So, anyway, take a read:

TV socializing is something of an oxymoron to begin with. When we sit down to watch the tube together, we’re mostly together in the strictest technical sense—couch proximity. We might share popcorn, or laugh in unison, or murmur something about how so-and-so got fat—but it ain’t exactly a meeting of the minds. Our eyes—and brains—are focused on the screen. So is adding a tablet to reach thousands estranging us from the actual people we’re with?

Click here to read the rest of this article from gizmodo.com

via Is that Bill Gates staring back at you from Outlook 2010?.

This could become a competitor to Apple’s iPad, considering that a lot of businesses already have BlackBerries in place and existing BES servers in place.  This might be a natural evolutionary product.

More details can be found at BlackBerry’s site, but the basics of the hardware include dual HD cameras (front and back), a 1GHz processor and a new tablet-based OS developed by QNX software.

In a lot of ways, our job in IT and Information Security is implementing change.  But as we all know, every change involves risk, and changes gone bad can be your worst nightmare.  I’ve seen the number of business system service interruptions due to changes in infrastructure pegged… [more]

via Change is Good. Change is Bad. Change is Life..

I was in Pittsburgh, Pa. for the launch event.  I have a whole bunch of pics on flickr that were taken that day.  Here are a couple of my favorites:

This one is a collection of all the Windows 4.0/95 paraphernalia that I collected over the months prior to release, as well as preview program discs and SWAG picked up from Pittsburgh.  Also included: the USA Today articles from the week of the launch.

It’s cookies! The Windows logo filled with red, blue, green, and yellow sugar cookies.  Kind of gives a new meaning to “Windows cookies.”

The product launch was pretty amazing.  Here is a YouTube video that sums up all that went on at the Microsoft campus before and during the launch:

http://www.youtube.com/v/y0CRWAz09r8?fs=1&hl=en_US&hl=en

Even though I enjoyed the ads, it still escapes me why Microsoft would ever use a song that contains the lyrics “You make a grown man cry” in the commercial to sell their Operating System…

Security 505: Securing Windows on YouTube

Jason Fossen was an excellent instructor.  He knows his stuff.  I also attended some of the SANS@Night talks, my favorite of which was Ed Skoudis’ “So, You Wanna Be a Cyber Warrior, Huh?” (You can follow Ed on Twitter @edskoudis)

It was a great course.  I had a great time and I look forward to attending more SANS classes in the future.  I should be posting some pics soon.

For more info on SANS, visit http://www.sans.org

If you are unaware of what’s going on, here’s a quick recap:

Apple has decided to attempt to enforce patents that have allegedly been infringed upon by competitor HTC.  A little more in depth background available here:

Apple sues HTC over iPhone patents (cnet)

Unfortunately, what’s really going on here is that Apple is just trying to obliterate the competition by suing them out of the smartphone business.  Apple has always been an innovative company.  More accurately, Apple has been a company that knows how to perfect a maturing technology.  They take a few disparate technologies (cell phone, MP3 player, GPS, e-mail, mobile web browser, etc.), throw them in one sleek box (iPhone), seal it tightly so that no one can jeopardize their OOBE, and charge a huge amount of money for the whole experience.  But the upshot of all this is that Apple moves the consumer market forward,  They make everyone else play catch-up.

And others are starting to catch up.  Windows Mobile should have had this market wrapped up several years ago.  They’ve been pushing smartphones for years but have always been just short of mass appeal.  In fact, my last two phones were both Windows Mobile based phones, one of which was the HTC S620.  Again, as a perfect example, the “HTC S620″ did a lot of things quite well, but “HTC S620″ just doesn’t sound nearly as sexy as the “iPhone.”  No fun = no sales.

Anyway, one article (and there are several) that shares my opinion of the lawsuits is available here:

Why Apple’s Really Suing HTC (PC World)

One nice way to try and get a grasp of how Steve Jobs’ mind works is to listen to what he has said over the years.  After listening to this quote from an old YouTube video, it sounds as if Steve has had expertise in this area before, but maybe on the other side of the fence:

If everything takes place in the browser… think of what’s possible…  go ahead.  I’ll wait.

But then, think of what’s not possible.  I’ll wait for that too, If you like.  I can see Chrome OS filling a little bit of a void, but it’s not going to get rid of your desktop PC anytime soon.  With no local storage, and no local apps, specialty applications like video and audio editing won’t be going anywhere else, anytime soon.

What I do like about Chrome OS is that it could possibly give users the look and feel of a Linux-based system.  And I think that’s good for everyone.  Except Microsoft.

You know they had to cringe when they heard the line “Well, maybe we don’t need this anymore.”

I have been toying with it for a couple of months and have to say it is an improvement over Vista, but I also have to agree with most of the media in saying that I don’t think I would recommend that the average user run out and buy the upgrade version of Windows 7 to install on their existing home PC’s.  I would wait and get it with a new PC.  Most of the time an OS upgrade is more of a hassle than it is helpful.  The only way I would recommend getting a Windows 7 upgrade now is if you were planning on reloading your computer completely in a fresh start kind of way.

Upgrades tend to take forever, and rarely do they improve the performance of the PC.  So unless you plan on formatting the hard drive and starting over, I’d wait just a bit.

I wish Microsoft would be a little less secretive about the upcoming Zune HD.  I’d like to know if it’s going to have enough storage to effectively replace my Zune 80.  I’d also like to know if I need to prepare to take out a second mortgage to be able to afford the device.