For those of you who can’t read Cyrillic: the top sign reads 150 meters (around 160 yards), while the bottom one reads 100 meters (around 110 yards).

On June 11, 2009, the World Health Organization (WHO) raised the worldwide pandemic alert level to Phase 6 in response to the ongoing global spread of the novel influenza A (H1N1) virus. A Phase 6 designation indicates that a global pandemic is underway.

Yes, we should do our best to protect our children, but is it really time to break out the masks and enter full panic mode?

This blogger certainly thinks so. “Holy crap! 141 H1N1 deaths worldwide! Good grief people,” he wrote on June 11. Even though that number tripled since then, and even though some 400 families lost a loved one we still shouldn’t panic as, according to the CDC, on average 36,000 people die from flu every year in the United States alone.

A total of 436 people have died in the United States from H1N1 as of this Friday (CDC). As a matter of fact, since the WHO declared the pandemic on June 11, the trend of new U.S. H1N1 deaths has been nearly linear, with on average 45 new deaths each week. Even if that trend tripled next week and stayed the same until the end of the year, the number of deaths would still be incomparable to the average number of flu deaths. And even if it were comparable, how many people you know died of flu?

Photo courtesy of thegtworld.com.

The installation of 7 on my Dell Inspiron 1520 ran smoothly. Nowadays, and despite common misconceptions, operating system installations are quite simple (even Linux ones) and anybody can do them, so the smoothness of 7’s doesn’t really stand out. Being exited (as only a geek such as myself can be when installing a new operating system), I didn’t measure the installation time but it certainly was fast.

After the installation was completed I was immediately surprised by how fast it booted up. After three weeks, I am still not used to these blazingly fast start-ups. Shutdowns are also fast too, and unlike all other Windows operating systems I used (98, Me, XP and Vista), so far I am still to experience frozen programs delaying shutdown indefinitely. I did experience programs freezing a couple of times during shutdown (which is normal as after the shutdown process is initiated, non-system program’s permissions are harshly restricted), but in each case Windows was able to force those programs to quit, and shutdown the computer.

The first thing I did after the installation was completed was open the Task Manager, where I found out that my laptop’s physical memory usage was around 32% of my 2GB of RAM, which is not even close to Vista’s 48% at start-up. In fact as I’m writing this, iTunes is running in the background together with around a dozen Chrome processes and the physical memory usage is 42%, still bellow Vista’s at start-up.

As for hardware support, the release candidate’s driver library did not include drivers for my memory card reader, nor for my Nokia E51 phone; but having in mind the number of devices on the market, that cannot really be taken as a flaw. What impressed me though is the way Windows handled this issue. I was presented with a window informing me about the lack of drivers, and a download link to a specific driver in each case. I was done in just a couple of clicks. And as if that didn’t make my life easy enough, after the installation of my Nokia drivers I was presented with another window that informed me that I am missing Nokia’s PC Suite. It also had a download link, so Windows did all the work for me. No CDs, and no searching on Nokia’s web site.

Truth to be told, I did experience a couple of annoying problems with the hardware support, but having in mind I am running just a release candidate I am sure those will be fixed before October 22, when Windows 7 is due to come out. The first one is a real pain in the neck as it involves drivers for the USB interface of my iPod which freezes when I try to sync it with the Disk Mode disabled (but simply enabling that mode solves the problem). The other problem I have is with buttons on my touchpad. Under Vista that was shipped with my Dell, a middle click is achieved by pressing both touchpad buttons at the same time and that doesn’t work anymore in my case.

As for system stability, it did not crash once in the past three weeks.

As for usability, Microsoft obviously put a lot of work into user interface which really stands out from Vista. The traditional taskbar withstood heavy modifications. It does take some getting used to, but when you do, you will wonder how could you ever use the traditional one without a headache.

One of the main things new Vista users complained about were the so-called “cancel or allow” messages which proved to be a great idea for this Get a Mac Apple ad Windows 7 offers several levels of security, and that setting sets the frequency of these messages. You rarely get them by default.

A lot of tools were drastically changed as well. For example, the Resource Monitor is now more detailed, and much better organized than its Vista counterpart. The integrated backup program was also changed and works great too.

Microsoft took a great blow with Vista’s failure because of bad PR. I have been a Vista user for two years and I do not think it is half as bad as people made it to be. Although a good product, it wasn’t released polished which allowed unsubstantiated rumors to spread. With the Mojave Experiment Microsoft did try to combat these rumors, but its PR department obviously failed. Unlike Vista, the release candidate of Windows 7 appears to be almost perfectly polished. As history repeats itself, I am sure that Vista will be remembered as Me of its time, and as for 7, come October 2010 Microsoft will probably declare it to be its lucky number.

Photo courtesy of www.itsmywindows.com.

After testing WordPress for a week on my computer, I found it to be much more customizable and almost as user friendly as Blogger. A lot of WordPress features just cannot be implemented easily on Blogger, and I think Google should seriously consider giving the whole service a major overhaul. Things like Pages, advanced comment moderation, and great theme building support are only some features Blogger lacks.

Anyway, I hope you like the new looks of the blog, and of course if you have any comments or suggestions feel free to comment.

You can also check out the movie trailers here.

It’s Star Trek the way you never saw it before.

In cinemas on May 8. The official movie web site is available here.

What do you think?

The story was printed on the front page of defacto’s issue 32. You can read it here. Being frustrated by the communication breakdown caused by the problems with the e-mail system, defacto decided to push for the implementation of Google Apps for Education at AUBG. You can read more about that here.

After Boucher was charged, his laptop was confiscated as evidence. However, investigators later found out that they are unable to access the questionable material on the laptop because it was, according to the Washington Post, “protected by Pretty Good Privacy, a form of encryption software used by intelligence agencies in the United States and around the world that is widely available online.” The government filed a subpoena that required Boucher to give away the passphrase that protects the data, and thus allow the government full access to his laptop.

However, Magistrate Judge Jerome J. Niedermeier ruled that the subpoena is illegal because it would violate Boucher’s Fifth Amendment rights. “If Boucher does know the [passphrase], he would be faced with the forbidden trilemma: incriminate himself, lie under oath, or find himself in contempt of court,” Niedermeier said.

Niedermeier ruling was later appealed, and a few weeks ago, according to cnet news, U.S. District Judge William Sessions ruled that Boucher does not have a Fifth Amendment right to keep his passphrase secret.

Law aside, two ethical issues pop-up in this case. Should border officials make random searches of computers that enter a country to counter the spread of child pornography; and is it ethical to force Boucher to reveal his passphrase and thus incriminate himself.

Any opinions?