Internet addiction leads to serious issues

Yesterday we heard about the guy that beat World of Warcraft, meaning that he's probably an internet addict. Hopefully he doesn't hurt himself, because apparently people who spend all their time in front of their computer on the internet are more likely to hurt themselves.

Researchers surveyed 1,618 adolescents aged 13 to 18 from China's Guangdong Province about behavior such as hitting themselves, pulling their own hair, or pinching or burning themselves, and gave them a test to gauge Internet addiction.

Internet addiction has been classified as a mental health problem since the mid-1990s with symptoms similar to other addictions.

The test found that about 10 percent of the students surveyed were moderately addicted to the Internet, while less than one percent were severely addicted.

The students ranked as moderately addicted to the Internet were 2.4 times more likely to have self-injured one to five times in the past 6 months than students without an addiction, said Dr. Lawrence Lam from the University of Notre Dame Australia.

The moderately-to-severely addicted students were almost five times more likely than non-addicted students to have self-injured six or more times in the past 6 months, Lam and his colleagues from Guangzhou's Sun Yat-Sen University reported.

Wow, so basically people with no social lives are more prone to physical harm of themselves? Surprise, surprise...

(This is from Tech Rave)

Are you ready for the Microsoft-Google Clone Wars?

Well this whole Bing-Google search engine war just took an interesting twist. Look for the cannonballs to start flying after Microsoft is in discussions with News Corp to stop indexing their content with Google News. That's the same News Corp that owns Fox News, the Wall Street Journal and The Sun. Uh-oh.

Microsoft has had discussions with News Corp over a plan that would involve the media company being paid to “de-index” its news websites from Google, setting the scene for a search engine battle that could offer a ray of light to the newspaper industry.

The impetus for the discussions came from News Corp, owner of newspapers ranging from the Wall Street Journal of the US to The Sun of the UK, said a person familiar with the situation, who warned that talks were at an early stage.

However, the Financial Times has learnt that Microsoft has also approached other big online publishers to persuade them to remove their sites from Google’s search engine.

News Corp and Microsoft, which owns the rival Bing search engine, declined to comment.

One website publisher approached by Microsoft said that the plan “puts enormous value on content if search engines are prepared to pay us to index with them”.

Things just got really, really ugly. We're about to see an all-out brawl. And I think newspapers are really kidding themselves if they think that selling the rights to their stories is going to save the industry. That's like saying a sports league could survive on TV rights sales alone. Not gonna work.

(This is from Tech Rave)

Video of Google Chrome OS in action

Here's a video of the Chrome OS, kind of gives you a better idea of whats going on (and you don't have to slog through my writing).

The lowdown on the Google Chrome OS

Google unveiled its plan for its new operating system yesterday and I'm sure nobody is still sure what to expect. Since I'm a huge nerd, and Google actually plays a large part in driving traffic to this website, I had to take a long look at it. Here's the basics about the Chrome OS...

1. Google Chrome OS is essentially a web browser on 'roids - This is something hard to get my brain wrapped around but essentially the Chome OS will be based largely on web applications (meaning no desktop apps) and a tabular navigation system much like the Google Chrome browser already in existence. This may seem weird but considering how much work people already do online and how many applications are online these days, this is just another way to be speedy on the computer (a webpage opens up quicker than a program). However, despite it's browser roots, it still will be able to handle multiple tasks at once, you'll just have to get use to the navigation.

2. It will update and fix itself constantly - Tired of those "Patch Tuesdays" that Microsoft always rolls out? Chrome OS will always be updating itself to the latest version for security and convenience reasons meaning that everybody will have the most up-to-date versions. If it does find some malware or other problem in the operating system, it will basically just re-download the latest version of itself, bug-free.

3. All your data is online - Everything will be stored online, not locally on a hard drive. While this seems scary at first, if your computer is stolen or broken you can just get a new computer and access all your old files. However, if you're not connected online, that's a different story. This is how they'll be able to pull of the constantly updating and re-imaging of the operating system since your files will not be on a hard drive, hence they wont be swept away when you OS refreshes itself.

4. Chrome OS will only work on Google-approved PCs - Google is looking for very specific types of machines for their OS. They're also going to do away with traditional hard drives and move on to "flash" or solid state hard media, meaning no moving parts. This would mean a boot-up time of around seven seconds on the machine.

5. It should work offline, but I'm not sure how well - You might be able to play games, but if you're not connected and can't access files, I could see this being a serious issue.

(This is from Tech Rave. Modified for Just South of North - of course)

Mozille makes a buttload of cash

Mozilla Firefox, better known as the browser you download with IE after you buy your computer because it runs quicker than that slug Microsoft saddles you with, reported some interesting financial numbers for the year 2008. They are another tech company that has seemed to be able to ride out these economic times and grow in profit.

Our revenue and expenses are consistent with 2007, showing steady growth. Mozilla’s consolidated reported revenues (Mozilla Foundation and all subsidiaries) for 2008 were $78.6 million, up approximately 5% from 2007 reported revenues of $75.1 million. The majority of this revenue is generated from the search functionality in Mozilla Firefox from organizations such as Google, Yahoo, Amazon, eBay, and others.

2008 revenues include a reported loss of $7.8 million in investments in the Foundation’s long-term portfolio (approximately 25%) as a result of economic conditions and investment values at the end of 2008. Excluding investment gains and losses, revenues from operational activity were $86.4 million compared to $73.3 million in 2007, an annual increase of 18%.

With Google Chrome, the latest version of IE grumbling in the background, Opera and Safari - there is a lot of competition out there for Mozilla. Although don't count out the devoted fanbase of Firefox, which seems to be growing all the time.

(This is from Tech Rave)

The Internet Explorer monster

Even though I use Firefox religiously, Microsoft gearing up for another version of Internet Explorer is big news because I'll have to eventually get a new computer and use this browser to download FF and Chrome.

Microsoft will talk about its plan for upcoming builds of Internet Explorer this week at the Professional Developers Conference
-- though, it will not offer a preview of its next browser, according to CNET. It is also reported that the company is not planning to announce a move to the WebKit engine, despite speculation.

During a presentation today at the conference, chief software architect Ray Ozzie said Microsoft would make Internet Explorer the best Windows
browser, but did not elaborate. Redmond is expected to offer more details during tomorrow's keynote speech, however, which will touch on some "focus areas" for the next version of IE.

One thing that keeps getting me about IE is how darn slow the thing is. While more tests have shown that it's actually a fairly safe browser in terms of viruses and spyware items, it still takes forever to boot up and load pages. So Microsoft... speed things up a bit.

(This is from Tech Rave)

Moving = no internet

Well I have some bad news for JustSON Nation. I moved yesterday, and since Comcast has yet to put cable/internet in I'm not sure when I'll get it. I've sat on hold for over an hour each of the last three days. Awesome customer service.

I'll try to update from wireless hotspots, coffee shops, public libraries, other people's phones that have internet because mine doesn't, etc.

Which this means that the new features at JustSON may be delayed a week.

The Internet will eventually run out of space

Just when you thought that the internet would never run out of space - we've got some serious web address issues. It seems that at our current rate, we will run out of internet address within the next two years. Does that mean we just have to start using geocities and blogspot domains?

A survey, conducted by the European Commission, found that few companies are prepared for the switch from the current naming protocol, IPv4, to the new regime, IPv6. Web experts have warned that we could run out of internet addresses within the next two years unless more companies migrate to the new platform.

The IPv4 and IPv6 protocols refer to the way in which web addresses are created and assigned. Each website has a unique IP address, represented by a string of numbers, such as 192.168.1.1, which are then given a user-friendly web address, such as telegraph.co.uk, to make them easier to remember.

Credit card details freely available on webThe IPv4 protocol uses 32-bit addresses, which enables the web to support around 4.3 billion unique addresses. By contrast, IPv6 uses 128-bit web addresses, creating billions of possible new web addresses – experts estimate it could assign a unique address for every blade of grass on the planet.

Ahhhhh! This is worst that Y2K. Everyone run for the hills Hopefully Casey paid the internet bill.

(This is from Tech Rave)

How to tell if you're addicted to the internet

1. You refer to people that play World of Warcraft as internet posers, and think that you shouldn't need to pretend to be a night elf in order to right a blog about being a night elf.

2. You twitter that you're on Twitter.

3. You're friends know you as that "LOL CATZ" person.

4. The internet was out for an hour one time, you can't remember what you did when your brain blacked out. You did however wake up with somebody's baby in the closet and a chimpanzee in doctor's clothing clanging pots and pans in the kitchen.

5. When you say "Dark Ages" you're referring to Dial-up. When you say "The 80s" you're referring to when your computer modem only transferred 80k at a time.

6. When you make out with your girlfriend, "Numa Numa" has to be playing in the background.

7. When people lament about how the internet is killing newspapers, you say "yeah, we showed those bastards."

8. You haven't been out of your house since Will Ferrell put out a good movie.

9. You think Canada is actually just a state in the US where they end all their web addresses with .ca.

10. You've watched an entire episode of Star Trek on You Tube. On a Friday Night. In your mother's basement. With your girlfriend. Who's actually just a stuffed Chewbacca doll.

Apparently Facebook thinks I like skanky Christians

Imagine you're on Facebook. Now take a look to the right of this post. Is there something wrong with that ad?

I'm going to venture a guess that Facebook is feeling the pinch of the economy and is now filling lost ad revenue with advertising from busty Christians with apparently more than God on the mind.

Now I wonder if I put my religion to Muslim if I would find equally flirty females... only this time with their faces covered. Ah the Internet, being offensive since some guy figured out how to put chicken porn online.