http://www.ComputerBob.com/journal_archive/2007/07.php .
.
.
It's almost 10:30 PM, and I'm finally able to do my Journal update for today. I wasn't been able to use my computer since early this morning, even though working on my computer was the only thing I did the entire day. Here's why: For the past year, I've been dual-booting my computer with Windows XP and Linux. My wife has needed to use XP several times, and I've used Linux exclusively, except for twice that I used Microsoft's Movie Maker software to convert a couple of videos that I couldn't figure out to convert in Linux.
Anyway, for the past year, I've had to deal with continuing problems caused by Windows XP's inflated sense of itself. Every time I've experimented and messed up my Linux partition, and then restored it from a backup, Windows XP would refuse to boot. Not only did XP expect to be the only operating system on the computer, it was extremely sensitive to any changes that my backup/restore software made to the Linux partition of my Windows/Linux hard drive. That problem has required me to reinstall or repair or re-clone Windows XP after every single time that I've restored Linux from a backup. It doesn't make any sense for Windows to care about my Linux partition, especially since I've always been very careful to not let my any of my Linux restorations rewrite the hard drive's Master Boot Record (MBR).
Today, I finally decided to try to install XP onto its own hard drive, and then use my Linux hard drive's MBR to boot both Linux and Windows XP. I figured that if I did that, then no matter what I do to my Linux hard drive, it wouldn't disturb the Windows XP's delicate sensibilities. The whole idea works really well in theory, and involves setting the computer's BIOS to bring up the boot menu on the secondary hard drive (Linux). Then, whenever you tell the Linux bootloader to boot Windows, it uses some lines of code to fool Windows into thinking that it is being booted from its own MBR on its own primary hard drive, instead of being booted from Linux's MBR on the secondary hard drive. Actually, it worked pretty well in practice, as well as in theory. Windows XP was fooled, just like it was supposed to be, and it booted up every time without complaining. Unfortunately, Linux would no longer boot. Despite re-cloning it, restoring it from backups, deleting and re-creating its partition many, many times, and even reinstalling it several times, for at least 8 or 9 hours, I kept getting error messages on boot, telling me either that the Linux partition did not exist, or that it could not be mounted. All I can figure is that those lines of code that did such a great job of fooling XP into booting, messed up the whole Linux boot process.
After spending almost 14 hours on trying to solve the problem, I finally gave up. I disconnected the Windows hard drive, set the Linux hard drive to be the primary drive, and reinstalled Linux on it. It booted right up, without any problems at all. And, since Linux lets me keep my /home (personal files and settings) folder on a separate partition from the operating system itself, my data was all intact, and I didn't have to redo any of my personal desktop or software configuration settings like Windows users always have to do after they reinstall Windows.
As of now, my computer no longer dual-boots Windows XP and Linux. It boots and runs only Mepis Linux, which I've been happily using full-time since last fall. Without Windows constantly whining, acting finicky and causing problems, I'm sure my computing experience is going to be much more pleasant from now on.
Are you curious about what I finally did with Windows XP? It's still perfectly installed, legally "activated," and securely configured with its own MBR on its own hard drive, sitting on a shelf across the room from my computer. If my wife or I ever really need to use it, I'll physically install it in my computer, set it to be the primary hard drive, and let it boot itself up. In the meantime, I've booted it out of my life.
Now that I've gotten some sleep after yesterday's computer-maintenance marathon, I realize, more than ever, how much of a geek I really am. After spending nearly 14 frustrating hours working on my computer, with only two 10-minute breaks to grab something to eat, I was too "wound up" to go to bed, so I spent the next 2 hours "relaxing," by working on this web site and browsing the web for interesting stories. In case you missed yesterday's Journal entry — which I was finally able to post at 10:30 PM last night — the bad news is that the Windows side of my Windows/Linus dual-boot computer had been causing me serious problems for several months. The good news is that, as of last night, my computer no longer dual-boots. It now runs only Mepis Linux.
If you're unfortunate enough to be using Windows Vista, you should be aware that more than 20 Windows Vista features and services harvest your personal user data from your computer and send it to Microsoft. Don't forget: Uncle Bill is always watching you.
I'm an intelligent person who likes to save money, likes to conserve natural resources, likes to know about the best technologies and lives in a very sunny state. It's probably only a matter of time before I install some sort of solar electric system on the south-facing back roof of our house. That's why I was very happy to find 10 Things You Need To Know Before Buying a Solar Electric System.
Do you believe former U.S. Vice President Al Gore is right when he talks about global warming? Have you ever checked to see how much of what he says is actually true? One reporter checked, and found a whole bunch of inconvenient truths.
It's brilliant marketing idea, even if you're not a fan of The Simpsons TV show: 7-Eleven has
turned several of its convenience stores into "Kwik-E-Mart" stores, in anticipation of "The Simpsons Movie," which will come out in a few weeks. Yes, you can buy Buzz Cola, Krusty-O's and Squishees. Thank you. Come again.
This is my second full day of running only Mepis Linux on my PC. For the past year before that, my PC dual-booted with Windows XP and Mepis Linux, so that my wife could use XP. After watching me deal with XP's frustrations for far too long, she's ready to try using Linux whenever she needs to use a PC at home. I set up her email account, browser bookmarks and data folders in Linux, so it's a brand new day in our household.
Long-term readers of this Journal have witnessed the evolution of my computing habits over the years. I've used personal computers since, 1980, but when I first started this site in 1998, I was using Windows 98. Since then, I documented my adventures in switching to Windows 98SE, trying out several versions of Linux, then dual-booting Windows XP and Windows 98SE, then dropping Win98SE and dual-booting XP with 3 different versions of Linux, and finally, running Linux all by itself. I hope that you've learned a little something from my many mistakes, trials and tribulations along the way. I know I've learned a lot.
If you've gotten to the point where you're ready to seriously consider trying something else along with — and maybe eventually instead of — Windows, I urge you to read a series of three articles called Linux Desktop – Is it an Option for Normal Users? Here are Part 1 and Part 2 and Part 3. They'll tell you much more about Linux than I ever knew about it back when I was a Windows-only user.
Whether you use Windows, Linux or Mac OS X, here's a good article that describes how to use the free, bootable GParted-Clonezilla LiveCD to easily manage and clone your hard drives and hard drive partitions.
Researchers are developing an
amnesia drug that reportedly helps trauma victims forget their bad memories. That reminds me of the time that I... no, wait, that wasn't me. (Thanks,
Steven Wright)
Yes, today is a national holiday here in the U.S., but that doesn't stop me from doing a Journal entry. After all, as you've probably noticed from the new banner ads that I added to every page except my home page a few days ago, "ComputerBob's Journal is brand new every day!" I added those banners when this site's free Site Meter statistics revealed that a lot of this site's visitors enter this site when other sites send them directly to specific articles, and then they leave without ever visiting my home page or any of my daily Journal pages. Now, thanks to those banner ads, at least those visitors will know that I update this Journal every day.
A few days ago, I stopped dual-booting between Linux and Windows XP, and removed XP from my PC. At the time, I figured that, if my wife and I ever really need to run XP again, I will physically unplug my PC's internal Linux hard drive and replace it with the Windows hard drive that I had removed. Then I remembered that I will need to keep using Windows for the foreseeable future, to prepare for the Windows-based corporate computer training courses that I occasionally teach for a local college. In fact, several weeks from now, I'll be teaching a Word course and a Dreamweaver course.
That's when I realized that I was going to want a better solution than repeatedly opening my computer and physically swapping its internal hard drives. So I went back out on the web and looked for other solutions. After reconsidering several different dual-booting, multi-booting, external-drive-booting and even USB-flash-drive-booting methods, I decided that all of them are too technically complicated for my taste, and each one of them can be easily messed up by doing something as simple as reinstalling either Windows or Linux. More importantly, I realized that, for my needs, the only advantage to setting up a dual-boot situation is that you can use the same PC to run both Windows and Linux, instead of having to buy, setup and maintain a separate computer for each operating system. That led me back to my idea of physically switching my computer's hard drive whenever I want to switch operating systems. And that's when it dawned on me: The only thing I really need is a cheap, easy, quick, safe way to physically swap my computer's hard drives. In the next day or two, I plan to order a couple of removable hard drive racks like this one. Then whenever I need to run Windows, I'll simply shut down my PC, pop out my Linux hard drive, pop in my Windows hard drive, and boot up my PC again. When I'm finished with Windows, I'll repeat that simple process to go back to Linux. I'll store each operating system's data on the same drive as the operating system itself, but on a separate partition, and I'll put any data that needs to be shared between the two operating systems, plus all backups of both operating systems, on my external drive, which both operating systems will be able to access. Plus, no matter what I do to XP or Linux, neither operating system will ever be able to change or mess up anything on the other operating system's hard drive. I think it's a simple, safe, inexpensive solution that will work perfectly for my needs.
About a week ago, my wife and I both started receiving email messages, telling us that "a friend" or "a special friend" or "a relative" had sent us an electronic greeting card or postcard. Several of those messages even claimed to be from reputable e-card web sites. Each email message urged us to click on a hyperlink in order to view the electronic greeting. Both my wife and I are smart and experienced enough to delete messages like that without ever clicking on their hyperlinks. Unfortunately, many people still click on hyperlinks that arrive in email messages from strangers, without realizing that pretend electronic greetings are just the latest technique that spammers are using to get people to
download worms, viruses and other malware onto their Windows PCs. If you didn't know it before, at least you'll know it from now on.
This is just weird. After spending many hours over the past few days, researching many brands and models of removable hard drive rack systems from many different online stores, I finally chose exactly the one I wanted to buy, and from exactly which store I wanted to buy it. But when I tried to place my order online, a red error message appeared, saying "Insufficient quantity available." How could that be? I had tried to order only three of them! When I changed the quantity to be ordered to two, the error message disappeared. When I changed it back to three, the error message returned. Apparently I had placed my order at the exact moment when my online store of choice — which sells tens of thousands of items every day — had only two of my chosen removable hard drive racks left. What are the odds of that happening? I cancelled the whole ordering process and sent an email message to the store's customer service department, asking them if that product will become available again soon, and, if not, if they're going to sell an alternative product that has similar features and price. While I wait to hear back from them, I've gone back to shopping for possible alternatives. Regular readers of this Journal know that I always research the heck out something before I finally commit to buying it, but here's a case in which I'm actually doing that two different times for the same thing. Stay tuned for "the rest of the story."
By the way, I decided to buy three of them instead of two so that I can take my 300 GB IDE hard drive — the one that I'll use for backups and shared data — out of its external USB case and make it a removable drive, too. That way, it will provide the convenience and data safety of an external drive, with the superior data-transfer speed of an internal drive.
Whether you agree with them or not, you've got to admit that they're clever. If you're a proponent of the RIAA's tactics, you'll probably think that what they're doing now is a brilliant strategy. If you oppose the RIAA's tactics, you'll probably think that it's a dirty trick.
A company claims to have developed a machine that can provide
infinite clean energy. Though it's theoretically not possible, because it defies the currently known laws of physics, I hope that it turns out to be true because I've been feeling a little tired lately.
Yesterday morning, I tried to re-do my online order for three removable hard drive setups, but the online store's site still only allowed me to specify two of them instead of three. By late afternoon, I still hadn't heard back from their customer service department about that problem. So I checked again, and then the site allowed me to specify that I wanted to order 3 of them.
Ironically, by that time, I had found a different model that I liked even better, so I ordered it instead, and saved $10 from what the first model would have cost me. For a total cost of only $58.31 (USD), I ordered two complete removable hard drive rack kits (PC-mounted frame and removable hard drive tray), and one additional removable hard drive tray. When they arrive, I'll mount the two frames in my PC, and then mount my three hard drives (Linux, Windows XP, and shared data/backups) into the three removable trays. The two operating system drives/trays will take turns occupying one of the PC-installed frames, while the shared data/backup drive/tray will go into the other frame whenever I want to use it.
The systems that I ordered are made of an aluminum alloy — nearly all competing racks in the same price range are made of plastic. My systems' cooling system uses a ball-bearing fan — nearly all competing systems' fans use either a less durable, noisier sleeve bearing, or no bearing at all. I looked for a system with a good cooling fan after looking at over 100 web pages and reading every buyer's comment that I could find on every model of removable hard drive system that was within my budget. In all of that, I saw a lot of complaints from people who had bought removable drive systems with cheap cooling fans. In many of those cases, the cooling fan stopped working within a few months, causing the hard drive to overheat and die.
Now you know what I mean when I say that I research the heck out of a product before I finally decide to buy it.
Here's a depressing item for anyone who works in IT: A local community college here is looking to hire a Softball Coach/Instructor and a Supervisor of Computer Operations. The softball job pays $53,000. The computer supervisor job pays $47,000.
There they go again. A few days ago, I told you about how spammers are currently trying to trick people into installing malware onto their computers by sending them email messages that claim to link to electronic greeting cards from "a friend" or "a special friend" or "a relative." If you click on that link, the malware gets installed on your PC. Since then, I've even received one that claimed to be a greeting card from "a neighbour," (in the U.S., we have "neighbors," not "neighbours") and one that said it was from "a Class mate" (sic). If you get an email message whose subject line says, "A Complaint," that's from the bad guys, too. If you don't already know it, a good general rule is to never click on any link that appears in an email message from a stranger. In fact, several years ago, I learned that Windows users need to be really careful about clicking on links that appear in any email message — even one from a trusted friend.
If you're a Windows user, you may be interested in
15 free security programs that work. You may also want to see
what Digg's users say about them.
According to UPS, my removable hard drive systems will be delivered this coming Wednesday. I can hardly wait.
For anyone who'd prefer to go the traditional dual-boot or multi-boot route, like I did for the past few years, here's How To Install and Boot 145 Operating Systems In a PC. Don't worry: the techniques that it describes should still work, even if all you want to install and boot is Windows and one version of Linux.
I've been using Linux full-time for the past year. For the past year, I've also been encouraging other people to at least try one or two of the many popular Linux distributions, to see if one of them could possibly replace Windows on their PC. Linux distros have always been extremely powerful, stable and secure, but in the past couple of years, they've also gotten much more user-friendly, shattering the old stereotype that Linux was just for geeks. And most of them are totally free, including hundreds of totally free software applications. Still, I'm smart enough to know that no matter how restrictive Windows becomes, no matter how expensive Macs become, and no matter how wonderful Linux becomes, there will always be People Who Will Never Adopt Linux. But I'll keep doing my best to at least let everyone know that they have a free, non-Microsoft option.
When the rechargeable battery in your cell phone gets too old to work very well, you can simply take it out and replace it. When the rechargeable battery in a new Apple iPhone gets too old to work very well, the entire iPhone will have to be
shipped back to Apple, to have them replace the battery. That will take 3 business days, and will cost $79.95 (USD), plus $6.95 (USD) for shipping, plus $29 (USD) for a loaner iPhone to use while it's gone. It's too bad that Apple didn't reveal those juicy details until after it began selling the outrageously expensive device. Do you feel sorry for iPhone owners? I don't either.
For years, smart Windows, Linux and Mac users have been using the free, multiplatform, multilingual, OpenOffice.org office suite with its Open Document Format, instead of the bloated, expensive Microsoft Office suite with its proprietary document formats. Now Sun has released a free plug-in that "gives users of Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint the ability to read, edit and save to the ISO-standard Open Document Format." Of course, like I always say, freedom and choices can be very scary to those who aren't used to having either one, so I doubt that very many Microsoft Office users will end up installing the free plug-in.
If you had to guess, when would you say that the first programmable robot was invented? The 1950's? The 1940's? The late 1800's? Guess again. I bet the inventors of that first robot would never have guessed that anyone would want to give robots stun guns.
You may be surprised to learn the reason why, if someone steals one of your credit cards, there's a good chance that the first thing they'll do with it is
make a donation to charity.
Many intelligent people who understand the issues agree that Linux-based operating systems are more stable, secure and powerful than any Windows operating system. But if they haven't tried a Linux distro in the past year or two, they may not realize that some of the most popular ones are also totally free, include tons of totally free applications, and are very user-friendly. In fact, every day, more and more Windows users are finding it relatively pain-free to make the switch to Linux. If you think you might like to try Linux, but you wonder what it's like to actually use it, take a look at Linux vs Windows usability.
Regular readers of this Journal know that, in years past, I tried many different Linux distros, looking for one that could replace Windows on my PC. Finally, a year ago, I tried the totally free Ubuntu Linux and thought to myself, "Close, but no cigar." Soon after that, I discovered its sibling, Kubuntu Linux, and decided that, although it wasn't perfect, it was good enough to replace Windows for me. Then, about a month later, I rediscovered Mepis Linux, and immediately liked it even better than Kubuntu, which I had liked better than Ubuntu. As of this writing, I've been using Mepis Linux full-time on my PC, instead of Windows, for almost a year. All this is leading up to the fact that Ubuntu Linux has been awarded "Enterprise Open Source Magazine's Readers' Choice Award for the 'Best Linux Distribution,' voted on by members of the open source community." That's quite an honor, and Ubuntu is certainly a very popular, very publicized, very good Linux distro. But based on my own experience, I have to conclude that most of EOS Magazine's readers must not have tried Mepis Linux, or they would have given it the award instead. Oh, well, like the old saying says, "A rising tide lifts all boats."
For many years, this site had user forums, a "tell a friend" page, a guestbook, a user ratings section, and other interactive features. The best way to keep automated spambots from registering and posting spam in those sections was to use registration captchas to make all registrants prove that they were human beings. I removed many of this site's interactive features last year, when it became apparent that spammers were getting around my captchas, and were still registering and posting spam messages all over this site. Now, the situation has gotten so bad that spammers are even getting past Hotmail and Yahoo's captchas.
They say a diplomat is someone who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you actually look forward to the trip. I can't vouch for any travel agency giving you that level of service, but I can tell you that an old high school friend of mine, who is a wonderful person, recently started her own online travel agency. If you have travel needs, now or in the future, please give her site a try at
CelebrationOnLineTravel.com.
My new removable hard drive equipment is still scheduled to be delivered tomorrow. Yesterday, I took my 300 GB IDE hard drive out of its external USB enclosure and mounted it inside my PC as the secondary drive. After making sure that my PC's BIOS was configured to automatically detect any internal hard drives, I did a few "dry runs" with my Windows and Linux hard drives each installed as the primary drive. I also installed Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher and FrontPage on the Windows drive, so that I'll be able to use whichever ones I'll need whenever I teach them in corporate training courses for a local college. Once I confirmed that everything worked exactly as I had planned and expected that it would, I backed up both operating system drives onto my 300 GB drive. I'm guessing that, tomorrow, it will only take about a half-hour to install my new removable drive systems. From then on, it'll be easy to swap my hard drives to meet my changing computing needs, and I'll have a dual-boot PC in which it will be impossible for Linux and Windows to affect each other.
A famous quote from Ghandi says, "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." I was reminded of that quote when I saw a screenshot of a spell-checker that can't find the word "Linux" in its dictionary, so it suggests using a different word instead.
If you're a Windows user, you should be aware that you can save hundreds of dollars on software by using several excellent open-source Windows applications.
Are you the kind of person who bites your tongue and walks away when you overhear a computer-store salesperson lying to a customer? Or are you the kind of person who gets kicked out of Radio Shack for trying to tell a customer the truth?
Just for fun, here's a very old, very weird Japanese
commercial for Windows 3.1.
According to the UPS web site, my removable hard drive equipment is on the local delivery truck, "OUT FOR DELIVERY." If it's like most UPS deliveries, it will arrive around 4:30 this afternoon. Oh, boy! Oh, boy! Oh, boy!
Last week, it was widely reported that the Geek Squad workers at a Best Buy store had been caught stealing and sharing pornography and mp3 files off of their customers' PCs that had been brought to them to be repaired. Since then, other reports have confirmed that that practice is widespread in the tech-support industry. In case you don't already know, here's an interview that explains Why Geeks Steal Porn From Your Computer and tells you what to do to prevent it from happening. Besides not having pornography on your computer to begin with. And doing all of your own PC repairs.
They're reportedly blamed for causing 100,000 hospital deaths in the U.S. every year, but now researchers think that they've found a way to stop them.
I'm secure enough not to care about mine, but you might have fun finding out
Your Online Identity Score.
This Journal entry has been turned into a separate article, My Hardware-Based Dual-Boot PC, which appears in this site's CB Guides section.
I'd like to welcome all of the new visitors that came here to read yesterday's Journal entry about "My Inexpensive, Hardware-Based Dual-Boot System." I hope to turn that Journal entry into a separate article soon, so you'll be able to find it quickly and refer others to it easily.
If you're a Linux user, you may be able to optimize the speed of your hard drives with just a few tweaks. Even though it appeared to be way over my head, I read A Three-Pronged Attack On Performance anyway. I was right — much of it was over my head. Still, I managed to understand two out of three of its sections enough to confirm that my 40 GB Linux hard drive is already transferring data at a very respectable 45 MB/sec, and my newer 300 GB shared data/backup drive is working at 61 MB/sec. Based on that article's advice, I also edited my /etc/fstab file to add "noatime" to the configuration line of each drive's data partition, which should speed-up my Rdiff-Backups between the two drives.
Every day for the past several days, I've gotten several spam emails with attached PDF files. As a savvy computer user, I've deleted them all without even opening them. It turns out that PDF spam is beginning to replace image spam, and spammers have learned how to hide malicious software inside of their attached PDF files. As always, if a stranger sends you an email message with an attachment, be sure to delete it without opening it. It's the electronic equivalent of "Never take candy from a stranger."
Anyone who has ever taught computer classes to teenagers knows that you often have at least one "special" student who spends a lot of their class time working on "unauthorized activities." I'm guessing that it happens even more often in Computer Security classes. Here's how one teacher
dealt with one "special" student. Do you think the teacher's actions were justified? Appropriate? Professional?
The good news about Windows Vista just keeps pouring in. In case you didn't know, compared to previous versions of Windows, Vista "keeps a lot more information — and more detailed information — about what a person does with a PC." That's really bad news for some litigation attorneys — but really good news for others. Is it good news for you?
Windows Vista has barely lost its "new-car smell," and some people are already starting to speculate about its eventual replacement, Windows Seven. All I know is that if Microsoft continues the same pattern that it started with Windows XP and strengthened with Windows Vista, users will pay through the nose for Windows Seven, and it will take away even more of their rights to do whatever they want to do with their PCs.
I don't know if it's true, or if it's an urban legend, but I remember reading years ago that a reporter once asked Albert Einstein how many feet there are in a mile. Einstein scoffed at the question, reminding the reporter that he has plenty of books that remember unimportant facts like that for him. Now a recent study reveals that the use of electronic devices to keep track of phone numbers and other information
is "dumbing-down" people's memories. That reminds me of an old Jerry Seinfeld joke that goes something like this: "I got a new telephone that has a memory function, so I programmed all of my friends' phone numbers into it. Now whenever I want to call one of them, I just press one button and my phone dials their number for me. The problem is that the other night, when I wanted to call one of my friends from a pay phone, I couldn't remember his phone number, and it's unlisted. So I called the operator and said, 'Could you please connect me to my friend?' She said, 'What's his phone number?' I said, 'I don't remember, but it sounds like beep-beep-beeeep, beeep-beep, beeeep-beep.'"
UPDATE: I just finished writing a new article, based on a Journal entry that I wrote a few days ago. My Hardware-Based Dual-Boot PC explains why and how I used inexpensive hardware to set up an extremely convenient, reliable, safe and easy-to-maintain Linux-Windows dual-boot system, in which the two operating systems are completely isolated and can never affect each other. My new article appears in this site's CB Guides section.
Several days ago, I saw an article titled, "Confessions of a Linux Fan: 10 Things You Might Want To Know Before Switching Over To Linux." I didn't mention that article here at the time, and I'm not linking to it here now, because I found a lot of what it said about Linux to not be true. In fact, so did the author of Are There Inconvenient Truths About Linux? Whether you're a Linux user or a possible-future Linux user, you might want to read this new article's response to that earlier article's main points.
A few years ago, only a tiny minority of computer users were using Mozilla's free and open source Firefox web browser. Now, a recent study of 96,000 web sites has determined that the award-winning Firefox is the preferred browser for a whopping 27.8% of computer users in Eastern and Western Europe, while 66.5% use Microsoft's Internet Explorer. I just checked my server logs a few minutes ago, and discovered that 30.2% of this site's visitors are using Firefox, and an incredible 16.2% of them are also using Linux. That confirms what I've always suspected — this site's visitors are smarter than most computer users.
Remember when you were a child, and your parents warned you to never take candy from a stranger? Well, I'm here to warn you to never take free software trials from Microsoft. "Microsoft is shipping limited-use copies of Office 2007 with PCs in a try-before-you-buy scheme to seed the market with its latest suite and drive Windows server and client software sales." So why shouldn't take their offer and try Office 2007? Because, unless you're very careful, it will convert your existing documents to its new file format, which is incompatible with your older version of Office. If you let that happen, you'll be forced to buy Office 2007, because your older version of Office won't be able to open your documents any more. Here's a spirited discussion of it by Slashdot's readers.
UPDATE: After reading today's Journal entry, "Bfairtoo" sent me the following email message: "On the Office 2007 coverting files and older versions of Office not being able to open them, MS has a free downloadable OfficeDocX converter (small program) that makes Office 2007 files work on older versions of Office. I have it downloaded and have it installed. It works!"
Here's further proof that Linux isn't just for geeks any more: "All 630 representatives in the Italian Chamber of Deputies are now allowed to request Linux for their PCs and laptops to replace current software, typically based on the Windows/Office platform... 'Not only is the adoption of an open source system a technological innovation, it also helps to save Euro 3 million each year.'" Mama mia! That's a spicy operating system!
It set off a whole rash of responses when a Slashdotter reported that, possibly after a recent Windows Vista update, some installed software no longer appeared in the Control Panel's applications list, and other installed software lost its "uninstall" icon.
Many people criticize standard corn-based ethanol production because it reportedly provides only 1.3 times the amount of energy that it takes to produce it, and using corn to make ethanol makes other corn-dependent products much more expensive. Now a company will start building a plant to produce cellulose-based ethanol from "any crops, like mown grass clippings, fallen tree limbs or corn stalks (instead of corn ears)." The new fuel is said to return up to 16 times the amount of energy that it takes to produce it, so producing it should be more than 3 times more efficient than producing gasoline.
Unlike open source software, in which anyone can view or change its source code, Microsoft's software is all closed source and proprietary. Here's a very rare peek at Windows' secret source code.
If you're looking for a way to help "save the planet," you may want to consider switching to an eco-friendly profession.
I've been writing this Journal for nearly four years. Regular readers of this Journal know that I try to write a Journal entry every single day, no matter what happens in my life. Here's another
very dedicated blogger.
A few days ago, I mentioned the fact that an incredible 16.2% of this site's visitors are using a Linux-based operating system. If you're one of them, you may agree that There's A Linux Distro for Every User — And Vice Versa.
I've mentioned this topic before, so to many of us, Will Vista Cause A Switch To Macs, Linux? is old news. But, like the TV networks say about their reruns, "If you haven't seen it, it's new to you!"
What do you get when you cross NASA with the fashion industry? Sleek, skintight spacesuits.
Everyone has their own sense of what's good and bad in the movies. For example, I can't stand a lot of the filth that passes for "comedy" nowdays. And it's not because I'm old — it's because my comedy standards are offended by the current truckloads of lowbrow comedians who are too lazy to create intelligent comedy. But, like I said, you're free to agree or disagree with me. You're also free to agree or disagree with these slideshows of
the best and worst movies.
Most people who support school, library and other public computer labs are familiar with software that rolls a PC back to a pristine state each time it is rebooted. Such software is often an indispensable tool for keeping computers up and running, no matter what computer users do to them. Now Deep Freeze software is available for SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop, and versions of it may be released for other Linux distros in the future. While there are other options for rolling back Linux-based computers, the company's CEO says that Deep Freeze is currently the only one that provides "a system consistency solution that works across the Windows, Mac and Linux operating system..."
It looks like Microsoft is once again going to "push the envelope" to see how much Windows users will be willing to put up with before they go looking for something to take the place of Windows. This news may come as a very unpleasant surprise to Windows users, but it doesn't surprise those of us who already found alternatives to using Microsoft operating systems and software: Microsoft is seeking a patent to add real-time, user-targeted, hard-drive-stored advertisements to its operating systems and software applications. Good luck trying to block advertisements when they start coming from Windows itself, and from Internet Explorer and Outlook Express and Word and PowerPoint and Excel and Access and Media Player and Publisher and FrontPage and Project and Picture Manager and Movie Maker and Money and NetMeeting and Expression Web and Visio and Calculator and Paint and Chart and PowerToys and Encarta and... you get the idea. It's pretty annoying just to read that list of Microsoft applications. Imagine how annoying it would be to be forced to look at advertisements every time you use any of them.
Writing a Journal entry every single day sort of changes your outlook on things, but it comes naturally to someone like me, who's basically a teacher at heart. Here's yet another
dedicated blogger.
Anyone can go to a web site like Distrowatch and find hundreds of different Linux distros (versions). They're all built onto the same underlying Linux code (kernel), but each distro adds its own unique touches, like installer software, PC hardware-detection routines, icons, menus, utilities and bundled software applications. Regular readers of this Journal know that it took me a few years of trying several different Linux distros before I finally found one (Kubuntu) that was good enough to replace Windows on my PC. They also know that, the following month, I switched to Mepis Linux, and that I've been using Mepis full time for almost a year.
In contrast, some Linux users continue to move from distro to distro, even after they've found one or more of them that they really like. I guess they're looking for the perfect "Holy Grail" of Linux distros — something that we all dream of, but which most of us realize can probably never actually exist. We call people like that distro hoppers. Some people disparage distro hoppers for their lack of loyalty to any particular distro, but I like distro hoppers, if they write about their experiences. By doing that, they help me stay informed about what's out there, and I think they also help to spur the competition between distros that eventually improves all distros.
Speaking of the fact that there are hundreds of different Linux distros, some computer users hypothesize that Linux would be more popular if there weren't so many Linux distros to choose from. Whether or not you agree with that hypothesis, Are There Really Too Many Linux Distros? is a thoughtful, thought-provoking response to it.
I started using a personal computer in 1980, and started working as a computer consultant during the summer of 1983. One of the first things I did on my very first day on my very first job was to try to make a backup copy of the company's only 5.25-inch floppy disk of its very expensive, copy-protected office applications suite. Instead, I accidently erased it. It's a long, terrifying story that eventually ends happily, but even 24 years later, my heart still races when I think about it. If you like to read about what it was like to use a computer "in the old days," you'll enjoy Living With A Computer.
If you know about Hollywood actor John Travolta's completely egocentric, incredibly-ecologically-unfriendly hobby, you'll quickly figure out how he may soon have something in common with
pond scum.
My wife and I pay a flat fee for our home's landline telephone service. For $34.95 per month, plus an incredibly high percentage of access fees and taxes, we enjoy unlimited local and long-distance calling within the continental U.S. We used to pay around 3 cents per minute for long distance, but even at that outrageously low rate, it cost us much more per month than we pay now with the flat fee. Now a startup company called Ooma plans to sell a device (for $400, USD) that promises unlimited free domestic calls (U.S.) for life, using P2P technology with each user's broadband connection and landline. Ooma's CEO says, "The economics of providing the service are almost zero." That may be true if you don't count the cost of each user's broadband and landline connections. And if you don't anticipate the very real probability that broadband providers are going to charge your company for comandeering their expensive infrastructure to set up your own Internet-based telephone service. I'm certainly no business expert, so I may be totally wrong, but it looks to me like Ooma's financial future will totally "depend on the kindness of strangers." If that's true, then it's a very risky business strategy.
In the constant battle between cyber-criminals and the rest of us, it seems like the bad guys constantly find new ways to victimize innocent computer users. And that very few of them ever get caught, or even stopped. Still, every once in awhile, the good guys win one. I guess you have to be willing to be happy for any small victory you can get.
Do you ever wonder why Microsoft's Hotmail email service seems to lose so many of the emails that you send, and that other people send to you? One guy recently did some testing and concluded that
Hotmail Fails To Deliver Up To 81% Of All Attachment Emails. He says, "It has long been suspected that there is a silent policy that makes Hotmail automatically delete the majority of attachments to save on bandwidth and internal disk space. Therefore it really doesn't matter if every client has access to 2GB of storage since they don't deliver the attachments to fill that space up anyway. If that truly is the case, then Microsoft may be liable for several hundred million cases of conspiracy and mail fraud." Whether he's right or wrong, I smell a messy lawsuit on the horizon.
In the competition between operating systems in general, and between Windows versions in particular, computer buyers continue to "vote with their wallets." Despite the fact that Windows Vista "replaced" the aging Windows XP seven months ago, and despite the fact that Microsoft has stated on more than one occasion that it will stop selling XP to PC manufacturers later this year, Microsoft now predicts that XP will comprise 22% of its sales of Windows in 2008. That figure is 50% higher than Redmond's earlier 15% prediction, and I think it says a lot about what computer buyers think about Vista.
Compared to desktop computers, notebook computers are smaller, lighter and more portable. Those are some of the reasons why notebook computers are expected to make up more than 50% of all new computer sales in the U.S. later this year, and to overtake worldwide desktop sales within a few years. If you had to choose between the two, would you buy a notebook or desktop computer? I'd still buy a desktop computer. Though it's fun to think of taking my computer with me everywhere I go, and being able to connect to my email and browser from anywhere, I really don't think I would do it very much once the novelty wore off. More importantly, I'm not willing to put all of my work and all of my data at such a high risk of being lost, damaged or stolen.
If you're a typical technology user, you may be willingly but unknowingly carrying a stalker in your pocket.
This is the type of problem that anyone who has ever worked with children should have anticipated and prevented. In fact, you're going to think of it as soon as you read my question: You know those OLPC (one laptop per child) notebook computers that are being distributed to developing countries? Can you guess
what the kids are doing with their new Internet access?
Is Linux harder to use than Windows? Two of the biggest complaints that I read about Linux are that you have to use the CLI (the command line interface — the "DOS prompt" to Windows users) to do anything, and that it's too hard to install new software. In response to those complaints, I'd like to state for the record that I've been using Linux full-time for an entire year, and in all that time,
So the next time someone tells you that Linux is harder to use than Windows, you'll know the truth.
Several days ago, I mentioned the fact that people are already speculating about the next version of Windows. See what CNet has learned about version 7.
If an airplane is about to crash, where's the safest place to be sitting? I would guess that it would be in your living room, watching TV. But if you're on the plane when it's going to crash, you may want to move out of your first-class seat.
If you have a forgiving sense of humor, you may enjoy taking a little peek at
God's Inbox.
Today's Journal entry was lost through a tragic cutting-and-pasting accident that went undetected until it was too late to recover it. It is survived by its loving h2 tag and an unordered list of its sub-entries. It will be sorely missed by all those whose lives it touched. Let us bow our heads for a moment of silence, to celebrate its short life and to honor its passing into the ether.
If you have your own web site, you probably want it to be spidered by search engines like Google and Yahoo, so that your web pages will appear in their search listings. What you don't want, and what you may not even know, is that there may be software robots spidering your web site for bad reasons, like spambots trying to collect email addresses to add to their mailing lists, or criminals' robots trying to find your private information. A traditional-but-outdated way to stop them is to put a
robots.txt file in your web site's root folder. A robots.txt file is a text file that lists all of the folders and files that you don't want robots to look at. The good robots, like the ones that Google and Yahoo use, obey your robots.txt file and ignore the folders and files that you list in it. Unfortunately, "bad robots" often ignore your robots.txt file and look for every folder they can find anyway. In fact, many bad robots actually read your robots.txt file's list of folders and files that you don't want them to look at, and use it as "a shopping list" to look at everything that you don't want them to look at.
It takes a bit of very careful work, but if you're ready to take your site's security to a new level, I highly recommend that you install robot-trap software on your web server. It sounds complicated, but the idea behind it is very simple. You basically put robot-trap software into a folder that only the bad robots will go into. Then, when the bad robots go into that folder, your robot-trap "catches them."
Here are the basic steps that you have to do to install most robot-trap software: First, you create a robot-trap folder and put the robot-trap software inside it. Then you add the name of that folder to your site's robots.txt file. Then you add a tiny graphic to your web page(s), and hyperlink it to the robot-trap software inside the robot-trap folder. People who visit your web site will never even see the tiny graphic, so there's no danger that they'll accidently click on it and get caught by your robot trap. Good robots will see the tiny graphic and its hyperlink, but they won't follow the hyperlink into your robot-trap folder, because they will obey your robots.txt file that tells them to stay out of that folder. On the other hand, bad robots will either ignore your robots.txt file and follow the hyperlink into your robot-trap folder, or they will see the name of your robot-trap folder in your robots.txt file and go directly to that folder, thinking that, if it's listed in your robots.txt file, it must have some juicy information in it. Once a bad robot goes into your robot-trap folder, the robot-trap software does its job. Some robot-trap software sends the bad robot on a time-wasting (for the robot) infinite loop of worthless or CPU-intensive links, to "punish" it for ignoring the instructions that you gave it in your robots.txt file. After doing that for awhile, the bad robot gives up on your site and goes somewhere else. Other robot-trap software automatically bans the bad robot's IP address, making it impossible for the bad robot to see any your site's pages, either temporarily or permanently. Some robot-trap software even sends you an email message each time it catches a bad robot, and tells you the bad robot's IP address, domain name, and other information.
Last night, I installed some robot-trap software on this web site. I made a few changes to the stock software to make my robot trap look even more tempting to bad robots, and to keep bad robots from knowing which robot-trap software I installed. Amazingly, within 3 hours after I had installed it, it had already caught its first bad robot. When I did a Google search of that bad robot's IP address, I found numerous security forums that identified it as belonging to a known spammer.
Even if you don't feel like using robot-trap software on your web site right now, please keep it in mind for the future, as another possible tool to protect your site from the world's bad guys. That's what I did. I knew about robot-trap software a few years ago, but protecting this site from bad robots wasn't very important to me at the time, and I didn't feel confident enough to try to use robot-trap software on this site. Now, a few years later, things have changed, and it was worth it to me to figure out how to do it.
The "robot-trap" software that I told you about yesterday is working perfectly. I knew that it would, because when I installed it, I thoroughly tested it by visiting my site and "acting like a bad robot" several times. Each time, it caught me instantly. When my sitemap generator software automatically ran in the middle of the night, it ignored my site's robots.txt file and my robot trap caught it, too, stopping it from spidering my site the instant that it went into my robot-trap folder. That's what I was hoping would happen because, along with the fact that it has caught other confirmed bad robots, it confirmed that my robot trap is doing its job "in the wild." Still, I want my sitemap generator software to be able to do its job, too, so I went into my site's .htaccess file and added a line to it that allows my sitemap generator to work without being banned by my robot trap any more. Then, I ran my sitemap generator manually, and it ran perfectly, without being stopped by my robot trap. And in the middle of the night last night, my sitemap generator ran automatically again without any problems.
I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to Linus Torvalds, the guy who first created the Linux kernel — the basic core of software that all Linux versions are built upon. His work, and the work that others built onto his work, has enabled me to work nearly 100% Microsoft-free for the past year. Still, I don't agree with everything that Linus says about his creation. For example, he was recently quoted as saying "I don’t use either [Windows or Mac OS X]. OS X is kind of pointless (pretty much anything it has, Linux can do better) and Windows offers stuff that I don’t much care about (mainly games — and I’ve got games (sic) machines for those)." In the past, I've documented here that, even though I've been using Mepis Linux full-time for nearly a year, I had to use Windows XP a couple of times in the past year, to convert videos from one format to another, because I couldn't find any Linux software that was as friendly and useful as Windows Movie Maker software. (In fact, even though I tried several different Linux video editing packages, because Mepis Linux uses a (currently crippled) multimedia support file called ffmpeg that comes from the Ubuntu Linux software libraries, none of the Linux video editing packages that I tried could do the specific type of conversions that I needed to do. To be totally fair, however, I am aware that those same video editing packages work just fine in other Linux distros, so the problem that I ran into is undoubtedly only temporary.) Here's a guy who feels much the same way that I do about Linux zealots. I may be wrong, but it seems to me that statements like the one from Linus could easily be interpreted to mean that he thinks that Linux can already do everything better than Windows and OS X. If people think that that's what he's saying, then it could actually hurt Linux by slowing or discouraging its development and improvement, while giving non-Linux users the impression that Linux users and developers are an arrogant bunch who think that their operating system is perfect just the way it is. What do you think?
If you're a techie, then you should read Five Tech Mistakes To Avoid, just to make sure that you haven't made any of them.
Late-night comedian Craig Ferguson has
a few thoughts on why Microsoft's products haven't been anywhere near as popular as Apple's iPhone.
Have you noticed all of the
FUDD about Linux that's been shoveled by some of "the big boys" lately?
The envelope, please... suggests some nominees for The Elmers, a fictitious award given for excellence in the perveying of lies, half-truths and innuendo that are designed to hurt the image of a worthy competitor in the eyes of potential customers. Take a look, and see if you can think of anyone you'd like to nominate for that dubious distinction.
And once again, Windows Vista is proving that it's "not ready for prime-time." If you use Windows Vista on a laptop/notebook computer, you may have already experienced the maddening Vista "Resume" Bug in which "Vista can take several minutes to resume after a portable computer is put into sleep or hibernation mode." Even if you haven't experienced it yet, you would still be wise to learn the latest about it if you're a Vista user.
An old saying says, "You are what you eat." That might have to be changed to "You are who you know," now that a new study has concluded that if you have fat friends, there's a really good chance that you're going to get fat, too. Well, that's food for thought.
Many men carry a wallet, which they keep in a back pants pocket. If you do that, you may be giving yourself
problems. Yeah, I know — you thought I was going to say, "you may be giving yourself a pain in the butt." Sorry to disappoint you, but I wouldn't say something like that. But please feel free to make up your own lame punch line to this story.
Apparently, they're dedicated to bringing you the latest breaking news from 2005: WIRED would like you to know that Linux is not just for servers any more.
I kid them because I love them.
Slashdot's readers have a lot to say about the fact that Mozilla's Thunderbird email client is leaving the Mozilla foundation. That's probably going to end up being good news for us Thunderbird users.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has announced that the installed base of Windows users will soon cross the 1-billion mark. I guess that means that the number of satisfied Windows users will soon cross the 1-million mark.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is funding the development of
"an LED flashlight that uses powerful flashes of light to temporarily blind, disorient and incapacitate people." Here's a top-secret photograph that shows
what the device looks like when it's being used.
The computing world has certainly changed dramatically in the past six years. When Windows XP was first released, in many ways, it was sort of the only operating system choice for serious desktop computing. But now, Mac OS X and the March of the Desktop Penguins have given serious computer users the freedom of choice.
Do you, or someone you love, still use a television antenna to receive television signals? If so, the U.S. government wants you to know that you won't be able to watch TV any more in a couple of years, unless you either upgrade or replace all of your television sets.
Just a few days before she makes a final decision on whether or not to certify electronic voting machines for use in the upcoming presidential primary elections, the California Secretary of State has learned that "State-sanctioned teams of computer hackers were able to break through the security of virtually every model of California's voting machines and change results or take control of some of the systems' electronic functions." Hmmm, I wonder what she's going to decide.
He quit school 35 years ago, to pursue a career. Now, he's finally going to submit his thesis, Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud, and try to finish his doctorate in astrophysics. Who is he? I'll give you a hint:
He will... He will... rock you!
Well, speak of the devil... I bet you thought that Microsoft was completely dedicated to providing computer software and services. That's what I used to think, too. But Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's CEO now says, "We are hell-bent and determined to allocate the talent, the resources, the money, the innovation to absolutely become a powerhouse in the ad business." Thanks for clearing up that little misunderstanding, Steve.
More governmental double-speak: Starting next week, buyers of new desktop and notebook computers, printers, fax machines, televisions and monitors in British Columbia will be charged a fee to pay for that province's free recycling program.
Wow! Just think of the cool-looking, indestructable paper airplanes you could make out of this stuff.
John Stewart should very glad that he doesn't live in New Zealand, where they could
send him to prison for what he does.
Here's good news for anyone who does any sort of business online, which probably includes most of us: "A (U.S.) federal appeals court has ruled that companies can't change their contracts and post those revisions online without notifying customers first." I'm glad to see that a court has finally acknowledged the fact that since a contract is a legal, binding agreement between two parties, one of those parties can't unilaterally change the terms of that agreement without notifying the other party beforehand and giving them the option to cancel the contract.
If you like to ponder "slippery slope" issues, here's one that you'll enjoy: Police in Springdale, Ohio, are using an automated license-plate scanners on patrol cars, to identify stolen cars and wanted felons. "So far, the scanner has located 95 stolen cars and helped locate 111 wanted felons." Does that sound like a good idea, or does it worry you?
Some of us are happy to live in (beautifully scenic) places that are also sometimes threatened by hurricanes. Others live in "Tornado Alley," "The Ring of Fire," flood zones, or other areas that are susceptible to natural disasters. If that sounds like you, or someone you love, you might want to make sure you have adequate supplies of the Top 100 Items to Disappear First During a National Emergency.
There's a famous song that starts, "Da, da, da, daaaa.... Da, da, da, daaaa.... Da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da, da-da-da-daaa. Da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da, da-da-da-daaa. Da-da-da-da (da-da-da-da). Da-da-da-da (da-da-da-da). Da-da-da-da. Da. DAAAAH!" What is that song? If Australian computer scientists succeed in their work, I'll be able to
sing that song into a search engine, and it'll tell me what it is.
You can find just about anything you're looking for on the Web, even if what you're looking for is a blog that presents the top Linux stories from Digg.com in Russian. In case you hadn't noticed, here's a little reminder that you can also view this entire site in a variety of different languages, as long as your computer has the ability to display international fonts. Just click on one of the language translation links at the top of this site's home page. Once you see this site's home page in whatever language you choose, then the rest of this site will also be automatically translated into that language until you close your browser window. If you see strange boxes instead of characters, that means that your computer doesn't have a font that can display that particular language.
UPDATE: This morning, I added language translation links to the top of every page on this site. If you find yourself "stuck" in a translation, you can either use your browser's Back feature to return to the last un-translated page that you viewed, or you can simply close your browser, and when you re-start it, this site will appear in English again.
If you click on the validation icons that appear in the left navigation column of this site's pages, you'll see that I created this site's pages with valid XHTML 1.0 Strict code, but that translated pages no longer validate. That's because the external language translation services add their own non-valid code to this site's otherwise-valid pages.
Every once in awhile, I like to mention Gary Kildall's name, out of respect for the mostly forgotten guy to whom I think Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates owes his entire fortune. Now a court has recognized and confirmed Kildall's role as "the true founder of the personal computer revolution and the father of PC software." Rest in peace, Gary.
Your data is probably secure while you're transferring it to your favorite online backup service provider, but how secure is it once it's sitting on their servers? SSL is Not Enough Security for Online Backup will help you choose a secure online backup service provider and ensure that your stored backups are secure.
You may have a song in your heart, but you don't own the patent to that song.
Here's
the perfect gift for the traveler who has everything — but isn't planning to go anywhere for... uh... ten to twenty years.
