Friday, February 18, 2011

Watch Out For Those Solar Flairs

Note: Look for a special edition of Rants and Raves this weekend…devoted entirely to how Apple is trying to throttle it’s competition by demanding money from competitors and even forcing retailers like Amazon to give Apple a 30% commission on books sold for use on the Apple iPad, even though the customer bought the books direct from Amazon. Looks like the government anti-trust folks are getting involved in this one.

Solar Flares Could Affect GPS, Satellites, Power

If your GPS Relevant Products/Services system's performance is a little spotty on Friday, don't call tech Relevant Products/Services support. Blame the sun. Three waves of charged particles that erupted from its corona Sunday, Monday and Tuesday will hit the Earth in the next few days in what scientists are calling the biggest solar event since December 2006.

How IBM's Watson hammered its 'Jeopardy' foes

In the big Jeopardy showdown, the IBM computer Watson, hammered two human Jeopardy champions. Here's how IBM's brainiac works its artificially intelligent magic

Piracy: Everybody Does It; Everything Should Be Free

Pirates are in it for the free stuff, and there are plenty of them: That’s the gist of a new PricewaterhouseCoopers study of consumer attitudes toward piracy. The study asked some 202 self-described pirates about their behavior and the reasons for it. At the top of the list was the fact that pirated content doesn’t actually cost anything. Duh!

250+ Places for Free Books Online

This is a listing of 260 sites that legally offer free books (eBooks) for download or for online viewing. Some time ago I went looking for some free eBooks and was surprised to find that there are many resources for this. I decided to put together this list of sites that offer free eBooks as a reference.

A complete guide to Windows 7 keyboard shortcuts

One of the best ways to increase your computing productivity doesn't cost a cent: learn the keyboard shortcuts for your most-used commands. To help you stop mousing around and become a keyboard maestro, I rounded up the best resources for finding, using, and creating shortcuts.

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