David L. Farquhar on technology old and new, computer security, and more
My oldest son met me at the door one day as I came home from work, holding two pieces of his favorite Bob the Builder DVD. “Daddy fix it?” he asked.
I can fix a lot of things, and I’ve learned a lot trying to fix his toys before, but when a DVD is snapped in two, there’s nothing I can do about that.
“What, you didn’t have it backed up?” one of my coworkers asked when I told him. “No,” I said. “And I wouldn’t admit it if I did.”
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Though I’m sure you’ve seen it hundreds of other places, the tech industry lost its most memorable pioneer and greatest marketer today. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs died, aged 56, after years of declining health. Read more
Amazon’s Kindle Fire sold 95,000 units in its first day of pre-orders, which pales next to the Ipad’s 300,000 on its first day. But the Kindle Fire looks to be a slower burn. It’s sold 250,000 units now. By comparison, the Ipad sold 1 million units in its first month, which the Kindle Fire hasn’t matched yet, but it’s only been five days. Some people are reporting it’s on pace to sell 2.5 million units in its first month. Realistically, I think the number should be lower–more on that in a second. But I think the naysayers should learn really fast that this war isn’t over.
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I found some tips to help stop social networking sites from tracking you outside of them at a surprising place: Infoworld.
And yes, to one degree or another, social networking sites can track what you’re doing on the rest of the web. If that doesn’t bother you, move along. If it bothers you, read on.
Here’s a good question: Will running Prime95 void my warranty? I have the answer to that. I run Prime 95 on every new computer I get, so that probably tips you off.
The short answer is no, and, in fact, I ran it about 30 hours straight on my newest computer. I started it on Friday before I left for work. I let it run until I got home from running errands on Saturday. All told, it probably ran 30 hours. If a computer is going to fail, I want it to fail before I’m depending on it for something.
I installed Asus’ CPU/fan monitor on my new AMD64 system, and I discovered that the system frequently changed speeds from 3.3 GHz down to 2.2 GHz. Very frequently. In fact, it spent most of its time running at 2.2 GHz. I decided to investigate, and found the setting was in Windows 7’s power management settings.
If you have a newer AMD or Intel CPU and Windows 7, you may find its power management settings aren’t quite as aggressive as they could be.
I’m a couple of days late and for that I apologize (I’ve been on the road), but this week Amazon released its anticipated Kindle tablet and snuck out a couple of new e-readers.
The tablet–7 inches, a faster-than-rumored 1 GHz dual-core CPU, priced at $199, and dubbed the Kindle Fire–seems to be an immediate hit, with 95,000 pre-orders in its first day. Amazon is selling each tablet at about a $10 loss, which it should easily make up by selling digital content.
It was approximately one year ago that I migrated my web site to WordPress. In a way it felt like going home again, as I’d used the predecessor to WordPress, a blogging system called b2, for a couple of years around the turn of the century. I liked b2, but it lacked moderation capability and my blog was becoming a spam magnet. Had I been able to hang in there a few more months, WordPress would have come to my rescue, but I didn’t, so my migration took about a decade longer than it could have.
Better late than never. And it’s been a good year.
Firefox 7 is out. Chances are, if you’re reading this, you already have it, because, historically, a large proportion of my readers use Firefox or, in the past, used other Mozilla-based browsers.
The last couple of Firefox versions have been yawners, and a frequent butt of jokes on Twitter. “It’s Tuesday. Time for a new major Firefox release.” This one looks better. Here’s my review, after a few days of use.
Veteran tech journalist Dan Tynan recently published a list of 10 overrated technology products, and CP/M was on his list. But was CP/M overrated? I want to dig into that question a bit.
I think everyone knows the story of how IBM almost used CP/M as the operating system for its PC, but ended up using an upstart product from a small company named Microsoft instead. We’ll probably never know exactly what happened, seeing as the author of CP/M is dead and his business partner is no longer able to recollect those events from the 1980 timeframe, and IBM and Bill Gates have no reason to embarrass themselves by revisiting the story.
But CP/M was the first and most popular operating system for early 8-bit computers, so people who used it remember it fondly, and the way Microsoft steamrolled it made Gary Kildall and his operating system folk heroes to underdog lovers everywhere. Even people who never used it and weren’t even born when Kildall’s company ceased to exist have at least a vague idea of what it was.
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