“To err is human — to really mess things up requires a computer.”

That’s a popular old saying.

But it’s usually not a computer’s fault when something gets really messed up.

It’s almost always the fault of a computer programmer or computer user.

Because, computers are [more...]

The other day, I downloaded the current Debian Squeeze (Stable) 6.0.2.1 Xfce+LXDE installation CD and installed its default Xfce choice from scratch onto a brand new ext4 hard drive partition of my existing Debian Wheezy PC.

Afterward, I added a few additional packages from the Debian Squeze repositories, including the Synapic GUI package manager and DesktopNova, my favorite automatic desktop wallpaper changer.

Then, in DesktopNova’s settings, I [more...]

It seems that less-than-fully-competent people always look for others to blame for their incompetence.

And, nowadays, computers are ubiquitous enough — and not very clearly understood by very many people — that they are a convenient target for that blame.

You’ve probably experienced it, probably as many times as I have: [more...]

This is bad news for Windows users.

Really bad news.

According to today’s issue of the Windows Secrets newsletter, “Microsoft’s latest Security advisory on .dll-file vulnerabilities reveals a whole new chapter of Internet security troubles — and raises many more questions than it gives answers. [more...]

One of the main reasons that, around the year 2000, I started looking for an operating system that could replace Windows on my PCs — and I began using Linux full-time instead of Windows in 2006 — was that I was sick and tired of Windows’ swiss cheese-like security and the constant need to learn about and deal with all of its security vulnerabilities.

Now here we are, ten years after I started looking [more...]

For years, I created and maintained this entire Web site through a 56K (actually 40K) dial-up Internet connection.

Many times, I sat up for hours overnight, waiting for a few hundred edited pages to upload to my out-of-state Web server; or for an ISO image to download so that I could [more...]

It’s a very, very significant improvement.

Google’s Chrome browser has had it since its first release.

But Firefox has never had it. [more...]

I keep a backup of my main PC’s completely configured / and /home partitions, to make it easy to restore one or both after a catastrophic event or user error.

I haven’t experienced a catastrophic event in Linux yet, but a few different times in my early Linux days, [more...]