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OCAU News |
Wikipedia's founder, Jimmy Wales is proposing changes on who can edit the online encyclopedia after vandals have changed the entries of two US senators, Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd, to erroneously report that they had died. The proposal, which was approved 60-40 by participants in an online poll, would not allow first-time or anonymous users to make instant edits but would require that they be approved first by trusted users.
Apparently a man from NZ found 60 US military files, including names and telephone numbers for American soldiers on an MP3 player he bought in Oklahoma. TV One News said the 60 files contained personal details of US soldiers, including some who had served in Afghanistan and Iraq. A New Zealand security expert said the information should not be in the public domain, but that it did not appear likely to affect US national security. The US Embassy declined to comment on the incident.
Speculation is growing that eBay is looking at selling Skype. Industry insiders believe that eBay signalled its intent last week after John Donahue, its chief executive, described Skype as a “great stand-alone business”. This has led to suggestions that eBay would find it relatively easy to part with Skype, if a substantial bid was made.
Windows is a first-class gaming platform..........according to Microsoft. The comments come at the same time as Microsoft appoints a new general manager for the controversial Games for Windows Live division which has been met with scorn from many gamers.
In June 2008 social networking giants, Facebook and MySpace, had about the same number of registered unique users, however, since then Facebook has surged well and truly ahead of MySpace. Facebook now claims 200 million unique users to MySpace's 100 million according to Adage. The glut of the growth Facebook has experienced comes from countries other than America. MySpace is quick to point out that while Facebook has outpaced it in unique visitors, it still sells more ads.
ExtremeTech has a preview of Windows Internet Explorer 8 RC1. Times are tough for Microsoft, with job cuts, the European Union breathing down its neck again, and Firefox slowly but steadily encroaching on Internet Explorer. More than ever, Microsoft needs IE8 to succeed if it wants to maintain its dominant position. Fortunately, the beta looked good. And while this first release candidate is little changed from the beta, the few adjustments made definitely improve the product.
It seems that world's six largest computer hard drive makers have finally published the final specifications for a single, full-disk encryption standard. According to a press release any disk that uses the specification will be locked without a password and the password will be needed even before a computer boots.
Now some news for our photography enthusiasts. Dpreview has posted and in depth review of the Canon EF 50mm F1.8 II lens. The Canon EF 50mm F1.8 II may be one of the cheapest lenses currently on the market, but its optics belie its lowly price. As befits a classic standard prime lens, it's very sharp when stopped down (especially in the centre), shows minimal chromatic aberration, and has relatively low distortion; APS-C users will also benefit from extremely low vignetting.
Trusted Reviews is looking at the Kata R-106 Camera Rucksack. I've used and reviewed some consumer-level Kata bags before, and I've been pretty impressed by their clever design and excellent construction, but The R-106 is in a completely different league.
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All original content copyright James Rolfe.
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