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Forbe’s ran an article comparing Apple Computer’s Keynote against Microsoft’s PowerPoint..

The article, while not very indepth, does praise Apple and its Keynote application. It says it performs on par with PowerPoint but with significantly better overall design/layout (well duh.. none of the MS apps have a good design/layout tools)

KDE 3.1, the popular desktop for *nix systems, was released early this morning. New features include integration of some of the Apple enhancements to KHTML (full integration between the two browsers will occur in KDE 3.2), tabbed browsing, download manager, VNC desktop sharing, new theme & icon set and much much more.

Release Announcement Here

Feature Guide
Screenshot Library
Looks very very nice.. GREAT JOB KDE TEAM!

Apple released some new Power Macs …

up to 2×1.42Ghz .. FireWire 800 .. 802.11g .. 2GB DDR333 SDRAM .. GeForce4 Titanium .. etc..etc..etc..

Can’t wait til the Macs get a new processor .. would be cool to see a Power4 system w/2Ghz+ chips (or perhaps running on an AMD Opteron 64bit chip)

Since about midnight EST almost every host on the internet has been receiving a 376 byte UDP payload on port ms-sql-m (1434) from a random infected server. Reports of some hosts receiving 10 per minute or more. internetpulse.net is reporting UUNet and Internap are being hit very hard. This is the cause of major connectivity problems being experienced worldwide. It is believed this worm leverages a vulnerability published in June 2002. Several core routers have taken to blocking port 1434 outright. If you run Microsoft SQL Server, make sure the public internet can’t access it. If you manage a gateway, consider dropping UDP packets sent to port 1434.

Here is an interesting graph of global packet loss

Here is an interesting graph showing increase in traffic at a particular switch

Lots of news coverage on this one..

I just stumbled on KNOPPIX Linux yesterday .. I think one word describes it: INCREDIBLE.

What is KNOPPIX Linux? Well for starters, it an entire linux distribution on a CD. Pop the CD into your computer, boot off the CD and a Linux Desktop pops up on your screen.

While that in itself is pretty nice (don’t have to install it to your harddrive) It goes further.

First, it automatically detects the hardware on your computer (on my system it detected my monitor, vidoe card, soundcard, keyboard, mouse, network card, processor, printer, etc without any problems..) and essentially optimizes the system for your computer. Next, inside of KNOPPIX, it already has virtually everything you need to do your daily tasks.

Applications include Star Office (word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, etc..), KOffice, a variety of photo, movie and audio players (including the very popular XINE and XMMS), Mozilla & Konquerer web browsers, email clients, instant messenging clients, audio editing applications, lots of desktop games, GIMP photo editing, DVD playback, etc…

KNOPPIX uses a special compression on the CD to allow the CD to store up to 2GB worth of data. The default install has 1.6GB worth of data and for people requiring a bootable Linux distro, this can be customized.

A few apparent drawbacks (have not read any documentation on this distro yet so I might be mistaken) –> for data / preferences set in KNOPPIX, it allows you to save them, but unfortuantely only to a floppy disk (YIKES!) –> I’d to see some options (ie save preferences to the local harddrive, a CD-RW, network share, etc..)

The default menus are a bit overwhelming .. they packed a TON of stuff on the CD… perhaps additional subcatagories would be useful (Ie they have an INTERNET programs menu with all the internet related apps in it .. perhaps they could subdivide into Instant Messenging, Web Browsing, FTP, IRC, etc..)

Some configuration options available in other desktop distros are not present in KNOPPIX (ie screen resolution) .. it would be nice to see a centralized control panel similar to Lycoris Linux.

To try out KNOPPIX, simply download the CD Image (click on Order/Download from their homepage..) and burn it to a CD.. restart your computer and hit enter at the boot: prompt. Its that simple. No additional installation required.

Bottom Line: KNOPPIX is a great wayt to start trying Linux.. there are other distributions that are more desktop friendly (Lycoris comes to mind..) but those distros require a full install to the harddrive (which for dual boot systems requires partitions, etc.. kinda messy) — KNOPPIX comes with a wide variety of software that is sure to have something for everyone.

A few possible uses for KNOPPIX…
- a demo/tryout of Linux
- a bootdisk for a network/system administrator
- linux education (use it in the classroom, work on it at the house..)
- software product demos (create a customized KNOPPIX CD and distrubte)

For any of you wanting to test out Linux (or would like to use Linux when on the road and using another persons system) KNOPPIX is an excellent choice.

System Requirements:
Intel-compatible CPU (486 or later)
20MB RAM for text mode, 96MB for graphics mode (128MB+ recommended)
Bootable CD-ROM or a boot floppy
Standard SVGA-compatible graphics card
Serial/PS2/USB mouse