Archive for February, 2006
What’s a “mashup”?
New words are constantly being coined on the Internet and one that is now occurring more frequently is “mashup”. Personally, I find this to be a rather infelicitous name, reminding me of the way a four-year old might talk about how he eats pudding, as well as sounding too much like “smashup”. Be that [...]
More on IE and Firefox safety
We are beginning to get more actual studies of browser safety instead of hand-waving or cooked statistics by vested interests. Internet week reports on an academic study of the vulnerability of different browsers to spyware.
Internet Explorer users can be as much as 21 times more likely to end up with a spyware-infected PC than people [...]
How to make your favorite folder easily accessible in Windows dialog boxes
A number of common Windows tasks use a dialog box listing the folders that are present on a computer. Examples are the file operations “Copy” and “Save As”. If you have a favorite folder that you often use, it is convenient to have it readily available in the dialog box. However, most folders require several [...]
55 Billion and counting
There is a site called the Wayback Machine (anybody remember the cartoon series with Mr. Peabody?) that archives old Web pages. The Search Engine Watch points out that the latest count of archived pages is 55 billion. SEW comments
Is The Wayback Machine a complete archive of every page on the web? No, not [...]
More on paying for email
John Dvorak can be amusing, he can be irritating, he can be informative, he can be dead wrong. But I like to read his column and in his latest, he talks about the AOL/Yahoo plan to charge for email. He doesn’t think much of the proposal either. (See my previous post.)
The important debate on “Net neutality”
The debate on structuring usage fees on the Internet continues. Here is an update on some congressional hearings. The issue is a very important one that all Internet users should be aware of. The present model where you pay a fixed fee and then use the Internet as much as your bandwidth will allow is [...]
A quick tour of motherboards
Most average PC users are not very interested in the details of motherboards but if you would like a short summary of what’s on one of these core PC components, try this article at PC World. If you want more than a quick description try AnandTech or Tom’s Hardware, among others.
Watch out for “read-only” attributes when copying files from a CD
When you copy files from a CD the usual way, they will still have the read-only attribute that files on a CD normally have. If you ever want to edit these files, you will need to change the attribute. There are several ways to to do this.
One way is to use the command line and [...]
Postage for email?
Related to the subject of the previous blog entry is the announced plan by AOL and Yahoo to offer users of email preferential treatment for a fee. The NY Times has an article that gives some of the details. By paying 1/4¢ to a penny each for messages, users would get expedited service. Here is [...]
Pay for priority on the Internet?
Traditional telephone service is now such a low-margin business that the successors to the old Ma Bell are looking to the Internet for their profits. PC World has an article on one possible development with some dubious implications:
A number of telephone companies such as SBC/AT&T, Verizon and others have begun talking about offering a [...]
How public is your Internet search record?
It may not be just the government that is interested in examining the record of where people search on the Internet. An article on ZDNet discusses the possibility of your search record being subpoenaed in a civil or criminal case.
It’s only a matter of time before other attorneys realize that a person’s entire search history [...]
