In an amazingly stupid move, Office Depot has decided to only sell Designed for Windows XP certified hardware and software.

"Please be aware that Office Depot is immediately requiring all products that connect to a Personal Computer ... must pass these Designed for Windows XP logo requirements to be considered for retail distribution through our stores.... Products must be certified as Designed for Windows XP by May 30, 2003."

This is undoubtedly due to pressure by Microsoft to extend their monopoly even further, this time to retail shelf space!? If a retail chain as large as Office Depot bows to their pressure, you can guarantee that they'll only increase the pressure on other distributers to drop non-MS certified products. Hopefully, other retailers will have more backbone and common sense than Office Deopt, who has just landed themselves on my boycott list.

Read below for more information, including the press release:

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=8472

As you can see, I've added many new and updated topic icons to my page. The graphics, of course, come from slashdot.org, and I'd like to thank them for being generous enough to allow others use of their icons. Hope you enjoy the new look!

According a new security survey released by the Computing Technology Industry Association, human error, rather than technology, is the most significant cause of security breaches.

Of course, anyone that's worked in the security field can certainly tell you this. Social Engineering, anyone?

More info can be found at the PCWorld article below:

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,109872,00.asp

I just read an intersting article on osOpinion about the Microsoft's file format lock-in tactics. Basically, it discusses Microsoft's current dominiation of the Office Suite environment, how it is largely due to their proprietary file formats that prevent people from switching to other suites (hence the term "lock-in"), and where this is headed in the next versions of Office and even Windows. Hint: It's not good.

The bottom line is that now is the time to begin looking at and switching to alternatives. I recommend OpenOffice to get started. You can and should read the full story below.

http://www.osopinion.com/perl/story/20982.html#story-start

This is a late announcement here, but phpMap 0.1 was released a couple weeks ago. Why am I announcing it here? Becuase it's my project! What does it do? It's an online, php-based map program. Right now it's still in very basic form (it only allows image zooming and navigation), but in the future it will also include location recognition, database tie-ins to retreive additional information, location pinpointing, a menu-based navigation system, etc.

For more information, see the phpMap web page. To see it in action, check out the Ole Miss Campus Map. Remember, though, that most of the features in the Campus Map are not currently present in phpMap.

I've finally completed my latest HOWTO, Installing Gentoo Linux. As the name implies, it's basically a walkthrough for getting Gentoo installed and configured, and should be especially useful for first-timers. Be sure to check it out in the Open Source section.

I finally got around to putting up an Open Source Software / Free Software page on my site.  It's intended to be a general resource for newbies and experienced users alike.  It's still under planning and construction, but so far I have four main areas:

• What is it? - written to provide decent introduction to the whole concept of OSS and FS for those not already familiar with it
• The Case for OSS - points out all of the benefits for using OSS/FS in the home and at work, including why it's a "Good Thing"  (still under construction)
• List of Applications - contains a list of and links to the applications that I personally consider to be among the best OSS/FS available
• Tips and Tricks - contains HOWTO-like documents on various topics that I've written to make things easier/better

This section of the website will pretty much be under permanent construction, with the apps list and howto section updated as often as I discover a new app or write a new document.  Of course, I'm always open to suggestions, so PLEASE e-mail me about anything you think could improve the site, including corrections, new apps, new HOWTO suggestions, etc.  Also, please feel free to drop me a line just to let me know what you think about it.

Intel reduced the prices on all its desktop Pentium 4 processors by as much as 21 percent Sunday. Meanwhile, AMD cut prices on select Athlon XP desktop chips by as much as 32 percent Monday.

Link to article on Zdnet

--looks like ill be getting a new athlon after all... now if only the motherboard prices would go down ;)

All of you should be familiar with my DailyStrips module. I chose the group of comics shown there each day simply because they're the ones I've always liked growing up. If you'd like to see your own favorite comics on there, just let me know. Choose from this list.

As a side note, I do intend on developing this module further so that each user can customize it to their liking, but that's going to take some time. PostNuke modules are especially rough (for me, anyway), and I haven't even figured out how to allow myself to set the comic selection list through the web yet. :-)

Thomas Bayes, one of the leading mathematical lights in computing today, differs from most of his colleagues: He has argued that the existence of God can be derived from equations. His most important paper was published by someone else. And he's been dead for 241 years.

Wow, tells you that sometimes old ideas are good ideas still.

Here is the news article from C|Net