Unraveling the trail of senatorial edits

Wow, how to make a sensible headline for this one.  I’ve not posted about this story before, but enough other sites have that I think most regular web surfers now know at least a little about this story.  Recently, there have been a number of edits to Wikipedia pages regarding a number of Senators.  Most of the edits have been made to remove facts about the Senators that could be viewed negatively.  The part that made the story big is that these edits have been coming from an IP address assigned to the Senate.  Now, Wikinews has taken the time to backtrack a lot of what’s gone on and determine who made what edits in many cases.  The write up of how they tracked this back, and what changes were made is quite interesting, in my eyes.  Of course, since Wikinews is also a wiki, I wonder how many edits to this story we’ll see?

Staff members of the offices of United States Senators, using Senate-linked IP addresses, have been editing Wikipedia, a free online encyclopedia that allows any of its users to edit its content. In some cases, they have removed negative facts about Senators from the articles.

Using the public history of edits on Wikipedia, Wikinews reporters collected every Senate IP which had ever edited on Wikipedia as of February 3 and examined where the IPs came from, what they edited, and of what those edits consisted. IP, or Internet Protocol, addresses are unique numbers electronic devices use to communicate with each other on an individual basis.

[tags]Wikipedia, Wikinews, Senate[/tags]

Versora Progression Desktop

I hadn’t even heard of this application before, but it is supposed to be a tool to help migrate users from Windows to Linux.  If you are interested in how well Versora Progression Desktop works, here is a detailed review of the program and its performance.  I’d post more about it, but the site isn’t responding for me right now, so I’ve only read the first page.  But color me intrigued so far.  Once it’s back, I’ll read the rest of the review.  This could be something handy for me to point others towards in the future.

n a nutshell, Versora Progression Desktop will migrate appearance settings, sounds, input device options, and application settings such as email, web browsers, word processors, and instant messaging. In other words, it covers all the fundamentals of operating system and application migration. If you’d like to learn more, you can visit the Versora website for detailed information.

[tags]Versora, Windows migration, Linux, Linspire[/tags]

Toshiba to acquire Westinghouse?

It’s surprising to me, but the logic seems sound.  Apparently, Toshiba is going to acquire Westinghouse for $5.4 billion.

Japanese electronics maker Toshiba Corp. said Monday that it was buying nuclear plant builder Westinghouse Electric Co., the U.S.-based unit of the British government’s British Nuclear Fuels PLC, for $5.4 billion.

[tags]Toshiba, Westinghouse, Nuclear power[/tags]

The technology behind the game

First, apologies for 2 days without updates.  There was nothing worth updating for on Friday, and I just had no time for updates on Saturday.  I’m still trying to catch up with my geek readings in the world.  So expect plenty of updates tomorrow.

That said, here’s a cool article at Engadget about some of the technology that makes the Super bowl work.

Oblivion official specs released

Over at the Gaming-Age forums, there is a post with official specs for the soon-to-be-released Oblivion.

Recommended:

* 3 Ghz Intel Pentium 4 or equivalent processor
* 1 GB System RAM
* ATI X800 series, Nvidia GeForce 6800 series, or higher video card

Minimum System Requirements:

* Windows XP
* 512MB System RAM
* 2 Ghz Intel Pentium 4 or equivalent processor
* 128MB Direct3D compatible video card
* and DirectX 9.0 compatible driver;
* 8x DVD-ROM drive
* 4.6 GB free hard disk space
* DirectX 9.0c (included)
* DirectX 8.1 compatible sound card
* Keyboard, Mouse

Supported Video Card Chipsets:

* ATI X1800 series
* ATI X1300 series
* ATI X850 series
* ATI x800 series
* ATI x700 series
* ATI x600 series
* ATI Radeon 9800 series
* ATI Radeon 9700 series
* ATI Radeon 9600 series
* ATI Radeon 9500 series
* ATI Radeon 9000 series
* NVIDIA Geforce 7800 series
* NVIDIA GeForce 6800 series
* NVIDIA GeForce FX series

[tags]Oblivion, Elder Scrolls[/tags]