Ads, Intel, Charlie

As you’re going to see hear in tomorrow’s OSNews podcast, there was a lot of interesting stuff going on on OSNews this week. We’ve had some serious talks about advertising on the web, Intel getting a serious slap on the wrist, we’ve talked about what to do with RAM, a mind-boggling security issue in Windows 7, and much more. This week’s My Take is about Two And A Half Men.

Week in Review

The biggest news this week had to do with the European Union taking another step to combat monopoly abuse within EU borders. Dutch EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes imposed a massive 1.06 billion EUR fine on Intel for abusing its monopoly position. The chipmaker bribed and bullied computer manufacturers into using Intel chips only, instead of those by rivals such as (mainly) AMD. Intel has stated it will appeal the decision.

As usual, we also had a few Windows 7 items. Firstly, Microsoft has stated it will release Windows 7 in time for the holiday season, which wasn’t a surprise to anyone. We also discussed the (possible) merits of SuperFetch, asking ourselves the question: should we let our memory sit there doing nothing, or should we have it filled up with stuff we might need?

Later in the week, we talked about why Windows 7’s default UAC level leaves open a major security hole – not through a bug or an error, but by design. Instead of fixing its own code to work better with UAC, Microsoft copped out and created a whitelist of applications and processes which are allowed to auto-elevate silently. A programmer has found a way to abuse this ability by injecting code into programs on that whitelist. The result is a completely owned machine. This design flaw has been known for a long time, but Microsoft refuses to do anything about it. You can prevent problems by setting UAC to “full”, which disables auto-elevation altogether.

Internet advertising was a prime topic on OSNews as well this week. We asked if you would be so kind as to disable ad blocking on OSNews, as like so many other sites, we are having issues with covering our operating costs. We hope our ads aren’t as annoying as those of other websites, and as such, ad blocking might not be necessary on OSNews. Many kindly obliged to our request (thank you!), still, we fully understand if you keep on blocking ads (thanks to you too for reading OSNews!). Related to this is a proposal by the Adblock Plus developer.

In a surprise move, Sony’s CEO admitted that had they been more open, they would’ve beaten Apple. He also admitted that Sony’s past behaviour towards customers has hurt the company, and that Sony is looking to being more open and less proprietary. Time will tell if actions will follow his words.

We also had several releases this week. Mozilla released the Prism 1.0 beta, Apple pushed out Mac OS X 10.5.7, and the Syllable guys finally got Syllable 0.6.6 out the door.

My Take: More Charlie

In last week’s My Take, I showed you guys and girls a clip from Two And A Half Men, hoping I’d be able to express why I (and my friends) like this series so much this week. The problem is – it’s really difficult.

I guess it mainly comes down the incredible dynamic between the two main characters, Charlie and Alan. Charlie is portrayed by Charlie Sheen, and Sheen has always been one of my favourite actors, especially in comedy. He just has a certain something about him that makes him perfect for comedy roles (Hot Shots!). It only gets better because he’s not really playing a role in Two And A Half Men – sure, it’s all a bit overdone, but he’s a whore-mongering alcoholic in real-life as well.

The contrast between Charlie’s worry-free lavish lifestyle and Alan’s life which is a total and utter misery, despite the fact Alan’s “the good son”, makes for very entertaining comedy.

I can understand people not liking Two And A Half Men. When my friends first introduced me to it I thought it was lame, repetitive, and simplistic, but for some reason, if you watch this series from episode one onwards, it just grabs you. Sure, there’s toilet humour in this, but it fits the story. One of the main characters is a 10 year old buy, so what do you expect?

It’s good comedy, and many a drink were shared between my friends and I while watching the series.

4 Comments

  1. 2009-05-17 9:46 pm
  2. 2009-05-17 10:57 pm
  3. 2009-05-17 11:10 pm
  4. 2009-05-18 2:06 am