From a comment on Lileks' (other) blog: My husband, unbeknownst to me, picked up some flourescent bulbs and installed them...
The New York Times carries an article about badly-designed (so-called "smart") machines and the people who must battle them to...
Given that my faithful old Toshiba Satellite now takes up to ten minutes to do certain things, and has finally...
Background Other than the volumes I speak indirectly, I don't say much about myself on this blog. Readers get to...
According to the RIAA, the answer is: nearly $4 million dollars. A Principled Mom A while ago, the RIAA came...
When we speak about "intellectual property" today, what people generally think about is protecting content currently owned and created by...
The New York Times reports that Apple -- that loving, cute company -- is apparently taking aggressive moves to punish...
A regular readers know, I'm fascinated by our psychological quirks. Today's fun behavior involves insisting everyone follow some practice or...
Brian Goetz: Pop quiz: Which language boasts faster raw allocation performance, the Java language, or C/C++? The answer may surprise...
Back in the early 1990s, I was working for a medium-sized software firm who had decided to try transferring its...
There are a number of things which I'd find tremendously amusing, but which my ethics will not allow me to...
DVDs are encrypted with something known as CSS - the Content Scrambling System. Fortunately or unfortunately (depending on your point...
Honestly, I did not think this was actually possible. And although I understand they use latent humidity, I don't understand...
I hate Windows XP. To the rest of you who crawled out of 98/NT-land, yes, I'm sure this is supposed...
I'd started MP3-ifying my CD collection back in the 90s, before the MP3 craze really took off. So when I...
I'm using Macromedia Flash. And I'm extremely unhappy about that. I rant at you. As if you cared.
What are Microsoft's latest moves in the browser market? And how did they become rich 'n' famous in the first place? Many people don't know the real story...
A while ago, Microsoft promised they'd eliminate spam completely. An inveterate Microsoft watcher, I was pretty sure I knew how that would turn out...
This box completely freaked out hardware-wise (while I was away on vacation, to make timing worse) and took quite a...
Earlier I mentioned Al Jazeera's coverage of Al Gore's speech. Another Gore snippet, as highlighted by Hugh Hewitt and others:...
I've got a new laptop computer! It's great under Windows XP, but Linux was another story.
Yahoo!: Electronics giant Sony and another Japanese company have developed a "paper disc" that can record more than two hours...
From the BBC: Good news for spammers, the smart filtering software used to catch spam can be beaten. With a...
Want to persuade people you're a nut? Does your central thesis lack substantiating evidence? Then follow this easy ten-step guide when creating your web site! There's something here for everyone...
Slashdot: IBM was well-aware that its click-of-death 75GXP hard drives had a failure rate of as much as 10 times...
Bruce Perens: ...representatives to the European Parliament are pushing very hard for software patenting that would indeed shut out all...
Want to get rid of all that grunge between your keys? Here's helpful tip about a technique you might, but definitely should not, consider.
2000: Napster is popular, music industry has record sales, yet claims it's destroying it's profit margins. 2002: P2P file sharing...
Yesterday, I purchased the Gyration Cordless Compact Keyboard and Mouse and have been using it for a little under a...
Technology doesn't eliminate stupidity. Technology just allows you to be stupid faster....
Am I the only person in the world with common sense and access to Google? Sometimes I ask this while...
Sigh, apparently Sun Microsystems has posted its largest-ever loss. Just another step along the away to a diversity-free cyberscape....
Facing banishment from governments such as Peru, Taiwan, Argentina, Spain, France, and Mexico, Microsoft has offered to reveal its source...
I first learned of Noam Chomsky though Computer Science. He was noted for formalizing grammars -- valuable to us CS...