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Cringely takes on Ashton Kutcher’s movie about Steve Jobs

Dave Farquhar Macintosh, Retro Computing , , , , , , , ,

Mark Stephens, a.k.a. Robert X. Cringely, wrote last week about his disappointment in Ashton Kutcher’s movie Jobs, about the late Apple co-founder and CEO.

Here’s the most important part of his quasi-review:

[S]omething happened during Steve’s NeXT years (which occupy less than a 60 seconds of this 122 minute film) that turned Jobs from a brat into a leader, but they don’t bother to cover that. In his later years Steve still wasn’t an easy guy to know but he was an easier guy to know. His gut for product was still good but his positions were more considered and thought out. He inspired workers without trying so much to dominate or hypnotize them.

Indeed. Read more

Why Intel can’t quit x86

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , , , , , , , ,

Here’s a nice perspective on Intel’s non-x86 efforts, and why they failed and x86 marched on, despite its weak points, and why Intel can’t quit x86.

Kudos for remembering that Intel made ARM chips.

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Is powerline networking secure?

Dave Farquhar security , , , , ,
Is powerline networking secure?

Is powerline networking secure? It can be, but just like wireless, you have to set it up securely. Here’s what you need to know about powerline networking security.

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The benefits of doing IT at home, too

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , , , , , ,

Earlier this week, The Register touted the benefits of having a home lab.

That lab doesn’t necessarily have to be elaborate. But there is definitely something to be said for having some equipment that you can learn and experiment on, and that can break without the world ending. Read more

Update Flash now

Dave Farquhar security ,

Adobe updated Flash today, to fix a couple of 0-day vulnerabilities. Here’s how to force a manual update on Windows and Mac OS X. I put on my sysadmin hat and looked over the update scripts on the page; they’re a little complex but don’t do anything nefarious.

Grab the appropriate update script for the type of computer you’re running, close your browser, run it, and stay safe. And remember, you’re doing me and the rest of the world a favor; if your computer is up to date, then it isn’t attacking my network, and if mine’s up to date and secure, mine isn’t attacking yours.

Four simple steps to optimize WordPress

Dave Farquhar Apache, Linux , , , , ,

A couple of years ago, I stood up a WordPress server. I made no effort to tune it, let alone turbocharge it, which is a decision I later came to regret. If your site gets more than a few hundred hits per day, you need to tune it. If you want to get more than a few hundred hits per day, you need to tune it because Apache and MySQL’s default settings are by no means one-size-fits-all. And you can never have too much speed. There are two reasons for that: Google favors fast sites over slow sites, and Amazon found that a one-second delay in page load drops traffic by 7 percent.

There’s a lot of advice out there on tuning WordPress, some of which seems to be good, and some of it not so good.

Here are four things that I know work. I run Apache and MySQL under Linux; these tools may run under Windows or OS X too.
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The lines between white hat/gray hat/black hat hacking and moral laws

Dave Farquhar security , , , , , ,

Longtime reader/commenter Joseph asked two questions yesterday: What’s the boundary between gray and black-hat hacking, and is it moral to pick and choose between moral and immoral laws?

The first question is easier than the second. So I’ll tackle that one first. Read more

A fast way to turn lots of images into an Adobe Acrobat PDF file

Dave Farquhar Software , , , , , , , , ,

I have a collection of magazine scans that, inconveniently, came as a series of JPG images rather than as PDFs that are more conducive to reading. I wanted PDFs, so I found a way to turn lots of images into an Adobe Acrobat PDF file.

Building the PDF manually took a good 30 minutes per issue, so I wanted a faster way. Using command-line tools, I was able to convert the entire collection (about 40 issues) in less than 30 minutes. Read more

Stop whatever you’re doing and uninstall Java. I’ll wait for you.

Dave Farquhar security , ,

For years, standard practice has been to install Java, just in case you need it.

That’s no longer a safe practice. For your own safety, unless you absolutely, positively need Java, you should uninstall it. If you’re not sure if you need Java, uninstall it, then consider reinstalling if something breaks. Read more

Thanks for the misinformation, Disney

Dave Farquhar security , , , , , , , , ,

In one of its throwaway kid’s sitcoms, Disney insinuates that open source software contains spyware and using it is a ‘rookie mistake’.

Open source software rarely contains viruses or spyware. Since it’s open for examination, changes to the code that have any funny business in them tend to be rejected. For that matter, code with unintended bad consequences tends to either be rejected, or quickly changed.
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