David L. Farquhar on technology old and new, computer security, and more
I definitely have mixed feelings about LinkedIn. It’s helped me get several jobs, but it can also have the same pitfalls of any social network. Plus some that are unique to LinkedIn. If Linkedin is annoying you, here are some things I did to make LinkedIn less annoying and more helpful.
Rustoleum paint claims to bond to plastic. This is a good thing, because traditionally, plastic has been a bit difficult to paint at times. So are the claims true? Does Rustoleum plastic paint work?
Another vintage computer enthusiast was showing me some interesting items when the topic of expansion slot buses came up. If you think PCI is confusing, wait until you hear about the things that came before PCI. Let’s dive into the slow and confusing world of ISA vs EISA vs VLB.
The Intel 486DX-50 is a chip that puzzles many people when they encounter it. Intel released the chip at the end of June 1991, as its top of the line CPU. It wasn’t one of their success stories. Within 6 months, Intel followed up with its 486DX2 chips. The DX2 chips are extremely common today, because they were phenomenally successful. So let’s look at the 486DX-50 versus DX2, and why the DX50 failed.
It’s understandable if the concept of disk cache vs memory cache is confusing. They have distinct similarities though they are not interchangeable with one another. But let’s talk about the concept and how it works.
The 486 SLC2 is an oddball 486 chip made by IBM. It isn’t something anyone seems to talk about much, maybe because I’m the only one who finds its story ironic. It’s the story of a proprietary upgrade that found second life on clone motherboards. Except the clone motherboards were made by IBM themselves. If IBM made it, is it still a clone?
When wood breaks, gluing it is easy enough. But what if the wood is only cracked? How do you get the glue into the crack so you can make it hold and prevent further breakage? There are a couple of tricks that let you glue a crack in wood, even if you need to get the wood glue into small cracks.
Strictly speaking, plastic can’t rust. By definition, rust is iron oxide, the combination of iron and oxygen. But plastic can combine with oxygen and oxidize. It’s not rust by stretch definition, but it’s the same concept. Here’s why it can happen, and what you can do about it.
What is the best retro network card? I will nominate the Intel 8/16 LAN Adapter. Depending on exactly what you need, there are other cards that can be just as good. And there are certainly faster cards. But the Intel 8/16 LAN Adapter is the most versatile. And it’s not terribly expensive.
What is ASM in security? ASM stands for attack surface management. It solves a real security problem. But it may not be the security problem that you think it solves, and it also doesn’t solve it as completely as it sounds like it may. Let’s talk about what ASM does and whether you might want it.