Google Chrome OS

That’s right, Google has announced the release of their OS “Chrome” later this year to early 2010.

By John D. Sutter – CNN

(CNN) — Google is jumping into Microsoft Windows territory — and threatening to change the way personal computers work — with its own version of a computer operating system.

The company says the forthcoming Google Chrome OS will revolutionize how computers operate, putting more emphasis on Web functionality, making computers faster and opening them up to helpful tinkering by outside program developers.

“The operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no web,” Google said late Tuesday on its official blog. “It’s our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be.”

Chrome OS will be available to consumers in the second half of 2010, Google says.

But why should you care?

A trim and speedy Google operating system, which has been buzzed about online for some time, is interesting for several reasons — even if you think it could flop out of the gate. (…more)

I personally can’t wait. I predicted (Nov, 2007) Google would be doing this and made mention of my prediction in this blog as a sidebar to the free 411 call called 800GOOG411 ...here

I truly love the Google Chrome web browser that just blows Internet Explorer out of the water for speed, sleek, clean functionality. Bring it on Google, lets give Microsoft the wakeup call. It’s time for Microsoft to smell the roses, hell, I am all for Google shoving a rose so far up Microsoft’s butt that they can taste its fragrance.

More Power to Google and open source!

Get Involved – Become a social member of Dragon Tail

Go to http://dragontail.ning.com and become a member of “The Dragon Tail” social network then get your network badge and wear it proudly. (found at the bottom right hand column)

Destroy Information on the Internet

Find out everything that’s being said about you online and get rid of the content you don’t like.

Next we DESTROY… This is where we go to work for you. Our trained and expert online reputation specialists use an array of techniques developed in-house to correct and/or completely remove the selected unwanted content from the web. – ReputationDefender™

Does this sound alarming to you or maybe impossible?

Using our network of websites & forums we dominate your name or business!
PROTECT YOUR NAME FROM HARMFUL INTERNET POSTINGS!

We specialize in moving those negative listings aside and replace them with positive information about you or your company! Dont be held hostage by negative Internet listings. - DefendMyname[.com]

How is this possible? How does a company remove anything you have published, from the Internet?

Do you have a Myspace, Facebook or Hoverspot account? A recent survey of hiring managers at CareerBuilder.com found that about two-thirds of the them rejected an application after performing a web search on you.

As soon as I had heard that companies are claiming to be able to do something like “remove” or “destroy” information on the Internet, a red flag went up. Our country is based on certain inalienable rights, of which freedom of speech and freedom of press are just a couple. So how are these companies able to relieve you of those rights? The answer is, they legally can not.

The first company I quoted (ReputationDefender), doesn’t even have a phone number that you can contact them with, stating “…we are in Beta and we are keeping our costs low, which allows us to keep our prices low.“ Prices? Oh yes, there is always a price, and in this case its $10 for you to find out what information about you they can find and then its $30 for them to do something about the information they find about you, if they can do anything at all. Then they claim to destroy information published on the web. If that doesn’t scream SCAM!, nothing does. I personally challenge them to destroy this post about them without hacking into my account.

The second company is a little more careful with their wording, and to an observant reader, disclose how they accomplish “squelching” any information about you on the internet. The process is simple, but completely unethical. DefendMyName will utilize the technology in search engines such as Google, along with their numerous forums and websites to post repetitious “good” information about you to ensure only the “good” information ranks highest in web search results. This is organized abuse at its finest as well as an unethical business practice. The company will only negatively impact the Internet and make it harder for researchers and folks searching the web for information, to find what they are looking for and force a longer sifting process. This type of flooding the internet with repetitious information is in essence suppression of information, oppression, and propagandizing.

I am sure you were thinking it so I will overstate at this time, yes, there is a price for the service.

Dragons and Angels

A recent search engine phrase brought a reader here. The search phrase was from the Ursula Le Guin pro-fantasy manifesto: “Why Are Americans So Afraid of Dragons?”

Of course I had to look this up as well and found an article that was more appealing titled “Why Are Americans So Afraid of The Golden Compass?” which had more interest for me. (read article here)

The Golden Compass is movie adapted from a trilogy of novels by author Philip Pullman called “The Dark Materials.” Philip Pullman is a self-proclaimed atheist, [big deal] and his trilogy published by Random House is categorized as “juvenile fiction.” So why are so many people getting their proverbial panties in a bunch over this movie and the books?

This is the intent of Philip Pullman to further his money making machine. What’s wrong with making money? Nothing. Mr Pullman has sold over 15 million copies of his trilogy “The Golden Compass”, “The Subtle Knife”, and “The Amber Spyglass” world wide. Since it is common for books to become movies, the first book was released as a watered down version movie on Dec 7th, 2007. So far nothing is wrong with this activity.

Mr Pullman claims to be an atheist but his writings and interviews touting his atheism is severely contradicted by the fact that you can’t attack or kill something you believe doesn’t exist. Pullman represents God as a decrepit and perverse angel in his novels, who captures the dead in a “prison camp” afterlife. one character, a fallen angel, tells another character in the book “The Authority, God, the Creator, the Lord, Yahweh, El, Adonai, the King, the Father, the Almighty – those were all names he gave himself. He was never the creator. He was an angel like ourselves – the first angel, true, the most powerful…”

Pullman’s writings contradict himself as we all know the first angel, the most powerful, was cast out of heaven and was known by many names, the most common ones being Satan and Lucifer. In later interviews with Pullman he states that two characters in his last book [The Amber Spyglass] kill God. The contradictions are endless as the two characters in the last book kill the fallen angel, the most powerful angel, which was in actuality, not God.

Books of the trilogy have sold more than 15 million copies around the world, with Northern Lights [released in the US as "The Golden Compass"] winning the Carnegie Medal for Children’s Literature in 1995 and in 2007 being awarded the ‘Carnegie of Carnegies’ for the best children’s book of the past 70 years. The Amber Spyglass, the final book of the series, won The Whitbread Prize in 2001, making it the first children’s book to do so.

In conclusion, what do we have?  We have a guy who writes books, who claims to be one thing, then contradicts himself in writing and interviews, trying to make as much money as he can using the resources at hand such as capitalism, commercialism, controversy and press, and trying not to be a “has been” overshadowed by the works of J.K.Rowling in the mean time. All summed up, big deal.

Editorial comment:  As the author of this blog, it is my firm belief that parents have always been and always will be responsible for how their children are raised and their development into adulthood. Pullman is not breaking the law, and he isn’t forcing anyone to buy his writings. Many Christian and non-Christian groups are advocating not patronizing Pullman with a boycott of his materials which only blinds us to the nature and content of his material which reduces our understanding and knowledge of what is good or bad about the content.  How can an individual say something is good or bad unless they have taken the time to read or view it for them self and make an informed decision on their own about the information?

My belief is if you decide to read or view the material or allow your children to do so, then it is our obligation as good parents to be fully involved in the comprehension and understanding of the material and to use the material as a teaching tool for whatever your values and morals prescribe. If some people decide to blind them self and/or their children from the content, then that is perfectly fine as we all should be doing as we believe. One of the great things about America is having that right to choose as we wish.

Norton Removal and PC Tuneup

Happy New Year 2008! I hope everyone had a great holiday season this past Christmas and New Year.

Being that this is the first post of the new year after a lengthy vacation for me, I feel it is important to start off the year with a useful post to just about every PC user out there.

Anyone that has bought a new PC has probably seen a Symantec created Norton product pre-installed on their machine. You didn’t have a choice of having this product, just like you didn’t have a choice of which version of Windows operating system installed on your machine. You got the latest release and get no choice of previous versions instead.

Like myself, many people are annoyed, frustrated, and unhappy with Norton products for various reasons. Some folks will subscribe and others will be automatically subscribed to Norton products when they purchase a machine, and others like myself will not subscribe at all and immediately uninstall (or try) any Norton products.

It is not commonly understood or known that Norton products severely degrade a Windows operating systems performance, however it is visible to a great many people how slow their systems become after a short time. This is due to a number of reasons most especially because Microsoft Windows still does not handle system resources properly after all these years of being on the market, and also because of utilities (like Norton) that bog down your system resources while trying to perform its tasks in the background. Other reasons are not defragmenting your hard drives with a reputable defragmentation program or at the very least the Windows defrag program, as well as a cluttered system registry (which Windows lacks the ability to keep clean and in top condition on it’s own) and an improperly sized virtual memory or page file.

With a Norton product installed and an expired subscription, you will get annoying reminders to renew your subscription because you are at risk if you don’t. If you have performed an “add/remove” of a Norton product, you may think that all is said and done. However, certain portions of those programs continue to run in the background,use system resources and load at start up even after being uninstalled because a Norton product is never fully uninstalled until you get the Norton Removal Tool. The soul point of todays post is to provide you with the link to remove any Norton product from your machine so that you can once again enjoy better performance from your machine. To do so, *clicky* this link: Symantec Home & Home Office Support to choose the Norton product you want to remove and download the tool.

After you have freed your system from the bonds of sluggish performance of a Norton product, you may be wondering what you can use for protection. I like Trend Micro for their Internet Security and PC protection. If you would like to use their free computer scanning system over the internet, visit Trend Micro Home and Home Office HouseCall. They also have a page with four of their best free programs for security of your computer and internet use called Trend Secure (here). This page also includes the HouseCall scanner.

My recommendations:

1. Never use or have active, more than one virus protection program at a time. You can have more than one program installed, just don’t activate or use them at the same time.
2. Never have more than one spyware/malware/greyware program running at the same time.
3. Since no one program for virus protection and spyware/malware protection is ever going to be 100% accurate or the “endall” of protection, I recommend having and using different kinds independently of each other, periodically.
4. Keep your system registry and your system as a whole tuned up frequently with some utility such as PCPitsop’s PC Optimize or similar program.

PC Pitstop is another what I call “can’t live without” pc resource for maintaining an absolutely top notch computer. You can perform a free scan of your system (even anonymously if you wish), read extremely valuable information about spyware and malware and you can download programs to install and maintain your own system. PC Pitstop “scores” you against their database of visitors and their machines so that you know how you rank compared to your friends machines.

If you have any questions at all or would like to relate your experience at PC Pitstop, or discuss any other items in this post, please leave a comment here. The only truly stupid questions are the ones never asked so please ask. I guarantee at least one other personal will learn something from the information, but was afraid to ask.

Club Tease in Second Life

by Rocket Flasheart – DragonTail Press

This post has moved to the DragonTail Press in SL at http://dtpsl.wordpress.com/2008/01/10/club-tease-in-second-life