broken technology
Strained From Soaring Screen Time, Computer Complications Plague Students
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With most classes still online, many students’ devices are struggling to keep up.
computers
As Microsoft Prepares for The End of Windows 7, Students Urged to Update
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As Microsoft looks ahead to Jan. 14, 2020 — when the long-awaited Windows 10 update eclipses the current Windows 7 — a company in upstate New York is drumming up awareness on how crucial it is to update operating systems.
Columns
SCHULMAN | Quantum Computers Are Game Changing
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It’s okay if you don’t know the difference between quantum computer and a flux capacitor. Even if quantum computing seems complicated, its implications are easy to understand. Although they sound like something out of a sci-fi novel, these things are going to change the world. Quantum computers are going to revolutionize our ability to predict complicated phenomena. Quantum computers are good at modeling complicated things because they exploit quantum uncertainty, the principle that an electron can be in two states at once.
Uncategorized
Voting Down the Malware, One Quorum at a Time
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When I finally managed to pull myself out of bed after an epic battle with the flue, an article on CNET caught my eye: Symantec Corporation, the maker of Norton Antivirus, is pursuing a new form of malware prevention that turns the self-mutating abilities of certain malware against itself. The new product is called Quorum. The best part of it all? It’s slated for release on Wednesday, which means if you’re sick with the flu and your computer happens to be in the same boat, then you can take the new program for a test drive.
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Trapping the Snow Leopard
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The OS War between Microsoft and Apple has been going on since the release of the Macintosh in 1984.
As we approach closer to present day, the release of Mac OS X in 2001 completely changed the playing field. 2009 is looking to be a turning point for both operating systems with Microsoft slated to release Windows 7 in October and Apple releasing OS X Snow Leopard on August 30. Both systems boast better performances, and seeing as I’ve already turned my skeptical eye to Windows 7 in a previous blog, I feel that it’s Apple’s turn on the chopping block.
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Cmail – Dawn of a New Era
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So as many of you already know through reading the Sun or word of mouth, Cornell WebMail has now been skinned with Gmail to form Cmail. Curious, I decided to take it for a spin and try it out.
Once I had set up the account, the resulting page looked a lot like my iGoogle home page, only with a giant banner on the top of the page reminding me that I’m looking at a Cornell-run page instead of my own.
Certainly this is a general improvement over the fiasco that is Cornell’s own server (remember when course enroll started and the server went down several times?), but it’s not perfect, and I’ll tell you why:
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Overpowered Computing
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Myth: teenager gets accepted to college, buys a new computer, packs things up, and flies out to start a new life.
Fact: teenager gets accepted to college, buys a new computer armed with an atrocious amount of processing power, RAM, and graphics card, packs things up, and flies out to start a new life.
Today we’ll focus on the issue of the vastly overpowered PC that has become commonplace by industry standards. Let’s face it, how many of us actually looked at the tech specs on our computers before coming to Cornell? Don’t answer, it’s a rhetorical question.
Firstly, I want to show you the recommended specs for Microsoft Office 2007, which is a staple for most college students:
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Information Technologies Advises Cornell Computer Users to be Wary of Viruses
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The Information Technologies sent out an alert yesterday advising all individuals on campus to exercise caution when using University computers. In the statement, sent out by Tom Young of I.T. Security, there are three “immediate threats to our computers and networks” — fake video software, hijacked network connections and a work called Conficker that is expected to undergo changes today.
“The I.T. Security Office has noted a large number of computers that became infected with [malicious software] when fake video software was installed,” the I.T. special bulletin read.
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Antivirus roundup
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If there are any words that nobody ever wants to hear, they‘re that “you have a virus on your computer”. Just thinking about the word virus sends chills down someone’s spine. While there are genuinely benign viruses that annoy you (the ambulance virus comes to mind), other viruses, such as Trojans that allow others to access your computer, are not so friendly.
So obviously, antivirus programs are a big market that is expected to reach over 9 billion dollars by 2009. However, not all them are the same, and not all of them pack quite the same punch against the nasty little buggers floating around the Internet.
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Internet Users Uphold First Amendment Rights
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Human rights activists, including myself, agree that the government has no authority to decide what is censored on the internet because this is a constitutionally protected right of an individual. The government cannot decide what another person should be able to see and do on the internet, as this is a personal decision. The internet serves as a vehicle for expression and therefore, limitations other than for criminal activity should not exist. As stated by the Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union, Steven Shapiro, “the government has no right to censor protected speech on the Internet, and it cannot reduce adults to hearing and seeing only speech that the government considers suitable for children”.