When it comes to entertainment, I’m somewhat of a non-conformist.

In fact, I’m probably more of a contrarian.

The more everyone raves about a new movie, the less I want to see it.

That’s because, long ago, I came to the realization that I’m not a member of the target audience for most new entertainment.

In other words, I’m [more...]

I’ve always assumed that the people who read my Web site are “smarter than the average bear.”

For those of you who aren’t baby boomers, that’s a reference to Yogi Bear, a cartoon character from my childhood.

Anyway, along with my belief about this site’s readers, I’ve also always believed several other things about intelligence and the human brain.

As an intelligent person, you probably [more...]

Regular readers of this Journal — and those who follow technology news — know that personal privacy is becoming a very rare commodity on the Internet.

And one of the biggest influences on the demise of personal privacy has been Facebook.

Over the years, Facebook’s leadership has repeatedly expressed disdain for those of us who value our privacy; and their company has [more...]

I’ve always known and taught that the biggest security threat to any organization’s network is the organization’s own employees.

Not because they intentionally sabotage the network’s security.

But because they have easy access to the network — and many of them are ignorant of even the most simple safe-computing practices.

So they unintentionally do unsafe things that end up [more...]

Years ago, my Uncle Dom, stricken with debilitating asthma, discovered that the World Wide Web would allow him to virtually explore the world.

Visiting places that his health would never have allowed him to go.

And making contact with long-lost relatives and friends in the old country.

All from the [more...]

Several weeks ago, in one of the Linux support forums that I frequent, someone started a thread to complain about the continuing problem of spam postings in the forums.

One member expressed the opinion that we should allow some of the spammers’ messages to remain, because he believed that they had made the effort to read our forums before they had spammed us.

What convinced him that the spammers were [more...]

As humans, we owe the survival of our species to our ability control the often-dangerous world around us.

So we’re kind of hard-wired to try to do that as much as possible.

And, to help us, we invent technologies.

Only later do we realize that the inventions that we’ve embraced have [more...]

Regular readers of this Journal know that — despite this self-named Web site, and the fact that I love to learn about all kinds of new technologies — I actually own very few pieces of technology.

No smart phone.

Not even a cell phone.

No X-Box. [more...]