You’ve probably seen it before, that heart jolting computer monitor sight: the Blue Screen of Death. The Blue Screen (BSoD) message can pop up on computers running Windows operating systems letting a user know that a problem has been detected, and Windows will be shut down – often loosing data and anything a user is working on.

The BSoD is a common poke by techies at Microsoft’s bug-prone systems, so you may be asking yourself, why are the words BSoD and Olympics popping up together today on message boards and forums worldwide?

Yet another opening ceremony flaw has retrospectively come to light today: a projected image of the BSoD onto the roof of the Bird’s Nest stadium while veteran Chinese gymnast Li Ning was suspended on his way up to light the Olympic flame.

Images of the malfunction message have popped up on Chinese websites early this morning, and news of yet another opening ceremony mishap has spread like wild fire. This news comes in just hours after last night’s lip synching revelation, and yesterday’s fake fireworks drama.

What is in store for us tomorrow? Check back to the NZS.com blog for Olympic Games 2008 updates.

Image from Flickr.

Online and computer security has been a hot topic of late, with online banking security and spyware the major issues.

The latest problem with spyware is not from hackers or malicious website, but from the people you know and possibly live with. Most notably, suspicious spouses who turn to spyware to monitor their partners every online move, such as website visits, emails, chats, online searches, keystrokes and even activity on popular online social networking sites like Facebook, Myspace and Bebo.

Cases of domestic abuse and stalking through spyware and surveillance of Internet use have already been documented. In these situations, information gathered was then used to intimidate or control a partner.

There are many forms of Internet security that can protect you from spyware, phishers, trojans, viruses and worms – our computer security section is a great place to start.

Later today the New Zealand Open Source Awards are being held in Wellington. The Awards, sponsored by Google, Red Hat, Catalyst IT and a number of other local organisations, attracted over 130 entries in the following categories:

• Open Source Ambassador
• Open Source Contributor
• Open Source Software Project
• Open Source Use in Government
• Open Source Use in Business
• Open Source Use in Education
• Open Source Use for Community Organisations
• Open Source for Creativity

Thirty-two finalists have been picked in the above categories. Congratulations to all those who have succeeded in being nominated as finalists.

The extension of daylight savings this year is being welcomed by most New Zealanders, but it’s already causing lost sleep at night for some software providers, as computers are set to automatically change the time based on the standard time changes to date.

So, what to do about it? The New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs has written to key software providers about the change, although we can all imagine how slow that update is going to be!

On the DIA website you can find a link to Microsoft Resources for updating Daylight Savings changes.

This weekend a worldwide event called Software Freedom Day will be held to publicise open source and free software. Here in New Zealand, we have a handful of events being organised by local enthusiasts. So, if you want to find out more about open source and free software, then go along to one of the events.

Software Freedom Day is a global, grassroots effort to educate the public about the importance of software freedom and the virtues and availability of free and open source software. Local teams from all over the world organise events on the third Saturday in September.

There is a type of software that exists that you are not only allowed, but are encouraged, to copy and give to your friends. This software is not second-rate or dubious quality but, just for example, it runs most of the world wide web.

The most famous name for this software is Open Source Software also known as Free Software, FOSS, FLOSS and Libre Software. It should be noted that the the term Free Software is a reference to freedom not lack of monetary price.

The main features of Open Source Software are:

• The complete source code of the software can be accessed and modified
• It is possible to get the software without any charge

Open Source software has been significantly growing in popularity since the birth of the Internet. One of the more famous examples of Open Source Software is the Firefox Web browser. There is also a free word processor and office suite called Open Office. The Web server that serves the pages of the majority of Web sites on the Internet (Netcraft Survey) is called Apache and is Open Source Software.

Arguably one of the most significant Open Source projects is called Linux and is an operating system (like MS Windows XP and Apple OSX). This Web site is served from a system running Apache on a Linux operating system.

Here in New Zealand we have a large and active community of Linux enthusiasts and experts. We have NZLUG which is a New Zealand-wide mailing list to get help on and discussion about Linux there is also CLUG in Canterbury, and WLUG in Waikato and a quite a few other places.

There are also New Zealand companies that specialise in Open Source Software solutions, like Catalyst in Wellington and Egressive in Christchurch.