Sys-con has released their top 150 i-technology heroes who, according to their editors, columnists, commentators and readers, are responsible for the conception, building, maintenance and advancement of the internet, as well as modern computing as we know it. There are some real geniuses on this list, and while it’s too exhaustive for me to republish it here, I will name a few of the more popular ones. However, chances are only Brian and I will enjoy this post.

Here are some of the more recognizable mentions:

Tim Berners-Lee - Father of the World Wide Web
Sergey Brin - Co-founder of Google
Bill Gates - Chief Software Architect of Microsoft
Steve Jobs - CEO of Apple
Bob Metcalfe - Inventor of the Ethernet
Tim O’Reilly - Publisher, open source advocate
Dennis Ritchie - Creator of C and co-inventor of Unix
Dave Sifry - CEO of Technorati
Richard Stallman - Founder of GNU Project
Bjarne Stroustrup - Designer and original implementor of C++
Ken Thompson - Co-inventor of Unix
Linus Torvalds - Creator of Linux Kernel
Guido Van Rossum - Author of Python
Larry Wall - Author of Perl
Steve Wozniak - Co-founder of Apple
Jerry Yang - Co-founder of Yahoo!

Stumbled across this hilarious photo this morning which is horribly stereotypical, but I couldn’t resist posting it because it really is so true:

To continue with this parody a bit more before ending this post, I’m going to quote a Digg user who wrote a would-be script for one of those Mac vs PC commercials that Apple puts out. However, in this case the PC guy has just switched from Windows Vista to Ubuntu, a popular Linux distribution.

Although the PC guy does talk about putting ‘Vista’ on his hardware. So they could do a add where he puts Ubuntu on. But I don’t think apple would want a script like this

“Hi I’m a Mac”
“and I am a PC!!!!”

“Wha.. Why are you so happy PC?”

“Noooo more Vista, gone! Out of here!!”

“Sooo umm, are you back to XP?”

“Nope, Ubuntu!”

“Err Ban Too?”

“Ubuntu. No surgery, no pain. Just a few questions about my name such and it was all working”

“That’s great, soooo what about your work, your photo’s, your music?”

“All taken care of! And none of that “Accept or Deny” gumbo either, security without the feeling of your teeth being pulled out”

“Ubuntu?”

“Ubuntu.”

*apple logo fades in*

PC guy “You know, this smug feeling, it feels pretty good..”

To some of you this might not make any sense and you may be sitting there with a blank look on your face, but to fellow computer geeks this is hilarious.

Microsoft is officially launching Vista today, the latest and “greatest” in its line of Windows operating systems. I say greatest in quotes because I for one have not been too overwhelmed by Microsoft’s latest OS. Microsoft claims that Vista is their most stable system yet, and that its new Aero interface improves usability. I caught Bill Gates on the Today Show yesterday with Meredith Viera, and she asked him why she should buy it. Gates proceeded to go into a rambling about Vista this and Vista that, but in the end didn’t really say anything convincing enough. Fortunately I have been able to try it for free, the full retail version, through Microsoft TechNet.

I installed it on this current laptop I’m writing on now (which has since been converted back to XP). While initially I was delighted by the “eye candy” aspect of Vista, I soon realized I was losing productivity. My laptop had constant issues with it, frequent rebooting itself, not detecting peripherals properly, etc. Granted, my laptop manufacturer will certainly be making a firmware update for Vista, but at a little more than a year old, it shouldn’t have to. Microsoft should accommodate to my needs if they want me to install Vista. I already had to double my RAM just to run the thing, I’m not willing to make any other concessions at this time when my XP works just fine and if I’m going to spend any money I’ll be looking into OS X before Vista.

Part one of my computer work at home is nearly complete. Last week I made the decision to remove Windows Vista from my laptop. I have the full retail version from Microsoft’s Technet, not a beta, but it just simply is not working out. But before I can get rid if it , I have gigabytes of data to backup. Thus my laptop’s weekend was constricted to backing up data (yes I just referenced my laptop in the 3rd person). However, playing around with my laptop got up my interest in playing around with my home desktop computer.

Currently my home PC is a Pentium III 800mhz, with 256 MB of RAM. I know, I know, horrible by today’s standards. However, this was a hand-me-down system from a friend and when I got it the system didn’t even turn on. I had to pop in some memory, a hard drive, and a PCI wireless ethernet device.. For simplicity I installed Windows XP at the time.

Now, working on my laptop got me interested in an old hobby: Linux. Again I originally installed Windows XP for simplicity, because I highly doubted that any flavor of Linux would support my PCI ethernet card out of the box.

I chose Fedora Core 6, a long-time favorite of mine. Many people swear over their children by Ubuntu but personally I’ve always had the best experiences with Fedora. The installation went pretty seamless. There was only one hiccup, where the installer said that the xcdroast package was missing or corrupt but after a few keystrokes of hitting the “retry” button it started working again; a slight issue reading the installation cd most likely. The total process took about an hour and a half I’d guesstimate, which is long for a Linux install, but also remember my horrible PC specs (I also chose to install a bunch of extras, such as French and Polish language support).

When the system was finished doing its thing I booted into Linux and was very delighted with the UI and simplicity of Fedora. It certainly has come a very long way from when I used to use RedHat 7.1. Unfortunately I was right and my PCI ethernet device did not work out of the box, so currently I have no internet access under Linux. After some brief research last night it appears as though I will be able to get it to work as long as I have pciutlis and ndiswrapper installed, at which point I should be able to load the windows driver and get it to work.

Once this is setup my computer work will be halfway complete, although I must say this is definitely the more difficult part, as the laptop work consists of inserting a restoration cd and copying and pasting data. I will keep you updated with my progress on getting the wireless to work, and I highly recommend it to anyone looking to venture into Linux.

For many people remote access to a computer is crucial. Traditionally software such as pcAnywhere or utilities like Remote Desktop have been used accomplish such a task. But how would you like to be to able to access your computer anytime, anywhere? No longer will there be a need to purchase your own domain name and configure dynamic DNS, Windows Vista will ship with Windows Internet Computer Name, a unique domain name for your computer.

The Windows Internet Computer Name is the result of advances to the Peer Name Resolution Protocol (PNRP) which came stock with Windows XP. Traditionally, domain name servers have been

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In a stunning change of position today Microsoft announced that it would allow open-source Linux software to work with Windows. What’s more, Microsoft even claimed that it will provide the support and technology necessary to achieve this end. This marks the company’s second open-source partnership this week, which signals an effort by Microsoft to inform an ever-growing Linux user base that the two platforms can co-exist, particularly in the server market where Linux is most competitive against the Redmond giant. For those who are unfamilair with Linux, it is open-source software, which means

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I’ve been wanting to write an entry for this since I first received word over the weekend, but unfortunately free time isn’t always on my side; rather, it rarely is. There is a “secret” Windows XP theme circulating the Internet of late. Apparently during the development of the XP Media Center theme (Royale), Microsoft also produced a black version of the skin. It is purported that since the skin was never officially released there are some bugs in it, however I’ve had it activated for a few days now and have yet to experience any issues. For those questioning the validity of the skin,

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