According to Forbes Warren Buffett is now the richest man on the planet.

Riding the surging price of Berkshire Hathaway (nyse: BRK – news – people ) stock, America’s most beloved investor has seen his fortune swell to an estimated $62 billion, up $10 billion from a year ago. That massive pile of scratch puts him ahead of Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT – news – people ) co-founder Bill Gates, who was the richest man in the world for 13 straight years.

Gates is now worth $58 billion and is ranked third in the world. He is up $2 billion from a year ago, but would have been perhaps as rich–or richer–than Buffett had Microsoft not made an unsolicited bid for Yahoo! (nasdaq: YHOO – news – people ) at the beginning of February.

2001

2008

If you saw Bill’s retirement movie I think he’s not worried about it.

Enjoy your retirement Bill you earned it. Being number two in the race for the worlds richest man isn’t too bad.

late,
gary pool

Did retirement cost Bill Gates his richest man in the world title? is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

GoLive has 9 Lives!

Adobe Systems announced the release of GoLive 9, a new version of their visual Web page editor. GoLive 9 costs $399; upgrades from previous versions cost $169. There is a trial version available for download.

GoLive is a WYSIWYG web design program that was acquired by Adobe from CyberStudio years ago. Adobe has really upgraded GoLive this edition. Just take a look at some of the feature upgrades GL9 boasts.

Designer styles
Design with character and paragraph styles similar to those in Adobe InDesign software but defined in CSS. Add new styles, edit existing ones, or delete old
styles in the Control panel, or use the Style Options dialog box to define specific properties.

Visual CSS layout
Use a visual CSS layout window to create or verify standards-compliant code that renders faithfully on the latest mobile devices and web browsers. Advanced Positioning and Margin & Padding tools make CSS Layout more visual and easier to use.

Place command
Conveniently place images and other content in pages using the File > Place command. If you place an image, the Save For Web feature automatically opens so you can optimize the image into the appropriate web format.

Updated tools
Work with tools familiar to you from other Adobe applications to select, edit, and create objects on the page. Streamline the design process with new or revised versions of the Text, Container, and Deep Selection tools.

Adobe InDesign integration
Copy or drag specific content components between InDesign and GoLive. Preserve formatting or applied styles, and automatically translate them into CSS.

Color management
Maintain common color settings throughout Adobe applications, and print with a simplified interface for color management.

Platform support
GoLive 9 is a universal binary application that runs natively on Intel® based Macintosh computers. It has also been thoroughly tested on 32-bit versions of Micro$oft Windoz Longhorn OSX Vista Home Premium, Business, Ultimate, and Enterprise editions.

Familiar site management tools
Simplify site management with concepts already familiar to you from Adobe Creative Suite® software. Manage your site from start to finish using a Site Window largely based on Adobe Bridge.

Publish Server
Work on multiple pages on your site and then use the Publish Server to upload, download, and synchronize modified content.

Smart Objects
Save time by placing native Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and PDF files into GoLive as Smart Objects, which re-render on-the-fly when you crop or resize them.

Mac system requirements for GoLive 9 call for a G4 or better processor (including Intel multicore processors), Mac OS X v10.4.8, 256MB RAM, 1GB hard disk space.

GoLive is really alive, really!
Well at least it has 9 lives.

late,
Gary

Adobe GoLive Still Alive! is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

1986 Mac Plus Vs. 2007 AMD Dual-Core.

Old Mac vs. New PeeCee!

I ran across this on the internet and had to share it with you.

It pits an old Mac Plus running System 6.0.8 against a New PeeCee running Windoz XP and Longhorn Windoz OSX Vista.

You Won’t Believe Who Wins!

The Most Outlandish Computer Comparison Ever!

Bloat. If you think that Americans are getting fatter, take one good look at the operating system (OS) your computer is running right now. It gets larger and more weighed down with every update. We are in the third decade of global personal computing, and have we really progressed that far?

The Comparison

The generally recommended configuration for a Mac Plus is System 6.0.8. This is an OS that needs a legitimate minimum of 1 megabyte of RAM to be able to multitask, connect to a network, print, display WYSIWYG in millions of colours (on modular Macs), as well as run a reasonable GUI. Those are functions that usually require at least 500 times more memory under Windows XP and 1,000 times more memory under Windows Vista.

When we look at OS hard disk requirements, we find similar discrepancies. System 6.0.8 requires 1MB, Windows XP requires 1.5GB and Windows Vista 15GB. Yes, Vista needs 15,000 times the hard disk space as System 6.0.8. In simple text format, you can write 175,000 words in one megabyte which is the size of System 6.0.8. That works out to about two full-length novels. Windows Vista demands enough real estate on your hard drive that you could easily fit 30,000 full-length novels into it.

System 6.0.8 is not only a lot more compact since it has far fewer (mostly useless) features and therefore less code to process, but also because it was written in assembly code instead of the higher level language C. The lower the level of the code language, the less processing cycles are required to get something done.

The Mac Plus has a Motorola 68000 CPU running at 8MHz. The AMD has an Athlon 64 X2 4800+ with two cores, each running at 2.4GHz. In absolute computing power exclusively measured in processor speed, AMD’s combined 4.8GHz is 600 times faster than the Motorola. However, the AMD is a far more advanced processor, thus performs in conventional benchmarks much faster than the old 68000 per Mhz. So it’s very safe to say that the AMD is at least 1,000 times faster than the Mac Plus.

We decided to splurge and fit the maximum possible 4MB RAM into the old Plus. After all it was going up against AMD with its 2x512MB RAM for a total of 1,024MB or 1GB. That’s about 250 times more memory than the Mac.

The Mac was fitted with an external SCSI 40MB Hard Drive. The AMD had an internal IDE 120GB Hard Drive with a 3,000 times greater data capacity. Both drives were under 10% filled.

Conclusion

Check out the results! For the functions that people use most often, the 1986 vintage Mac Plus beats the 2007 AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+: 9 tests to 8! Out of the 17 tests, the antique Mac won 53% of the time! Including a jaw-dropping 52 second whipping of the AMD from the time the Power button is pushed to the time the Desktop is up and useable.

We also didn’t want to overly embarrass the AMD by comparing the time it takes to install the OS vs. the old Mac. The Mac’s average of about a minute is dwarfed by the approximately one hour install time of Windows XP Pro.

Is this to say that the Mac Plus is a better computer than the AMD? Of course not. The technological advancements of 21 years have placed modern PCs in a completely different league of varied capacities. But the “User Experience” has not changed much in two decades. Due to bloated code that has to incorporate hundreds of functions that average users don’t even know exist, let alone ever utilize, the software companies have weighed down our PCs to effectively neutralize their vast speed advantages. When we compare strictly common, everyday, basic user tasks between the Mac Plus and the AMD we find remarkable similarities in overall speed, thus it can be stated that for the majority of simple office uses, the massive advances in technology in the past two decades have brought zero advance in productivity.

late,
Gary

Mac Vs. PC is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

No one expected fists to fly when Micro$oft chairman Bill Gates and Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs appeared on stage together this week. But it’s clear there’s no love lost between Apple and M$.

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and Apple CEO Steve Jobs took the stage Wednesday night, May 30th at The Wall Street Journal’s D: All Things Digital conference.

Jobs and Gates at times seemed to be overcome about their history together. Indeed, by the end, both men seemed choked up by the emotion of the moment.

Even after being praised for his recent philanthropic efforts, Gates talked more about what he did in the technology industry than what his charitable foundation is doing now.

“The most important work I got a chance to be involved in – no matter what I do – is the personal computer,” Gates said. “That’s my life’s work.”

Of course this appearance wasn’t all “lovey dovey”. At one point Jobs tried to convince Gates that Apple isn’t trying to be mean by poking fun at the “PC guy,” the lovable loser who stands in sharp contrast to Apple’s cool “Mac guy” in the popular series of commercials.

Gates in an interview with Newsweek earlier this year, he’d even questioned the ads’ veracity.

“I’d give a lot to have Steve’s taste – in terms of intuitive taste for people and products,” he said. “The way he does things, it’s just different. It’s magical.”

Similarly, Jobs said that Apple could have learned a lot from Microsoft’s penchant for partnering with other companies in the industry. Partnering simply wasn’t in Apple’s DNA, and the company didn’t learn how to do it until decades after its founding, he said.

“The funny thing is Microsoft’s one of the few companies we were able to partner with (where) that actually worked for both companies,” he said.

The event was the first time Jobs and Gates have made a joint public appearance since the 1997 Boston at Macworld, when Gates joined Jobs via teleconference to announce a landmark deal between their two companies. The previous time the two appeared together at a public event was in the early 1980s.

Jobs is well known for taking pot-shots at his company’s bigger rival. And he didn’t disappoint on Wednesday. The company’s iTunes software is one of the most popular programs on computers running Micro$oft’s Windoz operating system, Jobs noted in his conversation earlier in the day with Mossberg. Indeed, he said, some users have written to tell Apple that iTunes is their favorite Windoz application.

“It’s like giving a glass of ice water to somebody in hell,” he said.

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates at The Wall Street Journal Executive Conference, D: All Things Digital at the Four Seasons Resort Aviara in Carlsbad, California.

late,
Gary

Bill Gates and Steve Jobs Share Same Stage once Again – Apple vs M$ is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

As more and more M$ PeeCee users begin to use Mac they will be looking for the stuff they had to do with their old computers.

I ran across this interesting TOP 10 list today and I thought you might be interested in checking it out.

If you’re reading this list, you probably know that the Mac is one of the best machines around when it comes to keeping you secure on the Internet. But it’s also been receiving more scrutiny from the press and security professionals recently, and no machine is 100% safe. As the Mac becomes more popular, and as more services become Internet-based and cross-platform, so do the associated risks.

You can help keep not only your Macintosh, but also the Macintosh community as whole secure on the Internet by taking a few simple steps beyond those many significant ones that Apple has built into Mac OS X. Here’s our "top 10" list. We welcome any additions or alternatives you might have.

1. Physical security first. Although not strictly an Internet security issue, the odds of something bad happening to your Mac due to a physical problem are much higher than something happening to it over the Internet. So take precautions appropriate to your situation, such as physical lock-down cables, surge protectors and proper care of data on portable machines (such as encryption of any important files). And be sure to keep good, up-to-date local and remote backups.
2. "The only constant is change." Especially on the Internet. New security threats are discovered, temporary fixes and updates are issued, mistakes are sometimes made. It’s important to keep up as best you can:
   1. Subscribe to Apple’s Software Update and install security fixes soon after they’re available, although not necessary immediately
   2. Utilize online (for instance our blog isfym.com) and offline (for instance users’ groups) sources to keep up with new security issues, implement temporary protection as needed, and make sure updates appear good.
   3. Keep up on updates for any other popular applications you use, especially cross-platform ones like Microsoft products and security applications like your firewall and anti-virus applications.
   4. And of course stay knowledgeable about everything you can.
3. Use a personal firewall. You need a personal firewall on each of your machines, and the one Apple includes in Mac OS X is only sufficient for keeping you safe until you can get a better one. Be sure your firewall has logging fully enabled, and use a log analysis application to highlight issues that need to be addressed. And, no, the so-called firewall in any router you may have isn’t good enough either (although it does help).
4. Use good passwords. Until the day we log into everything through retinal scans or other "biometric" means, passwords will be the main way we identify ourselves to Internet-based services. Use passwords appropriate to the importance of the service they’re protecting, choosing longer, harder to guess (and more unique) passwords for the more critical services. Apple’s password assistant, built into Keychain Access, can be a big help here.
5. Do not send confidential information by email, unless you know how to use encrypted email. Also treat all email messages received, even from people you know, as suspect. Same applies to IM (with certain exceptions like encrypted iChat). On the Web, be sure the Web page is a secure one (look for the lock icon) before entering confidential information.
6. Never open attachments in email messages, which are more often than not viruses. This advise may seem a bit over the top, but you should apply it as the general rule, with the only real exception being when you know the person who sent you the attachment and the context from the rest of the email makes it clear that that person really did intend to send you that attachment.
7. Never click on links sent in email messages. Again this is the general rule, with similar exceptions as with email attachments. These links are often to "phishing" Web sites that will attempt to steal personal information from you, or to "maliciously-crafted" Web sites that will attempt to do even worse things, like take over your machine (yes, even if you do use a Mac). Always type URLs directly into your Web browser, use known-good bookmarks, or click on links from reputable sites (including search engines) that you’ve gotten to through one of these methods.
8. Consider an anti-virus application. There are essentially no known Mac-specific viruses, and use of anti-virus applications can help keep it that way. Right now, anti-virus applications are essentially insurance policies, which you hope to never need to use, but are glad you have if you do. Also like insurance, you need to be sure to keep your anti-virus application, and its associated virus definitions, up to date.
9. If at all possible, do not provide any services from your Macintosh. In other words, all services in the Sharing pane of System Preferences should be off, along with other services like iTunes music sharing and iPhoto photo sharing. If you do need to offer services, use your personal firewall to restrict access to as few machines as possible (preferably just machines on your local network). And of course use good passwords for those services, in particular for the cross-platform Remote Login (ssh) service, which is often subject to dictionary attack.
10. Properly secure your wireless (AirPort) environment, both at home and on the road. At home the most important things are to change your wireless router’s password and to use WPA encryption. Beyond that, don’t allow your router to be administered over the Internet and add other security measures (like creating a closed network and limiting access by ID) if you feel comfortable configuring them. On the road, be sure to turn off or block any services your Mac is providing through your firewall, be cognizant of who’s looking over your shoulder, use a VPN if you’re talking back to your home or work network and watch our for rogue access points

While I don’t actually buy in on all this paranoia, I do feel that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
I believe in being prepared. I have found, by experience, that if I prepare well I will never need it. A worth while trade in my book.

The DoorStop X Security Suite costs less than $50. No I don’t own it yet, but there is a free evaluation download.

late,
Gary

Internet Security for Your Macintosh Computer is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician

Turning Lamp – won in the “futuristic” category, starts up with a simple pull of a cord as if one were turning on a lamp. Each time you pull, the box changes into a different mode, from Pee Cee to music player to video player.

It still looks an awful lot like the Mac Mini to me!

PHOTOS: Pee Cees THAT BARELY RESEMBLE A Pee Cee

If you thought the iMac only vaguely resembled a legitimate personal computer, wait until you get a load of the winners of the PC Design Contest 2007. From the obscure input devices of the Egg PC to the pull cord-activated Turing Lamp to the Tron-inspired B-Membrain, these radical revisions to collective CPU and peripheral device designs are equal parts science fiction and fashion accessory, only without all the Steve Jobs-style marketing hype. Just call them the anti-iMacs.

Results are in for the PC Design Contest 2007, co-sponsored by Intel Korea and Samsung.
The designs that won were announced last week. Six designs won out of 644 entries.

late,
Gary

Pee Cees that look like Macs – at least not like Pee Cees! is a post stolen from the Search Engine Optimizician