http://www.ComputerBob.com/journal_archive/2008/04.php .
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The other day, while driving around, doing errands, I noticed a very slight old woman, slowly hobbling along a sidewalk. It was obvious that she was in great pain and could barely walk. I instantly felt sorry for her, and wondered if I should pull over and offer her a ride. As I passed her, I saw the rest of the story: She was pushing a wheelchair that carried another old woman. The woman in the wheelchair was bundled up in blankets, even though it was sunny and about 75� (24� C).
Have you ever noticed how politicians always refer to themselves as "public servants" and always brag about how many years they've spent "in public service?" Have you ever noticed that politicians are the only people in the world who call themselves public servants? I think that's because everyone else instinctively understands that a public servant is someone who chooses to help others altruistically, without reaping huge rewards — not someone who uses politics as a career path to become very rich and very powerful by shamelessly gorging at the public trough. (UPDATE: Here's one current example). Other than former U.S. President Jimmy Carter — who has spent the past few decades helping build new homes for poor families through Habitat For Humanity — how many politicians have ever spent more than an occassional photo-op moment doing anything to help any of the "normal people" that they publicly claim to be serving?
As far as I'm concerned, there are very few politicians who have ever been public servants — but millions of other people are. If you volunteer at a hospice, help people at your local senior center, deliver meals on wheels, teach children, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, heal the sick, visit the prisoner, or welcome the stranger, then you are a true public servant.
Please keep that standard in mind the next time you hear a politician speak.
Some people hate Microsoft. They really hate Microsoft, and they make their feelings really clear to everyone around them. Whether or not you agree with them, you'll have a better understanding of why they feel that way after you read
2007: Microsoft in Review.
It's April Fools' Day in the U.S. — a day in which it is generally acceptable for people to play sometimes cruel tricks and practical jokes on each other. Here's are Slashdot's readers' responses to a
Geeky April Fools' Day Prank Roundup.
I guess that there will probably be a market for it, but I don't think I want
my computer to start telling me who it thinks is attractive or not.
I can assure you that I am not — nor have I ever been —
co-opted by or paid by the U.S. military (or anyone else) "to verbally attack a specific person or promote a specific message may be worth considering." Of course, some may wonder if I would tell the truth about it if I were on some secret payroll. Of course I would. That's one of the many reasons why no one would ever bother to even make me such an offer. Another reason is that I'm not a "prominent" blogger. So, basically, even if you don't know that I'm an honest guy, you know that you can trust me because I'm not important enough for anyone to bother trying to corrupt me.
I guess that's a good thing — if I don't think about it too much.
It appears that now it's official: When dealing with the now nearly totally discredited ISO software standardization process,
the ends apparently do, in fact, justify
the means.
Here's one from the "You've-Got-To-Be-Kidding!" Department: T-Mobile has claimed trademark rights to
the color magenta. Or is it an April Fools' joke?
What would you guess is the latest threat to your privacy rights? You would be correct if you guessed that it's
your car's tires.
As an adult who has long paid a heavy price for a childhood of dental neglect, I'm looking forward to the promises of a newly developed method of
tooth regeneration.
Linux users and open-minded Windows users will enjoy a compilation of videos called
Top 10 Linux Commercials.
It sort of reminds me of a tennis match between three players. The well-publicized failure that is known as Windows Vista has increased many people's interest in Linux, as well as the need for Microsoft to keep lengthening Windows XP's lifespan. Now that XP's "expiration date" is once again looming,
will Redmond extend its life again? And if it does, how will that decision affect Vista and Linux? And how do you keep score with three players?
As I suspected, it looks like the issues are going to continue to haunt both the ISO and Microsoft, turning Redmond's recent undeserved political "victory" into a huge, well-deserved public-relations fiasco:
The World Sighs As ISO Becomes Irrelevant.
Those of us who have worked in IT tech support may wonder if the question is a joke, but apparently, some companies are seriously asking
Should IT Shops Let Users Manage Their Own PCs?
Coffee is bad for you. Coffee is good for you. Coffee is bad for you. Coffee is good for you. Coffee is bad for you.
Coffee is good for you.
As expected, the results of the recent
OOXML approval-process fiasco are being
appealed. Of course, at this point, no one knows whether the appeals will be heard or simply rejected by the discredited standards officials.
Also, as expected, Microsoft has
extended the lifetime of Windows XP again, but only in a very limited manner that will keep it from being much of a competitor to Linux.
If you're still using Windows, then you're still spending a lot of time trying to protect your PC from security threats and keeping it working correctly. A couple of articles that may help you with those tasks are
Dig Deeper Into Windows To Find The Source Of Problems and
Four Free Registry Utilities Make Windows Faster, Safer. In contrast, regular readers of this Journal know that I've been happily using Linux full-time instead of Windows since July, 2006, and since then, I haven't had to spend any time protecting my PC from security threats or keeping it working correctly.
By now, we all know that the victims of identity theft can suffer financial turmoil and huge inconveniences. But you may not be aware that identity theft can also cause innocent victims to be
accused of horrible crimes.
No matter how you look at it, it doesn't look good for Windows Vista. Here's another viewpoint on the significance and possible effects of Microsoft's decision to extend the life of Windows XP Home Edition (only for ULCPCs) again.
Slashdot's members have
a lot to say about Bill Gates' announcement that the next version of Windows will be released "some time in the next year." Whether or not his prediction comes true — and a lot of people who remember his company's history doubt that it will — it looks like it's another nail in Vista's coffin.
In the past, computer and network security was basically a defensive game. You did everything you could to protect and defend your computer and network from attacks, but you did nothing to fight back against the attackers.
That's all going to change, now that "The U.S. Air Force Cyber Command is developing capabilities to inflict denial of service, confidential data loss, data manipulation, and system integrity loss on its adversaries, and to combine these with physical attacks."
Proponents of the theory of global warming are having to deal with the fact that global temperatures
have not risen since 1998.
Is this the future of "recorded" music? "A quest by researchers at the University of Rochester resulted in a 20-second clarinet solo being compressed into less than a single kilobyte of data — nearly 1,000 times smaller than a standard MP3 representing the same audio." If I understand it correctly, what they ended up with was more of an impression than a recording — sort of like if you wanted a recording of U.S. President Bush giving a speech, but what you ended up with was
Frank Caliendo doing an impression of President Bush giving the speech.
Here's a little story that could possibly save you a lot of time, trouble and money in the future. Though
I've taken apart almost everything I own at one time or another, our home's garbage disposal has always been an exception to that rule. Unfortunately, a couple of weeks ago, it stopped working. It didn't even "hum" when I switched it on. Yesterday, I finally had time to look into the problem. Since it didn't even hum, I knew that instead of it just being clogged, it was either dead or it somehow wasn't getting any electricity. I very carefully removed its on/off switch from the wall, and then walked back and forth from the kitchen to the fuse box in the garage several times, checking the switch with an electrical test meter each time, to figure out which circuit breaker powered it. By doing that, I confirmed that the switch itself was getting power, and that it was sending power to the disposal unit. So, I lay on my back on the floor, with my head under the kitchen sink, trying to figure out how to take apart the completely sealed disposal unit, to figure out if a wire had somehow come loose inside of it. That's when I noticed a small red button on its underside. When I pushed it, it pushed in and clicked. Eureka — an onboard circuit breaker! I guess that the last time I had used the disposal, I had run it long enough that it had overheated, causing the onboard breaker to trip. After one last trip to the fuse box to flip on the appropriate circuit breaker, our garbage disposal was working again.
The Internet is an incredible technological, political and sociological accomplishment that has changed the entire world. Unfortunately, it's really starting to show its age. That's why scientists have created "The Grid," which is reportedly
10,000 times faster than a typical broadband connection. I guess the name, The Matrix was already taken.
I really enjoy writing these Journal entries every single day, which is why I still do it after all these years. Unfortunately, some bloggers are discovering, sometimes too late, that
blogging can kill you. In my case, I strongly suspect that last year's health crisis had nothing to do with this Journal, but instead resulted from a lifetime of having to deal with serious family issues.
Some people enjoy suspending their disbelief when they go to the movies. Some of us, though, are distracted from our enjoyment — we can't help but notice that Hollywood often
ignores (or breaks) the laws of physics.
You can always count on Slashdot's members to have strong and diverse opinions about anything that concerns Microsoft — like
the upcoming "death" of Windows XP.
It's called
10 Steps To A Well Maintained PC, but its tasks only apply to Windows users — they're the only PC users who have to spend a huge percentage of their time maintaining their PCs, instead of using them.
If you live in the U.K. and you use your PC to do online banking, you better be aware that "The Banking Code produced by the British Bankers' Association (BBA), and followed by most banks, makes it clear that banks
will not be responsible for losses on online bank accounts if consumers do not have up to date anti-virus, anti-spyware, and firewall software installed on their machines." With apologies to Dirty Harry, "Do you feel lucky, Windows users? Well, do you?"
City governments often build and promote huge publicly funded public transportation systems that cost taxpayers up to billions of dollars, while promising that those systems will pay for themselves through the fares that they charge. But I've never seen even one such system entice enough riders to end up paying for itself. I'm guessing that
this is probably why. I'm not paranoid. I know that everyone says I'm paranoid, but that's because they're all out to get me. I'm not paranoid.
I linked to it a long time ago, but it's worth doing it again because it has a lot of great information for anyone who's thinking of using Linux:
Why Linux Is Better.
It's going to take awhile for KDE4 to make it into the "stable" branch of Debian Linux that I use full-time. In the meantime, I look forward to using it some day, even though there still are reportedly
Nine Improvements Needed In KDE.
A few weeks ago, I did a Google search to quickly find the address of my new dentist's office. Imagine my surprise when the very first search result was a MySpace page belonging to one of the dentist's young receptionists. On that page, she posted her full name, her age, photographs of her drinking at parties, the name and address of the dentist's office, the name of college that she attends, the town where she lives, and lots of other "stalker-and-identity-theft-type" private information. After my first dental appointment, I approached her and tried to tell her how dangerous it is to put that type of information on the Internet, but she just laughed at my concerns and said "everyone does it." If you agree with her, please read
Teach Kids Web Safety and
this news story.
Years ago, I had to have blood tests done when I tried to increase the value of my life insurance. Several days later, my insurance agent called to tell me that I had been rejected because "you have the liver of a lifetime alcoholic and you're probably not going to live very long." I tried to tell him that I never even touch alcoholic beverages, but he insisted that I was way too big of a risk for anyone to insure me. Terrified, I went to my doctor and he did some more tests. There was absolutely nothing wrong with my liver. It turned out that all I had was a Vitamin K deficiency, which was solved three days later, after I took one or two Vitamin K pills. I wrote to my insurance company, described their agent's irresponsible behavior to them, and asked them to switch me to a different agent.
By now, you may be wondering: What is Vitamin K? Why is it so important?
How does vitamin K help?
Regular Journal readers know that for the past few years, I've repeatedly considered converting this entire site to a WordPress blog, to add user-interaction features to it. Up until recently, I hesitated because I wasn't sure that WordPress was secure enough to trust with all the work that I put into this site. Looking back now, I'm glad that I didn't convert this site to WordPress. Don't get me wrong — I've done tens of hours of research on it over the past few years and saved scores of links to important WordPress tips, and learned all about that powerful blogging tool. WordPress was already really good a few years ago, and
it just keeps getting better. But although it's arguably the best free and open source blogging tool in the world, I've concluded that it's not the right tool for this site. It would work great for this Journal, but this Journal is just a fraction of this site's content. Unfortunately, it would take an incredible amount of work, extra software, and customization to try to wedge all of this site's other types of content into WordPress. Instead, I've concluded that if I decide to convert this site from its current straight-XHTML-and-CSS format, I'll probably end up using a more complex-but-robust Content Management System (CMS) instead of a blogging tool. So lately, I've been looking very closely at two of the best, most-popular, free and open source CMS choices:
Drupal and
Joomla. I'm confident that either one would be more than capable of handling this entire site, but for a number of reasons, I'm currently leaning toward Drupal.
If you've done your research and you're ready to "try out some of the best php/mysql based free and open source software systems in the world," including several types of CMS systems, blogs, wikis, forums and much, much more, do yourself a favor and visit OpenSourceCMS.
The bad news is that widespread overuse of antibiotics has resulted in the creation of antibiotic-resistant infections. The good news is that new antibiotics may solve that problem. The weird news is
where they might get those new antibiotics.
They've been called "luxury condominiums for fish" and "DeLoreans of the deep." I suppose you could also call them "reefers." I wonder if they clean off all of the graffiti before they let Nemo and his friends move into them.
I've linked to an older, simpler version of this in the past, and now it's even better. It's a very clever, very creative
animation that looks at a stormy relationship between an animated character and its creator. You're welcome to draw your own conclusions about whether it makes any theological statements.
The big news for me today is that I had my annual physical this morning and the news is nothing but good. The results of every single one of my tests (cholesterol, blood pressure, blood glucose, liver function, etc) — which had all been excellent at my last few 3-month checkups — were even better this time! In fact, I'm doing so well that instead of having to go back for a checkup every 3 months for the rest of my life, I just "graduated" to only going every 6 months! I hope to tell you more about that as soon as I have time.
I'm busy, busy, busy with a perplexing photo gallery problem today, on a site that I created, host and maintain for a local charity. I hope to tell you more about it — once I've figured it out.
Yesterday, I had my yearly physical exam, where I got the incredible results of my latest blood tests. Those of you who have followed my journey back to good health following my February, 2007, stroke can read more about it in today's update to My Previous Life Is Over. I hope that my story will help inspire and encourage other people to do the work that is required to take control of their own health issues.
Yesterday, I told you that I was really, really busy trying to solve a problem. Today, I finally have time to tell you about it. A few days ago, I installed a new
Gallery photo gallery on a local charity's web site. Everything went well except that none of the 100+ photographs that I had taken for that charity would display in the gallery. Since the ability to show photographs is one of those things that every photo gallery should be able to do, I had to solve the problem. Checking and resetting all of the file and folder permissions didn't help. Deleting the photo albums and recreating them didn't help. Completely uninstalling and reinstalling Gallery didn't help. The owner of my web host even recompiled php on the server with mod_security disabled, but that didn't help either. All together, I spent 3 days of educated trial-and-error and several live online chats with the tech-support guys at my web host, trying to figure out the problem.
We were all stumped until I accidently discovered that even though the photos refused to display when we went to "www.domainname.com/gallery" — and caused permission errors to appear in the server's error logs — they displayed just fine if we went to "domainname.com/gallery" (without the "www"). That told us that the it was probably some sort of Gallery-related .htaccess problem. About ten minutes later, one of the tech support guys at my web host discovered a FAQ on the Gallery site that confirmed that there is currently a known issue between the mod_rewrite rules that the latest version of Gallery creates and the latest version of the Apache server software that my web host is running. The Gallery developers are working on a fix, but in the meantime, all we had to do to fix the problem was disable the "URL Rewrite" plugin in my Gallery's admin area, and either delete or rename my Gallery .htaccess file. I'll remember that the next time I install Gallery on a web site.
By the way, if you're looking for a clean, fast, well-documented photo gallery solution for your web site — that also happens to be free and open source and compliant to CSS and XHTML 1.0 Strict coding standards, — I still highly recommend Gallery.
I can hardly believe that it took me this so to think of it, but I recently discovered a fast, easy way to make rich, thick, fat-free, sugar-free "milkshakes" that taste great. I start with one box of Jell-O Fat-Free, Sugar-Free Instant Pudding mix. I mix it with twice as much skim milk as it takes to make pudding (4 cups instead of 2). I also add 2 or 3 packets of Splenda sugar-free sweetener, to make up for the fact that I'm diluting the pudding so much. I whisk it for two minutes, just like I would if I were making normal pudding, and then I let it chill in the bowl for 5-30 minutes, depending on how thick I want it to be — and how long I'm willing to wait for it. If I let it chill for an hour or more, it gets so thick that I can't drink it through a straw. Using even more milk would solve that problem. When it's ready — or I can't wait any longer — I pour it into a couple of glasses and it's a very healthy treat that I'd be proud to serve to my friends! During this past week, I've made banana, vanilla, cheesecake and pistachio "milkshakes," and they were all delicious! Jell-O currently makes
nine different flavors of fat-free, sugar-free instant pudding, and I'm looking forward to trying all of them (except maybe lemon). Unfortunately, they don't make my all-time favorite flavor any more — coconut cream. I hope they start making that again some day. In the meantime, if I can find
coconut extract at one of my local stores, I'll try adding a little bit of it to vanilla pudding. UPDATE: I've discovered that even if you use 4 cups of milk instead of 2, Jell-O Fat-Free, Sugar-Free Instant Pudding mix still turns into pudding if you refrigerate it for at least 4 hours. So, if you have time to wait for it, or if you make it the night before you need it, you can have twice as much pudding!
In response to recent videos that showed Windows Vista and a Mac each running multiple applications at the same time, here's a video of Linux running
165 applications at the same time. Plus Linux is running them all within an extremely impressive 3D user interface.
This story has been out a few days, but I didn't have time to tell you about it until now. The highly respected Gartner Group has bad news for Microsoft and Windows fans: "Calling the situation 'untenable' and describing Windows as 'collapsing,' a pair of Gartner analysts yesterday said Microsoft Corp.
must make radical changes to its operating system or risk becoming a has-been." To the growing number of us who no longer use Windows, it's already a has-been.
The story I read is that, back on April Fools' Day, the BBC created it as a video hoax. After that, someone turned it into
this Linux commercial.
Linux-based operating systems run governmental, military, educational, corporate and ISP servers all over the world. They also power an increasing number of cell phones and other handheld devices. They're also what many people wisely choose to run on their desktop PCs (like mine). As a result, Linux's fan base is growing every day, making it more and more of a threat to Microsoft's domination of the PC desktop. Apparently, Redmond isn't alone in its resentment of Linux, because now, Linux is being portrayed as a force of evil
in a comic book.
Most people are familiar with The Peter Principle — the idea that, in a typical hierarchy, every worker rises to his or her level of incompetence. Well, as far as I know, we've never had a name for it before, but many of us in IT are also very familiar with and/or have first-hand experience with what is now being called
The Dead Sea Effect.
Some people believe that "it takes a village to raise a child," but now there's proof that, in at least one case, it took
a cyber village to catch a car thief.
When your life becomes full of stress, sometimes you have to "stop and smell the flowers" — unfortunately, that's
getting harder and harder to do.
Whether you're a Linux user who wants some help explaining what it is to your friends, or you're a Windows user who's curious about what it is, you'll want to take a look at
All About Linux.
Why would you want to use a desktop publishing program? Is there a good DTP package that's made for Linux? Find out the answers to those questions and more, in
Scribus — Desktop Publishing for Penguins.
Traditionally, superusers — those rogue users who use and install all kinds of unsupported hardware and software onto their work computers — have always been sort of a pain in the neck for most IT departments. Find out how to turn that situation around in your organization by reading
Guerrilla IT: How To Stop Worrying And Learn To Love Your Superusers.
When you make a decision, you're undoubtedly the first one to know what you've decided, but in the future, that may no longer be true. Someone else may be the first to know, now that
Brain Scanners Can See Your Decisions Before You Make Them.
Late yesterday, I finished moving this web site — the last and largest of the five web sites that I moved over the past several days — to a new web hosting provider. I've moved enough web sites over the years that I know exactly what I'm doing, so all five of these latest moves went flawlessly, with virtually no downtimes (pun intended). Now all I have to do is wait another day or two, to give all of the DNS servers and ISPs around the world time to "learn" where the sites are currently being hosted. Once that happens, I'll be free to cancel my account with my previous web hosting provider. When I have more time, I'll tell you why I chose my new web hosting provider.
If you live in the U.S., you have until midnight tonight to submit your federal, state and local income tax forms. If you still haven't done yours, do yourself a favor and go to
TaxAct. TaxAct lets you do your federal taxes online for free, including your choice of either printing and then mailing your tax forms or printing a local copy of them for yourself and then electronically submitting them to the I.R.S. for free. They'll also let you do your state taxes online for a slight fee, with the same submission options. If you prefer to do your taxes on your own computer instead of online, you can download their federal tax software (Windows) for free. It's a fast, easy and inexpensive way to get those taxes done today.
A few days ago, I told you that Linux is now being portrayed as a force for evil in a comic book. If you're looking for a fun way to help your friends understand Linux better, you'll probably want to skip that comic book and instead buy them a book of
Linux comic strips.
Everyone knows that Linux runs great on the tiny Asus Eee laptop. Not to be outdone, Microsoft is developing a cut-down version of Windows XP that will compete with Linux on that computer. To see how well it runs compared to Linux, take a look at
IN DEPTH: Official Eee PC with XP.
"For want of a nail, the kingdom was lost." And now it appears that maybe,
for want of some good rivets, hundreds of lives were lost.
Anyone who's ever tried to redesign their web site to use 100% CSS for layout knows that there are many ways to achieve 3-column designs in CSS — in fact, there are probably
way too many ways to do it, since many of them either come with warnings and caveats, or are have such complicated structure and code that makes it extremely difficult to customize them without completely messing them up.
If you're tired of surfing the web and finding 3-column designs that won't meet your needs, take a look at Yahoo! UI Library: Grids CSS and YAML Builder.
For several months before I began using only Linux on my home office computer, I dual-booted with both Windows XP and Linux on one hard drive. Nowadays, if I ever need to run Windows, I do it by using
My Hardware-Based Dual-Boot PC. Others have moved past the whole dual-boot idea into virtualization, where they run Windows XP in a virtual desktop within Linux. Now there's another option that's supposed to be better for a number of reasons. "The coLinux project takes a stable release of the Linux kernel and ports it to run on Windows. That means that, unlike virtualization software, andLinux installs on Windows like any other application." As a full-time Linux user, that doesn't sound like a very good idea to me. What do you think?
You can download Ubuntu Linux for free, install it on as many computers as you want for free, and distribute copies of it to as many people as you want, also for free. Now Canonical is hoping that corporate and personal users will be willing to
pay $100 (USD) to learn how to use it.
One year when I was a teenager, I worked in the camera department at a local department store. One of the things I sold was calculators, and I remember that it was a big technological breakthrough when the first battery-powered, pocket-sized calculators started replacing the old electric adding machines. Just imagine how impressive even those old adding machines would have been for anyone who was used to using
this 19-century calculator.
Regular readers of this Journal already know several good reasons to use a Linux distro as their desktop operating system. Newcomers who don't know those reasons, and Linux fans who want a refresher on few of them, should take a look at
With Vista's View Getting Dimmer, Should You Give Linux A Chance? To that author's recommendation of Ubuntu Linux, I would add that I highly recommend
Mepis Linux for new Linux users and for anyone who wants a version of Linux that "just works" without requiring them to learn all about "what's under the hood." I very happily used Mepis for 15 months before switching to its not-as-newbie-friendly "father," Debian Linux.
I've been extremely busy for the past week, so I completely missed an important story. Happily, Stevo from the Mepislovers support forums
brought it to my attention. Whether or not you use Windows Vista, you've undoubtedly heard about its annoying User Account Control (UAC) feature, made famous by
this hilarious PC versus Mac commercial.. Using Machiavellian logic that I would never have guessed, it turns out that
Vista's UAC Security Prompt Was Designed To Annoy You. So, I guess that makes Windows Vista a huge success — in Ironic Bizarro World.
A U.S. senator is proposing a $1 billion plan for an Internet monitoring system to catch people who share illegal files over P2P networks. Slashdot's readers have a lot to say about the fact that the senator thinks that the good guys will recognize the illegal files
by looking at their file names.
Y3@h, th@t'5 @ r3@11y g00d 1d3@.
Are you a Linux user? If so, do you feel like you get as much as you want out of your Linux experience? Both new and experienced Linux users can find some good advice in
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Linux Users.
Regular readers of this Journal know that I've been using Linux full-time since July, 2006. In all that time, I've learned way more about Linux than I ever thought was possible. But now I know even more, after reading
10 Common Mistakes To Avoid When You're Installing Linux Software.
Here's a very enjoyable article about a nice guy who really loves his grandmother, so he
installed Linux on her computer.
Do you really understand how the U.S. Presidential delegate system works? Newstopia does —
sort of.
Like me, he's been using computers a long, long time. Like me, he spent years learning all about computers and Windows. Like me, he has years of Windows tech-support and training experience. Like me, he became disillusioned with the Windows certification treadmill. Like me, he became curious about Linux. Then, like me, he
switched to Linux. I don't know why, but for some reason, I just never get tired of reading stories like his.
Over the past several years, many people strongly disagreed with me when I told them that I saw this coming. Now it turns out that I was right: "Microsoft confirmed that it is planning
a subscription service that combines the consumer version of Office with its OneCare security suite. Code-named Albany, the product has a single installer that puts Office Home and Student, OneCare, as well as a host of Windows Live services, onto a user's PC. As long as users keep paying for the subscription, they are entitled to the latest versions of the products. Once they stop paying, they lose the right to use any version."
Tech lovers, unite!
Stand up for your rights!
Some of us are old enough to remember Johnny Carson doing commercials for The Tonight Show's sponsors' products during the show itself. Some of us are even old enough to remember Fred Flintsone and Barney Rubble talking about how much they enjoyed smoking Winston cigarettes and feeding Welch's Grape Drink to Pebbles and Bam-Bam. Nowadays, we're all getting used to seeing strategic product placements in every TV show and movie that we watch, and recently, a TV sitcom had an entire episode that centered around one of the characters repeatedly wanting his parents to take him out for dinner at a Red Lobster restaurant. Well, if you've enjoyed all of that, you're going to love what's coming: "A newly formed NBC Universal production unit is teaming up with an advertising agency to
create programs around sponsors' products, the company said." Insert an infinite number of your own lame jokes about specific products and programs here.
Today is the big annual "Poker Run" event to raise money for a local charity that finds good homes for retired racing greyhounds. Many of us have spent several weeks getting things ready for today, but a few people have been working on it for the past several months. No one has worked harder than my excellent next-door neighbors and good friends, Mike and Annamarie — especially Annamarie. As the charity's webmaster, I expect to take a couple hundred digital photos today, which I hope to post on its web site tonight, using the new Gallery software that I installed and configured on the server several days ago. Last year's event raised a record amount of money, and today's event has the potential to be even more successful. Tomorrow, I'll fill you in on the details.
Yesterday, I told you that Microsoft plans to move Office to a subscription service. Now comes word that the company has "started offering
an ad-funded version of Microsoft Works in some countries." I consider both moves to be pretty bold, especially since more and more schools, governments, corporations, private organizations and individual computer users are coming to realize that completely free and open-source alternatives like
OpenOffice.org can meet their needs just fine.
A few days ago, headlines proclaimed the existence of a company that was reportedly selling cheap Mac clones that came with the latest Mac operating system installed — an activity that clearly violates all of Apple's licensing and end user agreements. The next day, follow-up reports concluded that the story had been a hoax, and anyone who had quickly ordered one of the clones had probably been cheated out of their money. Now they're once again saying that
it's a real company, and it is starting to fill its customers' orders.
Apparently, there's no limit to some companies' greed and lack of concern for their customers: "Seeking to make money from mistyped website names, some of the U.S.'s largest ISPs are instead
creating gaping security holes in the web's largest websites, including eBay, PayPal, Google and Yahoo. The ISPs are making it possible for hackers to turn any website into a source of viruses, phishing attacks and other malware."
It's good advice for teachers, writers, corporate trainers — anyone who communicates with anyone else. It's also good advice for anyone like me, who tries to make geek-speak chic™:
10 Ways To Explain Things More Effectively.
I bet you thought that I forgot to do today's Journal entry. Nope — I've thought about it all day. I just didn't have any time to do it until the early evening, EST.
Yesterday was the big annual "Poker Run" event to raise money for a local charity that finds good homes for retired racing greyhounds. As the event's webmaster and photographer, I arrived at 8:00 AM. At 4:30 PM, I sat down for 5 minutes — it was the first time I sat down all day. I helped set everything up, then I took 276 photos, then I helped take everything down. When I got home, at 6:30 PM. I renamed, resized and published 238 of my photos on the charity's web site. I got to bed around 3:00 this morning. At 7:00 this morning, I woke up and added captions to many of the photos, updated the site's home page, and did a million other details that I don't even remember any more. Oh, yeah, and I also had the second half of my dental deep-cleaning that began last week.
It was all worth it, though, because the event was a huge, huge success! On a beautiful, sunny day, with the temperature around 80 degrees (F), and fresh northern breezes, hundreds of bikers, walkers, drivers, and even a couple of rollers, had a wonderful time. The Poker Run started and ended at a very popular restaurant, so there was plenty of good food and drinks, plus there was a live band, an ice cream truck, lots of sponsors and vendors, games for kids, a Poker Walk and plenty of greyhounds for everyone to love. The final auditing isn't finished yet, but it looks like we may have raised almost 50% more than we did at last year's event! All day long, as I took photos, either my volunteer assistant or I gave each subject a printed card, telling them the URL of the charity's web site. Apparently, many of the event's participants read those cards and wanted to see their pictures on the web: At 8:00 PM last night, the charity's web site had had a total of 8,400 hits in the past 3 years since I first created it. At 8:00 AM this morning, it had had a total of 9,514 hits. As of this writing, only twelve hours later, it has had a total of 22,958 hits!
I think my bed is going to feel especially wonderful tonight. Oh, yeah, and now my teeth are really, really clean.
Yes, you guessed correctly — I'm still very busily working on the charity's web site. Its number of visitors has slowed considerably since yesterday's rush, but as of this writing, it just turned over 27,000 hits.
Today, I researched "Contact Us" forms, and then installed and configured one. It turned out to be a real dog — really poorly written, and it took me almost an hour to debug its 23 HTML-validation errors. When I finally got it working correctly, I realized that it didn't even have a CAPTCHA to discourage spammers. So I deleted it and went out looking for another solution. That's when I found GBCF-v3 Secure and Accessible PHP Contact Form. With a little tweaking of its code, I was able to make it fit into the site's overall look and have it request exactly the types of information that we want to get from its users. It's running on the charity's site right now, and I love it! In fact, less than 15 minutes after I made it "public," a woman used it to say that she wants one of our bright yellow charity event T-Shirts. If you're looking for a secure, accessible, XHTML-compliant contact form for your web site, you'd have a hard time finding anything better. Plus, it's free.
Now it's back to work for me. I'm looking for a good GuestBook for that same site. I have one in mind that I've used in the past, but I want to see if it's still the best one out there or not.
Yesterday, I spent another 12 hours working on the charity's web site — followed by another 3 hours this morning. Now its photo gallery has a search function and over 20 photos that my next-door neighbor and "adopted brother," Mike, took of the charity event. I also added captions to many of the photos, to make them easy to find. Then I installed and configured a
Lazarus guestbook, to allow the site's visitors to post comments about the site and the event. Lazarus is not XHTML-compliant, and it uses tables instead of CSS for layout, but, after looking at several options, I chose Lazarus mainly because it has a reputation for being very secure. It's also easier to install than many other database-driven guestbooks that I've tried, it has lots of useful features, and it's relatively easy to embed it into an existing site by "wrapping" the site's header, navigation bar and footer around it. Plus, I really like Lazarus' security option that notifies me by email each time someone leaves a comment — and new comments don't appear in the guestbook unless I approve them.
Do you use Linux? If you do, then whether or not you care if other people use it, you'll find some thought-provoking ideas in
Is Linux Really Outgrowing Its Stereotypes? Does It Matter?
Regular readers of this Journal know that, although I still own a copy of Windows XP and a copy of Macromedia Dreamweaver 4, I choose to use Debian Linux and Quanta Plus to maintain this web site. If you're wondering which of the three most popular Linux web development applications would work best for you, take a look at
Three Linux HTML Editors Reviewed.
Seagate just reached an incredible
milestone in its corporate life. It's hard to even comprehend how much data storage it has manufactured over the years. I wonder if it comes as good news to Seagate that "a team of researchers claims to have come up with a power-efficient, scalable way to reliably store data with regular hard drives for an estimated (theoretical)
1400 years."
If you're smart enough to be reading this Journal, you probably already know that you should never ask your boss a question like "Have you gained weight?" But you might not already know
Nine Questions To Ask Your Boss.
Last week, my next-door neighbor,
Annamarie highly recommended
Sonicare toothbrushes to me, so I asked my dentist about them at my dental deep cleaning appointment early this week. He also highly recommended them, so I bought
a set of two of them at Sam's Club yesterday. There are also cheaper models, including Sonicare and competitor's electric toothbrushes that take batteries — one of those might be a better investment for children to use (thanks for the reminder, mdmarmer!) After charging mine overnight, I used it for the very first time a few minutes ago, with my favorite toothpaste, Colgate Total gel. Wowee! I can hardly believe it! Add me to the list of people who highly recommend Sonicare toothbrushes! Not only was it fun to use, but after just that first 2-minute brushing, my teeth are already noticeably whiter and brighter, and they feel much more "polished" than they did even after I had that deep cleaning a few days ago! I guess that's because the deep cleaning concentrated on just removing the tartar that was between my teeth, not polishing them. As I type this, my tongue is still feeling around my mouth, amazed at how "new" my teeth feel. I've already called and left a message for Annamarie, thanking her for telling me about Sonicare. I really hesitated to pay about 25 times more for my Sonicare toothbrush than what I've always spent on cheap manual toothbrushes, but I'm very happy — and somewhat surprised — to tell you that I think it was really worth it! And I don't think I'm going to need any more expensive dental deep cleaning appointments from now on.
Those of us who use Linux full time happily enjoy the freedom that comes from using free and open source operating systems and applications. But even if you're still using Windows, you can at least enjoy some of that freedom by using freeware instead of expensive commercial applications. Unfortunately, with so many freeware choices, you may be confused about which ones are best. If that's what's got you down, take a look at
Nine Must-Have Freeware Apps Rise To The Top.
Some of us are old enough to remember these lines from the cheesy 1970s TV show,
The Six Million Dollar Man: "Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to build the world's first bionic man... Better than he was before. Better, stronger, faster." Not only do I remember those lines, I remember that, back then, six million dollars was an awful lot of money. Nowadays, I bet it costs a lot more than that just to get one
bionic eye.
This Journal entry is now a separate article. You can find A Long, Slow Dance Of Death in this site's Abuse Info section.
Yesterday's Journal entry is now a separate article. You can find A Long, Slow Dance Of Death in this site's Abuse Info section.
More bad news for anyone running Windows on either their server or their desktop: "Hundreds of thousands of Web sites — including several at the United Nations and in the U.K. government —
have been hacked recently and seeded with code that tries to exploit security flaws in Microsoft Windows to install malicious software on visitors' machines." Wouldn't you think that there would be laws against doing that sort of thing?
No wonder it doesn't taste very good.
"Mmmm,
microbes — is there anything that they can't do?"
I'd probably buy
one — if it cost half that much.
Redmond's repeatedly-threatened-to-be-disinherited son may receive yet another reprieve from dear old Dad. Catch up on the latest episode of the corporate soap opera by reading
Secret Pre-Release Details On Windows XP Service Pack 3.
After serving mainly a tiny niche of loyal corporate high-end graphics and video users for most of its existence, "the Mac
is spilling over into a wider array of business environments, thanks to the confluence of a number of computing trends, not the least among them a rising tide of end-user affinity for the Apple experience."
I mentioned this a long, long time ago, but it's funny enough to look at again:
Error Message: Your Password Must Be at Least 18770 Characters and Cannot Repeat Any of Your Previous 30689 Passwords. Now that's what I call "unbreakable security."
This has absolutely nothing to do with any of the many topics that this web site normally covers, but I found it very interesting anyway:
What Does a President Really Do All Day? Insert your own lame jokes about Presidents here.
In case you're wondering, I'm just as enthusiastic about my new Sonicare electric toothbrush as I was a few days ago, when told you how I had used it for the very first time. I'm still amazed that it gives me that same "brand new teeth" look and feel every single time I use it.
Depending on your point of view — and possibly your gender — you may see
LinuxChix as either a great idea or a divisive one.
Slashdot's readers are never at a loss for words when it comes to what they think about anything tech-related. See what they say about a hacking competition that could be seen as either a way to anticipate future security vulnerabilities or as
a school for cybercriminals.
Years ago, some of my relatives made their own wine in their cellars, using everything from grapes to dandelions. A few of them even brewed their own beer. In the near future, some of us may take up a simlar hobby, for the benefit of our cars, with the promise of
Ethanol, The Ultimate Home Brew.
"Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am found.
Was blind, but..."
Regular readers of this Journal know that I've been using Linux full-time since July, 2006, and I've been using Debian Linux full-time since this past December. In case you're curious about where Debian is heading, here's
an interview with the Debian project's newly elected project leader.
I don't currently listen to any digital music, but I'm going to keep this review on file, just in case I ever want to start:
Three Utilities For Automatically Converting Audio For Portable Music Players.
Even Linux users who have never used it, have heard of the very popular ReiserFS journaled file system. And many people who have never used Linux, have heard of the recent trial of the ReiserFS developer, Hans Reiser, accused of murdering his wife. It's generally accepted that "The turning point in the trial came when Reiser took the stand in his own defense March 3."
After six months of an often-incredible trial that included a unique "geek defense," and 3 days of deliberation, the jury
reached a verdict yesterday. This is one for the record books — and for law-school textbooks.
If you think about it, there are some hilarious ironies within this story of
honor among thieves.
Microsoft Windows users are used to the annoying fact that every time they install or update their operating system or any of the software on their computers, they have to reboot the whole computer. And the installation of multiple updates usually requires multiple reboots. It's a frustrating situation that Linux users never have to deal with — in Linux, the only time you need to reboot is when you update the underlying Linux kernel itself. All other software updates and installations take place without rebooting. And now it looks like, in the near future, even Linux kernel updates won't require reboots, thanks to
Ksplice.
For more than a year, we've seen reports saying that many, many companies, organizations and individuals have avoided switching to Windows Vista, preferring instead to stay with Windows XP. XP has been the OS of choice, at least compared to Vista. Maybe XP deserves its praise, but maybe its popularity is just a result of
The Biggest Windows XP Myth of All.
Now that the deadline has passed for Yahoo to accept Microsoft's "low-ball" buyout offer, we're all waiting to see what's going to happen next, and how it's going to affect the whole IT industry. Here are
some possible outcomes.
Anyone who followed the recent murder trial of Hans Reiser (see yesterday's Journal entry) has heard of Reiser's unique "geek defense." Now, a juror from that trial
tells Wired.com what he thought about Reiser and his defense strategy.
