David L. Farquhar on technology old and new, computer security, and more
I read a story last week about an insanely fast router that can run at up to 5.3 gigabits, far faster than even the crazy-fast gigabit Internet service that only a lucky few people are able to get. The article questioned what anyone would do with it.
Think beyond network speeds, though, and there’s a lot you can do with that power.
I’ve read the stories this week about how fast-food chains like Jimmy John’s are forcing employees to sign non-compete agreements.
I’ve been asked to sign a non-compete exactly twice in my career, and signed one once, but neither of them was back in my teenage fast-food days.
Last week, HP introduced two new PCs, the HP Stream Mini and HP Pavillion Mini. They’re small, silent in the case of the Stream Mini, and cheap, starting at $180 for a Stream Mini with a 1.4 GHz dual-core CPU, 2 GB of RAM and 32 GB of storage.
Motley Fool is asking if HP just invented a new category of PC. No, they didn’t–mini PCs have been around a long time, but previously they’ve been limited to the enthusiast market. Now there’s a big-name company with big-name retail distribution entering the market.
I don’t buy a lot of hardware anymore, but we purchased a Fujitsu Scansnap ix500 document scanner this month. It has a fantastic reputation, and it only took an hour to live up to it for me.
Quick: Why is it easier to find a 1935 Goudey Babe Ruth on Ebay than the 1935 Goudey card featuring four of his former Yankee teammates, the less-than-immortal Red Rolfe, Johnny Allen, Jimmie DeShong, and Dixie Walker?
Because Red Rolfe was more likely to end up clothespinned onto bicycle spokes, right? Right?
That’s likely, but definitely not the only reason. Read more
The third 1935 Goudey card I bought featured four members of the Chicago White Sox, including Hall of Famer Luke Appling. But Luke Appling wasn’t the reason I bought the card.
I bought the card for George Earnshaw and Jimmy Dykes, in that order. Neither of them are Hall of Famers but they mean something to me. That’s the reason we buy a lot of the cards we buy.
I tried to remove black marks from wood floors with Bar Keeper’s Friend recently, and I’m happy to report it worked pretty well.
Here’s the story: I had some mysterious black ring-shaped marks on my hardwood floors. I traced them to metal ends of furniture legs. The long-term solution is to put the furniture on leg cups, but one still has to contend with the damage.
The pros use a floor bleach whose active ingredient is oxalic acid, but finding it is hard, and finding it in household quantities is harder. But there’s a cheap, readily available household alternative: Bar Keeper’s Friend. It costs a couple of dollars and you can buy it at big-box stores like Home Depot, hardware stores, grocery stores, and even some discount stores. It’s usually in the cleaning aisle next to the Comet. It’s good stuff to have on hand anyway, because it does a great job of cleaning up pretty much anything you’d use Comet on, but it literally eats rust spots for lunch so it’ll take care of chores Comet doesn’t.
I was on a conference call discussing the Microsoft product lifecycle with several coworkers and our Microsoft-assigned support engineers when someone asked if a server version of Windows 10 was going to come out.
The Microsoft rep said no comment. Then I chimed in.
“We need to assume they will release a server version, probably about six months after the desktop version, and we need to start testing and preparing to deploy it when it comes out,” I said.
“Shouldn’t we wait for Service Pack 1?”
I went in for the kill. Read more
I cited MS14-066, commonly known as Winshock, this week as a reason to take action on a server. Another stakeholder tried to argue with me. The vulnerability was very old, he said–years old, and hadn’t caused a problem yet.
He’s right. It’s at least 19 years old. But that’s merely interesting, not important.
What’s important is what’s possible now that people know how to look for it and how to exploit it. Read more
Mariott wants to jam wi-fi signals. They claim it’s for security reasons, but really it’s so they can gouge guests by charging them for wi-fi instead of using wi-fi hotspots. The security claims are pure bunk.
The truth is that hotel wi-fi networks are generally horrendously insecure, so it’s really better to avoid using them if you can.