: PCs around the world unite to map the Milky Way ( view on Google Sidewiki )

Freescale Semiconductor has demoed a cool and affordable tablet, recently. No manufacturers have been named, but they can't be far behind. Check out the specs below: in reference to: * Size: 200mm by 128mm by 14.9cm and weighing 376 grams; no need for fan or heat sink * Processor: Freescale i.MX515 applications processor provides high performance and low power * ARM Cortex-A8 1GHz * OpenVG & OpenGL/ES graphics cores * HD video decoder hardware * Memory: 512 MB DDR2 * Display: 7-inch (1024 by 600) touch screen * Storage: 4-64 GB internal storage; removable micro SD * Connectivity: 3G modem (option) 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1, GPS, RF4CE (option) * Ports: USB 2.0 and USB mini (also for charging), audio in/audio out, SIM card * Audio: speaker, microphone * Camera: 3 Megapixel (video recording up to VGA @ 30fps) * Battery: 1900mAh, USB charging * Sensors: the MMA8450Q three-axis accelerometer and an ambient light ...

This post is part of the freecomputers project . freecomputer20090226 I've been putting off working on this machine for a while, simply because it's so old. It's a Compaq Prolinea 4/66. Yes, it's a 486. It was donated by Narender, via FreecycleTO , and comes with modest hardware. I got some additional RAM from Norm this past week, and that helped somewhat. The CD drive that was in the machine was dead, so it was replaced. Still, there wasn't much to work with. The machine had WfW 3.11 loaded, which was a shocker seeing it. I booted it up just out of curiosity, and was floored. I hadn't seen WfW, since, well ... was it the mid-90s? Ancient times in the technology world. I tried right clicking on the File Manager before realizing how futile that was. It was a novelty to see the old OS, but it didn't last long. I loaded Damn Small Linux (DSL) onto the machine, and it performs fairly well. The unfortunate thing is the NIC, which is an old SMC IS...

This post is part of the freecomputers project . freecomputer20090221 I finished rebuilding this old Compaq Deskpro last night, and it's suffering. It's an OK machine, and could just use a little more RAM. The machine can handle up to 384MB RAM, but unfortunately, it has only got 32MB -- in 2 16MB DIMMs. I've appealed to the folks on FreecycleTO to see if anyone has some old memory laying about that can be thrown my way, otherwise I don't think the machine will be of much use to anyone. I've loaded Damn Small Linux (DSL) onto the machine, and it boots pretty fast -- a testament to the efforts of the DSL team. The Dillo browser loads fast, as expected, but the one drawback that the browser has is support for JavaScript. It was great that support was added for SSL, but no JavaScript means that websites with some interactive requirement, such as email, simply will not work. Firefox is installed by default as part of the DSL build -- yes, they did stuff it i...

This post is part of the freecomputers project . freecomputer20090218 The bulk of this machine comes courtesy of Trinity via the FreecycleTO community. The machine was in pretty good shape, but still a bit dusty -- I have to blow out the innards this weekend. The CD-ROM drive was dead, so again I pulled from the spares that Narender supplied. The machine comes with an integrated Ethernet port, but had a spare network card installed, which I promptly pilfered for another machine I will be working on. The machine is probably the fastest one I have recovered, so I decided to go with Kubuntu, since the KDE GUI is a little bit more demanding of system resources. It still performs fast though. My youngest commented that the machine runs much faster than her W2K machine that has more hardware horsepower. (I think I have some other work to do now.) The machine is suitable for office applications, as well as general internet surfing, email and even browsing videos on YouTube. It wor...

This post is part of the freecomputers project . freecomputer20090202 This machine comes courtesy of the generous freecyclers . The machine and monitor was donated by Sharon. The keyboard and mouse are from Cheryl. The machine was missing a CD-ROM drive, so I installed one from Narender -- who also contributed a secondary harddrive to the machine. Keyboard and mouse comes from another freecycler who I can no longer remember -- but thank you! Since the RAM was limited, I loaded Ubuntu onto the machine. It runs OK. The machine is suitable for surfing the internet -- email and the like, but not for watching streaming video. The typical Ubuntu desktop offers OpenOffice.org 2.4, which runs just fine. It obviously doesn't scream with performance on an older machine (see config below), but it performs well enough for occasional use. Configuration of freecomputer20090202 : IBM Aptiva, Model 2163504, S/N: AG03G11 Pentium II 350MHz, 224MB RAM Video: Creative CT6730 AGP 8MB Crea...

This post is part of the freecomputers project . freecomputer20090124 This machine comes via some good folks of the FreecycleTO community. The machine itself is from Adina, with the monitor donated by Cheryl and the serial mouse and AT keyboard from Ibrahim. I haven't seen a serial mouse or AT keyboard in ages! Since the machine only has 64MB RAM, I needed a smaller Linux distro. Hadn't heard of this one before, but Google saved the day when it lead me to Dam Small Linux . It's the 2.4.31 kernel in a 50MB footprint. That's right, the entire O/S in 50MB. The machine previously had Windows 98, which I blew away for the DSL install. The install required a little more thinking and configuration choice than Ubuntu or openSUSE, but after one failed attempt, I was successful. DSL had some trouble recognizing the Ethernet card in the machine -- some no-name brand -- so I swapped it out for one in another machine I picked up from SH last night. It worked wonders. T...

This post is part of the freecomputers effort. freecomputer20090117 I've rebuilt the first machine (see the January 17th update below) with Ubuntu 8.10. openSUSE was slower than expected on the 256MB RAM. The Ubuntu distro installed pretty fast, but desktop load time doesn't appear to be faster than openSUSE. That's besides the point however. What I was looking for was really usability of the O/S on older hardware. And it appears that there are moderate performance gains from Ubuntu over openSUSE. Whoo-hoo! Ubuntu comes preloaded with Firefox, a slimmed down version of OpenOffice.org, GIMP, a bunch of tools, games, and assorted goodies to keep most people from wanting to install more apps. The distro also provides a quick and easy way to keep the O/S up to date. An icon provides notification when new updates are available, and quickly downloads and installs them without much user interaction required. An internet connection is of course, required. Hardware co...

I've decided to do something about the inspiration that hit me over the holidays. I was rebuilding a machine for a friend of my wife's, and really enjoying myself, the hands on mucking around with figuring out the the hardware problems and reloading the O/S and apps. It reminded me of a post I saw last year on FreecycleTO , from a guy who was rebuilding machines from donated parts and donating it back via FreecycleTO. Old machines were getting a new lease on life, and those that really needed a machine -- any computer -- was getting one gratis. Inspired, I posted the following on FreecycleTO: I'm looking for old computers and computer spare parts -- stuff that you have lying around that could be used to put together working machines. I've idle hands, and I would like to keep old machines out of the dump, give them a new lease on life and help those who otherwise be left behind in the information age. All rebuilt machines will be loaded with open source software and...

Who says you can't do everything with Open Source software? The Trinidad & Tobago Computer Society (TTCS) has created a great CD with over 100 free or open source software applications geared towards home users (they say business, but probably small business only). The CD image is available for download online, or you can order a copy directly from them. It's packed with some really cool stuff, not all are my first choice for open source app, but it will do for the layperson who just can't afford to buy software. You can use your web browser to read detailed information about each program on the CD: what the program does, its key features, useful related websites, view a screenshot, find links to the program's website and to download/install the program from the TTCS OSSWIN CD. The only thing not included in the image is a free version of Windows -- but you can't blame them, since such a thing is not available -- legally, anyway. You don't need to down...

12:05AM : It's been a while since I've had the chance to play with hardware. I'm no longer up on the latest and greatest, since I don't upgrade my computers on such a regular basis anymore. My most recent computer is about 3-years old. And it was assembled by a local computer store -- nothing special -- other than being prone to crashes when the harddisk is being maxed out. My previous computers, which died horrible deaths -- the server was smoking apparently, when I was in Newfoundland in 2007 -- all had dual processors, full SCSI, not an IDE drive in sight. Back when they were built -- 2000 -- the specs stuffed two full towers with the latest gear. So, here I am, just after midnight, tearing apart a friend's old machine to fix it. It went into a coma recently, with the only sign of life, a annoying clicking, and a BIOS message proclaiming a hardware error and refusing to proceed further. The clicking was coming from a 40GB IBM Deskstar moving on to a well...

Umm ... the chrome-ier browser ? Currently in beta release ... get yours before all the bugs are fixed! Actually, if history is any indication, expect Chrome to stay in beta forever. It's the Google way.

GIMPS has found two new Mersenne prime numbers. The world remains unchanged. The world of mathematicians on the other hand -- there's a quiet party going on.

Ever closed a Firefox tab and wished you hadn't? lifehacker has a great tip for undoing that close. Ctrl-Shift-T (Windows) or Cmd-Shift-T (Mac) will do the trick! How's that for a cool feature?

Wired Magazine is running the tale of Chris McKinstry and Pushpinder Singh , two AI researchers, both Canadian, from completely different backgrounds, who eventually took their lives in very similar ways. McKinstry had a history of suicidal attempts, and struggled for legitimacy in the academic world. Singh had a privileged upbringing that culminated in a doctorate from MIT and landing a job working alongside his mentor, Marvin Minsky . Both shared similar theories of AI, and both pursued similar research. Both committed suicide under mysterious circumstances. There probably isn't much more to their stories, but both read like a work of fiction, begging for something deeper to be there. And maybe there is.

IBM Research published a paper last month, on the possibility of leveraging their Blue Gene/P platform, to create a global-scale computer, codenamed Project Kittyhawk. From the abstract: This paper describes Project Kittyhawk, an undertaking at IBM Research to explore the construction of a next-generation platform capable of hosting many simultaneous web-scale workloads. We hypothesize that for a large class of web-scale workloads the Blue Gene/P platform is an order of magnitude more efficient to purchase and operate than the commodity clusters in use today. Driven by scientific computing demands the Blue Gene designers pursued an aggressive system-on-a-chip methodology that led to a scalable platform composed of air-cooled racks. Each rack contains more than a thousand independent computers with highspeed interconnects inside and between racks. We postulate that the same demands of efficiency and density apply to web-scale platforms. This project aims to develop the system softwa...

Well, apparently Google invented cloud computing . Or that's what you'll get out of this BusinessWeek article, that profiles the 27-year-old Christophe Bisciglia, chief-cloud-guy, at Google. Have a read, as it gives a good sense of where Google is heading, and why they will take over the world if they're successful. Worse case scenario: Terminator or the Matrix. It will make us wish for the days when Microsoft dominated the computing market. Watch out future, here we come!

It's a visual dictionary of all the nouns in the English language, arranged by semantic meaning, and linked to 79,302,017 images culled from image search engines. Randomly click on the tiny images to see a popup of the hidden word and thumbnails representing the word. Totally cool ... in a "I not sure why they did this" kinda way. See the related research paper on the work for the techno-babble.

What happens when you take Michael Jackson, well, his white glove, and throw in some Java coding? You get a giant white glove . Don't ask why. But if you do, see the White Glove Tracking open source project.