Chutzpah: n. (Slang) — 1892, from Yiddish khutspe “impudence, gall” from Heb. hutspah. The classic definition is that given by Leo Rosten: “that quality enshrined in a man who, having killed his mother and father, throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan.”

You would be hard-pressed to find a corporation that [more...]

In its latest public admission that its operating systems are woefully insecure against malicious attacks, Microsoft has issued a new security advisory with a special instruction:

“Microsoft told Windows XP users (yesterday) not to press the F1 key when prompted by a Web site, as part of its reaction to an unpatched vulnerability that hackers could exploit to hijack PCs running Internet Explorer (IE).”

It seems to me that if you’re still using [more...]

You know those ubiquitous TV commercials for Windows 7?

The ones that feature “regular people” claiming that Windows 7 was their idea?

Well, if Microsoft would actually ask some real “regular people” what they want, they might find out that most people don’t really care about [more...]

Regular readers of this Journal know that I’ve been using personal computers since 1979, and I’ve been using Linux full-time instead of Linux since July of 2006.

Having been a DOS and Windows power user and support person since the early days, I’m really grateful that [more...]

The Web has a lot to offer — from email and Web surfing, to shopping and bill-paying, to Web site creation and social networking.

But we all know that it also has several annoying features; things that aren’t bad enough to make you stop visiting the sites that you like, but are bad enough that you [more...]

I’ll bet that every single Linux user has run into this problem — probably numerous times.

I’ve run into it several times with my DSL provider.

But there’s really nothing I can do about it.

Except try to be patient. [more...]

With everything that we’ve learned over the years about its never-ending list of serious security vulnerabilities, I find it really hard to believe that anyone would choose to run Microsoft’s Internet Explorer Web browser any more.

Personally, I switched to Mozilla’s much-more-secure, free and open-source Firefox browser — first in Windows, and then in Linux — on the [more...]

About ten years ago, I became so disgusted with Windows’ opaque frailty that I started looking for an alternative. In 2002, I learned some of the main differences between Windows and Linux.

But back then — and on until November, 2005 — I was on a slow dial-up Internet connection that made it nearly impossible to [more...]

According to the organizations that track such things, approximately 95% of all email messages these days are spam.

Where does all that spam come from?

Well, we know that an awful lot of it comes from [more...]

I love Italian food. I’ve always said that if you cut me, I bleed tomato sauce.

I love Italian food is because I love melted cheese. Specifically, melted mozzarella (or scamorza, if you have some). Whether it’s pizza, lasagna, cannelloni, mannecoti or baked ziti, Italian food usually contains plenty of melted mozzarella.

Low-fat mozzarella, for [more...]