The CIA knows what we Google

Subject: New Internet

Yeah, right. The main reason today's Internet works so well is that governments had virtually nothing to do with its design and deployment. (The US federal government provided funding, but that was about all). The only upside of a "new, improved, government-designed" Internet would be its potential to keep us all amused in the coming decades. And, of course, every government would be lining up to get its own Easter Eggs built in.

Welsh T

Subject: getting hotmail messages back

Paul,

Same thing happend to my hotmail, which I have been using since 1997. I wrote a sob story to Microsoft hotmail support about how I had been loyal for so many years and was devastated, etc. A few days later, the deleted messages re-appeared.

Good luck,
Tim Epstein

Subject: Ancient Scots tip up on line

ancestry.co.uk? Aye, no bad like.

But its cheaper and there's a lot more stuff at the various public record offices, all online via www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk. And when your Scottish, 'cheaper' is a big issue!

Donnie

Subject: Terrible treatment by Creative labs

Hi Mike, I have been reading the INQ for some time now and was especially glad to see the article in february concerning Creative's terrible treatment of customers and lack of drivers for windows vista.

Unfortunately we are now in april and nothing has changed, we still have non functioning drivers and no news or assistance from Creative indicating even if they intend to support their products or not.

Myself and other creative hardware owners would deeply appreciate it if the Inquirer would do another article and expose this terrible treatment we are receiving from a supposed leader in the sound industry.

Regards

Rob C

Subject: You do realize...

That in order to swim across the Atlantic in the time they suggested you would have to sustain a 5 MPH swim for those 29 days solid? BTW, 5 MPH is 1 MPH faster than the Olympic world record speed for 1500m freestyle (mens). Herculean needs an outbaord strapped to his butt.

Carlos

Subject: Yet again Charlie confuses his own infections with the DRM infection

If having a clear understanding of the DRM / Hacker / Pirater issue makes me an asshole, than an asshole I proudly am.

I take it as a compliment ... It shows that I have successfully dug my dirty finger into the gaping sore that is Charlie's misguided views on the DRM subject.

All of Charlie's concerns on DRM can be addressed by the public not buying and not pirating any content where they can not abide by the copyright or license terms of the content.

There is no need to keep publishing Charlie's repetitive anti-DRM articles, they are essentially all the same and simply feed more FUD to the masses and give more ammunition to the likes of Sony and Microsoft to justify their need to protect their content.

We killed Digital Audio Tape by not buying it. We killed the Sony PSP movie format by not buying it, heck we killed Betamax by not buying it ... we can do the same to HDDVD and Bluray.

There was no DRM problem before hackers and piraters brought content theft into the computer age. Similarly there would be no computer security problems if not for the hacker scum that profits either monetarily or from the personal pleasure they get from breaking other people's systems.

Cheers,
Ken Lord

Subject: Submerging computers in oil

Hello there,

Technology is a funny thing:) 8 years ago a friend of mine submerged his Pentium 2 @233MHz OC @300MHz in oil and used 4 micropumps to push the cooled down to room temperature oil on the CPU. He had no need for fans and he could overclock further than anyone else. We all found it a stupid idea back then because changing your PCI cards was not a neat thing to do anymore:) Now it's becoming a commercially available cooling solution. I hope it's not "patented"... Regards
Nikolaos

Subject: The DX10 Ripoff

Microsoft is blatantly misleading gullible consumers that DX10 (and by extension Vista) is needed to use DX10 hardware. You can use all the new, "advanced" features of DX10 hardware, including geometry shaders and all Shader 4.0 functionality, in XP (or any OS for that matter) through OpenGL.

DX10 isn't even a programming language, it is a hardware abstraction layer; the equivalent to OpenGL (GLSL) would be D3D 10 (HLSL). Microsoft has fooled gamers into thinking that DX10 is responsible for the fancy new graphics, when it is in fact the hardware that makes it possible. You have a DX10 card, you can use it on ANY platform provided you have the drivers for it.

There is no point hoping Microsoft will change their attitude, game developers should be urged to avoid DX10 and standardize on cross-platform OpenGL, or Nvidia's Cg language.

Simply put, DX10 is a trap. A trap like the DRM in Vista and Microsoft Gaming For Windows. Microsoft must be resisted, or we will live in a world where we no longer own our hardware and software. A world with a Microsoft Tax on everything. Not just for consumers, but developers as well.

OBK

Subject: CIA knows what we google?

Hello dear Letterman:)

Here is an interesting thing that happened to me while searching the word Venezuela in Google through the search engine box on the upper right corner of Firefox.

I have Firefox 2.0.0.3 installed. When I got the search results Firefox warned me that it received an SSL server certificate concerning the site www.cia.gov. However, the certificate was coming from verisign.com and that is a potential threat.

Unfortunately, I cannot attach the screen capture because of this webmail form but if you give me an email address I could do so.

Of course, you can say that I was sent a certificate because in one of the results when searching for the word "Venezuela" you get the cia.gov site (the world fact book). Nevertheless, as long as CIA is sending me the certificate it means that CIA knows that my IP has searched for the word Venezuela, terrorism, bomb, communism, Bin Laden and I don't know what else. Why does CIA know what searches I am doing in Google? Does google keep statistics about the searches I am doing on google? I would certainly want google to answer these questions.

I've been using firefox since its firebird incarnation and it's the first time I come across such an issue. There might be a good explanation for this but I had to let someone know.

Thank you
Nikolaos Gryspolakis

Subject: Alternative Route

Funny as it may be, it still manages to suggest going via France.

Surely a more direct route would be "Climb out of the water at Land's End and run up the A30"?

Robin

Subject: Avoid the Vista badge, it means DRM inside

Ah the DRM thingy rears its ugly f**king head, again. You see, when Charlie writes a piece like this, stand at attention and read very, very carefully. ‘What could it all mean', you may ask. Or, ‘so what, I don't do this, that or the other thing'. Well wake up a smell the coffee. As usual, he is way out in front and is on the inside track.

Ask yourself this, ‘where did all those security issues in XP and Word come from in the past'. And, ‘who put then there and why'? This not Dylan, and the answer is not blowing the wind.

Charlie knows, and has known, as do I, MICROSOFT has put them there to track you and gain access to your computer. They always have and continue to track everyone who ‘leases' their OS. The problem came when hackers exploited these “vulnerabilities”. They just jumped Microsoft train and got in. The patches only give ‘Misrosoft' exclusivity to use these gateways.

If you think that Microsoft doesn't profit by this acquired tracking/cookies, etc., information, I've got a couple of Bridges in here New York City up for sale. Further, DRM is just another step and way of exploiting you and making more money for the, (I hate this term, but I am compelled), The VOLE.

BTW: For bridge sales info, contact Bugs Bunny or Porky Pig.

Sparks

Subject: Wikipedia

While Wikipedia is certainly subject to mis information due to opinions and error, it is a pretty good source of technical information on subjects that lack a lot of opinion. Take this on for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth . I'm willing to bet most of the information in there is accurate. I use wikipedia for researching technical subjects, like the earth, and find it a very useful source of information. Sure there is the occasional mis-information, but where is there not? Sure there is the occasional opinion, but those are usually easily spotted. All in all I still find it a valuable resource for getting a free primer on many subjects, I just don't consider it scripture.

Greg Zapp

Subject: Doh...

You wally; it's an Easter Egg. It was put there so that dumb 'news' sites would pick-up on it and plaster all over the 'front page'. Well done; mission accomplished... Free ad for Google.

William

Subject: Windows XP Execution Date

Of course the useful thing to point out, is that for the cost of windows vista business or ultimate version people can use their old XP pro disks to install on a new machine and claim "downgrade rights".

An OEM can even use a volume licence to supply machines with xp pro on them, with just one cd key, and throw a business OEM licence on each.

This also works for 2k pro as well :)

Byron Mulvogue

Subject: Internet Reboot.

I don't know about this one. One one hand, the last thing many people would want is a more complex protocol that's a pain to implement in hardware, debug problems with, and allows DRM and wiretapping more easily. On the other, it might be nice to have something that can cope with the idea that everyone is now behind a NAT whether they like it or not, and can't be expected to open ports for every application under the sun. Something most games don't seem to understand yet. The existence of programs like Hamachi is evidence of the flaws in our current network system. Ether get IPv6 going already and give out 255 addresses per line so we can stop with the NAT stupidity, or admit this sucks and design something that doesn't cripple connectivity in order to have at least some semblance of security and control.

GLDM

Subject: NY to LDN

This certainly shows how bad Google maps are:

Instead of swimming to Le Havre, one would be better off swimming to Lizard or Penzance and head straight to London. This, all in all, would save you about 200 mls swimming.

Having said that maybe Google maps is better than we think, taking into account the notorious slow roads of SW England...

Go figure!

Vincent

Subject: "better battered"

Reminds me of a T-Shirt I once saw about, "There are over 6 million battered women in the US today. And all this time I've been eating them plain."

Mataroo

Subject: This is going to cause a blizzard

I hate to imagine the amount of reactions at this piece of news, but any Windows user of some experience cannot help but shout some form of expletive when reading that Microsoft crashing is a security feature. Here's another useful feature for Little Miss Security : don't turn on the PC.

And while we're at it, we can thank MS for putting an end to global warming in one fell swoop. After all, if we all stay cozy at home with the lights off, global warming is going to go away by next month. Or might it just be that there won't be a human left to worry about it ? In any case, this soundbite is just totally Microsoftian. It is technically correct, but entirely irrelevant and useless. Pure Redmondian thinking at its finest.

Scholars, to your notebooks. I want 150 000 blogs on this subject by tomorrow.

Pascal

Subject: Oil bath servers

Sounds decent up until the point that you need to perform maintenance on one of your servers...how do you get it out of the rack without spilling it's erl all over the place? And instead of taking it to teh local Geek Squad for a repair, do you drive them over to Jiffy Lube?

..and then one of them springs a leak, and a data center employee slips cartoonishly on the erl puddle and sues ya fer, you know, stuff.

Kaleb

Subject: Steeleye Span

Could you please educate your tone deaf Mr Martin Veitch. Those were the days when Steeleye Span strutted their stuff, actually being able to play musical instruments live. Just tell him to stick with listening to his collection of The Spice Girls and Donny Osmond, he will be a happy man.

Steeleye Spanner!!!!

Arthur

Subject: microsoft

Paul,

The same thing happened to me with my hotmail account, which I created and used happily before MS bought it. After the Microsoft purchase it's become chock full of ads and it lost all forms of competitiveness.

It's the same thing that AOL did to Nullsoft, Netscape, etc...

Sorry to hear about your loss; on the bright side though, you don't have to worry about trying to figure out how to download all your messages from that piece of junk.

Glen

Subject: Recent Letters

Sascha Krohn's: AMD claims Barcelona K10 will knock Intel dead

He tries point out the mistake in Guiseppe Amato's statement without realising he spelt sense "sence". A little ironic don't you think?

Greig's: Vista

Not all reader's are adults. I'm 16 and have been reading INQ for the last year.

Fister was slightly crude though nevertheless funny.

Adam

Subject: Killing off XP will make piracy rampant

Arn't all Microsoft's licenses backwards compatible?

I can buy Office 2007 licenses, and use them agains Office 2003 installations.

Why not just keep an XP install disk around?

The real problem is when they stop the updates!

Regards
Nevyn

Subject: Use of the adjective septic

The terms is cockney rhyming slam for a Yank. As in septic tank - yank , and has nothing to do with teh British Isles. Either go homw or do your home work.

NA