January 2010 Black Tuesday a Real Yawner

So we get one Security Bulletin, MS10-001, and it’s Critical on Windows 2000, barely noticeable on any other version of Windows.

Most of the sentient world can go back to sleep now.

How to Rip, Store and Play Blu-Rays

Pete Stagman has a tremendous, in-depth discussion about how he rips, stores, and plays Blu-Ray discs on his home network. He uses Windows Home Server. I do, too, and I heartily recommend it, if you have to store big media files and share them around the house.

Here’s the software Pete uses:

* SlySoft AnyDVD-HD (Pay)

* SlySoft VirtualCloneDrive (FREE)

* CyberLink PowerDVD 9 Ultra(Download) (Pay)

* MyMovies for Windows Home Server (FREE)

* MyMovies for MediaCenter (FREE)

* MyMovies Collection Management (FREE)

He puts MyMovies on his Windows Home Server machine, and the rest on the other PCs on the network. He uses Windows 7’s Media Center to play ‘em. Piece o’ cake. Well, not really a piece o’ cake, but the process is well within the grasp of almost anybody who’s reading this.

Google starts to get its China, uh, stuff together

As a long-time Tibetan human rights supporter, it pleases me no end that Google seems to be having a change of heart.

Google lawyer David Drummond just posted this on the Official Google Blog:

In mid-December, we detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google… we have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists… we have discovered that the accounts of dozens of U.S.-, China- and Europe-based Gmail users who are advocates of human rights in China appear to have been routinely accessed by third parties. These accounts have not been accessed through any security breach at Google, but most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on the users’ computers…

These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

Maybe I can go back to believing in Google’s original vision.