Archive for February, 2006
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 [...]
Is Google going to be a software company too?
Everywhere you look you seem to find Google doing something. Here’s an article about Dell testing out some Google software. Google already is on the desktop with their search facility and some people are even speculating about a Google operating system. That may be a little farfetched but who knows? In any event, even a [...]
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 [...]
Keep your Internet searches private
The government has been snooping into where people search on the Internet. If you think that your search habits are nobody else’s business, Internet Week has an article you might look at. There’s no new information here but it gives you a compilation of some standard methods.