Amiga on x86
Re-implementing Amiga OS on cheap, commodity x86 hardware always made sense, so I’m not surprised that someone is doing it. Mostly I’m surprised that it took me this long to find it. Am I interested?...
View ArticleThanks for the misinformation, Disney
In one of its throwaway kid’s sitcoms, Disney insinuates that open source software contains spyware and using it is a ‘rookie mistake’. Open source software rarely contains viruses or spyware. Since...
View ArticleStop whatever you’re doing and uninstall Java. I’ll wait for you.
For years, standard practice has been to install Java, just in case you need it. That’s no longer a safe practice. For your own safety, unless you absolutely, positively need Java, you should uninstall...
View ArticleOffice 2010, early impressions
I’ve mentioned several times that I hadn’t seen Office 2010 yet, so I couldn’t comment on it, and would reserve judgment until I’ve seen it. I’ve been working for companies that were a bit behind the...
View ArticleDon’t look for me waiting in line to buy Windows 8 at midnight
Windows 8 is out. Yawn. I won’t be standing in line. I wait a minimum of a year to install new versions of Windows anyway, a practice that’s beein serving me well since 1994, and I skipped Vista...
View ArticleCyanogenmod 10 goes gold
I see Cyanogenmod 10 had its official release this week. The Nook Color is on the “coming soon” list. It figures that a week or two after I got around to installing 7.2 on mine, something newer and...
View ArticleA fast way to turn a pile of images into an Adobe Acrobat PDF file
I have a collection of magazine scans that, inconveniently, came as a series of JPG images rather than as PDFs that are more conducive to reading. To make the files readable on a tablet or e-reader, I...
View ArticleHow to get your first job in IT
I helped a friend of a former coworker with his resume this week. He’s looking to get their first jobs in IT, and found it difficult, even though he was applying for an entry-level helpdesk position....
View ArticleThe lines between white hat/gray hat/black hat hacking and moral laws
Longtime reader/commenter Joseph asked two questions yesterday: What’s the boundary between gray and black-hat hacking, and is it moral to pick and choose between moral and immoral laws? The first...
View ArticleFour simple steps to optimize WordPress
A couple of years ago, I stood up a WordPress server. I made no effort to tune it, let alone turbocharge it, which is a decision I later came to regret. If your site gets more than a few hundred hits...
View Article“Why do we have a server named ‘Vicious?’”
My first non-food service, non-retail job was working desktop support for my college, the University of Missouri-Columbia. They were doing a massive computer upgrade and needed some part-time help....
View ArticleHow many Fortune 25 companies does it take to change a light bulb?
I’m working right now for a Fortune 25 company. This story is going to sound like bragging, so I’ll ask forgiveness in advance. Maybe if I mention I’m a contractor, then it’s not bragging quite so bad....
View ArticleThe benefits of doing IT at home, too
Earlier this week, The Register touted the benefits of having a home lab. That lab doesn’t necessarily have to be elaborate. But there is definitely something to be said for having some equipment that...
View ArticleHow to set up powerline networking securely
When you live in a neighborhood where everyone has a wireless network, you’ll struggle to get adequate coverage in every room of your home. That’s just the nature of wireless networking; we don’t have...
View ArticleWhy Intel can’t quit x86
Here’s a nice perspective on Intel’s non-x86 efforts, and why they failed and x86 marched on, despite its weak points. Kudos for remembering that Intel made ARM chips. Intel got into ARM by accident,...
View ArticleLinux admins beware, there’s a web server exploit in the wild
No OS is 100% secure if there’s enough desire to get in. There’s a web server exploit targeting Apache, Nginx, and Lighttpd running on Linux–a first of its kind, in at least one regard. Ars Technica...
View ArticleNo, this doesn’t mean Ubuntu and Linux are giving up
This week, Mark Shuttleworth closed the longstanding Ubuntu bug #1, which simply read, “Microsoft has majority market share.” Because Microsoft didn’t lose its market share lead to Ubuntu, or Red Hat,...
View ArticleHave a busload of servers? Need to know what version of Windows they’re all...
Every once in a great while, I have to answer a question like what version of Windows a range of servers is running. If the number of servers is very small, you can just connect to them with a Terminal...
View ArticleCringely takes on Ashton Kutcher’s movie about Steve Jobs
Mark Stephens, a.k.a. Robert X. Cringely, wrote last week about his disappointment in Ashton Kutcher’s movie Jobs, about the late Apple co-founder and CEO. Here’s the most important part of his...
View ArticleJuice Defender helps your Android battery life
My battery life on my phone and tablet have been rather lackluster lately. So I decided to do something about that, and installed Juice Defender on both of them. Your device sits on wifi even when you...
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