http://www.ComputerBob.com/journal_archive/2007/03.php .
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If you're thinking of switching to Linux, you may want to read The Reality About Switching to Linux. Its author could probably use a refresher course in proper punctuation and the difference between singular and plural, but his experience with Linux mostly rings true.
Many Linux users feel perfectly safe browsing the web and using email without using any antivirus software. After all, Linux operating systems have always been built from the ground up to be more secure than Windows operating systems. But are those users really safe, or do they have a false sense of security? Read Note To New Linux Users: No Antivirus Needed and the informative comments that appear after it, and then see what you think.
According to this morning's issue of the WindowsSecrets newsletter, time is running out on Vista 'Express upgrades.' That means that if you recently bought a new PC that came with Windows XP installed, plus a coupon for a free Vista upgrade, you'll only have to ignore that coupon for a few more weeks.
"What the world needs now is love, sweet love." I think that the world could also use
a new type of rechargeable battery that comes almost fully charged, and can hold its charge for years.
It doesn't present a bunch of highly technical statistics and concepts to make its point — it just uses relatively simple language to explain Why Linux STILL Runs Faster Than Windows.
"The effort to control what's called e-waste could lead to a national 'e-fee,' a recycling charge that would be paid just like a sales tax on laptop PCs, computer monitors, televisions and some other electronic devices." Just like it does with other taxes, and just like the states do with the money that they make from state lotteries, don't be surprised if the federal government collects the new tax for its stated ecological purpose, but then shamelessly squanders it on completely unrelated pork barrel projects.
It doesn't roll off of the tongue as smoothly as the phrase, "No pain, no gain," but if you work out at a health club, you may want to start getting used to saying, "No pain, no kilowatts."
Thanks for your help — this new technology is
very confusing.
If you've ever used DOS commands in MS-DOS or in a command line window within Windows, then Linux/Unix shell commands will seem sort of familiar.
"Citing concerns over cost and compatibility, the top technology official at the federal Department of Transportation has placed a moratorium on all in-house computer upgrades to Microsoft's new Windows Vista operating system, as well as Internet Explorer 7 and Office 2007, according to a memo obtained Friday by InformationWeek.
In a memo to his staff, the DOT's CIO Daniel Mintz says he has placed 'an indefinite moratorium' on the upgrades as 'there appears to be no compelling technical or business case for upgrading to these new Microsoft software products. Furthermore, there appears to be specific reasons not to upgrade.'"
Good for them. Many of us have been saying those same things for the past several months, so I'm glad to see that one government department was intelligent enough to figure them out.
If you use the Microsoft Internet Explorer browser, and you copy and paste (Control+C) any data, that copied data (i.e., passwords, credit card numbers, etc.) can be read by any web site that contains some malicious code.
For months, I waited for the WordPress 2.1, thinking that I would convert this entire Journal into a WordPress blog. Then, 2.1 was released, but it had several reported problems, so I decided to wait for 2.1.1. Recently, 2.1.1 was released, but it inadvertently contained a security exploit that was added to it by a cracker. Now, 2.1.2 has been released to solve that problem, but that security exploit scares me away from trusting WordPress with the thousands of hours of work that I've put into this Journal. Maybe I'll get over that with time; maybe not.
If you're looking for an easy way to start eating healthier, you may find some good advice in
Making The Switch To A Low Glycemic Index Diet.
Regular readers of this Journal know that I've had my PC set up to dual-boot between Linux and Windows XP since last July, but I haven't used XP at all in the past 8 months. Even my wife's been using Linux for the past few months. Unfortunately, in the past few days, she had to edit and then email Microsoft Word documents to several different people, and Linux's OpenOffice.org word processor wasn't quite able to meet that challenge. Each time she opened an existing Word document, made some changes to it, and then re-saved it as a Word document within OpenOffice, that conversion messed up a lot of her carefully adjusted document formatting. I tried everything I could think of to solve the problem, but I couldn't find a Linux-based solution. So, yesterday, I booted into Windows XP and downloaded and configured both Firefox (browser) and Thunderbird (email) for her. Then, I installed Microsoft Word, the Firefox NoScript extension, and the free version of the ZoneAlarm firewall. Finally, I locked everything down securely, using my experience, along with free utilities and advice that I got from Steve Gibson's excellent site. Then I spent some time checking and double-checking it all, to make sure that it would do what she needed it to do. I have to say that, having used Linux for the past 8 months, I found it extremely time-consuming, non-intuitive, scary, and frustrating to have to do things "the Microsoft way" again. For example, in the middle of the Word installation, XP asked me to insert my XP Service Pack 2 CD. When I did that, it told me "That is the wrong CD." After a couple more tries, I finally inserted my regular XP installation CD (with Service Pack 2) into the computer and it accepted that. Throughout the whole process, I deeply (and very vocally) resented the fact that Microsoft Word's stupid, undocumented, proprietary file format was the cause of all of my extra work and trouble. Needless to say, I will happily keep using Linux exclusively, but from now on, my wife will be able to boot into Windows XP whenever she needs to do Microsoft-specific work.
Speaking of dual-booting a PC, it's relatively easy to set up a dual-boot, or even a multi-boot situation, giving you the choice of 2 or more operating systems each time you start up your PC. That is, unless you're using Windows Vista, which tries to be the only OS on your PC.
Starting this year, Daylight Savings Time in the U.S., Canada, and Bermuda will start 3 weeks earlier and end 1 week later than it did in the past. How will PCs know about that new time-change? It's simple: Companies that use a Windows operating system will
pay Microsoft $4,000 (U.S.D) to patch each of their applications and operating systems. Incredibly, that's only one-tenth of the fee that the company charged for that same service last year. In the meantime, companies that use Linux have already downloaded its daylight savings update for free.
This Journal entry is now part of a separate article, My Previous Life Is Over. You can find it in the Personal Stuff section of this site.
Yesterday, I told you about how I set up the Windows XP side of my Linux-XP dual-boot PC, for my wife to use to do Microsoft-specific work. Though I haven't had any need to use Windows since I switched to Linux last July, if I had to use Windows for some reason, there are a few ways that I could
make the Windows experience more Linux-like.
What do you think of Linux? Have you ever booted one of the free bootable-CD Linux distros, to give it a try? If so, good for you! If not, is it because of negative things that you've heard about it? Linux Truths, Half-Truths, and Myths tries to set the record straight about what you can expect when you try a Linux distro. As always, be sure to read the readers' comments at the end of the article, since they help give a clearer picture of Linux.
30 Days with Linux is an interesting piece that documents one person's adventures with using the highly popular Ubuntu Linux exclusively for awhile. Of course, your mileage may vary.
Remember when the U.S. government's antitrust case against Microsoft, alleging that that it was an illegal monopoly? Documents from that case are still making their way into the public eye, and some of them reveal some of the company's ruthless business tactics. For example,
this discussion is about how Redmond considered dumping development of MS Office for the Mac, as a fast-and-easy way to hurt Mac sales.
This Journal entry is now part of a separate article, My Previous Life Is Over. You can find it in the Personal Stuff section of this site.
As you may know, Windows Vista's many downsides are causing a lot of companies and institutions to consider other options. One of the latest to consider leaving Windows behind is the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. It plans to introduce Linux to Japanese schools in the near future. "According to an investigation conducted in the spring of last year, there are currently over 400,000 computers at schools in Japan running on either Windows 98 or Windows Me, systems no longer supported by the software manufacturer Microsoft. The prohibitive cost of replacing these machines with newer models, as well as the rising price of proprietary software, prompted school teachers and administrators to propose the possibility of switching to open-source software as an affordable alternative."
You may or may not be aware that, for $50 (U.S.D) per user, per year, Google offers a suite of online business applications, including "e-mail, calendaring, messaging, and talk applications, as well as a word processor and a spreadsheet." A few days ago, I told you that the U.S. Department of Transportation had announced that it had placed a moratorium on upgrades to Windows Vista, Office 2007, and Internet Explorer 7. Now, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration is thinking of permanently banning those Microsoft products and using the Google online business applications instead, running on Linux PCs.
If you've ever watched a Hollywood movie and seen things that make you think, "Hey, that's not how things work!," then you'll probably enjoy
9 Laws of Physics That Don’t Apply in Hollywood.
This Journal entry is now part of a separate article, My Previous Life Is Over. You can find it in the Personal Stuff section of this site.
"Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive." This story shouldn't really surprise anyone: As if it hasn't caused them enough public relations trouble over the past few years, it's been reported that the Windows Genuine Advantage anti-piracy component
phones home to Microsoft, sending it some data from your Windows registry, even when you choose not to install it. Maybe their slogan should be, "Windows — How Do You Want To Be Spied On Today?"
This Journal entry is now part of a separate article, My Previous Life Is Over. You can find it in the Personal Stuff section of this site.
Yesterday's issue of the Windows Secrets newsletter contained a piece titled, "Find Your True Internet Connection Speed." It arrived exactly when I needed to see it, since I had recently been noticing that my browsing speeds seemed to be slower than normal. Though I had used one of the recommended speed-testing sites many times in the past, I hadn't thought to use it now, to see what my actual connection speed is. When I did some tests yesterday, I learned that my average download speed had dropped from its normal 732 kbps to only 359 kbps. Shutting down my Linux firewall didn't make any difference. Neither did rebooting into Windows XP. That told me that the problem must be with my DSL connection itself, rather than with Linux or Windows. So I shut off my DSL modem for one minute and then rebooted my PC. Afterward, my download speed was 745 kbps, which is faster than it's been in the past, and more than twice the speed that it's been lately. It's amazing to me that all I had to do to solve the problem was reboot my DSL modem, to force it to get a new connection. Cool.
Hewlett-Packard is seeing some indicators that desktop Linux may be reaching a critical mass. As a result, the company may soon become the only tier-one PC manufacturer to offer
PCs that are preloaded with Linux.
This Journal entry is now part of a separate article, My Previous Life Is Over. You can find it in the Personal Stuff section of this site.
A few days ago, I told you that Windows Genuine Advantage "phones home" to Microsoft, even when users choose not to install it. Now the same source has reported that all Microsoft upgrades phone home. Do you still want to be a Windows user?
About 21 years ago, I wrote a paper on the future of education, in which I predicted that scientists would eventually develop a brain-to-computer interface and human-implantable memory chips that would completely revolutionize educational theory and practice. Soon, gamers will be able to use a primitive form of that interface
instead of buttons and joysticks.
This Journal entry is now part of a separate article, My Previous Life Is Over. You can find it in the Personal Stuff section of this site.
Daylight Savings Time started at its new time last night, in the U.S., Canada, and Bermuda. Linux automatically changed its clock while I slept, but I may have to manually change Windows XP's clock the next time my wife boots into it.
Can you name the widely hated Windows component that poses a huge threat to the future of Linux? You are correct if you thought of Digital Rights Management.
I don't think that all of the
Top 5 Future Technologies are good ideas. For example, I don't want to wait for the energy gobbling dishmaker to make a new set of dishes for me every time I want to eat. In addition to using a lot of energy, it would create a lot of waste over time, since the dishes can only be used about 100 times before they have to be thrown out. The site says that it will save you a lot of cabinet space, but that claim ignores the fact that the dishmaker itself takes up a lot of space. What's next — a machine that takes up half of my bedroom and weaves brand new disposable sheets for my bed every night? No, thank you.
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One of the most publicized advantages of open source software is that anyone can change its code to do whatever they want it to do. That's all well and good for people who know enough to be able to dive into the code and make changes, but there's an important reason why you should care about open source software, even if you're not a programmer.
If you use Google's webmaster tools to control its spidering of your web site, you know that search engines seem to take forever to notice changes that you make to your site's spidering permissions. Here's one author's example of exactly how long it takes.
Proponents of Daylight Savings Time often cite U.S. founding father Benjamin Franklin as the originator of that idea. But was Ben
just joking when he first proposed the idea of Daylight Savings Time?
This Journal entry is now part of a separate article, My Previous Life Is Over. You can find it in the Personal Stuff section of this site.
If you're considering a career in computer science, you may want to give it some more thought. At least one academic theorizes that the high cost of education, a lack of high-paying jobs, and the rise of "anyone-can-do-it" technologies may lead to the death of computer science. That begs the question, "Then who will develop any future 'anyone-can-do-it' technologies?" It appears that, the better a computer scientist you are, the faster you work yourself out of a job.
A job interview is a stressful event, but it's even more stressful when you realize that some interviewers will ask you trick questions, just to see if they can catch you in a mistake. Here's one example of the type of interview traps that you'll want to avoid. "I guess I'd have to say that I regret embezzling from the company that I used to work for — and then murdering my boss when she caught me... Did I say something wrong?"
It's one of those old urban legends that makes a great point, but you know that it's way too perfect of an example to actually be true. This one reminds us that
punctuation is important. Its "tell" is the fact that we know that most students wouldn't have a clue how to correctly punctuate that sentence even one way, let alone 2 different ways.
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Linux is growing in popularity all the time. Even the Wall Street Journal has noticed that desktop Linux is starting to look good to a lot of people.
It doesn't surprise me at all. In fact, I not only thought that it would eventually happen, but, as a copyright holder and a defender of intellectual property rights, I actually hoped that it would: Viacom has sued the video sharing site, YouTube, and its owner, Google, for more than $1 billion, claiming that the site fosters widespread copyright infringement. YouTube is fun to visit, but it's not fair (or legal or moral) to make money from other people's copyrighted works without their permission.
Many people are angry that after they install a brand new security package in Windows Vista, Windows Genuine Advantage considers their fully licensed-and-paid-for copy of Vista to be "non-genuine." Microsoft says that WGA's behavior is
a feature, not a bug, and it protects Vista users from malware. What do you think?
This Journal entry is now part of a separate article, My Previous Life Is Over. You can find it in the Personal Stuff section of this site.
Companies, governments, schools, and people all over the world have discovered that they can save money and reduce risks by using Linux instead of Windows. Let's hope that the trend continues.
For the past decade or so, every new version of Windows has contained increasingly more restrictive
DRM components. And, as I said a few days ago, DRM poses a significant threat to the future of Linux. So should we worry about
DRM? Not according to one cryptography expert. He says that
DRM won't last, because people don't like it, and because it threatens the future of archival data. I sure hope that he's right.
With as many intrusive DRM and WGA restrictions as Windows Vista has, I'm pretty surprised that a simple Registry hack will allow anyone to legally postpone the need to 'activate' Vista indefinitely. To me, that seems highly counterproductive to Microsoft's stated goal of preventing Vista from being pirated. Now that the cat is out of the bag, I wonder if Redmond will end up plugging that piracy loophole with a mandatory Windows Update.
I recently told you that Viacom has sued YouTube and its owner, Google, for more than $1 billion (USD), alleging that the video sharing site infringes on its copyrights. Here are two opinion pieces and several comments that present both sides of that case.
If you're hoping to get a good job doing IT software support, you may be disappointed to learn about that field's relatively bleak future. On the other hand, Tech Jobs: How to Get Hired in 2007 may help you choose an IT career path that has a brighter future.
Can I freshen your cup of coffee for you? Would you like me to add an ice cube,
to warm it up?
Sometimes, it's good to read about other people's experiences with something new before you try it out for yourself. On the plus side, it gives you certain expectations for what you're going to experience, and it makes it all seem more familiar when you try it for the first time. On the other hand, a problem with any such anecdotal evidence is that the other person's experience may or may not relate to what you're going to experience if you try the same thing. Their experience may have been affected, either positively or negatively, by factors that aren't going to affect you at all. For example, if someone tells you that they had a horrible experience with a piece of software, but you know that their PC is constantly riddled with viruses and other malware, you may decide that their horrible experience could have been caused by the viruses and malware, not by the software that they tried out. The same thing would apply if you know that someone's PC has long had some type of underlying hardware problem. In other words, you always have to consider the source of any review that you read, and decide whether or not the reviewer's experience will relate to your situation. That's why it's always best to try to read several different reviews of something before you decide whether or not it'll be worth the effort to try it yourself. If several different reviewers all had the same experience with something, then you'll probably have that experience with it, too. I always keep that in mind when I read a review like Linux Desktop — Is it an Option for Normal Users? Its author relates his experience with trying 12 different Linux distros. Before I read the review, I already knew that thousands people use each of those Linux distros, and many people have written glowing reviews about each of them. So, I suspect that his particular problems with all 12 of them may have been due to one or more undiagnosed, underlying hardware configuration errors or incompatibilities, rather than bugs in the Linux distros themselves.
Basically, it seems to me that, while everyone has a right to share their particular experiences about anything they want, it's just silly for any one individual to proclaim that Linux "is ready" or "isn't ready" for everyone else, based solely on their own extremely limited experience with trying particular Linux distros on their particular PC. I suspect that that's why so many reviews make it clear that "your mileage may vary." I'd like to propose that, from now on, we all stop writing about whether "Linux is ready for prime time," or "Linux is ready for normal users," and instead start writing about whether or not a particular Linux distro runs well on our particular PCs and meets our own particular computing needs. Of course, your mileage may vary.
If you have your own web site, and it uses CSS stylesheets, the Clean CSS site will optimize your stylesheets for you. Even using its least aggressive mode, it shrank this site's main CSS stylesheet from 24K down to only 16K — a 31% reduction.
A quick search of this site will find several stories about Registerfly, a domain registrar that I had problems with and left a few years ago. In fact, many people have had bad experiences with Registerfly, and its bad reputation has gotten much worse in the past few years. The good news is that ICANN has finally taken action against the company and will soon terminate Registerfly's accreditation.
A pet food manufacturer that supplies foods to IAMS, Wal-Mart, Eukanuba, and many other brand names, has discovered that an ingredient in 60 million containers of their recently manufactured dog and cat foods can cause kidney failure and death. If your dog or cat food comes in cans or small pouches, be sure to check to see if it's on the huge list of
recalled pet foods.
This Journal entry is now part of a separate article, My Previous Life Is Over. You can find it in the Personal Stuff section of this site.
Working in IT used to be challenging, yet fulfilling — requiring a full range of both analytical and creative skills. Many IT workers miss those days, and now find it a challenge to get any fulfillment from their jobs. Here's some good advice on How to Stop the Dilbertization of IT. Now if we could just get the pointy-haired boss to read it...
What do you think will be the effect of Viacom's $1 billion+ copyright infringement lawsuit against YouTube? One legal expert says that it will result in
copyright chaos.
This Journal entry is now part of a separate article, My Previous Life Is Over. You can find it in the Personal Stuff section of this site.
If you're a Linux zealot, and you need help to try to convince everyone you know to switch to Linux, you should read an article and its related discussion called 15 Tips to Get People to Use the Linux Desktop.
According to one author, the free and open-source software movement really only has one major opponent: Microsoft. Still, that one opponent has a frightening amount of money, power and influence. So, who will eventually win the battle between private interests and freedom? See if you agree with the author of
The Nuclear Option.
Each new version of Windows embarks on a similar lifespan, made up of predictable stages. Windows Vista is currently at a stage that is providing an opportunity for Linux to make more headway into corporate and personal desktop environments.
If you're a Windows Vista zealot, or if you're a Linux user who's curious about how Microsoft's plans to try to market its products to you, take a look at Redmond's training video, Winning Against Linux the Smart Way.
Two of the most-expressed complaints against Microsoft Word are that:
If that's how you feel, then
Alpha Geek: Make Microsoft Word Less Annoying will show how to tweak Word's settings to make it work the way you want.
Lately, I've spent a lot of time looking for a standards-compliant, easy to use, free and open source photo gallery solution, to use on a charity web site that I develop and host for free. According to Wikipedia, there are several choices, but it's going to take effort to figure out which one will work best for the charity's needs. For example, yesterday, I spent several hours installing and configuring a ZenPhoto gallery on the site. Afterward, I discovered that I would have to manually copy and paste about 6 specific sections of code from one of my web pages into the appropriate places of 3 different ZenPhoto template pages, and do some major tweaking to the site's CSS stylesheet, just to get the gallery pages to have the same overall look as the rest of the site. I'm willing to do all of that work, but then I'd have to redo it all every time a ZenPhoto upgrade is released. That process is way too complicated and error-prone to be a good long-term solution, so I'm going to try another gallery package that I have in mind, to see if it will do the job more easily. I'll let you know how it all turns out.
By now, practically everyone has seen those funny Mac vs. PC commercials. Many of us have also seen many of the attempts to spoof those commercials. And some of us have even seen a few spoofs that tried to add Linux to the mix. Here's one guy's description of why and how his company created 3 spoofs that portray Linux as "the winner" of the 3-way competition.
It seems like a good idea, and over the past several years, many people have done a lot of work to promote the idea of the Semantic Web. So you may be surprised to read Why the Semantic Web Will Fail.
DRM is a friend to Windows Vista. DRM is an enemy to Linux. DRM is an enemy to freedom. But here's some good news for those who want to see DRM go away: DRM is also an enemy to
the customers of one of Europe's largest online music stores.
Yesterday, I deleted the ZenPhoto gallery and its supporting database that I had installed on the charity site on the previous day. Then I replaced it with a new Plogger gallery and its supporting database. The main reason I chose Plogger was because its web site says, "Integrating our gallery software into your website is as easy as inserting three lines of PHP code." That sounded really good, but it turned out to be not quite true in this case. It's true that it only took 3 lines of PHP code to make the Plogger gallery appear on the charity web site, but it wasn't integrated very well into the site's overall look and feel. I discovered that several items in Plogger's two separate CSS stylesheets conflicted with and overrode the charity web site's own stylesheet, causing the site's layout to go awry whenever the gallery page displayed. It took 7 hours to painstakingly figure out which stylesheet was causing each problem, and then figure out which line(s) to change in each stylesheet to solve each problem. Then it took another 3 hours to tweak Plogger's underlying PHP code, to remove several CPU-hogging features from the photo gallery. Don't even ask me what I'm going to do about future Plogger upgrades. Anyway, after all of that work, the photo gallery looks and works exactly the way I wanted, and from now on, it'll be quick and easy to add new photos to it. Whew!
In the past few weeks, I've mentioned the Viacom-YouTube-Google $1+ billion copyright infringement lawsuit a few times. In all the times that I've thought about that lawsuit, I had never thought of the possibility that maybe Google wanted to be sued.
This is absolutely amazing. I guarantee that you're going to want to show it to your friends.
Silverbrook's Memjet printers are the most incredible computer printers you've ever seen.
Back when I used to use Windows, I frequently used IrfanView to resize and optimize photos before uploading them to my web sites. The other day, I went looking for a similar tool to use in Linux. A few quick searches revealed that I don't need to install any separate software to do that in Mepis Linux, my preferred Linux distro. Mepis already has that capability. All I have to do is select some icons of photos and right-click on them. The resulting drop-down menu contains automatic resizing and optimizing options, and will also let me choose whether to overwrite the original photos or create new ones with different filenames.
Now that I've been looking, I keep finding more and more things that are both appetizing and healthy to eat. The latest one is chicken breasts. A medium-sized chicken breast (6-7 oz.) with skin has zero grams of carbohydrates, about 38 grams of protein, and only about 10 grams of fat. That's pretty good, but if the breast is skinless, the amount of fat drops to only about 4 grams. If you've bought any chicken lately, you've noticed that chicken breasts are relatively expensive, with skinless chicken breasts often rivaling the cost of steak. However, at Sam's Club, they often have fresh, boneless, skinless chicken breasts for only $1.98 (USD) per pound. That's much cheaper than what other stores charge for hamburger! The other day, I went to Sam's and bought a package of 13 large (~9 oz.) boneless, skinless chicken breasts for $14.71, which works out to only about $1.13 apiece. I threw them in a pan and baked them all at the same time; then stored them for future use. Yum!
One author has some tongue-in-cheek ideas for helping Linux become a more popular choice for desktop use. Start by giving it a sexier name...
What would you guess is the main ingredient in McDonald's Chicken McNuggets? That's what I thought, too, until I read
So What Really Is In A McDonald's Chicken McNugget? I think you'll be shocked to learn what else is reportedly in them.
This Journal entry is now part of a separate article, My Previous Life Is Over. You can find it in the Personal Stuff section of this site.
My next-door neighbor and buddy, Mike, has recently had a lot of trouble with SelectBlinds.com. He ordered a very wide window blind from them, and paid $70 extra for "special handling," to ensure that it would be shipped very carefully and arrive in perfect condition. When it arrived, its box had a large dent in it, and the blind inside was damaged. Unfortunately, the delivery guy drove off quickly, before Mike could stop him to report the damage. So, Mike meticulously photographed the damage and contacted Select Blinds. They asked him to email the photographs to them, which he did. Select Blinds then took a couple of weeks to think about what they were going to do about the situation. In the meantime, Mike's credit card company refused to cancel the charges for the damaged blind, because he still had possession of it. The latest news is that yesterday afternoon, Select Blinds finally offered to have their factory either make another really wide blind (which will probably get damaged in shipment again) or make two or three blinds totalling the same overall width. It looks like it's probably all going to finally work out pretty soon, but I haven't heard yet whether Mike will have to pay to ship the damaged blind back to Select Blinds, or what will happen to the $70 that he already paid for its "special handling."
Everyone knows that Linux users are some of the most PC-savvy people on the planet. And just like any other operating system, Linux runs on PCs, but it has no ability to cause damage to any PC hardware. So why do some major PC manufacturers silently
refuse to honor their PCs' warrantees if users remove Windows and install Linux on them?
This Journal entry is now part of a separate article, My Previous Life Is Over. You can find it in the Personal Stuff section of this site.
Last summer, when I switched from using Windows full-time to using Linux full-time, I also switched my email client from MS Outlook 2000 to Mozilla Thunderbird. In my case, I first installed and configured the Windows version of Thunderbird. Then, I converted my existing email messages from Outlook to the Windows version of Thunderbird, then installed and configured the Linux version of Thunderbird, then manually moved the Thunderbird email folders to the appropriate places in my Linux setup. It was a lot of work, but it was worth it, because Thunderbird is a great email client. Like many things in Linux, there are several different ways to switch from Outlook or Outlook Express to Thunderbird or Evolution (another Linux email client). Here's an illustrated step-by-step procedure, showing one of those ways.
How's Your Email Etiquette? reminds us how to be good email citizens.
Here's
a quick little exercise that reminds us why it's important to try to
think positive, not negative, thoughts. Here's a tip: Instead of trying to not think of an apple, consciously choose to think of something else. For example, I chose to think of an elephant. Even then, it wasn't easy. Without my permission, the elephant in my head started to eat an apple.
This Journal entry is now part of a separate article, My Previous Life Is Over. You can find it in the Personal Stuff section of this site.
A lot of computer geeks have known about this for a long time, but it may be news to you. By running a simple command on a PC that's logged-in to Windows XP, anyone can change its passwords to whatever they want, effectively bypassing the Administrator password. Do you still feel safe, XP users?
One of the very first security lessons that any computer user needs to learn is to never, ever tell anyone your username and password. That's why it's causing a huge controversy that Flixster and other web sites ask for their users' AOL, Hotmail, Gmail, and Yahoo! usernames and passwords, and then use that information to log in to their users' email accounts and "invite" other people to sign up for their services.
No matter how hard you try,
you just can't motivate some people.
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Whether you're in charge of migrating your whole company from Windows to Linux desktops, or you just want to switch to Linux on your home PC, you can find some good advice for making a smoother transition in Six Tips for Linux, Open Source Desktop Migrations.
Just in case you happen to know a geek who needs to feel more comfortable in their geekdom, here are
Ten Ways Being a Geek Makes You More Attractive.
This Journal entry is now part of a separate article, My Previous Life Is Over. You can find it in the Personal Stuff section of this site.
If you're a geezer geek like me, you've participated in community based computing since the early days of dial-up bulletin board systems. You've also administered your own online forums and served as a moderator for others' forums. If so, you've probably noticed that, for the past several years, there have been increasing numbers of poorly behaving people, leaving rude and insulting messages and comments on community based web sites and forums. In fact, now the worst of them are even threatening others. Why do site admins put up with that type of behavior? Here's a plea for site admins to show some courage and delete abusive, threatening people from their sites.
Its site says that it will "speed up your Internet experience, increase reliability, improve security and make DNS smarter for users all over the world." Its stats show that it has been incredibly reliable. It doesn't require you to install any software on your computer. Oh, and it's totally free. I've heard about it for quite awhile, but now I think I just might try
OpenDNS.
This Journal entry is now part of a separate article, My Previous Life Is Over. You can find it in the Personal Stuff section of this site.
Last night, I configured my PC to use OpenDNS. In Linux, all I had to do was copy and paste one line of code from the OpenDNS site into one Linux DHCP-configuration file. I've found that, just as it claims, OpenDNS is very fast. There is no longer a 1-2 second "looking up web site" pause after I type a web address into my browser — the web site just starts loading, almost instantly. And when I try to go to a site that is down or that no longer exists, OpenDNS shows me a page that reminds me where I had tried to go, and tries to explain why it didn't work. I recommend OpenDNS because it's free, it has some good benefits, and it apparently has no downside.
I wonder if
the light will go off when people close their mouths.
This Journal entry is now part of a separate article, My Previous Life Is Over. You can find it in the Personal Stuff section of this site.
If you're like most people, you get a lot of spam and other unwanted email every day. You may be surprised to learn that some of it comes from Fortune 1000 companies.
A welcome benefit of the
OLPC is that the company that manufactures that project's $100 Linux-based laptop computers, for sale to underdeveloped countries, plans to sell
$200 laptop computers to everyone else, later this year.
This Journal entry is now part of a separate article, My Previous Life Is Over. You can find it in the Personal Stuff section of this site.
Sales of Microsoft's Windows Vista have been sluggish. Here are ten reasons why.
Someone posted this in the Mepis Linux support forums. I think it demonstrates that someone at Google Maps has a sense of humor. It's a map and directions to get from Chicago to London. I think some of us might have a little trouble doing Step 20.
Don't forget to set your clocks back one hour tonight. And then check your calendar tomorrow, to make sure it has the right date.
