8 Ways to Sunday

I use an antivirus program called BitDefender. It’s effective, and it doesn’t slow down my computer like Norton and McAfee. What I didn’t know until this afternoon is that you can upgrade from version 10 to version 11 (AKA “2008”) for free.

Hidden away in the BitDefender online knowledge base is an article that reveals this free upgrade option. You can find a download of the new version and upgrade instructions in this BitDefender forum thread. I’d also recommend downloading the bootable rescue CD image. You’ll need the registration key from your version 10 purchase to install upgrade.

I haven’t yet made the upgrade, so I can’t tell you anything about the new version. If you’d like to learn more, this CNet review might help. I’ll probably run a full backup of my computer tonight, and upgrade tomorrow.

Update: Back to Version 10

My attempted upgrade to BitDefender Antivirus 2008 didn’t go so well. After an hour or two of use my computer would slow to a crawl, eventually freezing completely. A search through the BitDefender forums confirmed my suspicion: the new version suffers form a memory leak.

The bug has been a topic of discussion on the user forum since at least February. BitDefender’s support staff has apparently been non-responsive, and some users are annoyed enough they’re abandoning the product altogether.

I’ll be checking up on this again before my update subscription expires. If the problem hasn’t been fixed by then, I’m going to be looking for another antivirus program. Any suggestions?

Feast your peepers on the teaser trailer for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull:

High-definition versions are available from Yahoo! Movies. If you’d like more info about the film, check out Vanity Fair’s feature article and their exclusive interview with Stephen Spielberg.

Based on some publicity photos I’ve seen of a grumpy and aged-looking Harrison Ford, I was worried that this would end up being Indiana Jones and the Damn Kids who Won’t Get Off His Lawn. This teaser leaves me a bit more hopeful.

Dictionary company Merriam-Webster has named w00t their 2007 Word of the Year. According to the site, w00t was submitted for consideration way back in 2005 by “Kat from Massachusetts” with the following definition:

w00t

interjection
expressing joy (it could be after a triumph, or for no reason at all); similar in use to the word “yay”

“w00t! I won the contest!”

Visitors to m-w.com finally voted it into the top spot for this year’s competition. You’ve come a long way, w00t.

In other w00t-related news, Grant Barrett — editor of the Double-Tongued Dictionary of fringe English — has written another amusingly formal exploration of the word’s origins. This one is far longer and more detailed than the one I linked to in 2004.

Somewhat surprisingly, Barrett traces the word’s history to hip-hop music instead of online gaming and “leet speak.” I think his argument is weakened, however, by the claim that “whoot and w00t are, for our purposes, variations of the same lexical item.”

As they say on the internets, O RLY?

According to Manuel Amador, there are benefits to offending your weblog’s audience, as well as a right and wrong way to do it. His essay on the topic is being featured on Weblog Tools Collection as part of that site’s blogging essay contest. It’s a good, thought provoking, and occasionally funny read.

If you like the article, you might want to check out Amador’s personal site. He has some good stuff there, including a cheeky formula to calculate the duration of modern copyrights and instructions on how to fix an unbootable Windows XP computer… using Linux.

Blendtec is a little company that makes kitchen appliances, most notably some uncommonly powerful blenders. Faced with the question of how to market their blenders, Blendtec decided to do something… different. You’d best take a moment to steady yourself before pressing the “play” button, especially if you own an iPod. (more…)