Patrick E. Bennett, Jr., Computer Consultant ... computing support for small business

Cisco's take on remote control software can't hold its own against the top competition, despite offering 5 free gigabytes of online backup.

AOL's iPad app lets you IM and socially network with ease, but a few issues prevent it from being a must-have download.

Panda Internet Security 2011 has changed little since last year. It was good then and it's good now, but more innovative competitors are pulling ahead.

The Plantronics M100 is a solid, dual-mic Bluetooth headset with just enough features to make it worthy of consideration.

GoToMyPC was a pioneer in PC remote control, but it hasn't kept up with newer options of LogMeIn and TeamViewer.

According to a new survey by Robert Half International, IT executives are only planning modest increases in hiring, citing budget constraints and a shortage of qualified workers.

Martin's Blog: "KDE is currently blamed for errors in external components: the graphic drivers. I am lately reading quite some crap (e.g. on it news today) that we KWin devs knew about problems in the drivers and shipped 4.5 nevertheless with changes enabled which trigger the driver bugs. That is of course not true."

Netrecon 1.78 has been released. New in this version is experimental passive scanning, arpsniff and now a integrated front end to all of netrecons programs. A lot of the syntax has been changed up. This should be the last of the major changes as 1.80 (the hopefully gold) release is approached. I also dropped the second n on the name. Lets see how long it takes before the lawyers call....

SpuriousLogic writes "Does happiness rise with income? In one of the more scientific attempts to answer that question, researchers from Princeton have put a price on happiness. It's about $75,000 in income a year. They found that not having enough money definitely causes emotional pain and unhappiness. But, after reaching an income of about $75,000 per year, money can't buy happiness. More money can, however, help people view their lives as successful or better. The study found that people's evaluations of their lives improved steadily with annual income. But the quality of their everyday experiences — their feelings — did not improve above an income of $75,000 a year. As income decreased from $75,000, people reported decreasing happiness and increasing sadness, as well as stress. The study found that being divorced, being sick and other painful experiences have worse effects on a poor person than on a wealthier one."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Harald Welte's blog: "In recent days and weeks, I'm doing a bit more work on the gpl-violations.org project than during the last months and years. I wouldn't say that I'm happy about that, but well, somebody has to do it :/"

A recent NYT piece explores the never-ending quest for password-based security, to which reader climenole responds with a snippet from ReadWriteWeb that argues it's time to think more seriously about life beyond passwords, at least beyond keeping a long list of individual login/password pairs: "These protective measures don't go very far, according to the New York Times, because hackers can get ahold of passwords with software that remotely tracks keystrokes, or by tricking users into typing them in. The story touches on a range of issues around the problem, but neglects to mention the obvious: the march toward a centralized login for multiple sites."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Barence writes "The United Arab Emirates has its own Chinese-style firewall to weed out pornography and other 'unsavory' content. But as PC Pro's correspondent has found out, the firewall has more than a few holes in it. ISP helplines routinely suggest proxy server software that circumvents the filters. Access to Flickr is blocked, in case citizens' eyes should fall upon a naked buttock, but The Pirate Bay, which 'offers a range of bottoms to suit every need, including midget and donkey bottoms for anybody having a really slow afternoon – remains blissfully undisturbed.' 'Ultimately, I'm quite glad the UAE's authorities block websites, and thrilled that they're so inept at it,' concludes PC Pro's writer. 'Just like everybody in Dubai, all they've done is made me a master of internet chicanery.'" Guess that depends how closely they're watching the evaders.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Judged on its own merits, the Ubuntu 10.10 beta is a solid and consumer-friendly release. Looking at it in the light of the 10.04 Long Term Service (LTS) release from the Spring, it seems a very modest update…

Scott Photographics: "If you don't have a zoom lens or you'd like to manipulate a certain image in this style then this tutorial for GIMP should help you achieve a similar effect!"

ZDNet: "An Oracle was a person or agency considered to be a source of wise counsel or prophetic opinion. How can that particular definition be applied to Oracle the company?"

Fedora: "Today's installment of Fedora Test Day will focus on systemd, the new initialization system being introduced in Fedora 14."

This tutorial describes how you can install Apache2 with mod_fcgid and PHP5 on Ubuntu 10.04. mod_fcgid is a compatible alternative to the older mod_fastcgi. It lets you execute PHP scripts with the permissions of their owners instead of the Apache user.

Datamation: "In a tight economy, it's more important than ever to make sure every dollar spent is providing maximum return. And for a growing number of small businesses, this means reexamining plans for upgrading existing servers and workstations."

pgptag writes "This talk by Dr. Suzanne Gilbert (video) explains why quantum computers are useful, and also dispels some of the myths about what they can and cannot do. It addresses some of the practical ways in which we can build quantum computers and gives realistic timescales for how far away commercially useful systems might be."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hubpages: "Maybe you'll think: "Oh, I, Windows, I have not paid, they gave me with the computer." Are you absolutely certain? If your computer had Windows, then you paid, even if the dealer did not told you, or you installed a copy of "pirate"."