David L. Farquhar on technology old and new, computer security, and more
To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Commodore 64’s release, PC World–a magazine published by the same company that once published RUN, a magazine dedicated to the C-64 and other Commodore 8-bit computers–had someone try to use a 64 for a week.
Not surprisingly, they found the 30-year-old computer not up to 2012’s demands.
Read more
So Windows 8 was released today. I won’t be moving to it anytime soon.
There are some people who make a habit of waiting for Service Pack 1 to be released before upgrading to a new version of Windows. The trouble is, I can think of one instance, Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 1, that was much more problematic than its predecessor. And in more recent years, service packs have become more arbitrary. Knowing that practice exists, Microsoft releases Service Pack 1 based more on uptake than on actual need.
So I have a different rule I follow. Read more
If you’re in the market for anything that uses flash memory–USB thumb drives, memory cards, SSDs–this is a good time to buy. Toshiba is cutting its production by 30%, citing oversupply in the market. Read more
I had an unexpected death in the family late last week, so I’ve been traveling and not doing any writing the last few days. I had a few things in the pipeline; chances are I’ll just call that stuff good enough and run it until I find my groove again. And if I miss a day or two this week, that’s why.
I’ve read that e-readers change the way you read, but of course up until this week I’ve never experienced it firsthand. I can say that in my limited experience with a Nook Simple Touch, I’ve already noticed it.
Valve is intending to develop for Linux, as an insurance policy against Windows 8. I think that will lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy. If more games are available for Linux, demand for Linux will increase, along with market share.
There’s historical precedence for this. Read more
I’d owned a Nook Simple Touch for less than 24 hours when I had a problem. So I learned out of necessity what to do when a Nook won’t turn on.
I found several things to try to get them working. Don’t expect the same solution to work every time. But these things are good to know.
There’s a crazy rumor going around saying that the government didn’t do much of anything to create the Internet, and that private industry did it all.
I remember the Internet before the private sector got involved in it. I was there.
Read more
The New York Times laments the decline of craftsmanship and its side effects in the United States.
A generation ago, it wasn’t terribly uncommon for men to make their own kitchen cabinets. And those cabinets, if built correctly, would last several lifetimes. The cabinets my great-great grandfather built before the turn of the previous century survived just fine into my lifetime. A year ago, a prospective tenant took me to task for having such handbuilt cabinets in a rental house, and pointed to a couple of other rental houses–with particle-board Home Depot junk in them–as having “better updates.”
Consider the following scenario:
In [a consumer finance] study, the authors, Abigail Sussman of Princeton University and Adam Alter of New York University, ask you to imagine that one of your favorite bands is performing nearby. The ticket costs more than you would ordinarily spend, but you have never seen this band live and decide the experience is worth the cost.
The next week, your television breaks and you buy a pricey replacement because you only buy a new TV once every few years. A week later, you are celebrating your 10th wedding anniversary. Since this is a once-in-a-lifetime event, you decide that the occasion warrants a splurge.
Here’s how I would handle that sequence of events–a sequence of events that the study found many people Read more