HTNet - A Notepad of Tech, Business, Science and Self Improvement

As featured on OSNews and other news sources, Adobe is acquiring Macromedia for a whopping US$3.4 billion. This merger will undeniably form the largest multimedia software house, as far as the industry is concerned.

Personally, I was never into Macromedia stuff… but I have always been impressed by Adobe goodies, especially Photoshop. It is without a doubt the image editing app for semi-pro to professional purposes. What kind of innovation will this acquisition bring to the industry? Only time will tell.

Personally though, I do feel that this would be a good deal for both companies. The technologies involved in both parties seem to complement each other.

Mozilla Firefox 1.0.3 is available for download now. This update mainly consists of security fixes and improvements to the updating process. The release notes can be read here.

There’s also updates available for the Mozilla Suite, addressing similar security concerns.

I saw the picture of one of my beloved childhood heroes, Sesame Street’s Cookie Monster eating a Photoshopped apple!

Well, it seems that Sesame Street is running a campaign called Healthy Habits for Life, where one of the key issues is the importance of a balanced diet. However, the seemingly sudden change of diet by Cookie Monster is quite bizarre. This takes into consideration that his diet for the past 30 years or so has almost solely been cookies (with the occasional plates, eating utensils, and telephones thrown in for good measure)… and now suddenly he’s into fruits?

This change of diet has been met with mixed feelings by kids, parents and the media. Why must childhood innocence be dragged into battles of political correctness… For God’s sake, let children be children.

Holy fsckin’ shit… Nine bloody years in jail! That’s what you get for using spam to peddle your wares (v14gra anyone?)… at least according to laws in Virginia.

Jeremy Jaynes, 30, of North Carolina, was convicted in November of violating the state’s anti-spam statute by sending tens of thousands of bulk e-mail ads to America Online. However, Jaynes remains free on a US$1 million bond.

I hate spam as much as the next guy (probably more, I used to be a support engineer, and spam/email distributed viruses are some of the shittier problems I faced… even worse than a busted SCSI HD array), but getting NINE years for spam?

The company that produced the first Linux distro which I liked has transformed itself not only through a corporate merger, but a name merger as well.

Mandrake + Connectiva = Mandriva. Not really creative branding IMHO, but I guess none at Mandriva really gives a shit about what I think about their new name.

I’m still a true-blue Slacker by the way… But Mandrake was the first distro that got me seriously interested in Linux.