Briefly: Books, And Microsoft Must Die

That photo was swiped from Engadget’s excellent coverage of today’s Steve Jobs WWDC keynote.

I thought it was a major thing, iBooks incorporating PDF.

But then someone tweeted this CNet article about the new Stanza for iPad and that blew me away. It can do not just PDF, but comic book CBR files too! Now that is a major thing!

Now I understand why the Sony Reader is going for $199.99. As of today, it should be $149.99 — if not less!

I’ve spent most of the past two days with another Windows XP security breach. I don’t care if this maligns products, it’s the truth: I’d done a Quick Scan with Malwarebytes and the PC came up clean. I had Avast! Anti-Virus (version 4.x) running all the time too. A nasty combo of CINOME and BFGHOST still managed to pop up as running processes yesterday, confirming my suspicion this PC has — again! — been infected! I managed to hunt down and delete CINOME. I have no idea what disguise BFGHOST is using. It has to be polymorphic.

I ran a full scan with Malwarebytes overnight. It says this PC is clean. I ditched Avast! 4.x and put on Microsoft Security Essentials this morning. That program is a nightmare if you have a low-end CPU (as I do). My startup time became like ten times longer and one of its processes was chewing up 50-80% of my CPU! Microsoft apparently now writes software only for people who own quad-core CPUs. I ditched the Microsoft program too. But not before a Quick Scan (which took longer than any other product!). It also said this PC is clean. I’ve now surrendered to Avast! 5, which I ditched last year as being too cloggy. Damned thing seems to refuse to update too. But I’ll see how this goes.

I also had to learn about some damned Hive service program and compacting the Registry! Because Saving Your Settings was taking forever over the past few days.

And people wonder why the iPad is selling in droves? Who wants to go through this shit that Microsoft has created to do simple Internet tasks?

Comments will have to wait until I get back to regular blogging. I’m still otherwise busy right now.