David L. Farquhar on technology old and new, computer security, and more
The Encyclopædia Britannica is, after 244 years, calling it quits on its print edition, and I’m sure Wikipedia is gloating, because as I recall, that was one of its goals around a decade ago.
Wired argues that Encarta did more to kill Britannica than Wikipedia. I tend to agree.
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Gawker founder Nick Denton (home of Mac Hacker, er, Lifehacker; Gizmodo; io9; Jalopnik; and formerly Consumerist) says online comments aren’t worth the trouble.
I agree and disagree.
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There are only six patches in this month’s edition of Patch Tuesday, and only one of them is critical, but it’s a big one.
The critical patch fixes a flaw in Remote Desktop Protocol, something typically only present in the business-oriented flavors of Windows. But if you don’t know whether you’re affected, it behooves you to let Windows update whatever it wants to update. Read more
Infoworld tells employers to quit sniveling about their workers not having enough skills and train them.
Sounds good. It worked in the organization where I work.
John Dominik has been on a tear lately. Yesterday he wrote twice; the latter piece, The Stupid Juice–it Burns, shows an attitude that’s far too rare these days and frankly is one of the best pieces I’ve read in a very long time, anywhere. He laments people’s tendency to act as if those who disagree with them are subhuman and have no right to exist.
If you haven’t read it, I strongly suggest you do.
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My boss and I are compiling a huge Excel spreadsheet that summarizes everything our organization has ever done. It’s as big of a pain as it sounds. What makes it worse is having to scroll all the way back to the beginning to view the headers. The solution: make persistent headers in Excel.
The trick to making a persistent header that shows all the time, even after scrolling, hides in the View tab in Excel 2007.
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I’ve been moving files between Linux servers, and to and from Windows boxes, as part of my server migration. I started to write about how I’ve been doing it, but it seemed oddly familiar.
Yep, I’ve written about SCP and its Windows port, PSCP, before. Do this long enough and you find yourself repeating yourself.
So you’re downloading a large ISO image like a Linux distribution, or Windows with an integrated service pack. You get the download going, then go to work, and come home expecting to find a it waiting for you, only to find your computer went to sleep after just an hour. It makes your day, doesn’t it?
A free, portable program called Coffee–I guess it’s named that way because it keeps Windows from going to sleep–can fix that for you without you having to diddle with power settings and then having to remember to change them back.
There is some unfortunate misinformation circulating on various train forums. I first read this misinformation in the outstanding book by Peter Riddle, Trains from Grandfather’s Attic, published in 1991. As Classic Toy Trains editor Bob Keller noted while we were finishing up my article late last year, incorrect information in print lasts a long time. A very long time, sometimes. Lionel 1121 switches and Marx trains are rumored to get along famously. I am sad to report they do not.
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Another question from the big bag ‘o search queries: When you’re shopping for an SSD, is TRIM better than Native Command Queuing?
It’s an interesting question, and my first inclination is to say no, because TRIM and NCQ solve two similar but distinctly different problems. But the more I think about it, the more I understand why it’s possible to confuse the two.