David L. Farquhar on technology old and new, computer security, and more
I’ve seen some scary-looking headlines, predicting doomsday for “hundreds of thousands” of Internet users on July 9 when the FBI shuts them down.
Actually, the FBI isn’t sabotaging the Internet. Here’s what’s going on and how to make sure you don’t get caught in the crossfire. Read more
Prince of Persia isn’t just a recent movie. It’s based on a video game series, the first of which was first released all the way back in 1989 for the venerable Apple II series of 8-bit computers. That original game, extremely simple by today’s standards, is a classic today.
The author, Jordan Mechner, had given up on looking for the 6502 assembly language source code behind the game until his dad found a box of disks buried in a closet. Among them were several hand-labeled disks claiming to contain the long-lost code. Read more
PC Magazine asks when it’s worth upgrading to the new Philips L Prize-winning LED bulb, lamenting its high price and long payback time. I can only say what I plan to do, based on my experience with high-efficiency bulbs. I was one of those guys paying $9 for CFL bulbs nearly a decade ago. Read more
The latest figures I’ve read say there are perhaps a half-million infected Macintoshes still floating around out there, an improvement from the high of 600,000 that I was seeing a few weeks ago, but probably not what Apple had hoped after releasing its most recent fix.
I argued three weeks ago that the end of the innocence was either here or very near. I’ll argue now that it’s gone: There are now 250 known Macintosh OS X viruses in existence. In 2003 there were none. Read more
I saw a slideshow on CNN this week about ways to reduce allergies at home. One of the options they suggested was using a filter with an MERV rating between 8 and 12.
This works, and doesn’t have to be expensive either, if you know where to shop. Read more
Men at Work multi-instrumentalist Greg Ham died this week, aged 58, under circumstances still under investigation. At least in the United States, Men at Work is mostly remembered for the 1982-83 hit “Down Under,” on which Mr. Ham played the flute.
The song was the focus of a copyright battle a couple of years ago, which weighed on Mr. Ham. Read more
Consumerist asked its readers why they ditched their car repair shops. For me, that’s really easy. They didn’t do the work, and they were jerks. So I got rid of them and figured out how to find a good mechanic.
I’ll elaborate. Read more
I’ve been going through A+ training as I have time. Whether I go through with getting the certification will depend on whether my bosses think having someone with an A+ lurking in the corner is useful–by contract I can’t do much more than swap a keyboard or mouse, but in the meantime I’m picking up some stuff I haven’t had to think about in a very long time.
One thing I picked up is the proper use of an ohmmeter or ohm meter.
Ohm meters measure resistance. Frequently, you’ll have a tool that does several things, so you flip your multimeter over to ohms or resistance to turn it into an ohm meter. Then, if you need to test a cable, put the red lead on one pin, and the black lead on the corresponding pin on the other side. If you get infinite or higher-than-expected resistance, then the cable is bad.
When you’re testing for continuity, you need to do so with the power off. Testing for continuity on a live system will cause the multimeter to malfunction at best, and at worse, blow a fuse. That’s a tricky bit you have to remember if you’re doing component-level testing on a board–something of a lost art these days. You might be testing voltage on a live system, then when you don’t see what you expect, you might want to test resistance. Be sure to remember to shut the system down when you switch from volts to ohms to avoid damaging your multimeter.
Apparently, not everyone thinks it’s OK that Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg leaves her job at 5:30. To me, this is very strange. Read more
Sometimes you want to know how many volts your train transformer is feeding your trains, in order to avoid damaging the motors. And it’s also helpful to know how many amps you’re pulling from your electric train transformer, so you don’t damage the transformer.