Whistler has come to the aid of tsunami victims in the South Pacific with several fundraising events, but in case you missed out you can still make a contribution online to the central charities involved in the effort.
The main one is the Red Cross of Canada, which is taking donations at www.redcross.ca. Other charitable organizations include Doctors Without Borders at www.msf.ca, Unicef Canada at www.unicef.ca, Oxfam Canada at www.oxfam.ca, CARE Canada at www.care.ca, War Child at www.warchild.ca and World Vision Canada at www.worldvision.ca.
I know that’s a lot of organizations, but then it’s an unprecedented humanitarian disaster that’s left 160,000 dead, thousands injured, and millions homeless and without any means of support, while creating conditions that could lead to an epidemic of disease and sickness. It’s going to take years and billions of dollars to make these areas self-sufficient again, and even then it will never be the same.
All of these charities provide different kinds of aid, so visit each one and decide where you want your donations going.
Microsoft tackles security and spyware
Last week, responding to the growing number of virus attacks against Windows, Internet Explorer, and other programs, Microsoft released two new services.
The first is a free security tool that’s available at the www.microsoft.com download site. It’s not a full anti-virus program, but Microsoft confirmed it’s a beta version of a full program that will be available for sale next year, competing with software from McAfee, Symantec, Network Associates, Intego and others.
There is some speculation that Microsoft is moving slowly after undergoing several anti-trust suits in the U.S. and Europe, and is concerned with further accusations that the company is attempting to build a software monopoly.
The second program is not available yet, but according to Microsoft it would remove spyware programs.
It will also be free, but Microsoft said it might charge for future versions of the software, which Microsoft acquired in purchasing a small New York company.
The year that wasn’t
High tech is an optimistic field, to say the least; an endearing quality, but it sometimes leads companies to make promises they can’t possibly keep. For every CEO making a promise, somewhere there’s a project manager slapping his or her forehead – products can be late or sometimes are vastly different by the time they become available as to what was originally promised. And sometimes they never become available at all.
Although companies are probably hoping nobody will notice, Wired magazine (www.wired.com) has tracked these things for the past eight years in year-end articles. They call it the Vaporware Awards, with readers voting on the top-10 disappearing products of the year.
10. Alienware’s Video Array, a piece of hardware and software that was supposed to allow two video cards to work together, increasing their performance significantly when it comes to rendering 3D images. This made the list because not only did it not materialize, the company took a swipe at the competition when they first presented it at the E3 electronics expo.
9. Intel’s Pentium 4 processor clocked at 4 GHz didn’t appear as promised, topping off at 3.8 GHz. A minor difference to most, it had some tech geeks crying foul.
8. Apple was also expected to debut a line of G5 chips, manufactured by IBM, at 3 GHz by now, but that technology is already six months late.
7. Valve Software, a gaming company, finally made it to market with Half-Life 2 and by all reports it was worth the wait – more than a year overdue, but worth the wait. The company still has to explain the missing sequel to another series, Team Fortress 2: Brotherhood of Arms, which was expected in 1999.
6. Sony’s Gran Turismo 4 was supposed to be available for the Playstation 2 in 2002, but probably won’t appear in stores until the first quarter of 2005 – less than a year away from the expected release of the Playstation 3.
5. The next ATI Radeon X800 series of video cards was eagerly awaited by gamers, and was expected in December of 2004. Despite a public release, the cards never showed up in stores – only reviewers managed to get copies.
4. TiVo home hard drive video recorders were supposed to release a version that supports high definition television by now, which is still missing. TiVoToGo, which allows you to transfer recorded shows to laptops and other devices was also late, but was finally released on Jan. 3.
3. Microsoft Longhorn, the long-awaited follow-up to Windows XP, was originally supposed to be shipped in 2004, but the release will be closer to summer of 2005 and won’t have some of the features originally promised.
2. A Hawaiian company called Maui X-Stream announced a new Mac emulator for Windows PC’s, but the stampede of users waiting to download the software caused a crash at Slashdot. The company then pulled the software, although promised it would be back for November. Then November came and went, leading some to speculate that the program was just a copy of an existing emulator that has its share of problems. We may never know.
1. The number one Vaporware product for 2004 is the aptly named Phantom by Infinium Labs. Phantom was supposed to be a games-on-demand console where you could download the games you want to play, or go online to play others. The technology has been shown at E3 and the website at www.phantom.net is still up and running, but there’s still no word on games, release dates, system costs or anything concrete. The launch date is sometime in 2005.
