Stuck for an April Fool’s joke? Let Microsoft help you out

By Mark O’Neill

I am not normally a big April Fools person but when I saw this joke this morning, I couldn’t resist trying it out – and it comes from Microsoft ironically enough.

It’s the Blue Screen of Death screensaver and when your hapless victim has their back turned, just install it on their computer, activate it and then say “oh look, your computer has that funny blue screen thingie”.

I tried it on my girlfriend and before I could say “let’s buy an Apple Mac”, she was dialling the electronics store to complain that the computer was breaking down after only buying it from them 4 months ago. When she discovered it was only a screensaver, I had to run for my life.

So it really is true – Germans really don’t have a sense of humour!



11 year old takes over as school computer network manager

By Mark O’Neill

If you’re a network manager, I think your job might be under threat when your boss sees this kid. Jon Penn is only 11 years old and he’s Victory Baptist School‘s computer network manager. At 11, shouldn’t he be playing with his Nintendo Wii or something?

According to the article on Network World, his mother is the school librarian and when the IT support person suddenly quit, she found the IT job added to her already heavy workload. Enter her 11 year old son to save the day who says his favourite reading material is computer magazines.

He looked at what the school needed, looked at the budget and then started to build a network. Pretty amazing work for a kid his age.

Do you agree with what he did? Or would you have done things differently?



Leaked: Images of the Eee Desktop

You wouldn’t be able to tell by the 50 pound behemoth perched atop my desk, but I love small-footprint computers. Machines like the Mac Mini and gPC Mini have limitless potential and can be used in numerous ways: servers, firewalls, media centers, etc. As of late however, our favorite has got to be the tiny Eee PC. This tot of a laptop became an instant sensation before it was even released; its small price and size made it a must have.

Seeing how successful their first foray into tiny computing was, Asus has promised an Eee desktop for 2008 and these might very well be the first pictures of it. Apparently these images are far from official but HotHardware seems to think that they are, indeed, real. There are no hardware specs yet but an earlier report from Gizmodo indicates that it might sport a 1.8 GHz processor along with a $300 tag.

The new Eee obviously takes a page out of the Nintendo designer’s handbook, and we can’t say that it looks anything short of stunning. Based on the choice of color and awesome minimalistic design, it looks like this little PC would fit in just right with any computer or home theater setup.

Asus Eee PC Desktop, Eee Box Unveiled [via Giz]

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Apple to customer: We hate you

There’s no doubt about it; Apple has an extremely dedicated fan base. From waiting in line a whole week for a phone, to writing books and creating movies dedicated to the Apple experience, we’d say that this ungrateful corporation is lucky to have such a following. With this kind of loyalty, you’d expect Apple employees to treat customers with, at the very least, courtesy and respect.

This was not the case however, when an email to Steve Jobs regarding water damage took a hard left. An anonymous tipster on the BoyGeniusReport accidentally spilled water on his MacBook Pro, and after contacting Apple support was informed that the repair would cost $300. Without any guarantee as to its success. Naturally frustrated, the guy sent Satan Jobs an email voicing his concerns and this was the reply:

Xxxxxxx,

This is what happens when your MacBook Pro sustains water damage.They are pro machines and they don’t like water. It sounds like you’re just looking for someone to get mad at other than yourself.

Steve

Whether this was actually Steve or not doesn’t really matter considering it came from within Apple. You’d think that with Apple seemingly up on the blog and social networking communities, they’d expect for this to spread like wildfire. I’m sure they could have let the man down easy without making him feel like an idiot. A simple “not our policy” would do.

Apparently “Pro” machines dislike water, therefore we’d like to warn our aquatic readers to purchase regular Macs instead.

Apple doesn’t care about its customers

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Hackers attack epileptic forum and make sufferers convulse

By Mark O’Neill

epilepticbrain.jpgIn what is being described as the first attack over the internet to cause immediate direct physical harm, hackers have caused an unknown number of epileptic sufferers to suffer seizures by hacking into an epileptic support forum and leaving flashing animation screens.

The flashing screens, made with javascript code, would then adversely affect those suffering from pattern-sensitive epilepsy or photo-sensitive epilepsy (I also suffer from a strain of it). This means that if the eyes are exposed to rapidly flashing lights for a prolonged period of time, the brain reacts violently and sends the body into a seizure. The risk becomes even higher if the flashing lights are in a darkened room such as a nightclub or a cinema (you may have seen cinemas warning epileptics about strobe lighting in movies)

Circumstantial evidence has responsibility pointing to a group that seemingly has a beef with scientologists (Edit: After further investigation, we believe that the culprits were not who everybody though to be responsible at first… everybody points their finger at everybody else, and it’s not our position to determine who did it. Please note that WIRED, which usually is a reliable news source, reported the story first). But it’s one thing to have an argument with a religious cult. It’s quite another thing to target a group of people with a medical disability and provoke traumatic and terrible seizures in their head.

I am trying to be impartial about this but being a fellow epilepsy sufferer myself, I am shaking at the moment with deep anger. I am currently going round several other epilepsy support groups online that I am involved with to see if anything has been going on there as well.    Is this a co-ordinated attack or a one-off deal?    It’s essential to know.

Who in their right mind gets off on making people convulse uncontrollably? If they could just realize for a moment what a seizure actually involves and if they were to experience one themselves, they wouldn’t be so cavalier about inflicting that hurt on others.

LOST theory might be the real deal

Fellow LOST fanatics, we all have our own little theories as to what exactly is going on. Some of them are a simple “they’re all dead” and others are a little more complicated than that. I can almost certainly guarantee however, that they aren’t nearly as accurate as this one seems to be.

I’d start this post by summarizing the whole theory in a terse paragraph with witty annotations and humorous dialog but, it’s a complete analysis of every minute theory and is impossible to summarize completely. Basically, they all travel back in time by accident.

After sitting in front of this page for the last half hour, amazed at how well this thing is written and organized, I can definitely say that it’s worth a read.

Remember to sound off in the comments about your own theories!

The Time Line

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Is PC gaming on the way out? Long live consoles?

By Mark O’Neill

During the very brief and infrequent periods that I have played games, they have nearly always been on the PC. I played the Sims very briefly (before my character burnt the house down by setting the Christmas tree on fire) and I played a game where you created your own golf course. But that was years ago and these days everyone and their dog seems to have a games console. Which begs the question : is PC gaming dying?

The only thing that seems to be keeping PC gaming afloat these days is World of Warcraft. Apart from that, everyone is flocking in droves to the Nintendo Wii, the X-Box and the Playstation. When you walk into the store to buy a PC game, you’ve got to fight your way past the huge console game section to find the ever-shrinking PC games section in the corner.

So now it’s over to you. Do you think PC gaming is a dying pastime? Are consoles set to take over the hearts and minds of gamers? Or will World of Warcraft prove to be the one thing that keeps PC gaming from dying off completely?


Creative Commons License photo credit: Tom Lawrence