RIAA Ramps Up

RIAA is at it again and in full force just says after settling with Kazaa for $115 million dollars the record industry is at it again. And as you can probably guess they are after Limewire (seems about right... Kazaa was a P2P most of us used for a while then with the adware everyone switched to Limewire)

BetaNews | RIAA Sues LimeWire Over Piracy

And I do understand it. It is not fair to rip off music or movies but my twist on this is why can't we find a site/portal that we can pay for lossless/unDRM music? The only site I have found in my searching is allofmp3 and even they have been in litigation. I would be happy to pay $0.50-$1.00 for high quality songs I buy. Maybe someone out there can point me in the direction of some "legit" sites/portals that are running such a service and aren't being chased by the courts. People have pointed out sites as emusic but if your in search of very modern songs, for example things you just heard in your car, they don't seem to be the place to go.

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Google Radio?

No its XM Radio with Google Ads. Google has decided to venture into another avenue of marketing. At this rate we will have Google underwear, cereal, cellular, and cars before we know it... hehehe maybe that's a little much. Read the article below about the deal signed yesterday.

Google ads will stream out to XM listeners | CNET News.com

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Picasa Web Albums for Mac

I know I'm a little late but Google released yesterday a Google Picasa Web Albums "Test" (Beta) for Mac users.

The software comes with a uploader and iPhoto add-on.

But there are still users that want to see a Picasa version for Mac be a reality and after the recent release of their Linux version maybe they will.

Google Picasa Now for Mac, Almost

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What’s AOL Doing?

AOL announced yesterday that it would offer AOL for free.

Techdirt: About Time: AOL Goes Free

They realized that they are not going to stay around and keep customers charging them per month but will push more on their ADs. They are doing this as a strategic effort to offer free webmail to customers to hopefully retain the people they haven't already driven to their competitors (gmail, yahoo, hotmail, and lycos [who announced yesterday it would give customers 3GB storage space and no cap on attachment size]).

TechCrunch: New Lycos email tops Gmail in storage, attachment size

Today they are announcing that they will be offering 5GB of free online storage for all web users. This service will be using XDrive and will be available for customers around September. The link below will give you a run down on the service features and the lack of limits as it seems.

AOL to provide 5GB of online storage for free - Download Squad

So does this mean AOL is back in the game? Has Time Warner realized a better way to utilize AOL? Only time will tell.

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Setting up Phone As Modem on Samsung SPH-A900 in Ubuntu

Well I started playing with my new Samsung A900 yesterday in Ubuntu. I was able to pair the phone pretty easily so the next step was to configure it as a modem over bluetooth.

EVDO woes

Well decided to test the EVDO on my work laptop (Dell D610) running Windows XP (since I figured if any issues arose they would not help me much using Linux and I would have to use a USB Bluetooth dongle on my G4 desktop so I figured I would do my best to eliminate any issues prior to later testing ;-).

New Samsung A900 Arrives

Well the new Samsung A900 arrived. Very sweet looking. Spent a huge amount of time on the phone with Sprint trying to setup the phone and port the old number over. Not very much fun but is it ever? ;-) Next step after activated in a few hours is to test out the EVDO.

Switching wireless providers

Well after a little bit of thought and a long conversation today with my buddy (let's see if he makes an appearance here) I decided to finally do away with my Nextel (which I have only kept for this long and dealt with the high pricing, is for the PTT/Direct Connect). So I ordered up a new Sprint Samsung A900 phone with Phone As Modem service. Now we just wait til it arrives!!! :D

Dapper Drake Beta 2 (Ubuntu is the dist of choice)?

I have to start by saying I have always loved Debian and Debian based systems. Anyway back to the point. I went from starting with early version of RedHat (Manhattan) to Debian and then to a bunch of Debian based systems in the interim. Then finally started using Suse 9.2, 9.3, and up until recently 10.0 (still use on some of my machines).

Suse 10 Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird 1.5.0.2 updates

I have uploaded the latest versions of MozillaFirefox and MozillaThunderbird here: http://shadowsector.org/files/browse/suse/10.0/ If you have problems with Beagle.xpi please read previous update post here.

OpenSuSE 10.1 RC1 Arrives

After many beta and alpha releases there is finally a release candidate available of openSuSE 10.1. It is still not production ready and has known bugs (some with documented work arounds) but still something SuSE users are excited about and have been waiting for.

Google finally unveils Calendar

After months of speculation and leaked screenshots, Google finally took the covers off of their new calendaring app. Promising gmail integration, and the ability to work with the iCal format, this could be the answer to alot of people's prayers. Be aware that the Google servers are getting beat to snot today. Right now may not be the best time to go check it out.

Universal Firefox Update Released

Mozilla released a security update to 1.5 (1.5.0.2). This version does have some security and bugfixes but the biggest reason for this update is it now has "Universal" support for the new Intel Mac's. Mac Lover's rejoice ;-)

Hello world!

Welcome shadowsector.org. The Official shadowsector.org site can be found here.

Microsoft changing their filenames!?!

It appears that when Office 2007 is released all file formats as we know them will change. .doc, .xls, .ppt, etc will all be changed from 3 to 4 letter extensions. You can find the list of Office 2007 file formats on Aviran's Place. Biggest reprocussions I see of this change are: 1. Other 3rd party Office Applications will have to conform to Microsoft's new standard (since they are the leader in the Office market). 2. Anyone using older versions of Microsoft Office or the standalone products will be forced by Microsoft to upgrade since the formats will not be backwards compatible.

Is Windows Virtualization the way to go?

Now after the release of "Boot Camp" there is more more great news for those Windows users: Parallels has just shipped a beta of their Windows virtualization product today. As the rumor mill has it VMware is making the same venture under OS X as well. So no need for "Boot Camp" and dual boot when you can have "speedy" virtualization at your finger tips. Edit:
Here is a Related Article found:
Run Mac OS X and Windows simultaneously

Apple Releases “Boot Camp”

Apple has just released Boot Camp which will be final in OS X 10.5 Leopard. Boot Camp Boot Camp Beta: Requirements, installation, and frequently asked questions (FAQ)

Shakira’s Hot ;-)

I haven't posted a screenshot in forever..... and figured with the new background it was about that time ;-)

Upgrading Suse 10 to 1.5x Firefox and Thunderbird

Download these packages MozillaFirefox, MozillaThunderbird and install.

Update:

There is a problem with upgrading MozillaFirefox to version 1.5 because you will contantly receive messages when starting firefox about installing beagle.xpi.

Gaim2 + Guifications Beta3 packages

I have created and uploaded these packages here: SuSE 10.0 packages