UseNet participants from uk.comp.sys.palmtops and alt.comp.os.palm have come up with an SOS this morning. It turns out that Tungsten 5 and Tungsten E users (at least) are affected by a serious bug that can permanently disallow Palms from being switched off. The bug came into effect only yesterday. David Gerrie from uk.comp.sys.palmtops writes:

Solved!! Palm have put a fix on the website, all to do with birthday reminders apparently! Obviously posting here (UseNet) provided the impetus to fixing it!

Update: David Gerrie has E-mailed me the direct link to the solution. Here is his explanation:

It’s knowledge base article is number 26450. It’s not an actual patch, merely a workaround solution. Not sure if they are planning on patching or not..!

Cited by: PalmAddict

I would like to dedicate the following card to everyone who has helped me in one way or another, even just by stopping by my corner of the Web. Click to enlarge.

Card generated by Apple iCards and modified slightly

I have now decided on my new year’s resolution: I will no longer travel unless I absolutely must.

“I shall care less about my appearance”

Any other resolutions?

A second top headline from the BBC is dedicated to blogs and their effects on cyberspace. It has been only hours since the last dominant blog-related headline from the BBC. A closer look revealed a ‘pagefull’ of headlines of this nature and I began to ponder Jacken’s opinion:

I can really see that big companies could feel threatened by the blogging phenomena. If I am thinking of buying a new expensive product, I always do a google search to check out what people have to say.

From BBC News:

Some of the most vivid descriptions of the devastation in southern Asia are on the internet – in the form of web logs or blogs.

Bloggers have been offering snapshots of information from around the region and are also providing some useful information for those who want to help.

The forum uk.philosophy.atheism of UseNet was noisy today. One guy called Jim Hawkings expressed the sadness and anger in a way I can embrace:

“Is God willing to prevent evil but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”

Sri Lanka shoreline, before and after the earthquake. Picture from the BBC.

Dvorak has published a little item about the growth of the Web browser Mozilla Firefox. Here is a snippet:

…Firefox is gaining marketshare by a lot. But more interesting is the fact that unlike with other browsers the Firefox users almost all quickly converted to the latest version. This shift is very noteworthy as it shows that the Firefox users are proactive. Note this is the International market where you find a lot of Opera users. And they usually have Opera report that it’s MSIE to fool certain MSFT websites…

He inspired me to take a closer look at Webalizer (I prefer AWStats, but I have used Webalizer for 3 years and it is more popular) to provide some proof that Firefox has become rather dominant on this site (see below).

According to AWStats (Web site): MS Internet Explorer (49.4 %); Firefox Mozilla (40.7 %); Unknown (3.2 %); Safari (1.5 %); Netscape (1.4 %); Opera (1.4 %); Konqueror (1.2 %); Camino (0.3 %); WebTV browser (0.1 %); Others (0.1 %).

In terms of operating systems: Windows (67.2 %); Linux (27.2 %); Unknown (5.7 %); Macintosh (2.8 %); Sun Solaris (2.4 %); WebTV (0 %); CPM (0 %); AmigaOS (0 %); FreeBSD (0 %); NetBSD (0 %); Others (0 %).