http://www.ComputerBob.com/journal_archive/2007/09.php .
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Here's some good news and some bad news for long-suffering Windows Vista users. The good news: Despite earlier denials, Microsoft now admits that it has been working on Windows Vista Service Pack 1 this summer. The bad news? It's reportedly going to include a series of duct-taped, hard-to-maintain kludges that will give Vista even more software compatibility problems than it currently has. Plus, even if Microsoft is able to meet its development deadlines — and what are the odds of that happening — you won't see SP1 until some time next year. In other words, you'll have to wait and wait for Windows Vista Service Pack 1, and when it finally does get released, it will be a big disappointment. Hey, that sounds just like what happened with Windows Vista itself.
If you haven't tried them yet, you may be interested in learning about Six Great Linux Productivity Apps. As always, be sure to read the informative readers' comments that appear at the end.
Back when I was a full-time Windows user, my favorite free FTP software was Filezilla. When I switched to using Linux full-time more than a year ago, there wasn't a Linux version of Filezilla, so I've been using gFTP instead, because a lot of Linux users recommend it. Now I'm happy to report that there is a Linux version of Filezilla. I look forward to trying it out when I have time.
Are you old enough to remember the TV series,
Kung Fu? In it, a gentle, softspoken Shaolin monk traveled around the American old west in the 1800s, helping good people and gently, softspokenly beating the tar out of bad people. Nowadays, you'd better not offend a group of Shaolin monks or they might
threaten to sue you.
Windows users know that, unlike PCs that run Linux-based operating systems, Windows PCs get noticeably slower over time. That's one of the many reasons why many Windows veterans reformat their hard drives and reinstall Windows from scratch every 6-12 months. But have you ever stopped to think about exactly how many tasks it takes to reinstall Windows and all of the software that you use? Here's an article followed by several reader comments that answer the question, What do you install after a Windows re-format? Just for the record, I installed and reinstalled Windows many times on many computers over the years, and it was such a huge job that I always put it off as long as possible. In contrast, after messing it up really badly by experimenting, I've completely reinstalled Mepis Linux a few times over the past year, but reinstalling it from scratch usually takes me less than 30 minutes, and that includes installing hundreds of free Linux applications and preserving all of my data and configuration settings.
A German court has blocked government authorities from conducting secret remote searches of terrorism suspects' computers as a violation of civil liberties. So the government hopes to email spyware to the potential bad guys, and use that to spy on them. Yeah, I'm sure that's going to work. LOW, LOW TERRORIST PRICES ON V1@GR@ -- THIS WEEK ONLY! ACT NOW!
Regular readers of this Journal already know that PayPal Is Not My Pal. And apparently, PayPal's current
worldwide outages aren't winning it any new friends, either.
Yesterday was the 1-year anniversary of when I began using Mepis Linux full-time instead of Windows. I've been using PCs since 1980, but I've never enjoyed using my PC as much as I do now, thanks to Linux. It does what I want it to do, the way I want it done. For the past year, my computer has been incredibly more stable, secure and trouble-free than it was all those years that I ran Windows. And this feeling may be hard for Windows users to understand, but it sort of feels like it's really my computer now. When I was using Windows, it sort of felt like even though I was using my computer, it really belonged to someone else.
Here's something that's worth repeating every once in awhile: Not only are many popular Linux distros totally free, but most of them also come with hundreds of free software applications to do just about anything that most people do on their computer. But if you're a Windows user who's thinking of switching to Linux, you may wonder if there are Linux applications that can replace the specific Windows applications that you currently use. Switching From Windows To Linux: An App-Centric View takes a look at "two tremendous web sites which help find open source equivalents for proprietary Windows software."
Several days ago, I told you that global problems with Microsoft's WGA servers had incorrectly branded legitimate Windows computers all over the world as running pirated copies of Windows. Now Microsoft says that it was all due to human error, and it will never happen again. Critics have several reasons to be unhappy with that explanation.
There's an entire town in Sweden where Windows Vista users can't connect to the Internet, due to a bug in some Vista code. That's not as surpising as the fact that the town's ISP says that they could work reconfigure their servers to work around the bug, but
they refuse to do it. Is this a case of a stubborn ISP causing problems for its customers, or is it a case of David standing up and poking Goliath in the eye? It'll be interesting to see how it all shakes out.
To go along with the ones to which I linked a few days ago, here are some more great Linux apps. As always, be sure to read the comments that follow the article. In this case, one of them corrects an important error in the article.
I've been very happily using Mozilla's free, open-source Thunderbird as my email client for the past few years — first in Windows, then in Linux. One of the great things about Thunderbird is that, like its sibling, the free, open-source Firefox web browser, Thunderbird lets you install tiny software extensions that extend its functionality and customize it to work exactly the way you want. Here are a few of those Productivity Enhancers For Thunderbird.
This just in from the "Aren't You Glad You Don't Live There?" department: The extremely repressive government of North Korea is so strongly opposed to the infiltration of popular culture from South Korea into its society that it has taken drastic actions against people who have been caught copying and distributing South Korean visual material in North Korea. I guess they don't want those decadent South Koreans to be a bad influence on their morally superior culture. For those of you who happen to be in the North Korean government, I meant that last statement to be sarcastic — you see, in some places around the world, people are free to point out governmental hypocrisy and evil. And we like it that way.
I'm shocked to hear that a law like this is even needed in the U.S.: "Tackling a dilemma right out of a science fiction novel, the state Senate passed legislation Thursday that would bar employers from requiring workers to have identification devices
implanted under their skin." I suspect that many repressed, exploited Wal-Mart employees around the country will be relieved to hear that news.
What's the difference between a "shell," a "terminal" and a "console?" I didn't know before I read Shell, Terminal, Console — the Basics. I guess the article must be right when it says that "the differences between them are today more and more blurred" because even now that I read it, I'm still not sure.
Have you spent a lot of time making your resume as perfect as possible? While it may look perfect to you, it may contain glaring annoyances from the point of view of a potential employer. Just to make sure, you should check out 10 Ways Your Resume Irks Hiring Managers. You may be surprised, or even angered, by what it says.
Have you ever had a friend who believed some myth or urban legend that you knew wasn't true? Have you ever tried to convince them that they were wrong? Here's
why it's so hard to get people to stop believing myths, and how those myths can affect public policy.
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.
This Journal entry has been combined with others to create a separate article, Why I Won't Use KMail or Kontact, which now appears in this site's CB Guides section.
One of my favorite Firefox extensions is Web Developer, which adds several web developer tools and debugging features to my web browser. I may also try using Firebug too, now that I've read such good things about it.
Many of us breathed a sigh of relief when Lithium-Ion (Li+)rechargeable batteries began to appear in portable devices, because they promised smaller-sized, longer-lasting power than older battery technologies like Nickel-Cadmium and Nickel-Metal Hydride. But the past several months have brought us several accounts of Li+ batteries overheating, causing fires, and even exploding. It kind of makes you wonder
What's Wrong With Lithium-Ion Batteries?
This Journal entry has been combined with another entry to create a new article,
Dan, The Piano Man, that appears in this site's
Personal Stuff section.
This Journal entry has been combined with others to create a separate article, Why I Won't Use KMail or Kontact, which now appears in this site's CB Guides section.
One of the many cool things that I love about using Mepis Linux is that a little icon automatically notifies me whenever there are updates to my operating system, applications, utilities, support libraries or anything. And by simply clicking a few times, and entering my root (administrator) password once, the updates that I want are automatically downloaded and installed, usually within a few seconds — all without even having to even reboot my computer.
Windows users aren't so fortunate. In fact,
Unpatched Software Abounds On User Systems. Read the article to find out how to tell if your applications need updates.
While a woman may know a lot about computers, in Linux, sometimes you need a man to help you figure things out. I know that sounds like a sexist statement, but it's not — in Linux, the "man" command displays manuals that explain other Linux commands.
Regular Journal reader and fellow Linux user, malspa, says the following about man: "It seems like using Konqueror to view man pages is superior to using the command line. Normally, man uses the same rules as less, but beautiful Konqueror doesn't screw around with the less command! It just loads the entire man page. Just bring up the man page in Konqueror with either #command or man:command and you can scroll through the entire man page without using the keystrokes that you have to use from the terminal. I'm thinking that this is a case where the GUI wins out over the CLI... Of course, I think some people who are really sharp using the command line (and less) might disagree, and may find it easier to read man pages from the terminal, I don't know. Looking at man less, it really does have lots of features and if someone really knows how to use it maybe it works out quite well. I only know the basics and I'm not planning to go through and read that man page all the way through!" Yeah, that makes sense — Linux is all about having freedom and choices.
How many different software applications do you use on your computer on a regular basis? I'm guessing that I use about 15 different applications at least once a week, but I probably use less than 10 of them every day. How many software applications do you use on a regular basis just to maintain your computer? Other than backing up my data, I don't use anything to maintain my Linux computer. It just works. And I've been using Linux full-time for over a year.
The reason I ask how many applications you use is because, when I was a Windows user, I constantly needed to scan and defragment and innoculate and do all of the many other things that Windows users have to do, just to try to keep my computer running correctly. And I had to find either commercial or free software that I could trust to do all of those things safely and effectively. Of course, all of that took a lot of time and a lot of energy — time and energy that I'm now free to spend on using my computer, instead of maintaining it. That's just one of the many reasons why I enjoy using my computer much more now than I ever did when I was running Windows.
If you're still running Windows, you don't have that freedom. You'll have to keep spending a lot of time and energy just to keep your computer running. I don't vouch for them, I haven't used them, I don't know if they're all legal copies or not, and I take absolutely no responsibility for whether or not they do what they say they do, but here's what one Windows user says are 40 Essential Programs For Maintaining A Computer. Good luck. You'll need it.
Scientists in Russia have discovered a radiation-absorbing material. How cool is that?
If you've ever seen the Will Smith movie,
Wild Wild West, I'm sure you remember the giant mechanical tarantula created by the evil Dr. Arliss Loveless. Apparently, Dr. Loveless' great-great-great-grandson is following in his legless ancestor's... uh...
footsteps.
This Journal entry has been combined with others to create a separate article, Why I Won't Use KMail or Kontact, which now appears in this site's CB Guides section.
We've known for several months that Windows Vista is a dog. A bloated, expensive, incompatible, bossy, buggy dog. Still, Redmond continues to desperately try to convince Windows XP users to "upgrade" to Vista. Even if it has to badmouth XP to do it.
About a year ago, I researched the idea of investing in VeriChip Corp., the company that makes those little identification chips that can be implanted under your skin. In the end, I decided that I didn't want to be involved with that technology, because even though it has several potentially good applications, to me it also has way too many potentially bad ones. Now this makes me even more glad that I didn't make that investment.
Many years ago, I remember seeing all kinds of specialty items for sale at unholy prices in a Christian book store, including many items that I thought were ridiculous on several levels, like Christian drinking straws, Christian candy and little porcelain statues of Jesus (in a long brown robe) playing soccer and ice hockey. If you remember your Bible stories, you may understand what I mean when I say that seeing that stuff reminded me of when Jesus angrily drove the moneychangers out of the temple. That's why, in the late 1970s, I was happy to hear that Christian musician Keith Green had referred to that type of merchandise as "Jesus Junk."
It may seem weird and hard to believe, but I thought of all of that when I saw the clunky and reportedly barely usable Penguin Mouse for Linux lovers.
They called it it. Several years ago, it was highly anticipated as "The Next Big Thing." Paradoxically, it was simultaneously shrouded in secrecy and heavily hyped for several months. Before any of us even knew exactly what it was, investors had reportedly already lined up to make huge fortunes from it. Long before any photographs of it ever appeared in public, a media blitz of countless articles predicted that every man, woman and child would end up using it. As a result, they said that it would completely revolutionize the way that new cities would be designed, and existing cities would be completely redesigned to accomodate it. Obviously, those predictions never came true. In fact, can you even remember what
it was?
I lost this day's Journal entry when I accidently and inadvertently saved the next day's entry right over the top of it. I don't remember what it contained, but I'm sure it was all very educational, entertaining and funny, just like always.
I love to teach, I'm good at it and it shows. If you'd like to see an example of my teaching style, take a look at this video. Now don't you wish you could take one of my classes?
Should you pay to upgrade to Microsoft Word 2007, or should you save your money and switch to the totally free OpenOffice.org word processor that can run in many operating systems, including Windows, Linux and the Mac OS X? To help you decide, read Office Software Shootout: OpenOffice.org Writer vs. Microsoft Word, Round Three.
By now, you've heard all about how Windows Vista constantly interrupts users, to ask if they want to allow or deny things that Vista considers to be possible security risks. Well, the gang at the Mepis Linux support forums are
having a good laugh about
this Vista Security warning.
Linux-based operating systems are tremendous. I've been using Mepis Linux full-time for more than year, and it is by far the most secure, stable, configurable, and fun operating system I have ever used in 27 years of computing experience. With all of that going for it, why aren't Linux-based operating systems more popular? There's a whole lot of evidence that it's due to these reasons. Another author basically agrees with those reasons, but concludes that desktop Linux will succeed despite itself.
People who want to surf the web anonymously (or at least as anonymously as possible) may want to learn about JAP. According to the article, JAP works similarly to "the gold standard" TOR, but JAP is more user-friendly. I haven't tried either one of them myself.
Within a few years, some patients may start receiving medications through a patch that is stuck on their skin. That's nothing new, except that the patch will be using technology borrowed from inkjet printers.
A few of the U.S. states make a lot of money because they contain precious oil reserves. My state doesn't have any big oil reserves, but it's almost completely surrounded by salt water. Why is that significant? Because a cancer researcher has discovered a way to
burn salt water. It's almost overwhelming to even try to imagine how that discovery could affect everything from global poverty to the balance of world power.
Here we go again. Today, The Windows Secrets Newsletter and ZDNet have both reported the same disturbing news: "Microsoft has begun patching files on Windows XP and Vista without users' knowledge, even when the users have turned off auto-updates." Microsoft insists that it is all just a big misunderstanding, and it promises to tell users about such updates in the future. I think that we should all trust Microsoft on this — after all, when has it ever lied?
One computer user is so tired of Microsoft using its Windows Genuine Advantage feature to collect information about him from his computer, that he has sued Microsoft for infringing upon his privacy. Personally, I think that he's right, and I hope that he wins his case, but realistically, I don't think any individual has enough money to pursue a lawsuit against a company that has virtually unlimited resources with which to defend itself.
First we used paper ballots in our elections. That resulted in the weeks-long, Al Gore "hanging chad" fiasco, and a U.S. presidential election that was decided by a bitterly divided U.S. Supreme Court. Then, we had electronic balloting, but several studies showed that the electronic voting machines could be hacked, and without a "paper trail," no one had an auditable record of how voters had actually voted. The obvious solution to that problem was to use electronic voting that included a paper trail. Now, "The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation says paper trails increase costs and can actually reduce the chances a voters' choices are accurately counted." All of that probably comes as good news to the world's monarchs and dictators.
I'm one of those people who's always looking for the fastest, most efficient way to get things done. For example, if they had asked me, I could have told them how to do
this job in less than one second.
Just like I do, at least one author suspects that the stealth, forced upgrade to Windows Genuine Advantage that I mentioned yesterday may have been a dark foreshadowing of a much more sinister upgrade that may be on the horizon.
If you're a Linux user, and especially if you've followed the long saga of SCO's baseless claims of intellectual property claims against Linux, then you have a good reason to celebrate today — SCO has filed for bankruptcy. On the other hand, if you're an SCO stockholder, you're getting what you deserve — and shame on you for ever supporting that company.
It looks like maybe we're not going to get the flying car that they promised us decades ago. Instead, we're going to get a "personal strap-on jet wing that lets the pilot scream through the air at about 135MPH." Researchers say that its target audiences are military applications and extreme sports enthusiasts, but I'm guessing that it will also become a very popular tool for terrorists.
My wife and I watch the TV show
Jeopardy! almost every weeknight. If you're also a fan, you'll enjoy these videos of
ten Jeopardy! mishaps.
Tomorrow is Linux Day, the 16th anniversary of the day that Linus Torvalds first uploaded version 0.0.1 of his Linux kernel to the Internet. As part of the celebration, you may want to visit this special web site to read how others are using Linux, and to share your Linux experience with everyone.
If you're looking for a good Linux resource, YoLinux has links to tutorials and articles that cover just about anything you might want to know.
Where I live, it costs a whole lot extra to get digital cable service. Did you know that even if you're paying for digital service, your cable provider may be sending you some channels in the old analog format instead? That could make a big difference in both picture and sound quality, not only while you're watching TV, but also whenever you record a program. Are You Being Cheated by Digital Cable? will help you learn the truth about your cable service.
Do you remember the children's game,
Operation, where the object was to use a pair of tweezers to carefully remove the "internal organs" from a cartoon drawing of a patient?
Then you'll probably enjoy seeing how college undergraduates have built
robots that compete by playing Operation. Who knows — maybe some day, the grandson of one of those robots will remove your appendix. Or your funny bone.
Wow, it's almost lunch time, and I'm finally just getting started on today's Journal entry. I had planned to do it several hours ago, but something came up that kept me pretty busy until now: Someone stole one of this site's articles. While looking through Digg.com to find interesting stories for today, I found a story whose title sounded very familiar, so I clicked on it. I was taken to a web site out of China (in English) that had stolen malspa's recent Guest Article, How To Get System Info In Linux, word-for-word from this site, and had posted it on their site without permission, and had even added their own copyright notice to it at the bottom of the page. And they had removed malspa's name as the author of the article, to make it look like they had written it themselves. After all of that, they had promoted the stolen article on Digg.com to drive traffic to their web site. I wrote to malspa, to let him know what had happened. Then I wrote to Digg.com to let them know and to ask them to remove the Digg stories that promoted the stolen article. Then I posted a message on the Mepis Linux support forums, to let them know, and to ask their help in letting Digg.com know. And I also managed to leave a comment on the Chinese site, at the bottom of the stolen article, telling its readers that the article had been stolen from my site without permission.
Then I sent an email message to the owner of the Chinese site. I told him that his site contains copyrighted material that was stolen from my site and published on his site without permission, and I asked him to immediately remove my site's copyrighted material from everywhere and anywhere that he has published it. I don't have much hope that that my email message will make any difference, though, since the site owner appears to be the same guy who stole the article from my site, published it without permission, and posted links to it on Digg.com. If he doesn't remove that article soon, I will have to try to contact his ISP in China and ask that they shut down his web site.
Shortly after letting everyone know, one of my buddies from the Mepis forums posted a comment on Digg, calling it to everyone's attention that the article had been stolen from my site. And I registered on Digg.com for the first time ever, and posted my own comment about it, in both of the Digg stories that had linked to the stolen article.
They didn't write back to me, but within an hour, Digg.com removed both stories from their site. As of this writing, the stolen story still appears on the Chinese web site, with links to make it easy for readers to submit it to several of the popular Digg-like sites, to try to get more people to visit the site that stole the article from my site. At least for the time being, my comment appears on the Chinese site, at the bottom of the stolen article, telling readers that the article was stolen from my site. I won't post the URL to the illegal site here, because I don't want to do anything to send more visitors to that site.
And that, dear readers, is why I'm just now getting around to writing today's Journal entry.
In case you haven't heard, "Microsoft suffered a decisive antitrust defeat on Monday when a European Union court upheld a landmark ruling that the world's largest software maker had abused its dominant market position to crush rivals." This is widely considered to be bad news for the software monolith, but good news for pretty much every one else in the world. Here's a discussion of it that brings out a few important points.
The most influential baby boomer in the world may be sitting on your desk.
We've all known for some time that Big Brother is probably watching a lot of what we do in public. But you may not have realized just how much the authorities can see, even when you're in private.
For my alarm clock, I use my cell phone, programmed to play a recording of my wife softly and gently saying, "It's time to wake u-uuuuuup." I much prefer that to being woken up by a blaringly loud, beeping alarm clock. Still, if I had to choose, I'd definitely prefer the blaringly loud, beeping alarm clock to
this wake-up method.
After writing yesterday's Journal entry, I spent some time working on the problem of the guy (strongkill) who stole a copyrighted article from this site, published it on his site as though he had written it himself, and then promoted it by posting stories about it on Digg.com. The following has happened in the 24 hours since I first discovered the theft: Digg.com not only removed the two stories that pointed to strongkill's web site, they also deleted strongkill's Digg account. Even though the stolen story still appears on strongkill's web site, so does my comment right underneath it on that site, telling his site's visitors that strongkill stole it from this site. I've also done a few other things behind the scenes that I won't describe here for security reasons.
Long-time readers of this Journal have read the many, many reasons why I've chosen to use Linux full-time instead of Windows for more than a year. Here are some other reasons why people choose to use Linux as home users. I'm sure you'll recognize most of them.
Fresh on the heels of last week's announcement that IBM would support the free and open-source OpenOffice.org office suite, "IBM on Monday said it would start offering free word processing and other office software, joining a growing group of companies with free applications challenging a core Microsoft Corp product." In very closely related news, Yahoo has reportedly bought open source online/offline office suite Zimbra for $350 million (U.S.). It looks like Microsoft's bloated and expensive Office suite may finally get several very serious, and very healthy, competitors.
In the past few years, Ubuntu Linux has grown to become one of the most popular and publicized Linux distros, due in large part to its user-friendliness, as well as a huge advertising campaign and the company's distribution of thousands of free bootable CDs. As a result, many Windows users have either totally replaced Windows with Ubuntu, or they dual-boot the two operating systems on their computers. That has resulted in the mixed blessing of there being thousands of new Ubuntu users who need to be able to find support for their systems. If you're an Ubuntu user, you may want to get Ubuntu Forums Menu, a tiny Firefox browser add-on that "adds navigation menus for ubuntuforums.org to both the menu bar and the context menu. It also adds an ubuntuforums context search." Even though I prefer to use Mepis Linux instead of Ubuntu, I firmly believe in the adage that a rising tide lifts all boats. Enjoy!
Update: Long-time Journal reader malspa wrote to tell me that the Ubuntu Forums Menu add-on also contains links to many other Linux forums (like Debian forums, Linspire forums, Gentoo forums, Knoppix forums) as well as many other tutorial and reference sites that would be useful for all Linux users. In case you're wondering, I've already written to the add-on's developer, to ask him to add a link to the MEPISlovers Forums.
Update 2: Adam Smith, the developer of the Ubuntu Forums Menu add-on, sent the following reply to my email request: "Not a problem...will take care of it this weekend, and thanks for the heads up."
As always, different people have different opinions about using Linux versus using Windows. Here's a guy who tells his reasons Why Windows Users Are Insane. And here's a Windows Vista user who basically complains that he wants to be able to use Linux, but he doesn't want to have to learn anything new in order to use it. I feel sorry for people like that, stuck with using their horse-drawn carriages, wood-burning stoves, kerosene lamps and coal-fired furnaces.
Until now, most computer security software has used a blacklisting method that prevents known malware from running on your computer. The problem with that method is that bad guys are constantly developing new types of malware, which makes it extremely difficult for security companies and end-users to keep their black lists updated with all of the bad stuff. Now security company Symantec predicts that future security software will use a white list method that will only allow software that is on the whitelist to run on your computer. That sounds like it might be a good idea to me, but who will make sure that every single piece of "good" software in the world is on that whitelist? And that no "bad" software can get onto it? And what about the little scripts and programs and batch files that users create themselves -- will they be able to add those to their own white lists? If not, then how will users run those homegrown things? And if users will be able to add things to their white lists, then what will keep the bad guys from coming up with ways to automatically add their malware to users' white lists? Or tricking users into adding malware to their computers, just like they do now? As you can see, there are no simple solutions to the malware problem. Other than using a much more secure, non-Windows operating system on your computer.
Intel and other companies are predicting that, within a couple of years, computers will have new optical USB ports that will be
ten times the speed of current USB ports.
I first heard of Debian Linux several years ago, when a tech support guy at my ISP told me that they used that rock-solid operating system on their servers. If you're interested in Debian Linux, Ubuntu Linux, or the upcoming Mepis 7 Linux that will be based on Debian Linux. you'll want to read Why I'm staying with Debian. Be sure to also read the intelligent readers' comments that follow it.
A few days ago, I told you that Microsoft had been caught doing forced, "stealth" Windows Updates on users' computers against their will. Well, it seems that things were even worse than I had thought, and the forced updates actually put some computers at risk of being damaged or even causing fires. Get all of the gory details and learn how to protect your Windows computer from such updates by reading Protect Yourself From Silent Windows Updates and Readers State Concerns Over Windows Update.
If you've followed this story at all, then you won't be surprised to learn that Nasdaq intends to delist The SCO Group, Inc. one week from today.
We still don't have flying cars, robots that do our housework for us, or pills that replace our normal meals, but I guess we shouldn't complain, because at least scientists have created
ray guns. By the way, if you were like me as a teenager, you read a lot of the old
Tom Swift science fiction adventure books. Notice the title of Book #10 in that series. Then try to tell me you're not surprised to see that the acronym TASER stands for
this.
Here's some good news: there's reason to believe that Windows Vista may have inadvertently motivated some Windows users to try Linux.
Here's some bad news: there's reason to believe that some Windows users who try Linux are driven back to using Windows by Linux community issues.
An innovative new propulsion system could shorten the length of your next excursion to Mars from two years down to only six months. Please don't leave your left turn signal on the whole time.
I don't remember who it was, but years ago, I heard a comedian say that all of the chemicals and preservatives in
Hostess Twinkies made him wonder how long they stay fresh on the shelf. So he went to a store and looked at the freshness date on a package of Twinkies. It just said, "Buddy, you should live so long." If you like Twinkies, you're going to want to know
what's in them. Come to think of it, maybe you don't want to know.
Here in the Sunshine State, there's an entire city government that has been using desktop Linux on its employees' computers instead of Windows for the past several years. And now, they're hoping to move the city's employees onto the 3-D Compiz-Fusion desktop. Now there's a smart city that's thinking ahead.
How much freedom do you have to set up your Linux desktop to look and work exactly the way you want? Take a look at Desktop Show and Tell, Linux Edition.
If you live in the U.S., and you registered your phone number with the National Do Not Call Registry back when it started in 2003, your registration will expire soon unless lawmakers take action to stop it from expiring. Or if you want to make sure that your registration will continue for another 5 years, just re-register it.
I always assumed that you had to be really, really smart to be accepted into
MIT. Unfortunately, it appears that nowadays,
that's no longer true.
In the past few years, I've seen a glut of articles telling what one expert or another thinks that desktop Linux needs to do in order to be successful, along with a glut of articles telling why one expert or another thinks that desktop Linux will never be a success. After awhile, all of those articles start to make sense, which is confusing, since many of them contradict each other. Now that I've been using desktop Linux full-time for more than a year, I can honestly say that I completely agree with one author who says that Linux is already a success. Read the article to find out why.
I've linked to one or two of its articles in the past, but regular Journal reader and fellow Linux user malspa wrote to remind me that Raiden's Realm has a lot of good information, thoughtful editorials and even a comic strip for Linux users.
We may have beat them to the moon, but the Russians are very, very smart. By 2009, a Russian version of Linux will be running on every single school computer in Russia.
Internationally loved mime and
Holocaust survivor, Marcel Marceau,
has died. Out of respect for his life and work, it seems especially appropriate to observe a moment of silence.
Over the past several days, I've done hours and hours of back-breaking physical labor in my yard. Though it exhausted me, it gave me a lot of time to think, and the work that I was doing ended up reminding me of three important life lessons. I hope to write a new article about the experience later today, so you may want to check back in a few hours to see if it's up yet.
UDATE: I'm sorry — I ended up doing several more hours of hard work and now I'm too tired to write my new article. I'll try to make time to write it tomorrow.
This site's visitors have shown a lot of interest in reading my recent Journal entries that described my experience with getting KMail to work on my PC, and explained why I ended up deciding to not use KMail or the Kontact PIM that includes it. To make it easier for people to find that information, I combined those Journal entries with some other things that I wrote about KMail in a support forum, to create a new article, Why I Won't Use KMail Or Kontact, which now appears in this site's CB Guides section
More bad news for Microsoft. Several days ago, I told you that a European Union appeals court had upheld an earlier landmark antitrust ruling against the software giant. Fresh on the heels of that victory, an EU Commission now says that "Computers in the European Union should be sold without a bundled operating system." As usual, if it's bad news for Microsoft, it's probably good news for just about everyone else.
I just love to hear about things like this: Colorado State University is gearing up to mass-produce low-cost, high-efficiency solar panels that "could power homes and businesses around the globe with clean energy for roughly the same cost as traditionally generated electricity." I have an entire south-facing roof that would be a perfect place for something like that.
You may have heard about the giant meteor that crashed in Peru a few days ago and caused a lot of people to get sick. Well, scientists have figured out the cause of the mystery illness, and it turns out that
it's not the meteor's fault.
We've known for months that corporations have almost universally shunned Windows Vista and have chosen to continue using Windows XP instead. We've also known that PC manufacturers have continued to allow corporations to buy new PCs with XP installed on them. Now we also know that PC manufacturers are allowing normal PC users to downgrade their PCs from Vista back to XP. Just one more reason why I'm glad that I'm not a Microsoft shareholder.
Scientists aren't really sure yet why it happens, but when you send deadly germs up into space, they come back even deadlier. I'm not sure why it took them so long to figure that out — fans of science-fiction movies have known it for at least the past 50 years.
Photographers have always known that a tripod is a more stable and adjustable way to support something than a device that has fewer or more legs. Now scientists have developed a three-legged, walking robot that takes advantage of that fact.
Take a look at someone's idea of the
10 Best Gadgets of 2007, and see if you agree with me that one person's "best gadget" may be another person's over-priced piece of frivolity.
Late last night, I finished writing a new article, You Can Learn A Lot From An Air Potato, that describes several important life lessons that occurred to me recently while doing some back-breaking landscaping work. My new article joins the many other articles in this site's Personal Stuff section.
If you're a Windows user who's dissatisfied with your Windows experience, then you'll want to read the partly tongue-in-cheek article, How to Quit Windows And Cope With Windows Withdrawal Syndrome.
If you're a Linux user, then chances are they've influenced you, even if you've never used any of them. They're The 7 Most Influential GNU/Linux Distributions. I mostly agree with the author's choices, but like regular Journal reader and fellow Linux user malspa said in an email message this morning, the author should have also included Knoppix Linux. After all, Knoppix pioneered and popularized the entire concept of providing Linux on a Live CD that could boot up a computer and run Linux and all kinds of system utilities, all without having to install anything onto the computer's hard drive.
The upcoming version 3 of Firefox, the popular, award-winning, free, open-source web browser, will include a powerful new anti-phishing feature that will be disabled by default. When you learn how it works, you may decide to keep it disabled.
Internet users in the U.S. may soon have to pay significantly more for Internet access as well as for goods and services purchased over the web — up to 17% more, according to some estimates. As you've probably already guessed,
it's the government's fault.
He's only 23 years old, but this week, he's going to prison for breaking into 15 telecommunications companies, hundreds of businesses and millions of computers worldwide. How did he do it? Don't assume that he must be some sort of computer genius — he says that it was "so easy a caveman could do it." Scary.
If you've read Mr. Destructo, then you know what goes on inside of my head. Here's a woman who could probably be called Ms. Destructo. And she's not alone: here are the stories of several other Women In Technology.
A couple of times in the past, I've mentioned that I use the really powerful Web Developer Firefox extension to help me create and maintain this site. Though I've only ever used a small sub-set of its features, I've always wondered what else it could do. Here's a simple description of Web Developer's many features.
I hate TV shows like
this one. I think they pander to audiences' voyeurism by cynically exploiting women who need DNA tests to prove the paternity of their children. I'm hoping that
this invention will eventually make shows like that go away.
It's called Five Ways Linux Is Better Than Vista, but four of the five ways apply to Windows XP, too. Once you've read it, you'll know why you should be using a Linux-based operating system instead of Windows. After that, you'll probably also want to read this discussion about 5 Reasons Your Parents Should Use Linux.
For months, I've been telling you about the many serious problems that Windows Vista users have reported. Are those problems actually jeopardizing Microsoft's future? One writer explains Why Microsoft Must Abandon Vista To Save Itself.
A few weeks ago, I told you that PC users all over the world were angry that Microsoft had secretly pushed a Windows Update onto their PCs without their permission. At the time, Redmond admitted to doing the deed, but downplayed the possibility that the update would cause problems. It turns out, they were wrong (surprise, surprise). It's now being reported that "A silent update that Microsoft deployed widely in July and August is preventing the 'repair' feature of Windows XP from completing successfully." Luckily, the article also explains how to fix your copy of Windows XP.
If you're going to try to get rid of those cockroaches in your kitchen, you should probably do it
in the morning, rather than at night.
This Journal entry has been combined with another entry to create a new article,
Dan, The Piano Man, that appears in this site's
Personal Stuff section.
Along with being extremely stable and secure, Linux-based desktop operating systems are also highly configurable. That's one of the reasons why there are hundreds of different desktop Linux distros that serve all kinds of specialized needs. There are many that are designed to make it easy for Windows users to convert to Linux, and many others whose raw power is matched only by their incredible user-unfriendliness. There are several that are specifically created to run on older hardware, and others that are designed to run off of USB flash drives. Still others are aimed at people who do a lot of audio or multimedia work. There's even one specifically created for Christians, as well as one for Satanists. And here's one that I thought of as a joke, but when I did a search for its name, I discovered that it really exists: a Linux distro for cat lovers — Felinux. Now, regular Journal reader and fellow Linux user malspa reports that at least one man thinks it might be a good idea to have a Linux distro for women — and at least one woman says thanks, but no thanks to that idea.
Many of us have been saying it for months. Here's someone else who thinks that "Vista has turned into the desktop operating system no one wants, and even Microsoft is beginning to get it."
Anyone who watches crime shows knows that criminal masterminds always "case the joint" before striking, to look for predictable patterns in the security systems that they're trying to defeat. That's why I'm really shocked and disappointed to learn that one major U.S. airport is only just now starting to use the "bold new idea" of using randomly placed security checkpoints.
Did you know that, when it's exposed to high voltage, water can flow across a gap from one container to another? Well, now you know.
Are you feeling low or unsure of yourself? Do you need to be inspired, encouraged and motivated? Then you may not want to look at
these funny posters.
