http://www.ComputerBob.com/journal_archive/2006/11.php .
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This Journal entry is now a separate article, PayPal Is Not My Pal.
For years, Linux servers have been the choice of many major ISPs and corporations, but, for many reasons, Linux desktops have taken a back seat to Windows desktops. While Linux desktops may never pose a significant threat to Microsoft's desktop domination, many corporations and PC vendors are now selling or using Linux desktops.
My favorite PC newsletter for many years, the LangaList, is about to merge with and become The Windows Secrets Newsletter. If you're already a LangaList subscriber, you will automatically be a WSN subscriber. If you're not a subscriber, I urge you to sign up for it now — it only takes a few seconds.
Do you use Firefox or some other Mozilla web browser? If so, are you aware that they contain a feature called "link prefetching?" Basically, link prefetching allows a browser to follow "hints" that are set up on a web page, to silently follow hyperlinks on that page and pre-load the resulting web pages into your computer's memory in the background, so that they'll load faster if your click on their links. The downside to that is that your computer will probably visit many web pages and cookies that you'll never choose to look at. If you'd like to turn off your browser's prefetch feature, just follow these simple instructions. I disabled prefetch in my Firefox browser because I want to be in control of my own web browsing experience — I don't want Google and other web sites deciding which web pages my browser will visit behind my back.
Here's a new idea for solving the problem of global warming. Hmmm... I wonder if there could be any unexpected downsides to that idea.
We've all heard stories about the bizarre, freak-show behaviors that are tolerated or ignored on the streets of New York City every day. Apparently, you can do pretty much anything you want to do, and no one will call the police — unless you
cough on a bus.
Did you know that more than half of the world's web servers run Linux, but less than 1% of the world's desktop computers run it? Here are some good reasons why that is.
If you're like me, you have your Firefox web browser configured exactly the way you like it, with hundreds of bookmarks and tweaks. If you need to move Firefox and all of its bookmarks, settings, etc., to a different computer, or if you want to make a backup of it, you can do it the long and tedious manual way, or you can quickly and easily use MozBackup.
Think about it for a minute: Which is more annoying to you — email spam or direct mail advertisements? That's what I thought you'd say. Here's an explanation for that.
Here's a clever video that answers the question, Where Does Comedy Come From?
I'm not a big fan of actor Ben Stiller. Most of his comedy is way too
low-brow for my taste. An exception to that is Zoolander, a funny movie in which he plays a good-hearted, but dimwitted male model. Here's
a funny clip from that film.
It will probably make die-hard Windows fans angry, but you might like it. Here's a list of ten reasons that, from a technical perspective, "Linux and BSD are vastly superior to Windows" - Part I and Part II.
Despite the fact that Linux is technically superior to Windows, I agree with several of these reasons why the world just isn't ready for Linux.
They're interesting to read about, but you probably wouldn't want to buy any of the 5 Gadgets You Don’t Want to be Seen Wearing.
Here's an amazing woman whose head is
removable.
Do you know everything you want to know about how to get the most out of everything you own? If not, you should pay a visit to CNet Tips and Tricks, where you can learn a lot about just about everything.
It looks like it took a lot of work and research, but it's a very interesting idea. Someone went to all the trouble to overlay old photographs onto new ones, to show how various historical settings changed between then and now.
As the result of brilliant detective work, the suspect was charged with "robbery, extortion and banditry." Later, a more thorough investigation revealed that he was only 3 months old.
I think the people in these beer commercials may be just a little too excitable.
I originally put a 90-minute video of comedian Dane Cook in this spot. Then I started watching it, and was disappointed to hear several "f-bombs" in the first couple of minutes. So I removed it. Years ago, comedians didn't have to resort to dirty language and shock value in order to be funny. Here's an episode of the old
Burns and Allen TV show that proves my point.
Today, I turned 2 of my recent Journal entries into separate articles: Review: Quanta Plus and PayPal Is Not My Pal. I hope you enjoy them.
Last week, I told you about all the frustration that I experienced when I tried to spend the $50 that I had in my PayPal account. Now I'm very happy to report that the money electronically transferred to my bank account over the weekend, and I have closed my PayPal account.
If you want a lot of people to find and visit your web site, it's important to get it listed by all of the major search engines. There's a lot of advice out there for how to do that. Unfortunately, some of that advice could cause you to break the search engines' rules, which could result in them to not listing your site. Here are 11 Tips to Avoid Getting Penalized by the Search Engines.
Firefox 2.0 was released several days ago, and while it has many new features, it may not have all of the old features that you're used to using. Here are tweaks you can do to restore a couple of the old features.
In the past week, 3 important things happened that will have long-term effects on the software industry, and especially the open source software movement. At first glance, they may appear to be good things, but a closer look may reveal them to be
bad things.
Today is midterm election day in the U.S. Most of us look forward to this as the day that the past few months of incessant negative political ads finally end. This year's group of politicians did an excellent job of using their commercials to educate voters. Unfortunately, the main lessons that they taught us were
It doesn't surprise me that the majority of eligible voters don't vote.
Last week, Novell and Microsoft signed a landmark agreement that will probably have long-term effects on Linux and the entire open source community. Depending on what you think may come of that agreement, it was either a bad thing or it could possibly be a good thing.
We've all made an embarrassing mistake or two in our lives, but luckily, very few people witnessed our mistakes. It would be a lot more embarrassing to make a mistake in front of millions of people. Here's a video from a country music awards show. Watch
Faith Hill's temper tantrum as she lifts her hands to acknowledge that she has won the award, but then suddenly realizes that she hasn't. Judging by the comments at the bottom of the page, her outburst is probably going to cost her some popularity. In a similar vein, it's going to take a long time for this college student to live down
his dismal performance on the TV game show, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.
If you use Linux, you know that most Linux distros come with hundreds of software applications already installed. But you might have wondered why you have to re-download and re-install any additional applications every time you reinstall Linux or switch to a different Linux distro. Well, you may not have to do that any more. AptonCD reportedly lets you quickly and easily create a backup of the additional applications that you've installed.
Several weeks ago, I told you that my wife and I had started drinking green tea instead of soda pop. Since then, we've gone through 3 100-bag boxes of that healthy drink, and we still like it. Here are 20 Reasons To Include Green Tea In Your Daily Diet. A week ago, I noticed that, along with Uncle Lee's organically grown green tea, Sam's Club is now selling Uncle Lee's organically grown white tea, for the same price. White tea comes from the exact same plant as green tea, and a cup of white tea looks just like a cup of green tea. The differences are that white tea leaves are picked when they are very young and still covered with white fuzz, and white tea isn't processed as much as green tea. As a result, white tea doesn't have green tea's "slightly grassy" taste, and white tea has even more healthful antioxidants and even less caffeine than green tea. So I bought 200 bags of white tea at Sam's Club, and we'll start drinking that when we've used up all of our green tea.
I stayed up pretty late last night, because
the election night coverage was so entertaining.
For the past several years, this web site has had its own search engine, allowing visitors to do searches within this site through the search box that appears in each page's left navigation column. Over the years, I used various online services and software applications to perform those searches. For the past several months, this site's search feature ran right on my web server, using a PHP spidering and search engine script called Sphider. Sphider gave me a lot of administrative control, but unfortunately, it also required some up-front work and then continued maintenance on my part. First, I had to set it up and get it working, along with a database for it to use. Then I had to reindex this site every day, to keep the search database current. All of that would've been worth it to me, except that the search database was not staying current. It seems that Sphider had a habit of not reindexing changed web pages that it should have reindexed — like Journal entries that I had moved into this site's Previous Journal Entries section, and articles that I had updated. Plus, Sphider's search results displayed the first few lines of each web page that it found, instead of displaying the lines that actually contained the search terms. Yesterday, I converted this site's search box to use Google's search service, because it doesn't have any of Sphider's problems, and it runs virtually maintenance-free (pun intended). So from now on, when you use that search box in the left navigation column, Google will perform the search. Unfortunately, it will also show you several advertisements within its search results. Please feel free to ignore those advertisements. Just remember: I don't endorse or recommend any of the companies, products, or services that Google advertises. They're just "the cost of doing business" with Google's free search service.
If you're a Windows user, you're probably used to having to reboot your computer every time you install or upgrade a piece of software — sometimes even 2 or more times. What you may not realize is that, in Linux, every piece of software except the Linux kernel itself can be installed and upgraded without ever rebooting your computer. Here's why.
I'm still rethinking my decision to convert this entire Journal into a WordPress blog. If you're thinking of redesigning your web site, be sure to read Oops, I Redesigned My Website! An SEO Checklist, to learn how to do it without damaging your site's search engine rankings.
Microsoft has announced that, after 5 years of development,
Windows Vista is finally done, and will go on sale to consumers at the end of January, 2007. Yawn.
Windows costs at least a few hundred dollars, while most Linux distros are completely free. So, why does it cost more to buy a PC with Linux preinstalled on it than a PC with Windows installed on it? Because the big dog makes the rules.
Microsoft has predicted that Windows Vista will be adopted twice as fast as any previous Windows client operating system. At least one research company disagrees.
In a telephone interview, Microsoft's co-president claimed to reporters that Windows Vista is so secure that
its users won't need antivirus software., In an effort to promote Vista's new security features, Jim Allchin reportedly stated, "My son, seven years old, runs Windows Vista, and, honestly, he doesn't have an antivirus system on his machine. His machine is locked down with parental controls, he can't download things unless it's to the places that I've said that he could do, and I'm feeling totally confident about that. That is quite a statement. I couldn't say that in Windows XP SP2." After waiting several seconds for the laughter to die down, Mr. Allchin added, "Thank you — you've been a great audience! I'll be performing here all week. Take care, and don't forget to tip your waitress."
How much music can Microsoft-hired musicians create during 18 months of work? About 4 seconds worth. Insert your own lame joke here.
A mediocre resume lists your duties, while a great resume describes your accomplishments. That's just one of the valuable tips you'll learn from Making Your Resume Pop Without Fizzling.
I worked there for several years, and drove by it for several more. Every year at Christmas-time, the main building at 3M headquarters in Maplewood, Minnesota, displayed a giant Christmas tree by strategically lighting specific offices that faced nearby Interstate 94. Some students in Hungary cleverly improved that concept by using their dormitory building's windows to display dot-matrix animation, synchronized to music.
If you remember the TV sitcom, Taxi, you know that its funniest characters were Reverend Jim Ignatowski (played by Christopher Lloyd) and Latka Gravis, (played by Andy Kaufman). Come to think of it, they were probably that show's only really funny characters. Here's
a funny scene in which Latka tells the rest of the gang "the one thing you need in life to make you happy." The comments underneath the video are interesting, too.
Regular visitors to this web site are probably familiar with its DV Information section. In the past couple of years since I first created it, I've heard from several people who found help and hope in that section's pieces. If you're a victim or survivor of domestic abuse, if you care about someone who may be one, or if you want to help someone who is one, please visit this site's DV Information section.
There's a really basic lesson to be learned from this video of a soccer goal.
Christmas day will be the third anniversary of my wife and me arriving in the Sunshine State. Though I haven't seen a single snowflake since then, I really don't miss snow at all. As I type this, about 8:00 AM, my windows are all wide open and the temperature outside is about 70 degrees (F). The sky is blue, the sun is shining, birds are singing, and I'm enjoying this video of a TV news reporter up north, getting snow-plowed.
If you look carefully, you can usually find at least a few mistakes in every newspaper. Here are some funny newspaper mistakes, shown by The Tonight Show's Jay Leno:
Part 1 and
Part 2.
Over the past several weeks, I've posted several articles describing reasons not to "upgrade" your computer to Windows Vista. 10 Reasons Why I'm Not Buying Windows Vista does a good job of summarizing the main ones.
Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 was supposed to fix many of IE's deviations from recognized web standards. Instead, it is reportedly only insignificantly more standards-compliant than IE6. In fact, IE7 even refuses to display some web pages at all. There is no fix for the problem, but a workaround involves configuring IE7 to tell any web site that you visit that it is IE6.
Black Friday is coming again. Every year, on the day after Thanksgiving (November 24 this year), many stores put items on sale at ridiculously low prices to kick-off the Christmas buying season. Here's a site that lets you preview this year's incredible deals from several different stores. Be prepared to arrive several hours early and wait in very, very long lines.
Rowan Atkinson was a comic genius in the title role of the Mr. Bean TV series. He's also pretty funny as the Devil (you can call him "Toby"),
welcoming new arrivals to Hell.
TIME magazine (Europe) has published its list of heroes of the past 60 years. One name on that list that we should all recognize is Linus Torvalds, the man who first created Linux 15 years ago — when he was only 21 years old.
Yesterday, I told you about some ridiculously good deals that you'll be able to get on Black Friday this year. Here's a list of things that you'll be able to get for free that day.
Whether it's your job to hire people, or it's your job to work for people who hire people, you'll enjoy reading How To Recruit the Right Person For the Job.
Ever since I can remember, mosquitoes and other biting insects have loved to bite me. As a result, I spent much of my childhood covered with large, infuriatingly itchy welts. Here's some advice for how to stop itchy bug bites. Be sure to read the comments underneath the story, where you'll even find a few suggestions for how to avoid getting bitten.
Here's an interesting stop-motion music video, showing a young man playing both a piano and some drums. It's really well done, especially when you consider that
he doesn't know how to play either instrument.
One of the best features of all Linux distros is that they are highly configurable — even if what you want to do is remove nearly all of their software applications. Why would you want to do that? One reason would be to set up a computer that's really secure, really easy to use, and really trouble-free, for your parents.
Lawyers typically have really good analytical skills. Here's a lawyer who recommends that his colleagues and competitors put off switching to Windows Vista.
I'm sure you're well aware of the millions and millions of spam messages that people receive every single day. What you may not be aware of is that 80 percent of that spam is sent by only 10 spammers.
Sometimes, when a child's behavior is radically different from that of his peers, it indicates that something is seriously wrong. Sometimes not.
One of the first rules of interviewing for a job is to do some research about the company beforehand. It might save you from
making an embarrassing mistake.
Several months ago, I found and used GSiteCrawler software, to create a Google sitemap for this site. Since that application runs in Windows, and I've been a desktop Linux user since this past July, I've been looking for a suitable free replacement that runs in Linux — so far without any success. The bad news is that the web contains a sea of unusable, poorly documented sitemap scripts and faulty online sitemapping services that only spider a site's root level (just this site's navigation menu); or that won't spider more than 200 web pages, The good news is that I found XML Echo's Google Sitemap Generator, a free online sitemap service that works really well, even for sites that have multiple levels and up to 5,000 web pages. After it creates the sitemap, it will:
I plan to use XML Echo's online sitemap generator until I find some good sitemap software that will run in my desktop Linux (or directly on my web server).
Let's say you're one of the world's most famous television journalists. You work for the world's most famous television news network. You're paid millions of dollars each year to interview famous newsmakers. Wouldn't you use the Internet to research your subjects and help you stay informed about world events? Not if you were CNN journalist, Larry King. He's never used the Internet, and apparently doesn't even know for sure what it is — but he's sure that he wouldn't like it.
I'm always disappointed to see how much research is done on topics that are obvious to most of us. Researchers have now discovered that playing chess improves children's academic performance. Gee, who would've thought that getting kids to use their brains would help them do well in school? Their next research project hopes to tackle the age-old question: Do brown cows produce chocolate milk?
Social awareness was the theme of much of the popular music of the sixties and seventies. Many of us have fond memories of our favorite songs from that era, even though we often didn't have a clue as to what their lyrics meant. If you stop and think about it, you realize that there's a pretty good chance that some of the songwriters were clueless, too.
Tillamook Cheddar has had shows in places like New York, Belgium, and the Netherlands. His most recent works utilize very Rembrandtian brush strokes. Time Out New York called his work "a masterpiece of conceptualism." Apparently, he's some sort of artistic genius, which is really unusual, especially since
he's a dog.
If you're a relatively new Linux user, you'll probably appreciate 8 Tips For New Linux Users.
As I described yesterday, my search for a good, free Linux client-based or server-based sitemap generation tool continues. I've read hundreds of comments from webmasters, checked out about 20 different online sitemapping services, and have installed (or tried to install) about a dozen different server-side sitemapping scripts. I still have about 7 sitemapping scripts to check out before I make my decision.
In a related story, Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft just announced that, within the next few weeks, their search engines will all start using sitemaps in Google's current XML sitemap format. That will make sitemap maintenance a lot simpler for webmasters, who will no longer need to create different sitemaps for those major search engines.
Last Friday, a Brazilian cat gave birth to 6 furry little offspring. Three of them were dats. The other 3 were
cogs.
If you've created a web site, whether for yourself or for a client, you probably want as many people as possible to find and visit it. One of the best ways to do that is to get it indexed and listed by all of the major search engines, like Google, MSN, and Yahoo! If you don't want to wait weeks or months for those search engines to eventually find your web pages, you can create a sitemap for them to read, to tell them the titles and URLs of all of your site's web pages.
That's where it gets tricky. There are many, many sitemap generator tools out there, and it could take days of testing and analysis to finally figure out which one(s) will work for you.
The good news is that you won't have to do any of that work. I spent the past several days looking for a long-term, non-Windows solution for this site's sitemap needs. Then I wrote
The Best Sitemap Generators, to summarize everything that I learned by researching and trying about 20 different free, online sitemap generators, and installing (or trying to install) about 20 different free sitemap generator scripts on my remote Linux web server. I highly recommend that you read it.
Each time I post a Journal entry that contains a lot of technical information, I like to follow it with a fun entry. For example, yesterday's entry was a very long, somewhat technical article about sitemap generators, so today's entry contains a bunch of fun stuff.
When I was a kid, my family had a ping-pong table in our basement recreation room. By my mid-teens, I was able to beat my father about half the time, which made me feel like a world champion. No matter how hard I tried, though, I could never get anywhere near this good.
Have you noticed how many U.S. stores, malls, companies, and government buildings have sprouted a row of small pillars outside of their front entrances in the past few years? I've often wondered if those devices could actually stop a speeding vehicle. This video proves that, if they're designed correctly, even one of them can.
What did your favorite science fiction movie characters do after their movies ended? They had to find other jobs.
Think about it and you may agree that it would be really stressful to be God.
If you're a fan of the late comedian Andy Kaufman's strange brand of comedy, you'll probably love a 1974 standup routine, featuring what would later become his "Latka Gravis" character. If you're not an Andy Kaufman fan, you'll probably think that the audience must have been high on drugs to think that he was funny. You may be right.
As children, millions of us watched every Saturday morning, hoping against hope that the Coyote would finally catch the Road Runner, but knowing in our hearts that he never would. I never realized that there was one episode in which
he finally did.
Last month, I told you why I had decided to shut down this site's Forums, Guestbook, User Ratings, and Free E-Cards sections. Now I'm in the process of going through the old Forums database and this Journal, copying out important Forum posts and Journal entries that I'll turn into standalone articles. Yesterday, I used that process to create 3 new articles that I hope you find useful. All 3 of them now appear in this site's CB Guides section.
How To Fix A Noisy PC Fan evolved from advice that I gave someone in an email message and then posted in this site's Forums.
What Causes WGA Failure? started as information about the "Windows Genuine Advantage" feature that I first sent to someone in a series of email messages, and then posted in this site's Forums.
The Best Sitemap Generators began life as the Journal entry that I posted 2 days ago.
As I described in my article, The Best Sitemap Generators, I bought and have been using XML-Sitemaps' sitemap generator script to create this site's sitemaps. It did a great job each time I ran it manually, but I got error messages every time I tried to get it to automatically run as a scheduled cron job on my web server.
If you're not an XML-Sitemaps' script user, you probably don't care much about that, but I know a lot of XML-Sitemaps customers care, because they're having the exact same problem. The good news is that I stayed up until after 3:00 in the morning this past Sunday night, and figured out how to make the XML-Sitemaps' sitemap generator script run as a cron job. Then I explained it all in my new article,
How To Get XML-Sitemaps To Work as a Cron Job in HSphere. Even if you don't use the XML-Sitemaps' sitemap generator script, you may want to take a look at my article, because it contains some valuable lessons about how to follow logical steps to solve a problem, even if that problem is beyond your technical expertise.
What would you guess a former middle east Microsoft executive would be doing after leaving that company? You would be correct if you guessed that he's been leading an effort to sell desktop Linux to emerging markets in the middle east and Africa.
You're a savvy Internet user, and you know what you want. See if you agree with this list of The Web Innovations That Internet Users Really Crave.
When its stock price broke the $500 (U.S.D) per-share barrier the other day, Google's company value jumped up to about $156 billion (U.S.D). I use the Google search engine all the time, but I find it hard to believe that Google is really worth more than $25 (U.S.D) for every single man, woman, and child on this planet. If I owned Google stock, I would be happy to sell it now, at its highest price ever, instead of waiting and hoping that it will go up even more. Past experience in the market tells us that what goes up quickly, can come down even more quickly.
How to Steal a Parking Spot is either an example of incredible stunt driving, or an example of really good digital animation.
Here's a group of 5 guys performing a synchronized dance show at a college basketball game. That doesn't sound too impressive until you realize that
only one of them is a real person. See if you can figure out which one it is.
Today is the 10th anniversary of my brother's suicide. To finally make some sense of, and get some closure for that horrible loss, I wrote one paragrah, Rest In Peace, which now appears in this site's DV Information section.
My Journal entry from 2 days ago is now a separate article, How To Get XML-Sitemaps To Work as a Cron Job in HSphere. It appears in this site's CB Guides section.
Today is Thanksgiving Day in the U.S. The act of giving thanks implies 2 things:
What are you thankful for? To whom are you thankful? If you are thankful to God, then you may want to consider the fact that there are probably hundreds of things that you can and should be thankful for every day of the year. In fact, you will probably be a happier person if you try to keep a thankful attitude every day of your life, instead of just once a year.
I haven't tried to do it yet, but it looks pretty impressive and relatively easy to do. It's the the snap change card trick.
It's a question that a lot of couples ask each other at some point in their marriage: "If I died, would you get married again?" In the case of this couple, the discussion took an unfortunate turn.
Here's a pretty funny guy, doing man-on-the-street interviews with American Idol hopefuls.
Thanksgiving was pretty uneventful around here, but employees of a small radio station in Cincinnati had a serious and memorable problem with
their Thanksgiving promotion.
If your computer runs Windows XP, you've probably made up your mind by now, whether or not you want to upgrade it to Windows Vista. But if you're still running Windows 98, 98SE, or ME (like I did until this past July), have you decided whether or not to upgrade it to Windows XP? Several months ago, I wrote some advice on that subject to a close friend via email. Afterward, I posted that advice in my (now closed) forums. Today, I turned that advice into a new article, titled Stay With Win98 or upgrade to WinXP? It appears in this site's CB Guides section.
This is a time of year when millions of Americans take millions of photographs with digital cameras. While digital cameras are much more convenient and provide much faster results than film cameras, digital cameras are susceptible to the same types of electronic glitches that affect desktop computers, and sometimes those glitches result in priceless digital photos being lost. Several months ago, one of my favorite former students wrote to me after losing some very important digital photos. I've turned our correspondence (which solved the problem) into a new article, titled
How To Recover Lost Images From a Memory Card, which appears in this site's CB Guides section. If you're planning to take any important photos, you may want to read it, or at least keep it in the back of your mind, just in case it turns out that you need its advice.
By many measures, Ubuntu has been the most popular desktop Linux distro for the past couple of years. Despite its huge poularity, many Linux beginners have complained that by design, Ubuntu has always come with only free software installed. That philosophical decision has always forced users to find and install the proprietary non-free multimedia drivers that are needed to display many popular multimedia formats, such as WMV or AVI. Now it appears that, fueled by a perceived need to make it more multimedia-capable "out-of-the-box," the next version of Ubuntu will include some proprietary drivers.
Whether you're a Linux beginner or a seasoned veteran who'd like a referesher course, you'll probably get some value out of a new, free, self-paced online course, An Introduction to Linux Basics.
It sounds like it might be dull and technical, but it's actually pretty interesting, even for a non-programmer like me. Here's an ex-Microsoft programmer's description of what it was like to work for a year on a Windows Vista feature that could have been completed in about a week. No wonder it took 5 years to develop Vista, and no wonder some analysts claim that Windows has grown to a size and complexity that will make it impossible for Microsoft to maintain it in the future.
Here's a spoof of those droning science films that used to put you to sleep in high school. It starts out like it's going to be boring, but trust me, you'll enjoy Look Around You - Module 5 - Sulphur, even though you won't learn much from it.
Here's a funny, perfectly acted Saturday Night Live skit in which rapper, Ludacris introduces his latest discovery, The Blizzardman.
Some days, life can be cruel, but you'll be happy as long as you're wearing a nice, soft
diaper.
I've been using Linux exclusively since this past July, and I'd like to see more people use it, but I try to keep an open mind about the advantages and disadvantages of dropping Windows in favor of Linux. Here's a little review for those of you who are trying to convince your friends to switch from Windows to Linux: Ten Reasons To Drop Windows - Part 1 and Part 2.
If you're a recent convert from Windows to Linux, here are Five Things to Know When You Switch to Linux.
They spend millions of dollars on computers each year, and generate extremely high-quality graphics, but their forecasts are wrong much of the time. Here's a perfect example, but as a Floridian, I'm certainly not complaining.
The OLPC (one laptop per child), project has chosen a modified version of Linux to use as that $100 (U.S.D) computer's operating system. Here's a demonstration of its graphical user interface.
I've been having the same woman cut my hair for the past few years. She does a much better job than
Mr. Bean.
A few years ago, I was unable to find a version of Linux that could replace Windows on my main PC. This past July, I finally found one that could do the job, and I've been using Linux exclusively ever since. Here's a guy who says that Linux is so ready for the desktop that it has become boring. He recommends that everyone dump Linux now, and start using a more untamed, "wild-west" operating system. Thanks, but I think I'll stick with Linux.
If you're willing to jump through some hoops to earn them, Microsoft will send you a free copy of Windows Vista Business Edition and 2007 Office Professional.
If you're a Windows user, and you want to edit your photos and other images, but you can't afford Adobe Photoshop, you might want to try a few of the Top 8 Free Photo Editors for Windows.
Did you know that when you "delete" a file in Windows, it's not really deleted? It's true. Most times, deleted files can be recovered using file recovery software like DiskInternals Uneraser. Be sure to read A Hard Lesson In Privacy to learn what you can do to make sure your deleted files are really deleted.
I don't totally agree with all of its reasoning, but there's some good advice for bloggers in Five Things Your Blog Doesn't Need.
When I drove a large Chevy Blazer SUV every day, I got used to seeing traffic from about 6 feet off of the ground. When I traded in my SUV for a small Saturn sedan, I had to get used to feeling like I was sitting right on the road. With his unique brand of comic genius, Mr. Bean found
a solution to that problem.
How's this for a new slogan: "Linux — if it's good enough for the French parliament, it's good enough for you." Yeah, you're right — I'll have to give it some more thought.
In the months since I switched from Windows to Linux, I've linked to a lot of pro-Linux articles here. Some of those articles were well written and pretty convincing, while others were not. For example, we all know that Linux is used by more than 50% of the world's web servers, but when an article asks the question, "What Can Linux Do To Defeat Windows?" it hurts its own credibility by assuming that there's anything that a desktop operating system that is used by less than 1% of computer users (Linux) can do to "defeat" a desktop operating system that is already being used by almost every computer user on the planet (Windows). So, what's the best approach to writing intelligent, credible, pro-Linux articles? Advocating Linux offers some great advice.
Stop Annoying People With Your Newsletter. That's a great title for some great advice for anyone who writes a newsletter. Or a blog. Or who forwards "funny" emails to others.
You may be surprised to learn that some of the newest, most effective soldiers in the fight against terrorists are honeybees.
Where I live, it seems like they air reruns of the Friends TV show at least 18 hours of every day. If you used to be a Friends fan, but you're kind of burned out on seeing those same episodes over and over, take a peek at
10 Seasons of Friends in 90 Seconds. As Chandler might ask, "Could it be any funnier?"
If you're looking for a generic comparison of Windows and Linux, take a look at the oddly titled Top Linux vs Windows Disputes Myths. It's not comprehensive, but it may allay some people's fears about using Linux.
Do you remember the hilarity that ensued a few weeks ago, when a Microsoft executive claimed that Windows Vista was so secure that his 7 year-old son was able to use it without any antivirus software? Well, here's the punchline that we all knew was coming: Sophos has announced that 3 of the top 10 malware threats can bypass Windows Vista's security and infect users' computers.
Over the years, I've done a lot of work to ensure that this site and its email are fast and stable, with as little downtime as possible. If you click on any of the "Monitored By" boxes in the left navigation column, you'll see that my efforts have been successful. If your web site and email are important to you, The Definitive Guide for Robust Websites and Email has some advice for you.
If there's someone in your life that want to drive crazy, you can probably do it with The Annoy-A-Tron. Be sure to read the comments underneath the article, too.
In the past few months, there's been a craze of "one picture every day" and "one picture every month" stop-motion videos on the web. Here's a funny one that
tells a story.