Bugs and Toys

Microsoft Ends Year with Critical Security Alert - Last year Microsoft issued 51 patches for critical security issues. The total this year is 45. Although it might sound like Microsoft is getting a handle on their buggy operating system it turns out that multiple problems are being patched over in those 45. Perhaps this is why serious business use some flavor of UNIX for their mission-critical infrastructure.

New hard-drive equipped Linux PDA impresses - Sharp has come out with a PDA that includes a small hard drive. The drive, 4 GB, is 8 times larger than the hard drive on a 80486 system I bought years ago - wow. Personally this PDA is not attractive to me - looks slightly bulky and I prefer my toys to be slim and compact. Not too long ago the industry was predicting PDA's to become obsolete because of the increasing functionality of handsets (mobile phones). With tiny hard drives they can hold much more data and software and appear to be making a comeback. A merger has been taking place - a combined cell phone + PDA + wireless internet access. If you're into GPS toys there is even a PDA with built-in GPS and mapping software from Garmin.