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How much time have you wasted today? “Not enough”, you say? How about 150 Flash Games for Your Enjoyment to help you meet your quota?

Even ham radio operators need to take a break from doing serious stuff in order to have some fun once in a while. Maybe if we did it more often there would be fewer Cranky Old Farts on the air.

The games are sorted into the following categories:

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DownloadSquad has fanned the flames in the “Please don’t kill XP because Vista sucks” controversy.

Windows XP, also known as the operating system that will not die, looks like it could be around a bit longer, making it just a bit more likely that you can upgrade directly from Windows XP to Windows 7 in a year or two and skip Windows Vista altogether.

Microsoft instructed retailers to stop selling copies of the operating system to consumers this summer. But there’s a loophole that lets customers purchasing new computers running certain versions of Windows Vista request a free downgrade to Windows XP. That option was set to expire on January 31st, 2009. Now Microsoft has extended that date through July 31st, 2009.

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This article by Tanya Eiserer for The Dallas Morning News probably has a moral, if anyone wanted to make the effort find it. Yeah, it could happen.

Dallas technology officials told City Council members that it will take over a year and more than $14 million to resolve problems related to the installation of Dallas’ new emergency dispatch system.

A briefing before the city’s public safety committee Monday detailed a litany of problems plaguing the system: firefighters sent to wrong addresses, crews directed to incidents when others were closer, and emergency workers inadvertently told to disregard emergency calls when help actually was needed.

Police officers also have released wanted suspects they were questioning because information on their outstanding warrants arrived too late.

The problems started immediately after the nearly $6 million system went online in August. (Read more)

This article by Patrick Thibodeau and Todd R. Weiss in Computerworld, subtitled From IT to edge funds and back again, is quite interesting.

The collapse of Wall Street may help make computer science and IT careers attractive to students who abandoned these fields in droves after the POP of the last big bubble, the dot-com bust of 2001.

William Dally, chairman of the computer science department at Stanford University, said that for the last several years, he has watched some students interested in technology go into banking and finance because those fields could be more lucrative.

"Many thought they could make more money in hedge funds," Dally said. He said students are returning to computer science because they like the field and not because it can necessarily make them rich.

John Gallaugher, associate professor of information systems in the Carroll School of Management at Boston College, said he’s already seeing a shift in student interest. (Read more)

SOURCE: Computerworld

Holy Wah! This thing must whine like a kid that just dropped his ice cream cone. The rumor has been around for a while, but it still is worth noting.

Several industry sources have said that Western Digital is working on a 20,000 RPM Raptor hard drive.

According to several sources close to the hard drive industry, Western Digital is working on a 20,000 RPM Raptor hard drive to combat the increasing pressure from SSD manufacturers.
We have spoken to a lot of people out here in Taipei about this industry’s direction and one thing is becoming clear: SSDs are going to be affordable in the next 12 to 18 months.
Because of this, hard drive manufacturers are starting to get a little worried about what marketshare SSDs might eventually take away from them—especially where performance is more of a concern than storage capacity. And that’s exactly what Western Digital’s Raptor line is all about.

The new drive will be very similar to the recently-released VelociRaptor, in that it’ll be a 2.5in drive with a custom 3.5in housing built around it. Details are incredibly light at this stage, given that the product is still in development, and we don’t even have a release timeframe at the moment. (Read more)

SOURCE: Bit-Tech.net

You may need to buy a new laptop computer bag, according to the TSA. This is the latest travel inconvenience that is supposed to make us all safer. Of course, the bag manufacturers are happy to cooperate, as you will read.

To help streamline the security process and better protect laptops TSA has recently encouraged manufacturers to design bags that will produce a clear and unobstructed image of the laptop when undergoing X-ray screening. A design that meets this objective will enable TSA to allow laptops to remain in bags for screening. (Read more)

I heard Leo Laporte talking about this the other day and could hardly believe it. Emphasis on hardly. Does anyone else remember the time when the difference between the United States and communist countries — which we despised — was that we didn’t do this stuff to our citizens?

Planning a vacation? Thinking about traveling outside the country?

If you travel outside the United States, you can kiss your right to privacy, and perhaps your laptop, digital camera and cell phone, goodbye.

With no suspicion and no explanation, the U.S. government can seize your laptop, cell phone, or PDA as you enter the United States and download all your private information — including your personal and business documents, emails, phone calls, and web history. The Department of Homeland Security confirms that this is the official policy.

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ConsumerReports.org has some very good suggestions for safer computing.

These common mistakes can ruin your computer or invite identity theft

1. Assuming your security software is protecting you. Security software is fully effective only when activated and frequently updated. (Most products can update automatically.) To update most commercial software products, you must pay an annual fee. Last fall, the National Cyber Security Alliance and the software maker McAfee found that nearly half the users polled who thought their software was protecting them hadn’t updated it regularly. Software bundled with a new computer requires special attention because its subscription may expire within weeks. (Read more)

SOURCE: ConsumerReports.org

This report on computer threats and vulnerabilities contains some interesting information that you should be aware of.

The XForce won’t save you from a burning building but, they just might make your surfing safer. The XForce is IBM’s team of Internet Security Systems researchers and they’ve just released the midyear report for 2008, listing all kinds of facts and figures on internet security. If you’re really into data, go read the report for yourself. It might also be good for insomnia. I’ll give you the quick highlights here.
The first part of the report is about computer threats and vulnerabilities. Top five companies with vulnerability disclosures (when they publish information about a security problem) in 2008 so far?

• Apple
• Joomla!
• Microsoft
• IBM
• Sun

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SOURCE: downloadsquad.com

If your MP3 and downloaded video collection has outgrown its storage media, you will be thrilled to note that Seagate has won the manufacturer’s race by being the first to announce a 1.5 terabyte hard drive. The huge Seagate 1.5TB Barracuda 7200.11 will use four platters and should be in stores in August.

This makes me feel old. The first hard drive I ever saw had a capacity of only twenty megabytes. At the time, we were thrilled by its size and judged it by the number of 5 1/4 inch floppy disks it could digest. When I first got an Internet connection you would get flamed for having an e-mail signature longer than six lines because it “wasted bandwidth”. Now, everyone transfers full motion video files without giving it any thought. How times change.