http://www.ComputerBob.com/journal_archive/2007/10.php .
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In memory of my friend Dan, I've combined my two recent Journal entries about him into a new article,
Dan, The Piano Man, which now appears in this site's Personal Stuff section.
See if you think this is a good idea: Microsoft is planning to release a web-based version of its Office suite, to compete with a similar offering from Google. The catch is that you'll have to buy and install the hard-drive-based version of Microsoft Office before you'll be allowed to use the online version. Office fans can look forward to the online version combining the high cost and bloatedness of Microsoft Office with the infamous online security of Microsoft Internet Explorer. Hey, maybe they should call it Microsoft Office Vista.
If you've looked into the topic at all, then you know that when you "delete" a file in Windows, it doesn't actually get erased from your hard drive — it just gets renamed in a special way that makes it "invisible" to Windows — so anyone who has a cheap (or even free) "undelete" utility can find and recover your "deleted" file in just a few seconds. If you really want to make a file hard to recover, you have to use a special "disk-wiping" application to overwrite it with random ones and zeros several times. If you're going to sell or give your old PC to someone, you'll probably want to wipe its hard drive first, to make sure that your private files on its hard drive are as hard as possible for anyone to recover.
DBAN is an example of a disk-wiper. Notice I said that a disk-wiper will make your deleted file "hard to recover," instead of "impossible to recover." That's because, as far as I know, unless you either melt down your hard drive or physically shred it into tiny pieces, you can't make a deleted file "impossible" to recover, even by wiping it. The best that you can hope for is to make it so hard to recover that no one will be able to do it unless they have some very specialized knowledge of data-recovery and access to some very expensive equipment.
If you've been a Linux newbie for awhile, and you'd like to move up to a new level of understanding, check out Basic Linux Tips and Tricks, Part 1.
Researchers are developing
a non-invasive imaging technology that could eventually allow your boss to know whether you're sitting at your computer thinking or sitting at your computer daydreaming. Hey, wake up and get back to work.
Anyone who's seen Microsoft CEO's Steve Ballmer's
manic speaking style will probably get a kick out of
The Ballmer Peak.
From what I've read, the two suites are comparable and compatible enough that most people can easily give up using the bloated, expensive Microsoft Office productivity suite and switch to the free, open-source
OpenOffice.org office suite. But can OpenOffice.org's "Impress" presentation software really replace MS Office's PowerPoint for power users? Find out in
Office Shootout: OpenOffice.org Impress vs. Microsoft PowerPoint, Round 2.
In these days where the nightly TV fare constantly fawns over the excesses of self-indulgent celebritneys and millionnaire heir-heads, it can be very difficult to teach your children good lessons and habits about money. You'll get some help and tips from
10 Lessons to Teach Your Kids About Money.
Its implications are astounding: "Research in the last few years has raised the possibility that Alzheimer's memory loss could be due to
a novel third form of diabetes."
It's a cute, fluffy white teddy bear. When your child holds it, it says things like, "You're the best!" and "I love you so, so much!" But, every once in awhile, for no apparent reason, it says something nasty and bites them. What kind of parents would buy their child a bi-polar bear?
Every computer user who has ever switched from using Windows to using Linux has a story about why they switched. I wrote
my reasons for switching more than 3 1/2 years before I found a Linux distro that was able to take the place of Windows on my computer. That happened about 15 months ago. After that, it only took me a few more weeks to find the Linux distro that
I've been using full-time ever since. Here's
another Windows convert's story. And Bruno from Quebec City wrote to call my attention to
this article that explains how it's getting easier to switch to Linux, now that PC manufacturers like Dell are offering new PCs with Linux preinstalled on them.
People used to think that white-collar, "geeky" criminals were prosecuted and punished more leniently than violent criminals. It appears that due to heightened concern about terrorism nowadays, that may no longer be the case. I'm not sure whether I believe the tale of the
persecuted and prosecuted Linux user, but it seems to me that the real problem wasn't that he was a Linux user — the real problem was that he was a stereotypically geeky, sociopathic criminal.
I play the 12-string guitar. If you've wandered through my page of favorite quotes, you've probably seen this one: "Twelve-string guitarists spend half their time tuning and the other half playing out of tune." It's funny, but I think it's probably also true. Having been blessed with relative pitch, I used to have to retune at least one or two strings after nearly every song. Now, after more than ten years of research, Gibson is offering a new line of
self-tuning guitars. Of course, the new technology is causing quite a controversy among musicians. Why? I think it's probably for a lot of the same reasons that many computer experts object to any technologies that make computers easier for everyone else to use.
Nothing in it is offensive in any way.
But much of what it says will surprise you.
And some of what it says will shock you.
Depending on your personality type, you will find it extremely disturbing, depressing, sobering, frightening, challenging or motivating.
As a trainer and educator, I found it to be all of the above.
I guarantee that Did You Know? will change how you look at a lot of things.
And how you see yourself from now on.
You will remember it.
And you will probably want to show it to everyone you know.
Everyone you care about.
Today, my wife and I join our next-door neighbors and good friends, Mike and Annamarie, in grief over the loss of Oliver, their beloved greyhound. Oliver was a really good boy whose gentle, loving demeanor brought a lot of joy to a lot of people for many years. We're all going to miss him very much, but
I believe that we'll see him again some day.
Several weeks ago, Microsoft caused yet another huge controversy when it force-fed a silent Windows Update to Windows users without their permission. The controversy heated up even more when it turned out that that update itself actually created new problems for Windows XP users. "Fortunately, there are
alternatives to Windows Update that will keep your system fully patched without costing you a dime."
Regular readers of this Journal know that, instead of Windows, I've been using
Mepis Linux full-time for more than a year. Still, because I teach Windows-based training courses for a local college, I sometimes need to run Windows to prepare for those courses. That's when I fully utilize the advantages of
My Hardware-Based Dual-Boot PC. Of course, I keep Windows XP as lean as possible, to minimize any possible security problems. Unfortunately, Microsoft hides a lot of the insecure Windows XP "junk," from the "Add/Remove Programs" screen, to keep people from easily uninstalling it. Fortunately, there's a way to
hack into Windows XP to "un-hide" the junk and make it easy to uninstall.
The news of incredible new technologies used to make me feel exhilarated. Unfortunately, over the years, I've seen too many really good ideas end up being used for really bad purposes. So nowadays, I find myself reacting to many new technologies with both cautious optimism and cynical foreboding. That's exactly how I feel about "a composite
plastic that's as strong as steel but lighter and transparent".
You know how, um, when, uh, like someone's talking, and um, you know, they uh, sound like this, and it's um, like really annoying? Well, you may not realize it, but, even if you speak really well, you may make a really bad impression with your
body language. Of course, if you spend too much time thinking about how you sound and how you act all the time, people will think that you're way too self-conscious, and that will make a bad impression, too. So just be yourself. Only better.
In the past, I told you that the free
SystemRescueCD is a very powerful tool for troubleshooting and fixing problems on your Windows or Linux PC. Now there's a new version of the SystemRescueCD that's reportedly
even better than before.
Have you ever had something go embarrassingly wrong while you were giving a presentation? If you have, then you'll probably feel relieved that at least it wasn't one of the ten worst presentation moments.
Have you had your appendix removed? Millions of people have. But now some scientists think they may have figured out
the purpose of the appendix.
Stephen, one of my former college students from 7-8 years ago, wrote to call my attention to
this funny video. You'll probably enjoy it if you have children of your own. Or if you've ever been a child.
Regular visitors to this web site (and my current Dreamweaver training students) may notice a few new cosmetic changes. This past weekend, I moved the language-translation icons to the bottom of the left navigation column, enlarged the two lines of text that are next to my "CB" logo, and removed the animated banners that linked from the top of all non-home pages to this Journal. I also increased the contrast of the entire site's "clouds" background image. I think the changes make the whole site look cleaner, brighter and snappier, and the improved background image better integrates the site's various visual features into a more-unified look.
If you're a Linux user, or if you're thinking of becoming a Linux user, you might want to read Mac OS X and Linux Fail to Compare to Vista — not for the article itself, which I think is a poor analysis of the data, but for the intelligent readers' comments that follow it.
If you've tried to buy a concert ticket lately, you've probably run into this problem: Even if you use a computer to try to buy your tickets online, you find that they're all sold out almost immediately. Then just a few minutes later, online scalpers are offering to sell those tickets at many times their published prices. How did they get them? Find out
what's causing the problem, and if there's anything you can do about it.
For as long as most people can remember, Microsoft has enjoyed the unchallenged monopoly power and incredible wealth and influence that come from having its Windows operating systems shipped by default — against the will of many PC buyers — on nearly all PCs that are sold in the world. But, as I told you a few weeks ago, the European Union
is thinking of breaking that stronghold by unbundling Windows from new PCs that are sold in Europe. That's gotten a lot of people talking about the possibility of doing the same thing in the U.S. There are
a lot of opinions, both for and against the unbundling idea. Here's one author who is clearly
for it.
If you're like me — and I know I am — you use the free, secure, open-source Firefox web browser instead of Microsoft Internet Explorer. One of my favorite Firefox features is its tabs, which allow me to have multiple web sites open simultaneously, each in its own tab of the same window. If you love Firefox tabs too, you'll want to take a look at Firefox Extensions For Tab Addicts.
Interpol recently found photographs of a suspected pedophile on a web site, but his face had been "scrambled," using a digital blurred whirl. Fortunately, they were able to
digitally "unscramble" the image back into a clear photograph of his face, and have now asked for the public's help in identifying who he is. While it's a good thing that it is possible to use such digital forensics to help catch criminals, it raises a serious concern about the safety of the common technique of
using digital blurring to protect other sensitive information that appears on the web. To be completely safe, you should either remove the sensitive information, or completely cover it up. For example, there's a photograph on this web site that originally showed the address on the front of a house. Instead of digitally blurring the address, I copied a nearby blank section of the house and pasted it over the section that contained the address.
This Journal entry is now a separate article, How I Connected Multiple PCs To One DSL Connection. It appears in this site's CB Guides section.
It took me several hours of research to figure out the information and procedures that I wrote about in yesterday's Journal entry. To make that information easier for others to find, I've turned yesterday's entry into a separate article,
How I Connected Multiple PCs To One DSL Connection. It can be found in this site's CB Guides section.
Whether you're a Linux newbie or a veteran user, and whether you use the KDE environment like I do, or some other desktop environment or Windows manager, you'll probably learn at least a few interesting things from
12 Tips for KDE Users.
If you're a Hotmail user, you're going to want to follow this story: IT administrators have reported that "Hotmail has placed Draconian limits on the number of Hotmail recipients who can receive an email. They say that if you send an email message to more than 10 recipients, only the first 10 recipients will receive it. Of course, Microsoft denies that it's true. I wonder who's telling the truth.
Does your Web site load really slowly, especially when people access it through a dial-up Internet connection? Don't go looking for a new web host until you first explore the possibility that the problem
might be your own fault.
There's a (possibly American) expression that says, "I'd like to be a fly on the wall when that happens." What it means is that the speaker wishes that they could somehow witness an event firsthand, without anyone noticing that they're there. As far as I know, no one's figured out how to transform a human being (other than Jeff Goldblum) into a fly, but there are various reports and rumors that indicate that researchers may have created and even successfully used
robobugs to spy on people.
I've been really happy with the web host that I've been using for several years, but I kind of like the idea of having my web sites hosted by a company that's
inside a diamond mine.
A couple of days ago, the mother of a 13-year-old girl took on Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer publicly, to complain about her experience with updating her daughter's computer to Windows Vista. I don't normally feel any sympathy for the blustery Ballmer, but in this case, I think that maybe the woman unfairly put him into a lose-lose situation, public-relations-wise. Read about
what happened and see if you agree with me that maybe she's at least partially responsible for her own problems because, instead of doing some research into its feasibility before doing her failed Vista upgrade, she apparently upgraded mainly because her little daughter told her that she "needed" Vista's "gadgets."
Every day, millions of people around the world do Google searches and use Google's many other services without ever thinking about how just much personal information Google has on file about each of us. Maybe it's time for
a little healthy paranoia.
If you use the Firefox Web browser, and you download a lot of things from the Internet, you'll probably want to check out DownThemAll!, which can reportedly increase the speed of your downloads by up to 400%, and allow you to pause and resume your downloads.
When you're online, do you behave the same way that you do "in person?" It seems that a lot of normally polite people act like complete jerks when they put on the Worldwide Web's
cloak of anonymity. Or could it be that their online behavior reflects their "real" personality, and the politeness that they display in person is all just an act?
If you like to keep a finger on the pulse of what's new, exciting and possibly world-changing, you'll love the winners of
the 2007 Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Awards.
Anyone who follows the computer industry at all knows that, in an obvious effort to cast dispersions over his company's very worthy competition, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has claimed for years that Linux software violates hundreds of Microsoft's intellectual property patents. He's even implied that Linux users should have to pay Microsoft for the right to run Linux software. Of course, the bombastic Ballmer has never cited even one example of a patent violation to back up his FUDD, which has led many analysts to conclude that he should either "put up or shut up." Here's
a good example of that.
One of the best things about the free, open-source Firefox browser is the fact that you can download your choice of hundreds of different add-ons that enhance it with specific features. For some good ideas of which ones to add to your Firefox, here's a forum thread in which Mepis Linux users list the Firefox add-ons that they use.
If you're looking for a free graphics application that has most of the same features that you'd have to pay hundreds of dollars to get in PhotoShop, take a good look at
GIMP. Yes, I agree that it's a lame name (pun intended), but for most people, GIMP can reportedly do everything that PhotoShop can do, and GIMP can run in Windows, Linux or on a Mac. Of course, like any good graphics manipulation software, GIMP offers more than one way to do various tasks. For example, here's a short tuturial that describes
how to whiten teeth in GIMP, while
How To Touch-Up Portraits With GIMP describes several techniques, including a different way to whiten teeth.
UPDATE: Regular readers of this Journal know that I've been using Mepis Linux full-time for more than a year, and have been eagerly waiting for the upcoming Mepis 7, which is expected to be released soon. Last night, I downloaded the latest beta version of Mepis 7. Today, I tried it out and then wrote
My First Look At Mepis 7 Beta 5, which now appears in this site's Reviews section.
Because it had received thousands of complaints about problems with Windows Vista, the Dutch Consumers' Union (Consumentenbond) recently asked Microsoft to provide free copies of Windows XP for its dissatisfied Vista users. Microsoft refused. "The refusal has led Consumentenbond to call on consumers to
explicitly ask for Windows XP when purchasing a new computer and for shops to provide free Windows XP packages to those dissatisfied with Vista." Read the comments that follow the story to see how some people are reacting to the news.
My Dreamweaver students and I discussed the need for web sites to be accessible during our recent training classes. Here's a perfect example of what we talked about: "California law may
require websites to be accessible to disabled internet users, according to a ruling in a case against retail giant Target."
Email software's configuration is something that most people do once and then pretty much forget about. Some of us switch computers or operating systems, though, and we find ourselves having to reconfigure our email software in those new situations. Luckily for me, I use Mozilla's free and open-source
Thunderbird email client, so its configuration is pretty consistent, whether I'm working in Windows XP or in Linux. Still, even though it's pretty easy to get most email software to receive email messages, it can get trickier to get it to send email messages. That's why you may want to save a bookmark to
a good Thunderbird troubleshooting page.
Regular readers of this Journal know that I'm happily anticipating the upcoming new Debian-based (as opposed to Ubuntu-based)
Mepis 7 Linux distro. In fact, as I wrote yesterday, I even downloaded and tried out its newest beta version, to confirm that using it would be feasible for me. The release version of the new KDE desktop probably won't be ready in time to be included in the first release of Mepis 7, but the Mepis developers are working to make sure that Mepis 7 will be ready for it when KDE 4 is released. Here's
an illustrated preview of KDE 4 that shows some of the features that users are looking forward to getting in the new KDE.
In the U.S., a person who is very egotistical is often said to have "a big head." If that's true, then Hitachi has succeeded in creating hard drive components that are very humble. The company predicts that hard drives that will hold 4 terabytes of data will be available in 2011.
I don't understand how it plans to beam it back to Earth, but the U.S. military hopes that it will soon be able to collect massive amounts of solar power in space, to free its forces from their current dependence on insecure foreign sources of energy.
Here's some good news on the medical front: Researchers have developed
"a simple blood test that may be able to predict whether mild lapses of memory could be an early sign of Alzheimer's disease."
Regular readers of this Journal have read about problems with Microsoft's Update and the Windows Genuine Advantage "feature" several times in the past. It seems like a new problem surfaces at least once every couple of months, and some of them have had devastating effects on users' computers. Yet the technical problems themselves may turn out to be insignificant compared to the cumulative public-relations fallout that they've caused. One author says that what's really broken with Windows Update is
trust. I have to agree, since Microsoft's loss of my trust was one of the main reasons that I started looking at alternatives to its operating systems and applications a few years ago, and began using Linux full-time instead of Windows over a year ago.
A few days ago, I mentioned GIMP, the free and open-source graphics program that many people find to be a viable alternative to the proprietary and expensive Photoshop. Still, Photoshop users who are used to doing tasks the Photoshop way may not want to be forced to learn new ways to do those tasks in GIMP. Those users may want to use
GIMPShop to make the GIMP user interface act more like Photoshop.
Homer Simpson once said, "Donuts — is there anything they can't do?" I'm beginning to feel the same way about plastic. Hey, maybe someone will think of a way to make plastic donuts that will solve all of the world's problems.
You may remember that a few months ago, the three computers that control the U.S.-Russian International Space Station's orientation shut down suddenly and unexpectedly. At the time, the Russians immediately tried to blame the Americans for the shutdown, citing several possible reasons that ranged from technical mistakes to suspicions of espionage. Ever since then, I've wondered if we'd ever find out the real source of the problem. Well,
now we know.
Regular readers of this Journal know that I've been using
Mepis Linux full-time instead of Windows for more than a year. They also know many of the reasons why I'm so happy to be almost totally free of Microsoft operating systems and applications. Of course, I realize that Linux may not be the best choice for everyone in every situation, but I know that it would be a better choice than Windows for many, many people. Here are
13 Reasons Why Linux Should Be On Your Desktop. By the way, I couldn't help notice that their author uses Mepis Linux, too.
It seems like every few weeks, we learn something new about Windows Vista — and it seems like it's always something bad. Now it appears that, for months, Vista has had problems with
copying large numbers of files. Microsoft was supposed to release a fix for it in Service Pack 1, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen. Instead, they offer a hotfix for it, but they don't want you to install the hotfix unless you really need it, because it might cause other problems, and it currently doesn't work with the SP1 beta. You really didn't want to copy large numbers of files anyway, did you?
How's your email inbox? After automatically analyzing billions of emails weekly, Commtouch has concluded that "Global spam levels reached an all-time high of
95% of all emails" in the third quarter of 2007.
For the past several years, this web site has met all XHTML 1.0 Strict web-coding standards as well as all web-accessibility standards. You can confirm it by clicking on the validation icons that appear in the left navigation column on every page of this site. I've never had any problems getting Google to index this site. In fact, it re-indexes it every couple of days — probably because this site's content is valuable enough that hundreds of other web sites link to its articles and home page. Here's a demonstration that supposedly answers the question,
What if Google had to design their user interface for Google? It's kind of funny, even though I think the real answer has nothing to do with what it says — if you want your site to be indexed by search engines, make sure that it contains useful, original content and that its underlying code is error-free. Of course, doing those things to make your site popular takes a lot more work than just adding things to your web pages to try to fool search engines into thinking that your site is popular.
"On September 27, Microsoft has extended the cut-off as to when PC makers will be allowed to continue to sell Windows XP with new machines." Plus, Windows Vista is infamously buggy and problem-filled, which is why so many companies and individuals choose to continue running Windows XP instead. It almost makes you wonder,
Is Windows XP too good for Microsoft's own good?
If you start thinking that maybe Windows XP is too good for Microsoft's own good, keep in mind that there are new reports that both Vista and XP are automatically updating themselves against the wishes of end users. Regular readers of this Journal know that the desire to control my own PC — instead of feeling like Microsoft controls it and then allows me to just use it — is one of the big reasons why I weaned myself off of Windows more than a year ago, and have been using Mepis Linux full-time ever since.
Here's some news that surprises me: "A bipartisan bill that would let victims of identity theft seek restitution for money and time they spent repairing their credit history was introduced on Tuesday in the (U.S.) Senate." Aren't you surprised that lawmakers are just now coming up with such a bill, when identity theft has been an expensive and life-shattering experience for its victims for many years?
Here's some good news in the field of medicine: "University of Manchester researchers have
transformed fat tissue stem cells into nerve cells — and now plan to develop
an artificial nerve that will bring damaged limbs and organs back to life."
Microsoft has a long history of wielding its immense power and resources to reduce or eliminate its competition in various fields by either driving its biggest competitors out of business or by purchasing them. Now comes word that Redmond plans to buy open-source software companies. If you think like I do, you're starting to pick up a new faint-but-familiar smell of Microsoft antitrust issues in the air.
As a webmaster who has spent over 9,500 hours hours working on this site over the past 9 years, I am a fierce
proponent of intellectual property copyrights. Still, even I am repulsed by
one law firm's reported copyright claims.
This morning, I got an email from an old friend that contained a link to
this story, describing how as few as 7 raisins or grapes can poison your dog. With Thanksgiving coming up soon in the U.S., I'd like to share the fact that my vet told me that if you feed your dog even a small amount of juicy Thanksgiving turkey, they can get a life-theatening intestinal obstruction. If you have any kind of pet, be sure to read
the ASPCA's Animal Poison Control List. Here's an even better idea: print it out, post it on your refrigerator, and tell your whole family to read it.
To me, the scariest part of the story is not that the automatic robotic weapon
killed 9 people and wounded 14 others. The scariest part is the fact that anyone would ever create — let alone trust — an automatic robotic weapon.
For centuries, art lovers have pondered the secrets of the Mona Lisa's enigmatic expression. New research reveals that what we're seeing is not exactly what da Vinci originally painted, and may be at least partially the result of
a poor attempt to clean the famous painting.
There's an old expression that says that if you don't like a company's products or services, you should "vote with your feet" and take your business elsewhere. One dissatisfied Comcast customer apparently decided to also "vote with
her hammer."
If you're a Windows user, using Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser along with RealPlayer software, "an exploit in circulation can allow an attacker to take complete control of your machine, Symantec is warning." Learn more about that exploit, as well as
how to protect your computer from it.
Sometimes I see a driver who drives like they think that they're playing an electronic game — you know, the kind where there aren't any real consequences for reckless driving, and if you crash and burn, you get a brand-new car in a couple of seconds. Well, soon there will be a $189 (USD) vest that adds some realism to "shoot-'em-up" games by allowing players to feel it when they get shot. So now those types of games won't just desensitize your child to the act of killing other people, they'll also desensitize them to the possibility of being shot. If such games serve any good purpose or have any redeeming value, I'm not seeing it.
Popular lore says that if there's ever a global thermonuclear war, the only creatures left alive at the end will be cockroaches, but does anyone know for sure if cockroaches could survive that level of radiation exposure?
They will pretty soon.
I don't know Matthew, but I do know that he recently had a birthday. And that he likes
Mac and Linux computers.
Following years of having a reputation as being too geeky or difficult for normal PC users, desktop Linux is finally mainstream, thanks to the worldwide popularity and notoriety of Linux distros like
Ubuntu and the fact that tier-one PC manufacturers are starting to follow Dell Computer's lead in offering desktop Linux preinstalled on some of their PCs. In fact, "two of the top three Linux distributions are commercially successful operations, and the third aims to be."
This is a good time for Linux and an excellent time to be a Linux user. It's also a good time to ask, Where does Linux go from here?
Does the fact that a typical Linux desktop computer gets more software updates than a typical Windows computer mean that Linux is not as secure as Windows? At least one writer has said so, but
there's a big flaw in that logic that proves that the opposite is true.
I think it would probably take me weeks just to read all of it, let alone take the time to use and understand much of what it says, but if you're looking for a tremendously comprehensive tutorial and reference work about Linux, you're going to love
LINUX: Rute User's Tutorial and Exposition. According to its site, "This book covers GNU/LINUX system administration, for popular distributions like RedHat and Debian, as a tutorial for new users and a reference for advanced administrators. It aims to give concise, thorough explanations and practical examples of each aspect of a UNIX system. Anyone who wants a comprehensive text on (what is commercially called) "LINUX" need look no further — there is little that is not covered here." Wow — it sure looks like they're right about that.
It doesn't have any graphics system or any of Windows Vista's features, but it's less than 1% of Vista's size, and it may eventually become part of Vista's eventual replacement. It's the Windows
Mini-Me.
UPDATE: Here's a little bit of potentially good news for anyone who lives in a highly populated, hurricane-threatened area: "Scientists have made a breakthrough in man's desire to control the forces of nature — unveiling plans to
weaken hurricanes and steer them off course, to prevent tragedies such as Hurricane Katrina." Of course, one person's good news could be another person's bad news.
Is it possible to watch TV, even cable channels, for free, even if you don't own a TV set?
Yes! And no.
Like many Linux users, I'm eagerly awaiting the soon-to-be-released new version of Mepis Linux, even though the current version has easily replaced Windows for my full-time usage for more than a year. Anyone who uses or follows what's going on in "the Linux community" knows that there has nearly always been a philosophical rift between those who think that desktop Linux is fine the way it is, and those who think that desktop Linux needs to become more "Windows-like" to compete with Windows. For my own computing needs, I find Mepis Linux to have a nearly perfect balance of functionality and user-friendliess, but others wonder Is Grandma's Linux called Mac OS X?
In related news, here are one writer's Seven Areas Where Linux Could Get Better. Note that none of the suggestions involve user-friendliness.
Microsoft has reportedly finally agreed to comply with the European Union's 2004 antitrust decision against it. And yes, it has agreed to pay that fine of 500 million Euros. Here's
a discussion about the news. I think this sets a huge legal, operational and philosophical precedent that could change the computing future for us all.
Does the name Frank Abagnale sound familiar to you? It might, if you've ever seen Leonardo Di Caprio's portrayal of him in the 2002 movie,
Catch Me If You Can. A few days ago, the semi-famous fraudster spoke to a conference audience about security, saying, "It would be
4,000 times easier to do today, what I did 40 years ago, and I probably wouldn't go to prison for it."
If you use a wireless Internet connection, you'll probably be glad to hear that IBM is announcing new high-speed wireless chipsets that promise wireless speeds
100 times faster than today's speeds.
Even before it was announced a few years ago, worldwide publicity predicted that it would change the world. Instead, it quickly became an expensive toy that has had virtually no global impact. And now, apparently to make it even more of a laughably niche product, they're offering an even more-expensive
designer model. Oooh, look — it's red! And it has a designer sticker!
Yesterday, I added
Firebug to the list of Firefox browser extensions that I use. Along with many, many other features, Firebug lets me interactively view, enable, disable, edit and add to the CSS attributes of any element on any web page in a real-time, non-destructive way. I used it for awhile yesterday, to try different colors, column widths, fonts, background colors and font attributes in this site's left navigation column. Firebug will be a big help if I ever need to troubleshoot any CSS problems or make changes to this site's CSS. Its site contains a description of its CSS features, as well as descriptions of some of its many other features. If you're looking for a quick lesson on how to use Firebug's CSS features, take a look at
this helpful forum thread.
Firebug is one of the
20 tools for web application development that one site highly recommends. You may not need more than a few of them, but it looks like a good list to keep in mind in case your needs change.
Here's a fast-and-easy tweak that will make your Firefox browser just a little more convenient to use:
Let Firefox find it for you.
If you're the type of person who'd rather not hear about it when there's bad news, then you probably don't want to know why NASA won't reveal the results of a national air-safety survey of pilots.
There's an old saying that "Nobody likes a
back-seat driver." If that's true, then you can bet that nobody's going to like
this new invention.
If you're a Linux user, the Linux Foundation
wants to hear from you. It's conducting a worldwide survey to find out where to concentrate future Linux development efforts. So help shape the future of Linux by letting them know what you think. It took me 15 minutes to complete the entire survey, and then another 5-10 minutes to look through the current survey results, which were interesting, even though they're pretty much what I expected them to be.
As if Windows Vista users don't already have enough problems to deal with, one writer has reported another one: "After weeks of gruelling troubleshooting, I've finally had it confirmed by Microsoft Australia and USA — something as small as swapping the video card or updating a device driver can trigger
a total Vista deactivation. Put simply, your copy of Windows will stop working with very little notice (three days) and your PC will go into "reduced functionality" mode, where you can't do anything but use the web browser for half an hour." Insert your own lame joke here, about the new problem being a feature, not a bug — unless you're a Vista user.
Soon, you may be able to enjoy extremely high-speed Internet access without the trouble and expense of installing fiber optic cable. An Australian doctoral student has developed a way to make broadband Internet connections
up to 200 times faster, using existing copper telephone wires. I think we're going to hear a lot more about this in the future.
If you're like most people, you probably think that the Internet poses the greatest risk of allowing someone to steal your identity. If so, you'd be wrong —
your mail box and garbage can are bigger risks.
A surge in the number of U.S. teenagers in the early 1990s was expected to cause a corresponding surge in the crime rate. Instead, the crime rate went down. One economist thinks that it was because of
the Clean Air Act.
If you're still using Windows, you may not realize it, but you can try out Linux by running it completely from a bootable CD without disturbing your Windows installation at all. Then, if you decide that you really like Linux, you can use that same bootable CD to install Linux onto your PC's hard drive, while still leaving your Windows installation undisturbed. That will give you a dual-boot PC that will let you choose between Windows and Linux each time you turn it on. And if you eventually decide that you want to be completely Windows-free, you'll have the option to delete Windows from your hard drive and run only Linux. There are several Linux distros that will alow you to do all of that, including
Mepis Linux, which I've been happily using full-time instead of Windows for over a year.
How To: Switch From Windows To Linux explains all of that, and tells you how to get, install and use the very popular Ubuntu Linux. By the way, you should also know that many of the most-popular Linux distros are completely free and come with hundreds of completely free software applications.
Here's even more bad news for beleaguered Windows users: "Something seems to have gone horribly wrong in an untold number of IT departments on Wednesday after Microsoft installed a resource-hogging search application on machines company-wide, even though administrators had configured systems not to use the program." To me, this looks like yet another example of Microsoft acting like it thinks it owns your PC.
Whether you're a youngster who uses the Firefox browser with your monitor set to a high resolution, or an old-timer whose eyes complain that the text on some web sites is too tiny, you're going to love the NoSquint Firefox extension.
If you like to know about the very best new technologies, you'll want to read about
The Best Tech You Can't Get in the U.S.
When my wife and I lived in the Frostbite State, about 1600 miles north of here, Winter was my least-favorite season of the year. I hated having to put on multiple layers of clothes just to go to the grocery store, and then sweating under all of that clothing once we were in the store. It's a whole different story here in the Sunshine State, where we welcome the yearly respite from Summer's heat and hurricane threats, and we don't have to deal with the northern Winter's frigid temperatures, arctic winds and snow. After the past several months of needing to use air conditioning 24 hours a day, we've been able to keep all of our windows open for the past 36 hours. Ahh, cool, fresh air... Within a couple of weeks, we'll be able to keep them open most of the time for several months, closing them only at night on those nights that get a little too cold. When I lived up north, I hated Winter, but here, I love it.
Regular readers of this Journal know that I've said it many times: I've been happily using powerful, stable, secure
Mepis Linux full-time instead of Windows for more than a year, and I absolutely love being "Windows-free." I realize that Linux isn't the best option for everyone, but I know it would be an excellent choice for many, many Windows users. If you're considering running a Linux distro (version) along with or instead of Windows, take a few minutes to read
What Kind of Person Uses Linux, And Should You Be One Of Them? Be sure to look at the readers' comments that follow the article, too, since they take issue with a couple of its points.
Once again, here's even more bad news for Windows users: "Installing Windows Live OneCare, Microsoft's downloadable security suite, changes the settings of Automatic Updates
without notifying users or honoring their update preferences." It seems like every couple of weeks, there's another example of Microsoft's disrespectful behavior toward its customers that makes me so very happy to be "Windows-free."
If you think that all television and movie stars and celebrities are brainless, then you haven't seen
Geek stars: The secret (nerdy) life of celebrities. Note, however, that there really aren't very many smart ones, and not even a handful of those are under 40 years of age. That means that we may have a severe shortage of smart stars in the future. Do you think anyone will notice?
Here's good news for Internet users in the U.S. — maybe. The U.S. Senate "passed a bill that would extend the 1998 Internet Tax Freedom Act yet again, this time
for seven years." Does that mean that our Internet access won't be taxed for the next seven years? No, because the U.S. House's version of that bill extends the tax moratorium for only four more years instead of seven. "With the House and Senate having passed slightly different versions of the legislation, the bill will now go to a joint committee to hammer out the differences." Unfortunately, we all know just how well those two governing bodies work together to resolve their differences, so I'll believe it when I see it.
If you have your own web site, you'll want to check out
6 Important Webmaster Tools to see if you could use any of them to help you maintain your site and keep track of its visitors.
Firefox users know that one of the best features of that browser is its tabs. Here are
20 Tips to Tweak Your Tabs. I'm currently using only one of them (Tab Mix Plus), but it's nice to know that all of those others are available to anyone else who might find them useful.
Photography is a wonderful hobby and creative outlet for young and old alike. Long-time visitors to this site know that my Uncle Dom taught me all about photography when I was only 12 years old, and the resulting skills and discipline helped keep me out of trouble all through high school and beyond. Nowadays, inexpensive digital cameras have greatly simplified photography while greatly reducing its overall cost. Today's new photographers have much more freedom to focus on (pun intended) the creative, rather than technical, aspects of their hobby. If you're looking for a fun and creative activity for yourself or for someone that you care about, take a look at 7 Reasons To Take Up Photography.
"The human race will one day
split into two separate species, an attractive, intelligent ruling elite and an underclass of dim-witted, ugly goblin-like creatures, according to a top scientist." Boy, when that happens, I sure hope I don't end up being one of the dim-witted, ugly, goblin-like creatures.
It's not especially well-written, but the story that it tells is a familiar one to any Windows user who has repeatedly had to deal with a virus-infested computer. And unlike most Windows stories, this one has a very happy ending, thanks to
The Beauty of Ubuntu Linux.
There's an old saying that basically says, "He who controls the media, controls the people." Countless governments have proven that lesson to be true throughout history. Now it appears that Russia, like its neighbor China, is doing its best to try to control its people by controlling the Internet. Count your blessings if you have unfettered, uncensored access to information.
If you're a job-seeker, you may wonder why your job interviews aren't resulting in job offers. Here are 25 Reasons You Didn't Get The Gig. You may also find some more good advice in the readers' comments that follow the article, as well as in Digg's readers' responses to it.
I think it's a great idea that will make perfect sense to any dog-lover:
a GPS dog collar that will help you track and find your dog if it wanders away from home.
Penguins and Muscle Cars is an interesting article that explains how hardcore PC users have more in common with car afficionados than they do with "normal" computer users.
If you've been using computers as long as I have, you're familiar with entering commands at "the DOS prompt." If you're not familiar with using DOS commands, I think you're missing out on using some of its powerful features, even in your new Windows PC.
DOS Lives! Secrets of the Windows Command Prompt will get you up-to-speed on the subject in an understandable way.
Apparently, a lot of people know about an old technique that bad people have used for years to hide malicious code in web pages by surrounding each letter of the malicious code with "zero-byte" characters. When Microsoft Internet Explorer encounters such code, it ignores the "zero-byte" characters and happily runs the malicious script hidden within them. Unfortunately, most Windows anti-virus software
doesn't recognize the malicious code. Here's
a discussion of the issue. That's just one more good reason why you should be using
Firefox instead of Internet Explorer.
A few decades ago, it was big news when IBM introduced its first mainframe computer that was small enough to fit into the trunk of a car. At the time, supercomputers were still the size of entire rooms. Now, a researcher predicts that "supercomputers small enough to fit into the palm of your hand are only 10 or 15 years away." Instead of using all of that computational power to change the world, I'm guessing that most people will end up using palm-sized supercomputers as cell phones, PDAs and music/video players. Sadly, it often seems like the smarter our computers get, the dumber we become.
If you're using Windows XP, there are steps that you can take to replace some of Microsoft's insecure, restrictive and intrusive applications with secure, friendly, third-party applications. I haven't tried the advice given in
How To Get The M$ Out Of XP and Vista so I can't vouch for it, but you may want to give it a try, after you've made a backup of your important data. And try to ignore the article's poor spelling and punctuation. That's hard to do, isn't it? It's kind of scary to even think of making major changes to your Windows installation based on an article that reads like it might not be credible. It reminds me of what I always tell my computer students: "It doesn't matter how much you know, unless you can effectively communicate it to others."
Here's an example of someone who's trying to chip away at the wall: "The UK computer agency Becta is advising schools not to sign licensing agreements with Microsoft because of alleged anti-competitive practices." If you read what Microsoft is requiring the schools to agree to, you'll understand exactly how one-sided the agreement is, and why the schools really should reject it.
The possibility has been discussed for years, but now it's getting close to becoming reality: "Researchers have developed a low-cost, low-power computer memory that could put
terabyte-sized thumb drives in consumers' pockets within a few years."
If you're a fan of the NBC TV show, "The Office," you'll enjoy revisiting
Michael's Dunder Mifflin Commercial. You'll also find several more videos from "The Office" in the "Related Videos" section on the right side of that page.
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.
Ten Reasons why Windows Users Shouldn't Go For Ubuntu is a funny, tongue-in-cheek "poke in the eye" at the faulty logic that lots of Windows users use when they decide not to try Linux.
Wouldn't it be nice to be able to enjoy Mac OS X's stability and user-friendliness without having to buy expensive Mac hardware? That's the whole idea behind
Hacking Leopard To Run On PCs.
I've seen photos of this technology at work before, but this is the first time I've heard of anyone using it to make an army tank
invisible. Of course, being invisible probably isn't much of an advantage if you're bellowing smoke and noise, and can be easily spotted by infrared cameras.
If you've followed the field of pain management in the past few years, you probably won't be surprised to hear that it looks like the future of post-surgery pain management may be found in
chili peppers.
