Online Home of Derek Meister
Today is the 6th annual System Administrator Appreciation Day, for those of you who’ve managed to melt your company network due to opening up virus-laden emails you shouldn’t have, or pestering the IT staff to recover a file you deleted a month ago despite being told to back-up by your boss.
So show the guy in charge of your network and servers a little love today.
Games Revolution has an article up by Duke Ferris in regards to the recent up-surge in news items and proposed legislation to fight the so-called epidemic of youth violence in America being caused by violent video games.
The core point of the article, however, is: “There is no epidemic of youth violence in America.”
Despite the increasing number of hyped news articles and opinion pieces over the “worth” of video games that contain violence, the statistics coming in from the federal government is that violence, and crime in general, is down among young people. In fact, it’s at it’s lowest point in twenty years, as many independent studies have shown.
Something to keep in mind the next time you see a breathless television journalist keeping their ratings high by interviewing yet another politician who talks long and hard about how they’re going to “protect the children” with proposed laws that never make it out of congressional sub-committees, all while the hard decisions are conveniently never made.
Users of the alternative web-browser Opera will be happy to hear that version 8.02 is available for download.
In what has become something of an Internet cliche, yet another anti-piracy measure by the software industry has been cracked within twenty-four hours. In this case, it’s the “Genuine Advantage” requirement Microsoft has implemented on their Windows Update website.
BoingBoing has the details.
VTech released a new Vonage-compatible cordless broadband enabled telephone yesterday.
The Vtech IP8100-2 is an expandable system that features two cordless handsets that communicate with a central base station that can be directly connected to your broadband network, providing full local and long-distance telephone service through Vonage’s VoIP network.
The system can be expanded with up to two additional handsets and currently lists at $149.95, with a $50 rebate from Vonage after sixty days of service.