the finger-keyboard synapse - Technology Archives

"Technology" archive

Thursday 18 October

New Samsung 226BW Monitor for sale @ great price (21:23) - When I buy computer hardware, I research the heck out of every product I consider buying, spend a week contemplating the best choice, and then finally jump. I don't usually make bad decisions, and while I didn't pick bad hardware, I just picked something not right for me after all. I'm hoping that one of my readers will be able to benefit. I purchased a 22" Samsung 226BW monitor (link is to Samsung's description of the monitor) a few weeks... | 2 Comments

Saturday 19 May

Windows and PC makers shooting themselves in the foot? (09:51) - Vista came out in late January, and I knew it wouldn't be long before I needed to set up some Vista systems. Come March, I was working on my first few and have done a handful altogether since then. I don't know if the problem is necessary with Vista, but I have been very disappointed overall with these new computers. I'm not really sure that Vista is to blame as much as the PC makers. The first few systems that... | 1 Comments

Sunday 22 April

The best investment: shrink wrapped computer games (09:50) - I certainly would not classify myself as en eBay junky, but I do occasionally like to do some searching to see what I can find, usually in the areas of music, games or old computer hardware. I recently came across a seller who was selling hundreds of old Commodore 64 games, some of them still in their original shrink wrap. I'm going to overlook the obvious question of why someone would have hoarded shrink wrapped games for the C64 until...

Sunday 11 March

Anti-viruses really are worse than viruses (21:14) - I have for a long time thought that anti-virus programs were almost a bigger pain than the viruses that they are supposed to prevent. I got my proof last week when MIcrosoft announced that their OneCare program could blow away your entire Outlook data file or individual Outlook Express mail boxes if you received an attachment with malicious code. Full story at ComputerWorld. Hilarious. Just hilarious. It wouldn't be so funny if it were irreversible, but fortunately for those affected,... | 1 Comments

Wednesday 14 February

Thoughts on digital books (19:12) - Last week, Steve Jobs (CEO of Apple) published his Thoughts on Music on Apple's web site. Prompted by the calls for Apple to open up their iTunes/iPod FairPlay technology, Steve in response suggested that we should instead be focusing on pressuring the music companies to license their music without DRM. He sites that 90% of the world's music is still sold without any DRM on traditional CDs, and that protecting the other 10% doesn't do any good. Whether this is... | 4 Comments

Saturday 30 December

Merry Christmas to me (20:19) - If you're like everyone else in my family, you're really going to think I'm crazy now (if you didn't already before). I just bought a $300 keyboard, the Kinesis Advantage USB Qwerty/Dvorak Black. See It. Here were the factors that went into my decision (in no particular order): 10% off sale when ordering before Dec. 31. My current keyboard is going on 9 years old (amortize $300 over 9 years and it comes to $30/year or about 8.2 cents per... | 3 Comments

Sunday 17 December

Busted! (14:51) - This story really made my day: Laptop helps man in Germany bust burglar in Brazil (CNN) A technically savvy man wired his home in Brazil to trigger a message to his cell phone in the event that the security system was tripped. He then logged in remotely and watched the man who had entered his house. The police were called and the man was apprehended. That's just brilliant! Maybe all of our newfangled technology really is good for something: catching...

Sunday 3 December

The ultimate data structure? (19:59) - One of the projects that I worked on this year (not related to BitWise) involved storing and processing a decent amount of data in a PC application. I had sketched out on paper all sorts of elaborate structures with hash maps instead hash maps, sorted arrays, lists, and ways to link them all together. I was really dreading implementing all of this, especially writing the algorithms to join the data together. Then I got this nagging little thought in the... | 3 Comments

Tuesday 22 August

The ghost of computing future? (16:03) - If anyone is reading this who knew me in high school, you're probably going to ask, "Who are you, and what did you do with Kevin?" That's OK. It's been many moons, and people are allowed to change their mind, right? A few weeks ago, Apple released the new Mac Pro, the Intel-based replacement for the PowerMac G5. As always, the machine itself looks slick, but it wasn't until I started reading the reviews that I realized how amazing this... | 3 Comments

Tuesday 15 August

I stood before the ghost of computing past (13:55) - In case any of you noticed I've been AWOL (not likely) or missed me (even less likely), I have a very good explanation. I was on vacation in Washington DC. I have to say that vacationing there is great because almost everything is free (well, not really, it's our tax dollars at work). Anyway, one of the high points of the trip was visiting the Smithsonian museum where I took this picture: Yes, folks, my beloved hero from yesteryear has... | 1 Comments

Friday 4 August

Wikipedia and quality (17:07) - I read a really interesting article today at InfoWorld about Wikipedia and the quality of the entries there. According to the article, the powers that be want to steer Wikipedia away from growth and instead concentrate on quality. To this end, they're talking about putting together an advisory board. I guess I'm a bit skeptical that an advisory board is going to be do much advising over a worldwide group of public volunteers, but hey, the Internet has always been... | 2 Comments

Friday 28 July

Features and lawsuits (16:21) - One of the more common requests for BitWise over the year is to add a feature whereby you could search other users' shared files en-masse a-la Kazaa. As much as this has been requested, we have always stood firm that this could attract a lot of unwanted attention from various entities looking to protect their rights. Now that Kazaa has successfully been sued and ordered to pay at least $100 million in fines, I am glad that we aren't already... | 3 Comments

Friday 23 June

Computer users to Microsoft: we're not all stupid (17:53) - I have been following with some interest the recent hubbub over Microsoft's Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) program and the validation checks that have surfaced on Windows XP. For those of you not familiar with the issue, basically Windows XP now "phones home" to see if it is legitimate when you boot, and if not, displays information about genuine Microsoft software. While I can see how some people might find this as an inherent sign of mistrust of computer users worldwide,... | 2 Comments

Wednesday 7 June

Merging the ideals of Commodore and Apple (or, the $100 laptop) (21:17) - There has been a lot of talk over the recent years about the digital divide. I do think that the digital divide is real, so I have followed with interest the $100 laptop that has been in development for a while now, and a recent story at ComputerWorld shows just how close these laptops are to reality. The idea behind these laptops is to eliminate the digital divide by making a computer available to [almost] anyone in the world at... | 1 Comments

Tuesday 16 May

BitWise IM for Commore 64/128 Announced (19:54) - We are pleased today to announce that BitWise IM will be available by the end of the month for the popular Commodore 64 and 128 personal computers. We can no longer afford to ignore the tremendous demand from users of the best-selling computer of all time. Users will be able to download BitWise IM from the popular QuantumLink online service or can order a 5-1/4" floppy for a small shipping and handling charge. It has taken an incredible feat to... | 2 Comments

Friday 12 May

Permission bits shouldn't be optional (14:57) - I've had reason lately to investigate Adobe Acrobat security for an unrelated side project that I'm involved with. More specifically, we were interested in being able to control access to documents based on a set of permissions that would be centrally stored. A password-protected file wouldn't suffice because a password can be shared, and sharing documents should not be permitted (unless the recipient had been granted the same permission). By the end, I had learned that not only does Adobe... | 2 Comments

Tuesday 9 May

Don't bash it before you try it (22:47) - I realized that despite all my poo-pooing IE 7, I hadn't actually used it. So last week I loaded up the IE 7 Beta 2 on my laptop, and I have to say that I do like it quite a bit. I don't think it's a Firefox killer, but it does bring IE 7 back on to the playing field after years of being pretty outdated. Once it ships with the OS, it could very well be enough to keep... | 4 Comments

Wednesday 3 May

ExtremeTech: IE7 Isn't Good Enough (12:17) - In my last post, I talked about Dvorak blasting IE as Microsoft's biggest mistake. A few days later, I came across a "review" of Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2, and their opinion was basically too little, too late. In many ways, Microsoft is stuck in the age of big, spread-out releases. It's used to the prospect of building up a huge set of new features into a big product, selling it, and then moving on to the next two-year development... | 1 Comments

Saturday 29 April

Dvorak: Internet Explorer Was Huge Mistake (09:09) - I may not always agree with John Dvorak, but he usually has some thought provoking (if not a little "out there") columns. One of his latest columns was suggesting that IE was Microsoft's biggest mistake and that IE should be pulled from the market immediately. First, [Microsoft] needs to face the fact that this entire preoccupation with the browser business is bad for the company and bad for the user. Microsoft should pull the browser out of the OS and... | 4 Comments

Thursday 20 April

Does open source encourage rootkits? (16:44) - I read with some interest a recent story at ComputerWorld, McAfee: Open-source encourages rootkits. To which I have to say, Bah, Humbug. The basic logic is that open-source rootkits make it easier for people to hack in to other systems, by merely making rootkits easier to get and use than ever before. Further, open-source rootkits on the Internet help the bad guys continue to "improve" their rootkits and make them better and better by sharing ideas & code. The growing... | 3 Comments

Monday 17 April

Wisdom or folly? (17:34) - A recent issue (December 2005--yes, I'm that far behind) of Business 2.0 had an interesting set of "Golden Rules" from well-known figures in business and technology. I especially liked Blake Ross's statement (Blake is co-creator of Firefox): When Firefox began, the browser market was "dead," client software was "outdated," and many entrepreneurs were working on podcasting tools for goldfish and other "next big things." We focus on the everyday problems that nag at everyday people. There are more than enough... | 2 Comments

Sunday 9 April

What is "Beta?" Is perpetual Beta the way of the future? (14:18) - Stephen Mane's Full Disclosure column in the May 2006 issue of PC World brought out something that I have noticed a lot lately: In keeping with the perpetually-in-beta services of companies like Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo, we hereby extend to you a warm welcome to Full Disclosure, Beta Version! ... You'll still get the same hard-hitting, incisive column as always--but thanks to the magic of beta, we won't be shy about passing along information we might have avoided in the... | 1 Comments

Wednesday 5 April

Boot camp: Macs do Windows (17:32) - I originally had something else to post today, but this news takes precedence. There have been a lot of "hacker" communities trying to get Windows to run on the new Intel Macs, and the results have been largely disappointing. Imagine my surprise when a friend this morning send me this link: Boot Camp Public Beta: Macs do Windows, too I have to say, a Windows/Mac dual-boot machine has a lot of potential, and I'm glad that Apple has recognized this...

Friday 31 March

Skype and Intel sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G (10:21) - Thanks to everyone who commented on my anti-virus post. I enjoyed reading all of the comments and have proven to myself once again that controversy is good! So here I go again. Earlier this month, Skype announced that its conferencing feature would be limited to 5 users on AMD chips, while people using Intel chips could have conferences with up to 10 users. This is, in my opinion, complete B.S., especially in light of some interesting testing that shows that... | 2 Comments

Monday 27 March

I'm a bad computer user (or, why I don't use anti-virus software) (18:44) - I generally am a pretty honest, open person. But there's one question that I always hope people won't ask me: "So, Kevin, what anti-virus software do you use on your computer?" The honest answer is that most of the time I don't run any anti-virus at all, or it's disabled. Considering that many of the people I know consider me a computer "expert," I don't set a very good example. It's even harder to answer the inevitable follow-up question: "Why?"... | 7 Comments

Sunday 26 February

Linux on Mactel, who cares? (14:33) - Here's something I've been meaning to write about for a week now. It was big news that Edgar 'Gimli' Hucek was the first person to get Linux running on one of the new Intel Macs. That's all very hunky-dory, but I have a big question: Why? There are two big reasons why I don't understand this: 1) Mac OS X makes great workstations and great servers, just like Linux. Because Mac OS X is based on BSD, it already has... | 1 Comments

Sunday 5 February

All praise the demise of IE for the Mac (15:20) - You may recall my griping about IE for the Mac when I was redesigning the web site during the first part of last year. It therefore made me very happy to read the headline: Internet Explorer For Mac Dead And Gone You can read the full story on CRN. Basically, IE is no longer available at all, and all IE for Mac downloads have been removed from Microsoft's site. Obviously there will still be people out there using IE for... | 2 Comments

Thursday 12 January

Microsoft takes a page from the BitWise playbook (09:25) - One of the aspects of BitWise that surprises (impresses?) many users is that all three "versions" of BitWise - Personal, Plus and Professional - are all bundled in the same executable. Then, the various features are activated by the server when you log in. I was therefore very interested to see that Microsoft is doing something similar with Vista. From the news article at CRN: Having a master Windows Vista operating system means customers that buy PCs preloaded with one... | 3 Comments

Wednesday 4 January

Leaping in all the wrong ways? (16:58) - Back in 1998, I assembled my first custom computer from parts that I selected. I remember being both overwhelmed and excited by the number of choices that I had for all the different components, but by far one of the biggest choices I remember debating was the motheboard. On top of that, I had to decide between an Intel or an AMD processor (Cyrix was still around but I knew better than that). In the end, the price-performance ratio won... | 1 Comments

Wednesday 14 December

It won't be called crazy now that IBM is doing it (10:37) - When we first began offering BitWise Professional almost two and a half years ago, we thought long and hard about how to price it. We finally settled on the model that we still have today: a monthly service fee based on the number of active users. Every once in a while, someone will tell us that our pricing model is terrible, or that no one would ever possibly want to use BitWise because of it (which is not true at... | 1 Comments

Sunday 27 November

Catching up on IM news after Thanksgiving (20:35) - I was reading the news that piled up over the last week or so, and found a couple of interesting articles that I wanted to share/discuss. The first article is about AOL moving their next-generation AIM (aka Triton) out of beta status. I guess what I found most interesting is that it talks about their tabbed IMs and their improved file transfer support. Well gee AOL, welcome to the club (finally!). I'm actually more interested in the level of ads...

Saturday 19 November

XCP fiasco not just Sony's fault (10:44) - This flap over the XCP copy protection on certain Sony CDs has been prevalent in today's news, both in mainstream and technology-based outlets. A few BitWise users have sent various links to me the past couple of weeks, though in most cases I've been following this one pretty closely already. I haven't posted yet because I didn't really have anything new to say, and what's the point of being a broken record? However, I do have something to say now... | 1 Comments

Sunday 6 November

DRM, audio CDs, rootkits, and exposure (20:48) - Last year, I complained about DRM and not being able to rip an audio CD that I purchased for my own enjoyment. I do not share via P2P. I am not a criminal and don't appreciate being treated like one. A few months ago, I learned that you can avoid the DRM software on audio CDs by not allowing the audio CD hybrids to auto-play in Windows. Thus the DRM code is not loaded and the CD can be ripped... | 1 Comments

Thursday 20 October

An audio CD is just an audio CD after all (22:56) - Last fall I ranted up and down about copy protected audio CDs, and how I couldn't rip the tracks off of a copy-protected audio CD to mp3. I have since learned that there's a really easy solution: don't allow copy-protected CDs to auto-play. It turns out that the copy protection software is loaded when the CD auto-plays (they are hybrid audio / data CDs) and if the CD never auto-plays, the copy protection software isn't installed. The CD drive then... | 1 Comments

Tuesday 18 October

Security software gripes increase 650% (20:36) - Interesting timing: one of my email newsletters today linked me up with Larry Seltzer's column on eWeek entitled, Only Suckers Renew about the rising cost of anti-virus product subscriptions. He makes a good point: in 2001, Norton Anti-Virus annual subscription updates were $3.95. Now, they're $29.99. I can't think of much else that has gone up 650% in the last few years. Even gas has only doubled or tripled since then! So in other words, now I have to pay... | 1 Comments

Monday 17 October

What's with security software? (21:09) - I was reading a recent advisory on ComputerWorld, and had a question: why is a scanning engine vulnerable to malformed HTTP requests? Maybe I am being a bit naive, but is this implying that some security packages are web servers? While I realize that anti-virus, firewall, anti-spyware, etc. software are all quite complex, it seems again and again I am finding these packages to be overbearing, cumbersome, quirky and sometimes unusable. I recently helped someone install Norton Anti-Virus, a process... | 2 Comments

Sunday 9 October

Gaming becomes a social disease? (14:39) - They can't stop playing video games (CNN) Jun Mung-gyu remembers the throbbing pain in his head and shoulder aches from spending as many as 15 hours a day hunched over a computer keyboard battling his online foes. "You have no life, you only focus on gaming, putting off everything, like getting a haircut," recalled the 27-year-old Jun, who was able to kick the habit earlier this year though he remains in the milieu, running an Internet cafe in southeastern Seoul.... | 3 Comments

Thursday 22 September

Yes please, I'd like the Google Virus! (16:05) - There are times when the general public becomes so enamored with a company, product, service, etc. that it's dangerous. I think that in some regards, this has happened with Google. Note Well: I have nothing against Google. What I'm questioning is people's judgement. When GoogleTalk was released a few weeks ago, it didn't really do anything new, except it had the "Google" name on it. It had some cute interface ideas, but overall really doesn't have much to it. Yet... | 2 Comments

Wednesday 31 August

FaceTime serving their face? (19:58) - Here's an article that caught my attention the other day: FaceTime greets, disarms spyware (InfoWorld). I don't know about anyone else, but it bothers me that a company that sells an instant messaging service is announcing other instant messaging services are security holes, and then starts offering a product that plugs those "holes." So, you can pay them $5,000 for their spyware protection suite, and then you'll have to choose them for corporate messaging because your new spyware protection suite...

Monday 22 August

ZoneAlarm 6 is a terrorist? and a new ZA alert when running BitWise (10:04) - The recent ZoneAlarm 6 has seriously increased the number of activities that it alerts you about, to the point where I think they are excessive and will probably terrorize the average home user. In any event, this new Zone Alarm 6 shows an additional alert when running BitWise, and in order to make sure as many people as possible see this information, I'm posting it here in the blog too. It is also available in the FAQ or the Tech...

Saturday 30 July

Ultimate Boot CD (22:10) - This is too cool: Ultimate Boot CD. It's a tech person's dream come true! It has hard drive diagnostic tools, installation tools, wiping tools, cloning tools, sector editors, partition managers, and file tools, plus other great stuff like CPU and memory test suites, network tools, free anti-virus tools and much more. Why haven't I discovered this before now? This will make so many things easier!... | 2 Comments

Sunday 17 July

A niche isn't a bad place to be (19:50) - Call me old-school, but I'm still a Matrox fan. Yeah, I know, most people say, "Matrox? Didn't they go out of business already?" Well, no, they haven't. In fact, for the market they serve, they're still doing some really cool things. I just hope that market is bigger than, um, just me. ;) The latest news from Matrox is their Millennium G550 PCIe graphics card, a universally compatible 1x PCI Express graphics card with Dualhead support. Even better, Matrox finally...

Wednesday 29 June

Be ripped off wisely on ink (10:33) - I have recently been looking to replace my aging HP 822Cse printer. It still works, aside from the problems it has feeding that require cleaning the rollers far more than should really be necessary. The fax machine also died a couple weeks ago, so it seemed like an all-in-one unit would be a really good idea. I liked the looks of the HP 6210, but before buying a printer I've learned also to look at ink costs. So I checked... | 5 Comments

Tuesday 29 March

Safari, image opacity and divs do not mix (20:13) - Sometimes the most benign things can mix to form a deadly combination. On the new web site, there is a really neat image opacity / mouseover effect. (Speaking of the new site, see the entry below for how to see it if you haven't already!) The short phrases to describe the sections of the image don't tell very much, so someone suggested using the tooltips from another page to display more information without taking up more space. A great idea,... | 2 Comments

Wednesday 23 March

Nousing Narciposters (22:45) - Wired magazine has a mini-column called Jargon Watch each month. This column highlights emerging words in today's society, and then tend to be technology-related. A few of this month's (April 2005) were particulary interesting: - Narcipost - A shamelessly egocentric blog post that's of little interest to anyone besides the person who posted it. - Nouse - A peripheral device that tracks the movement of the tip of your nose to control a cursor. So I guess this could lead... | 2 Comments

Saturday 19 March

More interactive new web site features (10:39) - The new BitWise web site has many more interactive pages where the reader has the opportunity to try something themselves or give us feedback. Some of the recent interactive additions:The FAQ and documentation pages provide a way for users to submit suggestions for FAQ questions and new documentation articles. Each documentation article can be rated by the reader to provide their thoughts about the quality of the documentation. A new Direct Connection Setup Wizard provides customized instructions for setting up...

Wednesday 16 February

Image opacity is the joy of my life (18:13) - I've learned more about image opacity in browsers than I thought there even was to learn. Turns out that Internet Explorer has it's own alpha filter style tags for opacity, Mozilla invented a MozOpacity style before CSS added an official opacity style in CSS 3, and Safari, in version As much as I hate to do it, Opera users are just going to miss out on a snazzy interactive feature of the new web site. The effects are way too... | 2 Comments

Monday 14 February

Why does Mac OS X include IE? (20:09) - Today was a day of battling browsers. Victory was sweet with all but IE 5.2 for Mac OS X, which I hope has been banished from OS X 10.4. The latest version was released in 2001, and it shows. A couple of places on the new site make clever use of iFrames (which probably could be "better" done in CSS, but that's a discussion for elsewhere). In particular, two places resize the iFrame based on the content, which was relatively...

Wednesday 26 January

Six Apart, Google, Yahoo and MSN fight comment spam (21:01) - As I've lamented here several times, comment spam is a problem. It's encouraging to see steps being taken by major players to combat comment spamming, using an HTML "nofollow" tag that tells search engines not to consider those links. Spammers have traditionally benefited by having links to their sites appear in numerous blogs, and without the search engines indexing and counting those links, the motivation to "publish" the comment spam is, theoretically, diminished. Hopefully it works half as well in...

Tuesday 11 January

Someone at Apple was listening after all! (23:04) - I like Apple. I'm not a Mac addict, or even an everyday user, but I like the Apple platform. What I have not liked is their computer selection. Let's say I wanted to buy an Apple, but I already had a nice LCD monitor and other peripherals. My only choice was to spend at least $1500 on a G5. An eMac comes with a built-in 17" CRT (takes up way too much space) and the iMac with its 17" widescreen... | 1 Comments

Wednesday 5 January

Voice over IP can't be regulated by states (20:12) - I have received many links and news article from BitWise users regarding the current court cases involving Voice over IP (VOIP) software and whether or not the states can regulate VOIP. Last week, in an appeal, VOIP has been ruled a data service and cannot be regulated by the states. Unfortunately, it's not over yet as some states want to appeal to the Supreme Court. Link The two-page decision was issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth...

Sunday 12 December

Hey person at my keyboard, part 2 (14:18) - I was reading the latest issue of PC Magazine today and saw a headline that shocked me: E-Mail Scam Dupes Linux Users So while at first I thought PC Magazine had made a liar out of me (since in my previous post I said that most Linux users are more technically inclined that the average Windows users and therefore less likely to be duped), after reading the accompanying article I decided that sensationalist journalism is definitely out of hand. A...

Wednesday 8 December

Hey person at my keyboard, step away from me! (19:31) - There have been quite a few articles recently in/on a variety of magazines/web sites about the vulnerability of Linux and Mac OS X to viruses and attacks. The general feeling seems to be that Linux and Mac OS X are safer partly because there is less reward (fame) in bringing down only a few machines. If someone were to write a virus or worm for one of these operating system, it probably wouldn't get very far because most of the... | 4 Comments

Monday 29 November

OS Libraries and Development (16:57) - One of the questions I get asked when others find out that I work on Windows, Linux and OS X is "Which platform is your favorite to develop for?" I haven't really had a good answer until today. The criteria for my choice: the amount of time spent fighting the compiler, the OS, or standard system libraries. From this perspective, my favorite platform for development is OS X. Back story: regardless of how you feel about Microsoft, you have to... | 4 Comments

Thursday 18 November

Microsoft joins the free IDE crowd (19:34) - Some developers use only command line software and tools, but many developers, myself included, find many benefits to using an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) that provides a GUI editor, a source file editor, project management, a debugger, build configuration management, and more. Linux has several good IDEs available, my preference being KDevelop. Apple released XCode (previously ProjectBuilder) with OS X 10.3. Both KDevelop and XCode are excellent IDEs, and are available for free. Microsoft Visual Studio is the de facto... | 2 Comments

Monday 15 November

Spam, spim and now... spit (09:30) - Apparently the world is getting ready to "spit" on us with "Spam over Internet Telephony." Maybe I'm just slow on learning this new technology acronym, but a USA Today article last week brought this one to my attention. It's bad enough that we're getting spam in our email, in our IMs (except on BitWise, I might point out), in our snail mail (how many credit card offers do you get per week?), and on our landlines (yes, please, consolidate the... | 3 Comments

Thursday 11 November

Firefox hits the front page of USA Today Money section (09:10) - I'm not particulary anti-Microsoft, but I always like to see a healthy dose of competition. I was really thrilled to see a front page article in yesterday's USA Today Money section about Firefox, which this week released the long-anticipated Version 1.0. It is almost unanimous among users and experts alike that Internet Explorer is beyond stagnant: it is dangerous. I hope that you will join with me, millions of users worldwide, and the companies and governments that have denounced Internet... | 12 Comments

Friday 29 October

Always check the cable (21:36) - I was installing a new scanner this morning for someone, and I was running into a really baffling problem: the scanner drivers installed, but when I plugged in the scanner to the USB port, Windows XP would say it found new hardware and then say "Unrecognized USB Device." I did the logical thing and tried uninstalling the drivers and reinstalling them, but that didn't help. After messing with a few settings, I decided to call Canon. It looked like some... | 5 Comments

Thursday 21 October

You can't copy protect analog (10:04) - A few weeks ago, I got a CD made and sold overseas (coincidentally, England). Much to my surprise upon receiving the CD, it was marked as being "Copy Protected & Pre-Ripped for PC." I have turned my PC into a jukebox with all of my CDs, making it really easy for me to listen to my music with juggling CDs. I don't use any file sharing like Kazaa, so I'm not doing anything illegal. I'm not just saying that, either--I... | 4 Comments

Tuesday 21 September

Wardriving driving across the line? (22:59) - Wireless technology is hot these days, with more and more wireless devices appearing all the time. There's no denying that wireless is here to stay. My brother works from home two days per week, and I recently helped him set up a wireless router at his house. His company has a wireless usage policy even though they do not condone using wireless technology for work; because they recognize that they can't control or monitor wireless use in home offices they... | 7 Comments

Friday 10 September

Humanity through a 17" rectangle (23:36) - It is undeniable that the Internet has opened avenues of communication that did not exist just 10 years ago. We now have the ability to "reach out and touch someone" half the world away with the touch of a few keys. Cameras and microphones allow us to see and hear people instantly. Or, for the true multitasker, text-based IM lets you communicate with multiple people all at the same time, none of them knowing that they don't have your full... | 8 Comments

Sunday 22 August

Protecting your computer from yourself (22:00) - From: service@yourcarcompany.com To: you Subj: vehicle recall Our records show that the gas tank in your car model tends to collect dirt deposits. To preserve your vehicle warranty, we recommend that you add a cup of ordinary laundry detergent with each tank of gas. I wish I was that clever, but I must give credit where it is due. This post was inspired by (and the above borrowed from) an eWeek article by Larry Seltzer to point out just... | 1 Comments

Wednesday 18 August

Microsoft Word rules the world with quirkiness (22:46) - One of the programs that I like the least is Microsoft Word. What reminded me about this pent up frustration? John Dvorak's latest column in PC Magazine. While John is frequently off the mark or a bit over the top, I fully agree with him on this one: Word is beyond repair. I have a few main issues with Word. First, it is way too helpful. It auto-formats stuff all over the place, even when I turn it off (maybe... | 6 Comments

Saturday 17 July

I, Robot -- My "armchair critic" review (12:52) - I don't intend to make a habit of doing the "armchair movie critic" thing, but since I, Robot has a strong focus on technology (AI, specifically) and I had the oppurtunity to see it on opening day, I thought it might make for an interesting post. No spoilers here, this is a "safe" post. I, Robot begins and never lets you go. For a two hour movie, it has a brisk pace taking you to the end before you think... | 3 Comments

Tuesday 22 June

A better way to "buy" and use software? (20:19) - I should state here and now that I am not a Microsoft basher or an Apple basher, or a Microsoft lover or Apple lover. I may praise or criticize either company, and comments either way should not be construed as pro or anti-anybody. That said, on we go. It seems that Microsoft has been struggling with how to support (or not support) the aging Windows NT 4.0 platform. By the end of the year both NT workstation and NT server... | 9 Comments

Sunday 20 June

Freedom of misinformation and bad software (20:38) - Today, a different BitWise user informed me about another [bad] IM program called PSST. Not only is my favorite "military-grade" expression used again there, but this person obviously knows nothing about encryption and has the absolute worst ideas about what to put in screenshots."It would require military-grade supercomputers to crack the 128-bit block encryption." - Again, no such thing as a "military-grade" supercomputer. Besides, a fast PC these days could crack 128-bit encryption within only a couple of weeks (or... | 1 Comments

Friday 18 June

Deceptive Advertising and Stupid Pricing (16:52) - I like to make truthful statements, and like to do honest promotions that are not misleading or controversial (at least not more than mildly so). Though there is always some marketing flex that is expected, sometimes it goes way too far, and reading about a product just sends me over the top. A BitWise user sent me a message today telling me about more competition, Intego ChatBarrier which is a plugin to Apple's iChat. It's a nice idea, but I... | 3 Comments

Wednesday 16 June

Software Reliability (2 years later) (15:13) - In a nod to my previous blogging life (back before blogs were "cool"), here's an updated version of the last post I made some two years ago. Enjoy. Of all the stories you don't want to hear, this is one of them, from the August 2002 Wired Magazine: Ed Yourdon was on a tarmac in Pittsburgh when he got a glimpse of the coming software hell. His New York shuttle had been cleared for takeoff when the pilot pulled a... | 1 Comments