Firefox 6 is out. Yawn.

Dave Farquhar Software ,

Firefox 6 came out sooner than expected, and yet, I can’t find anyone who’s excited about it. Probably because, under last year’s conditions, this probably would be called Firefox 4.2 or perhaps Firefox 4.5 or 4.6, something like that.

Yeah, I’ll be installing it, if only because it’s the security update for Firefox 5. But it sure feels anticlimactic. When Firefox 3 and Firefox 4 came out, I felt excited. Maybe that means something’s wrong with me. But there was something compelling, something tangible about those new releases. I don’t think either of them let me do something I couldn’t do before, but they at least held the promise of letting me do those things faster.
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Milestone! I’ve been pirated!

Dave Farquhar Personal, Writing , , , ,

In searching for the abstract of my book, I found more than I expected: What appeared to be a pirated PDF copy of the book in its entirety. What’s worse is that it appeared #1 in Google’s search. Numbers 2 and 3 were various pages on my site, #4 was my Wikipedia profile page, #5 was O’Reilly’s page, and #6 was Amazon’s page. So it’s easier to download a pirated copy of my book than it is to buy it. (It’s $2.03 at Amazon right now. Maybe I should buy some copies.)

I’m having trouble deciding whether that bothers me. The likelihood of me ever making another 25 cents off that book is slim. There was some talk at one time of releasing the book under some kind of Creative Commons license, but I never received the paperwork so I guess they changed their mind. As far as I know, it’s still under copyright.

And the copyright doesn’t belong to me, so ultimately it’s not up to me. I wrote it, but O’Reilly owns the copyright. So I e-mailed O’Reilly to ask them if they care.
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Outlook mailbox full but is not? Here’s the fix

Dave Farquhar Office, Software

So your Outlook mailbox says it’s full, but is not? If you have a problem with phantom e-mail in Outlook, resulting in an Outlook mailbox full even after deleting a pile of messages, you can fix it. I did, and it was chewing up all my Exchange server space. Here’s how I fixed it.

I run Outlook connected to an Exchange server at work, and I’m constantly running out of mailbox space. When I go into Mailbox Cleanup, click View Mailbox size, and click on the Server Data tab, I see lots of space in my outbox–54 megabytes in this case–with no way to clean it out from inside Outlook. Yet when I look in my Outbox, there’s nothing in it. I’ve run Scanpst, which is the usual cure for Outlook maladies, but that didn’t eliminate the invisible messages either.

When the amount of space you can see doesn’t match the amount of space you’re actually using, go into Outlook Web Access and empty it.
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Google drops a bombshell, buys Motorola

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , , , , ,

I was shocked to read today that Google went out and plunked down $12.5 billion for Motorola. I’m sure that other Android phone makers aren’t exactly happy about it–it means Google is going to be competing with them, unless Google just bought Motorola for patents–but I don’t really see how Google had much choice.

Google risks alienating its partners, but…. More on that in a minute.
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Why SSL isn’t fooolproof security

Dave Farquhar security , , , , ,

Over at Rabbit-Hole, a commenter posted that my low-tier VPN is unnecessary if you’re using SSL. He’s wrong.

Perhaps I should have titled this “When SSL isn’t foolproof security,” but it’s too late now. Oh well.

When you’re sitting on a strange network (not your home or work network), SSL is vulnerable to a classic man-in-the-middle attack. If you’re paying attention, you should know if your session is being hijacked. But who’s paying attention?

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64 bits or bust

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , , , , ,

I’ve resisted the pull to AMD64, for a variety of reasons. I’ve had other priorities, like lowering debt, fixing up a house, kids in diapers… But eventually the limitations of living with 2003-era technology caught up with me. Last week I broke down and bought an AMD Phenom II 560 and an Asus M4N68T-M v2 motherboard. Entry-level stuff by today’s standards. But wow.

If you can get one, an AMD Phenom II x4 840 is a better choice, but those are getting hard to find. And if you can’t afford a $100 CPU there are bargains at the very low end too: A Sempron 145 costs less than $45, and a dual-core Athlon II x2 250 costs $60.  The second core is worth the money.
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Happy birthday, IBM PC!

Dave Farquhar Hardware, Retro Computing , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The IBM PC 5150 turns 30 today.

IBM didn’t invent the personal computer, but if your computer has an Intel or AMD CPU in it, it’s the direct descendant of the beige box IBM unleashed on the world on August 12, 1981. Without a huge amount of effort, it’s even possible to run most of that old software on your shiny new PC. You probably wouldn’t want to, except out of curiosity, but you can do it.

I wasn’t one of the people who rushed out and got one. At the time, I was still watching Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers. I had my first experience with a computer–a Radio Shack TRS-80–in 1982, and the first computer my family bought was a Commodore 64 in 1984. Even in 1984, there were still plenty of people who questioned why anyone needed a computer in their home. My introduction to the IBM PC and PC-DOS didn’t happen until 1987.
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Is someone trying to hack Facebook? Maybe.

Dave Farquhar security

From the big bag o’ Google search queries: Is someone trying to hack Facebook?

Possibly. An announcement came out this week that Anonymous and Lulzsec, the groups behind some of the more notorious hacks this year, plan to try to take down Facebook on November 5. There’s some debate whether they can do it, even within the groups, it seems. Some even believe the announcement was a hoax. But these are the same groups that hacked virtually every cell phone at the hacker conventions in Las Vegas last week, so it has to be perceived as a threat.

What should you do?

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Tom’s Hardware asks: Is an SSD the best upgrade for a slightly old PC?

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , ,

Not surprisingly, they find the answer is yes. Specifically, that a PC equipped with an SSD gets about a 30% across-the-board performance increase.

I don’t agree with everything Tom’s Hardware say in the conclusion, namely, that it’s pointless to put an SSD in a netbook. Indeed, when you put an SSD in a netbook, you get several benefits: improved latency, improved battery life, and much faster boot/resume times, all of which are useful.
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