666 the number of the beast.

as iron maiden used to sing.
My fave was the ace of spades 'gamblin's for fools, but that's the way i like it honey..'

Without a spade in sight or an ace. Here's 6 stories from 6 authors in 6 weeks. It's called 'we tell stories'.

It uses a map to illustrate how a story progresses, the narrative being provided by 6 successful UK authors.

* Charles Cumming
* Toby Litt
* Kevin Brooks
* Nicci French
* Matt Mason
* Mohsin Hamid

Each week you can tune in and read a little. The stories are quite long, longer than a coffee break, so if social networking is getting you down, this may be the ideal distraction.

Visit the site here and click through each story until the devil arrives to reprimand your computer and sack you for wasting office time.

Introducing Corporate Bloatware for 2008 - Norton Antivirus 2008

Following invitation, recently installed the 2008 version of Norton Antivirus.

Free software
Usually you have to pay, but this was free so why not?

The software took a couple of minutes to download.
I installed it on 11th Dec.

The following major effects were noticed over the course of it's short, but eventful life:-

• System boot-time went from 10-20 seconds to more than 2 minutes.
  After a number of boots, this did not improve.
  I don't see long boot-times as necessarily a bad thing. It can be indicative the software is doing it's job learning the systems and programs, learning, after which it would become faster.
• Boot times did not improve, running at roughly 2 minutes (4month old 1.8ghz Pentium dual core with 1gb of ram).
  
• After 8 days running, system experienced stability issues, crashing Dreamweaver and Photoshop, two of the software's I use every day.

When I came back to work on Wednesday, I essentially didn't have a computer to work with.
It's taken me from then, the 18th, till now, the 4th, to fix the problem and install firewall and virus protection i.e wasted about 8 days.

If you're tempted to download Norton 2008, don't.
Or if you do, be prepared:
Here's what you have to do to get rid of the stuff.

Rolling (backwards)
I rolled back to 2007 which I had on disk.
That failed to renew the subscription and virus definitions.
I then had to roll back to 2006.
The subscription and virus definitions failed when I came to work on the 2nd.
This was despite having over 103 days of subs left.

Uninstalling Symantec
The uninstaller failed.
After searching, Yahoo Search
I visited the Symantec site where they have an Symantec Unistaller tool for when things go wrong.
Downloaded this.
Failed.

Attempted to download and install Kapersky (internet software). Was told I had to uninstall Norton first.

I had no firewall to go surfing around the 'net, pick up my emails or leave a broadband connection safetly.

Visited Cnet found this Revo uninstaller.
It identified the dynamic library and system entries which I had to go through and delete manually.

System now works.

Visited F-System.
Now running evaluation software .

In summary
For anyone running an older system, I dread to think. You're looking at dial-up style frustration say from a 1999 machine.
Paper readingly boring boot times.

Apparently Norton now charges for help facility so that goes some way to explaining why this release is so diabolical.
As an IT professional, I really don't have time to sit and wait for software to load.
I don't buy non-core software to invade and consume resources.
It should sit in the background. Quietly.

PCpro - Antivirus software review. See how Norton stands up to the competition.

Lonely Planet announces deal with Google

or was it the BBC?

Anyway, Lonelyplanet's founders the Wheeler's let go a 40% stake in the company after fellow shareholder Singleton released his shareholding of 30%.

That means the beeb have majority holding of 75% and the Lonely Planers will be dancing to their tune.

You've got mail..
Does this mean I will be receiving more nasty legal letters in the near future?
Probably.

BBC Announces launch of iPlayer

Following the ITV recent announcement to bring broadband download on films, BBC has announced it's venture into Broadband TV.

Players will be able to download the latest or watch live: files in a format specific to the iPlayer lasting 30 days on the users computer.

The Beeb are making steps to present the whole back catalogue in the future.

Free
The service is to be Free to British license payers.

Hack Day - Struck by Lightening

Hack Day

Hosted by Yahoo! and BBC backstage. Developers are set to work developing new apps. for the possibility of winning a prize.

Hack Day - London 2007
Alexandra Palace was stuck by lightning which blew the Wifi receptors up at about 11am.

The fire grid blew out and emergency vents in the main hall opened.

We were evacuated from the main room as rain came in.

Clumsy Cracker
As we started programming the guy next to me spilt coffee on his computer.
He had to take it to the toilets to dry the keyboard out under hand dryers.

Apart from that everything went well.

Lightning strikes Yahoo! Developer Day