Activity for November 4

Review - The KMPlayer
2.9.4.1435 (Sep 14, 2009)

THe Ask toolbar installation is purely optional.

This version also includes a new skin that's much better than the old one, and also is fully multilingual (in the past, you often had to manually download the English language file separately).
Review - SecureCRT
6.2.3 (Sep 10, 2009)

Slash the price in half, and this would be perfect. A hundred bucks just for a terminal client software is too expensive for anyone but medium to small businesses.
Review - PC Tools Firewall Plus
6.0.0.66 Beta (Aug 14, 2009)

A former PCTFW user here who just came back to it. It's relatively lightweight, doesn't overburden you with paranoid security features that make using the computer too annoying, and it now has 64-bit support (at least under Windows 7). Previous versions would occasionally see their config files corrupt themselves, which was why I had dropped it. Going to see now if this has been since fixed.
Review - AVIPreview
0.26 Alpha (May 9, 2005)

A bit buggy indeed. Media Player Classic can pretty much do the same thing now with incomplete files, with more features.
Review - Bersirc
2.2.7 (Jan 2, 2005)

Might be good noting that this is a complete rewrite, by a new programmer. The only thing left from the original Bersirc is the name (I fail to see why they had to buy the old source code since they are not reusing it).

Bersirc2 also aims to be cross-platform, which isn't a bad idea - the only other alternative right now is X-Chat, with a pretty poor Win32 port (that one crashed on me within the first five mins of walking through its settings).
Comment - Performance drain: The first public perception test of the Windows 7 era
2.2.7 (Nov 4, 2009 - 5:37 PM)

Nobody wants to hack Mac OS X because there's no profit in it, due to the small installation base.

Today's malware are mostly targeted at generating revenues through advertising, selling fake security products, spreading spam, etc... The day MacOS, Linux or BeOS would get 20%+ of the market, you'd notice an increase in malware targeting that platform.

Today's software has become too complex. The more lines of code you add, the more likely it is you'll get a potential security hole found.
Comment - Microsoft should dig into the WebKit to stop Google from framing IE
2.2.7 (Sep 23, 2009 - 8:25 PM)

Actually, I can't track down where I saw this mentionned back then, only mentions of Gazelle and that it might be used for things others than replacing Trident. So unless someone can quote what I think I saw, I guess it's still just rumor.

Not that I care anyway, I stay away from IE and not just because of its render engine.
Comment - Microsoft should dig into the WebKit to stop Google from framing IE
2.2.7 (Sep 23, 2009 - 8:17 PM)

MS already announced they were dropping Trident in favor of a new engine back in the IE8 dev days.
Comment - Symantec launches Norton Security 10 and Quorum technology
2.2.7 (Sep 11, 2009 - 1:01 AM)

So let me get this straight: they said they trimmed their software, removed the fat, but... implemented a resource usage monitor into it? A security software suite that monitors memory usage? Something doesn't quite add up there.
Comment - iPod beaten in Japan by 30-year-old line of music players
2.2.7 (Sep 4, 2009 - 1:41 PM)

Quite often it comes down to the headphones (and speakers). You have to test these players with the same quality headphones (which means not the bundled junk in 90% of the case, my Sony 639 being the first one that I bought and came with better than average headphones).