David L. Farquhar on technology old and new, computer security, and more
It appears that you don’t have to defeat Android location traffic; disabling Android location tracking is entirely possible. Go to Settings, then Location and Security, and uncheck the options Use wireless networks and Use GPS satellites.
There are upsides and downsides.
I fixed up a Nintendo 64 this past weekend. People of a certain age affectionately refer to it just as “the 64,” though to me, “the 64” refers to a computer with 64K of memory introduced in 1982. I have an inherent bias against almost anything that reminds me of 1997, but in spite of my biases, I found a number of things to like about the system after spending a few hours with it.
In the wake of yesterday’s iPhone mess, Android isn’t coming up completely clean either.
While Google’s intentions aren’t completely clear, the approach is safer.
The scandal of the day is the iPhone and the discovery that it tracks your every move. Will that be featured in the next Android commercial? iDo track you. DROID DOESN’T. Update: Probably not.
Of course, the pundits are all over the map on this one. Nobody thinks it’s a particularly good idea. Some think it’s bad but are willing to live with it since they trust Apple not to misuse it. Some think it’s no big deal as long as Apple stops with the next patch. Others have gotten paranoid.
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Would you like to improve your gas mileage in stop-and-go traffic by five or six percent without spending any money and without changing what you drive?
Well, that certainly didn’t take long. Yesterday Samsung announced its hard disk business was for sale. Today it announced Seagate was buying it for $1.375 billion in cash and stock, a slight discount from the asking price.
So after the deals finish shaking down, Seagate and Western Digital will each have somewhere between 40 and 50 percent of the market, and Toshiba around 10 percent.
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I see reports today that Samsung is looking to sell its hard drive business. Samsung is one of four companies left that manufacture computer hard drives, the others being Seagate, Western Digital, and Toshiba.
Hard drives aren’t a growth market any more, so the most likely suitors are one of the remaining three. Since Western Digital just bought Hitachi’s drive business, it probably won’t be them. They may not have the cashflow, and they probably don’t want the regulatory scrutiny that would go along with two acquisitions in rapid succession that make them suddenly nearly twice the size of Seagate. It’s more likely to be Seagate or Toshiba. I’d expect Seagate.
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Just an observation: I’ve received two unexpected e-mail attachments from people I don’t know in the past hour. I figured the first one was an honest mistake–for some reason I get e-mail intended for other people from time to time–but when I got a second one and it, too, was little more than a smiley and an attachment, I started to think something strange is going on.
Your antivirus software should catch anything floating around, but if it’s too new, you can still get bitten. It’s never a good idea to open unexpected attachments. Bad things can happen.
I saw an interesting question about the configuration of mid-1980s (pre-PS/2) IBM PCs on a vintage computer forum this week. The question regarded how various machines came from the factory, especially when some collectors have PCs they bought from the original owners, including an invoice, showing the machine didn’t match known factory configurations. This made me think of the gray market.
The gray market referred to the practice of discounters getting genuine IBM PCs and reselling them, sometimes modified. The most famous gray marketer was Michael Dell–the “Dell” in Dell Computer Corporation–who got his start by upgrading bare-bones IBM PCs and selling them out of his dorm room and later, out of a condo. Eventually he decided he wanted a steadier supply, and started manufacturing, becoming the company we know today.
But Dell was far from the only one. Read more
Years ago, I tried to take apart my dad’s Lionel 2026 to fix it, and I gave up trying to figure it out. Today I scored a similar 2037 locomotive at an estate sale in fixer-upper condition. To my knowledge, no book has ever gone into detail on how to disassemble this model, so I’ll explain it here. This time I was able to drop the motor out to get at what I needed to repair it.
There are also five additional Lionel postwar-era locomotives, the 637, 2016, 2029, and 2036, that come apart the same way.